Update Discussion: October 18, 2018

Recently I gave some advice about gearing up in the current state of the game. There is (still) a gear drop void between 30-50 it seems as I've asked a few new players who ended up grinding goblin dungeon and were close to 50 while still wearing 35 gear. This problem has been around since I started playing 2-3 years ago.

I was asked when is a good time to start crafting and modding gear. My answer was around 60 (in the current game), this is because leveling from 40-60 is still not that difficult and there isn't content in the game that really requires level 40s to build nicer gear.

So this makes me question the whole concept of level 40s gambling on weapons that can break because what I would tell these level 40s is to just get to level 50 and get a level 50 weapon instead, why waste the time trying to build their level 40-45 weapons (assuming they even have these, because most people still get 35ish gear) when they can just tough it out and wait for level 50-60 weapons instead?

I personally have no issue with risking a weapon that can break in order to make it more powerful, I think my only criticism would be that it requires too many crafts. I think it should just be simplified down. I'll use an example from Final Fantasy 1.0 (no the 2.0 trash right now)

in FF14 1.0, you can add "mods" to a piece of gear. The chance of adding goes like this:

1st: 100% chance
2nd: 35-50% chance (depends on the power of the mod)
3rd: 15% chance
4th: 5% chance
5th: 1-2% chance (I actually got one to go through)

The item can break any time along this path of improvment, you lose both the item and the mod(materia in this case)

I found this system kind of fun and I think it's simple enough to understand for most people. It was definitely not necessary to get beyond 3 mods to do endgame. 2 mods was probably expected.

So my advice would be to lower the amount of times you upgrade these weapons, but increase their chance of breaking as you gamble higher, but maybe the first 1-2 upgrades have a higher chance of happening.

Yeah huge bummer your weapon breaks as you adding the last +2, fail at the 150th time, stuff like that would send people raging.

It's not that it might destroy a weapon: It's because random chance on enchantment is is a bad mechanic which penalizes anyone who doesn't have the time to grind. It's a grind at the end of a grind. It's bad. It doesn't incentivize being crafty or clever, it just emphasizes grind.

So a lot of new posts, thanks Citan.

I want to just say that I am in the 'likes dangerous upgrades' camp and people that don't want to get +300 damage can instead spend a lot less effort to just get to +100, or just not at all - I was being out damaged with a +300 hammer by someone using skills that don't have a dangerous recipe today.

I also strongly agree with once the level cap is 100+ level 70's will not be spending literally days to get a +300 damage level 70 weapon when they could instead get to level 90 in those days.

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Originally Posted by Citan

So if people have ideas for other ways to "dangerously" (riskily) augment gear, using metal ingots (possibly among other things), that they think will work better for the target level range, please share!

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I quite liked Yaffy's idea of upgrades that add random positive or negative effects, more stuff that's simply unique(think adding fire shield potion effect to some armor or adding a chance to ignite target to any weapon) or some enhancements with drawbacks(+x% elemental damage, receive y% more damage from all elemental attacks would be a bit more interesting than the current +5.6% fire damage you can get from tailoring recipes)

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Originally Posted by Yaffy

Even if you add another upgrade system why wouldn't you want to use both that upgrade AND dangerous enchantments on it? To me what this means I'll do is that I'll avoid any cool upgrade system you might have planned until I have a +300 damage weapon

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I think Citans point is that if you do that, good job. You now have a better weapon than anyone else in return for your great effort. Currently it is a problem because if you do that you get so far ahead(well, with the recent nerfs it doesn't even feel as such already - I'm hitting for 2k with a +300 hammer and people using fire/psy hit for that or more) - Having best in slot gear seems to be the 'norm' on MMORPG's now but I don't think it's something that should be the norm or maybe even realistically possible in every MMO. If getting best in slot is going to take you forever and be frustrating then that's fine, you don't need best in slot to be readily available to all players.

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Originally Posted by Citan

Some notes about the new recipes:

But just to be clear: in the final game, I can't imagine anyone with legendary level 70 gear risking it in one of these recipes, because why in the everliving FUCK would they do that? That's a terrible risk for tiny reward. Keep in mind these players will probably only have one or two legendaries at that level at most, since they won't be staying at level 70 terribly long. I don't currently see a situation happening at level 70 that's comparable to what level 35 players are experiencing. But if I'm wrong and these recipes end up seeming "mandatory" at higher level, I'll limit the recipes further until they aren't. Surely by level 120 a recipe that "adds 2 simple damage with a 3% chance to destroy your weapon" is a terrible, terrible deal. There will be other better ways to enhance top-end gear.

I still need to tweak these recipes more in the future; I'm still trying to figure out the right risk/reward, and what sorts of limitations they should have. They use a new type of damage so that I can organize the calculations in different ways as needed. When I'm happier with how they work I'll add versions for more skills, but right now it's nice to keep it contained a bit.

(Edited to add: I might add one or two more recipes soon in order to get more data and feedback coming in. Not a lot of people are testing the Knife one, which is the one I'm most worried about, balance-wise, because you can dual-wield knives and double stack the simple damage.)

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I mean for the a level 120 sword anything endgame that gives me even the slightest amount of edge over the average joe especially so when weapon smithing comes out will be very appreciated, all I would have to do is just spam craft weapons and try over and over, besides compared to other skills sword is lack luster in burst damage with calligraphy and not all the potions and other crap I only do 2.8k

But on a side note on how to make lower level metal slabs usefull make it so when armor smithing comes out you would lower level slabs to craft armor stakes that would be used in high level gear, say you want a level 60 metal chestplate you will need lower level slabs for the stakes on top of masterwork metal slabs in the required materials list or something along those lines not all stakes corresponding the level will be needed for the same tier armor for example a level 60 chestplate will take a level 50 armor stake which you will need expert metal slabs to make on top of masterwork slabs


Ps. Considering I want to make my own metal armor set fully maxed out I'm probably shooting myself in the foot for this idea but I would rather be productive and give actually good ideas to fix the problem