Crafting thoughts: Blacksmithing, Mushroom farming, and others
I finished brewing last night and have some thoughts regarding a few of the crafts currently in the game. My primary complaint (blacksmithing and carpentry) is that there are super obvious routes that require half the materials vs other options.
Blacksmithing (50+): Too easy with throwing knives (though almost entirely wasted since nobody buys at full) or too hard with gear (ridiculously expensive & tedious). I feel like you're asking people to take too much of a financial hit with little benefit, especially when it starts to require three tools. Obviously this will change over time since blacksmithing is intended to be more of a helper skill like textiles/tanning, but it's an odd skill to level at the moment.
My recommendation:
- Lower crafting level of throwing knives (this was too easy, even at a huge loss)
and
- Give us a way to sell armor stakes. If metal armor is going to be difficult to make, that is fine, but something has to give if throwing knives are rightly nerfed. Asking people to make several hundred pieces of gear losing 2-3 slabs, a rivet, half a tool, and a gem for a mediocre return might be too much. Giving us a way to offload these stakes, which are easier to make than level equivalent gear, until armor smithing comes would be nice.
Also... crafting all of the statues once might give too much xp.
Mushroom farming & Fishing (Ice fishing) : Too good? If it was your intent to stop all (most) foraging for mushrooms and fish, it's doing its job. But as is, I have absolutely no use for mushroom forage boost stuff (arrangements, alcohol) because it's foolish to do it any other way. I hope that as the cap increases, we have a reason to go outside to get this stuff aside from leveling.
Brewing: Fine. Leveling this skill puts every other craft to shame and some of the benefits are really neat. I can boost my armor by +180 plus liquor (haven't mapped them out yet) for bosses. In another post, Niph said 3500ish barley is required if you do 1-30 with casks, I agree with this number. You also need about a thousand hops. Lacking any source of green apples is a pain.
Buckle Artistry: Do this with dye making. Buckle artistry requires a ton of different dyes, the only other time you will make most of these is when leveling dye making. If you're just doing dye making, suck it up and do buckle artistry too.
Carpentry: Cow/deer shoes too easy? Or just a gift for toolcrafters? Great wooden cow/deer shoes, level 63 crafts, require only a single piece of cedar, a single tool, and a crystal. A screaming deal.
Fletching: Collect feathers for a couple of weeks and you can finish it. This skill is too easy to level, requires zero thought and is cheap. I could understand this working as intended though.
Flower arrangement: A truly pleasurable skill to level and use. It upgrades everything that you do. Going to grind in a place with wood? Need to forage in sun vale? Foolish to do it without an arrangement. This isn't even getting into cotton and gardening displays, which are absolute requirements. Grinding this skill early on definitely paid off. My one little hint about this is that when leveling, make arrangements, not bouquets (in most situations), but that should be obvious to all but the most dense.
Gadgeteering: I haven't done it and I see absolutely no reason to.
Spoiler: