Forums » Crafting and Gathering

Define rare

    • 174 posts
    October 6, 2017 9:24 AM PDT

    I've seen posts about rare materials, but haven't noticed what folks think rare should mean. I imagine rare to one person means something else to another. This could probably apply throughout the forums to mobs, drops etc., but I was particularly wondering what harvesters think the various levels of rarity would be defined as, and what levels might exist for that matter.

    Examples:

    Common- 90% success rate (allows for 10% damage while harvesting)

    Uncommon- 10% chance of finding an uncommon material when harvesting

    Rare- 1% chance of finding something, i.e. you swing your scythe 100 times and 1 time you harvest a rare plant fiber

    Legendary- 0.1% chance of finding said item 1 out of 1000 chances

    Mythical- 0.01% 1 out of 10,000 swings of your axe. Item is so rare you're not sure it exists at all. When you find it you sacrifice your most valuable items to your diety to increase your chances of success upon crafting your "mythical sword of amazingness"!

    These are just examples to stimulate conversation, hopefully. Please give your opinion as to what rare means to you. Should mythical even exist? Maybe 1 out of 5000 is painful enough. Should perception modify rarity? Perhaps a truly perceptive harvester has a 10% better chance of finding a rare material than a non perceptive harvester.

    Thoughts?

    Disclaimer: I did a brief search, but couldn't find anybody attach any numbers to the concept of rarity (mainly searched crafting), forgive me if I missed the obvious...

    Edit: begone excess zeros, thank Durp, obviously I wasn't a math major in school...


    This post was edited by Chimerical at October 11, 2017 7:49 PM PDT
    • 3 posts
    October 6, 2017 12:32 PM PDT
    As a lover of RNG loot tables your post caught my eye. Thanks for the topic. I agree and your numbers seems sound. Perception should definitely play a roll as well as specific skill lines associated with the type of material gathering or refining.
    • 1785 posts
    October 6, 2017 1:02 PM PDT

    I agree with your numbers in general, but I think there maybe should be more to it.

    common resources are easy to get, whether you do it with a pick, a hatchet, a shovel, a sickle, a skinning knife, or by otherwise prying it out of the cold, dead body of a monster somewhere.

    uncommon stuff is also as you mention, but better tools help you find it more easily.

    rare stuff is not only hard to find, but requires really good tools/gear AND is only found in dark and dangerous places.  "Hey guys, I need an escort to the bottom of the caves of chaos so I can mine some mythril, you available?

    mythical stuff should involve extreme danger and preparation, not just luck. "ok after we take down the boss we need everyone to stick around and protect the gathering team while they try to harvest the adamantium vein at the back. Sometimes it can cause the giant elemental to wake up and we need to be ready for him"

    sent from phone keys, sorry for typos :)

    • 3016 posts
    October 6, 2017 1:05 PM PDT

    Mythical sounds good to me, why not? :)  Challenges are always good,  and if you can get help with it..even better.  :)

     

    Cana

     

     

    • 174 posts
    October 6, 2017 1:31 PM PDT

    I'm hesitant to promote danger as the sole means of determining rarity. I happen to appreciate getting lucky and finding a rare resource. Perhaps proximity to danger could be a modifier as well? Example a vein of ore down in a cave known to be inhabited by a sect of goblin miners extremely possessive of their territory could increase your odds of locating rare, or rarer, materials by 20% (for arguments sake). Crafting drops off mobs should be even more reflective of the difficulty of the mob. Drop a raid boss and 1 in 10,000 becomes 1 in a 1,000 (or 100 up for discussion). 

    I do think better tools should improve your efforts, i.e. a pristine pickaxe increases yield 5% and chance at uncommon quality or better 8%. A gnomish headlamp could illuminate rare gems 15% better, sewing gloves of amazing dexterity allow 10% increased chance of salvaging components from a rare garment, that sort of thing.

