Crafting updates from the Devs

Community General Discussion
1

Sadly you cant ask questions in response to blue posts on the Community Council, I can only do that here. A recent set of posts provided more information on crafting in Dragonflight and while some of it sounds good, there are a few things that concern me.

Good thing:

You do not directly get better at a recipe via crafting it multiple times, as you do with legendary recipes in Shadowlands

I hate the current legendary crafting system because it involves a series of extremely expensive grinding. I dunno about other crafters but I donā€™t mind working on a profession to improve my skills but I seriously dislike being asked to hand over hundreds of thousands in gold to do that.

That is an interesting system, but ultimately requires a huge amount of gold investment and can get repetitive. This means only players with lots of gold can easily engage with it, and has also resulted in the cost of legendaries being extremely high in many cases.

Exactly, Devs. Why did you do it this way if thatā€™s what you think??

Good, but a bit concerning:

It is absolutely the case that we plan on having crafted gear be able to compete with top end gear from other sources, and in some cases even be best in slot.

In the past higher level gear required materials gained from raids. This never made a lot of sense to me since raiders had access to higher levels of gear through playing that higher level of content. If a social/casual player wants to work on crafting, putting that sort of barrier in place is a bit sad. This isnā€™t about whether someone like me wants to raid - sometimes itā€™s just not possible for various personal reasons.

Iā€™m not sure I understand this:

Just remember, in order to have that powerful gear crafted for yourself, youā€™ll need to go out and earn special (soulbound) reagents to provide to the crafter in order to have that item youā€™ve had your eye on crafted!

If the special reagent is soulbound, how can they provide it to a crafter? Only thing I can think of is that its somehow allowed through the AH work order system?

I do very much like this idea:

One thing I want to talk about that we havenā€™t mentioned yet is the concept of recrafting. Itā€™s still in the works so is likely to change some, but the basic idea is as follows:

Recrafting will allow you to take any piece of Dragonflight crafted gear and bring it back into the crafting screen as a crafter. You can then spend a special reagent, plus a small subset of the original reagents from the recipe to ā€œrecraft the itemā€.

During this process, you can completely change out optional reagents if you want. The new quality of the item will be determined based on the new setup of reagents, plus your current skill. This means you can have an item crafted at a low quality, then later recraft it when you are higher skill to a higher quality.

For non-crafters, we are planning to support recrafting orders as well. In this case, you can send you item to get recrafted to have its optional reagents changed out, or to potentially have its quality increased.

All of this should help players feel comfortable having a high end item crafted early, when it might not be at max quality, secure in the knowledge that they can always have it recrafted to be better later.

This will be an excellent crafting option if indeed it does make it live.

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2

Not sure why you donā€™t understand this. Itā€™s like if you pick up a flower and itā€™s soulbound, meaning you canā€™t trade it to anyone else, you can only use it in whatever you are crafting.

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Did you actually read it? Just in case you didnā€™t Iā€™ll repeat the confusing bit:

i.e. get something yourself (that is soulbound) and give it to someone elseā€¦??

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Yeah, I can read, and I assume itā€™s a mistype. Logic is a thing.

5

Hmm,give a soulbound to recraft it on a work order seems out of place from the past expansions ,this would change everything in crafting.

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I would suspect that the work order works like getting a rogue to open a lockbox for you. Put your thing in the ā€˜do not tradeā€™ section and they can still act upon it.

So if you put in a work order, you provide materials (which may make soulbound irrelevant) and the crafter can use it.

7

The new work order system. That was explained.

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8

Maybe the crafter is the only one that can through an regent ,then that mean they are the only ones that will get it?

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Probably like the trade window where you can PUT IN an item to be enchanted, but not actually trade it. The crafting thing may be like cloud storage, you just place your items into the window, and its accessible by the crafter but they cant just grab it.

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10

Yes, as I said in my post: ā€œOnly thing I can think of is that its somehow allowed through the AH work order system?ā€

I havenā€™t seen it explained but then there have been so many interviews out there I could easily have missed it.

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You did. I remember them explaining it in one of the crafting videos.

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Yup, thatā€™s exactly how the WO system was initially described. When you create the WO, you also put up some or all of the resources.

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13

I would say we get the reagent recipe from doing rep with one of them. Surly there will be some block(there always is).

