Critical Crafting

[Lara3con]

One of the ‘fun’ parts of crafting in Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) was the chance that a crafted item could be produced with better stats or armour.

I thought I’d have a look at this on our home server and it is certainly possible to introduce into Turtle Wow in a fairly basic way, without too much work.

I set up a chance element of 74%, 20%, 5% and 1% named Common, Fine, Superior and Perfect respectively within the random enchant database and added additional stats to some crafted items. (These percentages and names can be anything you like)

For example, White Linen Robe normally has +1 Int. This becomes White Linen Robe (Common).
A White Linen Robe (Fine) is now +2 Int or whatever improvement would be fitting but would only be made 20% of the time. And so on.


This in effect dovetails into the ‘of the whatever” that you can obtain from drops, but for crafted items.

[Gantulga]

This also happened in other MMOs but in different forms.

For example in Aion, a critical craft consumed less materials, while stats remained the same.
Something like this would work nicely for alchemy or engineering.

I'm not a fan of extra stats, stat RNG and such though. Such systems do not belong in a MMORPG.

[Kefke]

Mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, it would be a nice, cool bonus, and it would make certain low-level crafts more rewarding. On the other hand, the ghost of titanforging looms. In every game I've ever seen with random enchants the player can apply, people with IRL goblin brains won't settle for anything but the best ones. Which for this system would mean having to craft dozens of an item to get that rare proc. So first of all, there's the price of higher rarity items for players not crafting them themselves, as people crafting items to sell would need to price for the expense of materials on all the "failed" attempts. Then there's the late to endgame crafts, some of which are such an expense to make in the first place that grinding out multiples to get higher level versions just sounds painful.

So, all in all, I'd have to say no to this one. At least in this form. Maybe if there was a new "reforge" mechanic you did to an existing, unmodified item, so that costs are fixed across all items, but even then I'd be on the fence.

[Illyane]

Kefke's arguments made me completely convinced.

[Lara3con]

Yes, really strong arguments Kefke.

I was so occupied with whether I could, I didn’t stop to think if I should. To borrow a quote

I have it in place for low level items, where crafted items are poor compared with drops and there it will probably remain.

[Xudo]

Actually, it is possible to make sort of critical craft in Wow.
Already present in recipe https://classicdb.ch/?item=3610
Random stats can be 1-1 or 1-2 or 2-1 or 2-2 or 4. They are usually usable by mail users: stamina, strength, attack power etc.
When you rolled 2-2 stat, you can consider it is "critical".

There is also engineerings Green Lens https://classicdb.ch/?spell=12622
They could get very neat bonuses.

Crafts with random bonuses could require reduced mats compared to static crafts. With obvious outcomes.

Other good feature of random craft is that you have single recipe featuring different stats.
You can craft "of bandit" with stamina, attack power and crit or "of whatever" with healing and mp5.

"Failed" non BiS attempts might be sold with discout for price of mats.

Reforge mechanic can easily be implemented with recipe, which requires item X and produces same item X.
What should be its cost? I think most sensible is enchanting mats and stuff like Flux, Threads, Dye.