    Maybe they can have specializations for harvesters. Gatherers would have modifiers for yield, gleaners would have modifiers for quality...

    • 1785 posts
    October 6, 2017 2:05 PM PDT

    I would support a combination of luck and risk (with one exception) I just don't want it to be purely based on luck or on gear. This is probably because I am one of those people that almost never gets the RNG to work in their favor ;)

    The exception is that I feel that the very rarest stuff absolutely should involve danger to obtain. I say this because that helps keep it from being easily farmed. Many games have proven that no matter how rare you make something, people will go to extremes to farm it if all it takes is time. Plus, I want adventurers and crafters/gatherers to have to work together to make the best items. Putting the resources needed for the top of the top in the bottom of dungeons helps promote an active economy and helps give people additional reasons to go to those places.

    • 294 posts
    October 7, 2017 3:19 PM PDT

    Rare is certainly something you should not attain everyday.

     

    • 33 posts
    October 10, 2017 11:33 AM PDT

    I like the idea of danger being part of finding rarer resources, but sometimes people really can just be in the right place at the right time and get lucky too. I also think that anything guarding a resource should have a small chance of dropping that same resource. I agree that something rare isn't something you should be able to get everyday and legendary/mythical should be even harder - maybe a month or six months respectively. Just throwing out numbers... And the bump up in item uberness from each level of rareness should be smaller and smaller; legendary maybe 25% better than rare, mythical only 10% better than legendary as a base upgrade. Again, just throwing out numbers.

    • 724 posts
    October 10, 2017 1:21 PM PDT

    I think the Common to Legendary notion used above is fine (numbers may be different but the general idea is good). Mythical chance however I don't like, that's just way too much RNG chance. Better to keep such items rare or legendary...but make them appear only in dangerous places unlike "normal" rare/legendary items which can appear anywhere.

    • 77 posts
    October 11, 2017 12:49 PM PDT

    Ah rng, I pulled off 5 precursors in GW2 first year. Even merched one not realizing it was another. I have offerings to RNG gods all day ever day. 

     

    I however don't like the idea of rng generated nodes. If the giant mythical pegasus has a giant mythical hoof that I need to make a mythical cold ark steel breastplate, when I or raid team kills the mythical creature I would like to be able to obtain the hoof from the bloody carcass unless of course the mage somehow fireballed it to ash. Of course I would also suspect in such legendary/mythical items there be needs of many enchantments/rituals/elvensacrifices to make even a portion of the item truely mythical. 

    If it's a drop I want to know who the smith was that crafted the raid bosses mythical breastplate +20 so that I can torture them for their knowledge. 


    This post was edited by Nolvu at October 11, 2017 12:53 PM PDT
    • 399 posts
    October 11, 2017 2:53 PM PDT

    Chimerical said:

    I've seen posts about rare materials, but haven't noticed what folks think rare should mean. I imagine rare to one person means something else to another. This could probably apply throughout the forums to mobs, drops etc., but I was particularly wondering what harvesters think the various levels of rarity would be defined as, and what levels might exist for that matter.

    Examples:

    Common- 90% success rate (allows for 10% damage while harvesting)

    Uncommon- 10% chance of finding an uncommon material when harvesting

    Rare- 1% chance of finding something, i.e. you swing your scythe 100 times and 1 time you harvest a rare plant fiber

    Legendary- 0.001% chance of finding said item 1 out of 1000 chances

    Mythical- 0.0001% 1/100 0f 1%- 1 out of 10,000 swings of your axe. Item is so rare you're not sure it exists at all. When you find it you sacrifice your most valuable items to your diety to increase your chances of success upon crafting your "mythical sword of amazingness"!

    These are just examples to stimulate conversation, hopefully. Please give your opinion as to what rare means to you. Should mythical even exist? Maybe 1 out of 5000 is painful enough. Should perception modify rarity? Perhaps a truly perceptive harvester has a 10% better chance of finding a rare material than a non perceptive harvester.