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Well that will be good if it includes those supposed soulbound mats. So if I had, say, a hunter who really wanted that fancy bow and Iā€™d collected almost all the materials, including a soulbound mat I got through some activity, and I could put all those items (including the sb one) up as a work order, it would effectively mean that there would be nothing in the crafting system I couldnā€™t get access to in at least someway.

In the past there were items you could craft which were themselves BoP, and that could be frustrating. In my case, my Paladin took Leatherworking as his professions waaaay back when I first made him many expansions ago and in that time collected a lot of rare patterns which I would have lost if Iā€™d dumped the profession. But in certain expansions since many of the higher level pieces he could make were useless because they were BoP. If this system provides a way around that barrier, it would be a good step forward.

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15

I would like to know if the limit of 1 wearable crafted item will remain. This is a HUGE limitation, especially if you are trying to catch up either being away from the game or for an alt, not to mention it heavily impacts the ability to make gold from the professions.

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The two concerns I have are:

  1. is it alt-freindly? (I donā€™t want to dominate the economy, I just like having a lot of alts and I like the fantasy of them being their own little self-sufficient community ā€¦ which I know flies in face of the ā€œplayer interactionā€ side of things ā€¦ but ā€¦ well, I want what I want)

  2. will there activities I can build a routine around? (I donā€™t enjoy just flat farming of mats without any structure and the WQs of the last couple of expansions have been too scattered, erratic and unrewarding to build a routine around). My opinion on ZM mats is still pending judgement.

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A good point. Recently the limitations on 1 piece only seem to have mostly been towards the end when the ilevel of the pieces was high. If, as they are saying, we can theoretically make BiS pieces, you have to wonder what limits will be set on those.

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I do like the bundle system where the mats do drop from time to time when questing or downing the creatures or humanoids for them .Hope they keep that.

19

Another point I just caught on crafting is Ion reminding me of the fact that they are putting back the idea of Master crafting - and it seems to be similar (in a way) to current legendary crafting insofar as you can concentrate on one aspect of crafting and level it up to be able to offer the best pieces of that particular thing. Now obviously they dont want to go the Legendary route of extremely expensive levelling but Ion even mentioned that it would be as if crafting had a talent tree.

So for example, if my Leatherworker wanted to be the best at making mail gear, he would pick mail gear to work on and then perhaps pick leggings and level his mastery on that piece of gear so that in time he would be to offer top quality leggings. So the first thing my LW might concentrate on would look something like this:

And once that was run through all the various ā€˜talentā€™ levels, he could switch to something else. Of course, it all depends on timing: how long it takes and how much effort it requies and how much it costs in whatever way it might cost to complete or nearly complete each choice, along with whatever timing walls are put in the way of achieving that top level Mastery.

20

Crafting was literally destroyed in BfA when you had to have marks to make superior gear. Those marks were obtained through horrible grueling reputation grinds.

Here are just a few of my suggestions:

  • Eliminate all Soulbound items and make them an account bound. Im grinding reputation on all my toons just to get a recipe. If my class canā€™t use it I can still give it to one of my toons who has the level and right class.

  • Return to MoP crafting where armor and weapons had 2 sets that could be learned. Crafted Armor and Weapons should look impressive but not overwhelm Dungeon, PvP and Raid armor and weapons. MoP had the best crafted outfits.

  • Return MoP vendors that sold inexpensive green armor that increased iLvl as you level your toon.

  • Toons should be able to do all secondary professions without paying for training in Archaeology, Cooking, Fishing, Herbalism, Mining and Skinning. Primary professions should be limited to 2 for Alchemy, Enchanting, Engineering, Inscription, Leatherworking or Tailoring and require training.

  • Materials should be plentiful and not scarce. All materials should be exchangeable and be able to sell on the AH. Vendors should sell small quantities of materials to keep AH prices in check.

  • Add Wood Cutting to the Secondary Professions so players may cut down every forest in sight.

  • Inscriptionists should have the ability to make dyes that can be sold in the AH to change the color appearance of armor and weapons.

  • Crafting recipes should require materials from other expansions. Ex. Kingsblood (low level herb) and Celestial Cloth (high level cloth) to make a red cape for instance. This would put gatherers back all over Azeroth to collect materials long forgotten. Skinning, however, should yield more material so not to kill off the entire animal population.

  • Profession Trainers should be able to trade material goods for higher or lower materials. Example: Trade 100 copper ores for 1 gold ore.

  • All crafted items should have at least one jewel socket and allow one enchantment, thread or leather or metal improvement.