    Thoughts?

    Disclaimer: I did a brief search, but couldn't find anybody attach any numbers to the concept of rarity (mainly searched crafting), forgive me if I missed the obvious...

    Rare could be exactly as you described or just simply a differentiation between common and not common.

    It depends on the situation and also on the developer but also on the perception.  187 was relating a story about his guild waiting 10 weeks for a certain item to drop before his guild could move on, where as another guild got 2 in 1 week. 

     

    With respect to the math....1/100 is 1% .... 1/1000 is 0.1% and 1/10000 is 0.01%... ;)

    • 174 posts
    October 11, 2017 8:52 PM PDT

    I'd still like to have a chance to harvest something extremely valuable. Make mythical 1 in 50,000 attempts, that would be over 6 months if you harvested 250 times a day 7 days a week, if you're lucky. It might make sense if you found something extremely valuable that bandit type npc's might attempt to steal it from you. Perhaps should you harvest a legendary or mythical item, npc's perception would increase while you have it on you until you bank the item for safe keeping. You would have to get a group together, while you head toward town, in case you agro'd npc's that would steal it from you. 

    As a crafter I'd like there to be a challenge using rare materials. The rarer the material the harder it is to work with. Even a "grandmaster" crafter would have a difficult time working with mythical material, it shouldn't just be as simple as working with common or uncommon materials. If the challenge is severe enough you can make legendary/mythical materials a bit easier to find, taking into account likelihood of failure in creating items with material. Maybe the grandmaster would first have to obtain a difficult to obtain recipe before they could even attempt a legendary/mythical combine. Perhaps that's where a forge in a dungeon comes in. A grandmaster smith using a forge in town has a 50/50 chance of succeeding in creating a mythical item, but using a special forge in a dungeon, while protected from mobs by group/raid increases that chance to near 100%!

    I'd also like to add in the concept of a unique item. There can only be one per server, per type. These could be rewards from gm's or special drops from difficult mobs that once obtained would no longer be found in the loot table. Maybe a unique recipe, a unique tool, a one of a kind sword, with hopefully a one of a kind appearance, to make the rest of us all envious...

    • 1120 posts
    October 12, 2017 8:22 PM PDT

    If youre going to make something extremely rare, it shouldnt also be extremely volatile to work with. 

    Imagine getting that lucky 1 in 50000 item and then you fail a combine with it.

    If you want things to be SEMI rare and then difficult to work with im 100% on board with that.

    • 174 posts
    October 12, 2017 11:18 PM PDT

    Well I'd hope for the developers to balance the difficulty of finding the material with the difficulty of turning it into a useful item to hit the sweet spot of legendary/mythical. 1 in 50,000 would be just stumbling upon something, getting lucky with the rng, the only investment an insane amount of time harvesting. For an item that could be lost in crafting they would need to make them somewhat less rare to find, or perhaps they would be "damaged" in the crafting effort and rather than a mythical item you would end up with legendary item instead. 

    • 1921 posts
    October 13, 2017 9:08 PM PDT

    Chimerical said: ... Thoughts? ...

    Make it as rare as you want, as long as something like 10 or 100 of the previous tier can be combined or traded to an NPC to make one of the next rarer tier. 

    I'm all for rare, but I'd rather not be punished by the RNG if I've put in 4-10 times the time & effort as someone else and still have nothing to show for it. :)

    • 1120 posts
    October 14, 2017 5:10 AM PDT

    vjek said:

    Chimerical said: ... Thoughts? ...

    Make it as rare as you want, as long as something like 10 or 100 of the previous tier can be combined or traded to an NPC to make one of the next rarer tier. 

    I'm all for rare, but I'd rather not be punished by the RNG if I've put in 4-10 times the time & effort as someone else and still have nothing to show for it. :)

    This is something I could get behind!

    • 11 posts
    October 15, 2017 1:29 AM PDT

    Not a huge fan of tool quality increasing the chance of getting a uncommon/rare/legendary item. If I'm mining a copper node with a mythril pickaxe of awesomeness I dont expect to suddenly hit a chunk of Adamantium, it just doesnt make a whole lot of sense. Now the tool quality increasing the yield I can get behind. Using that same mythril pickaxe I should be getting a crapload of copper from the node since it cuts through the ore like butter but if I'm using a copper pickaxe on a mythril node then I'm going to destroy my tool in the process and maybe break off little chips of mythril that are useless.

     

    I'm also a huge fan of having raid mobs be harvestable for super rare crafting drops. You want to craft that best in slot breastplate outside of raid drops then you better go kill that molten giant in order to harvest his fiery skin into the container that you crafted to hold the item and not set you on fire so you can take it to the forge to get the right heat required to melt the damn ore. Does it suck that everyone won't be able to craft that piece of equipment that makes you want to instantly start worshipping the player as your diety? Yeah but then it wouldn't exactly be deity inspiring if every idiot with a pickaxe could craft the stuff lol.

    • 1120 posts
    October 15, 2017 10:57 AM PDT

    Kefo said: 

    I'm also a huge fan of having raid mobs be harvestable for super rare crafting drops. You want to craft that best in slot breastplate outside of raid drops then you better go kill that molten giant in order to harvest his fiery skin into the container that you crafted to hold the item and not set you on fire so you can take it to the forge to get the right heat required to melt the damn ore. Does it suck that everyone won't be able to craft that piece of equipment that makes you want to instantly start worshipping the player as your diety? Yeah but then it wouldn't exactly be deity inspiring if every idiot with a pickaxe could craft the stuff lol.

    I agree, there should be distinct tiers between gear.  Im not saying if you are a top end raider you cant exp in Zone X.  But if i raid, and you dont, i should have significantly better stats than you.

    Im all for certain item slots being able to be BiS before raiding (think back to classic and kunark EQ) but the majority of the best items should come from raiding.

    This is where crafting comes in.  I feel you should be able to craft a set of gear that is equivalent to the best you can farm pre raiding, and even have a few pieces that might be better than a raid item... but if you TRULY want raid quality you need to raid.  If you kill raid mobs (even trash) and farm materials, im ok with that (think farming elementals for mephit bloods and whatnot).  I dont want to be able to create the best item ever without ever stepping foot in a dungeon or raid.

    • 399 posts
    October 15, 2017 11:19 AM PDT

    Porygon said:

    .................... I dont want to be able to create the best item ever without ever stepping foot in a dungeon or raid.............

    I'm not sure I agree with this.  While I certainly am all for risk vs reward and believe that raids should drop the Top of the Line items, I am also in favor of a master crafter being able to craft a similar Top of the Line Item. 

    However, there is/should be no trivial on this.  In other words, just as it is not likely that one person will get a Top of the Line raid item once a week (as there are many in the raid loot is distributed to) a master crafter will only succeed on a Top of the Line item rarely, commensurate with how often one would be able to get raid gear. 

    The items required to be able to craft this top of the line item will be rare-ish but become more available as new expansions come out and levels increase. In case of a fail, an item that's good, but not top of the line, i.e. lesser quality could be returned.

    This then to reward a crafter who spends as much time levelling, perfecting, honing their crafting ability as someone does levelling, perfecting and honing their raiding ability.

    But I don't want someone to be able to craft 20 top of the line items in 1 day.  That would not be ok

    • 1120 posts
    October 15, 2017 11:48 AM PDT

    Durp said:

    This then to reward a crafter who spends as much time levelling, perfecting, honing their crafting ability as someone does levelling, perfecting and honing their raiding ability.

    But I don't want someone to be able to craft 20 top of the line items in 1 day.  That would not be ok

    I completely understand where you're coming from, and can tell we most likely won't agree,  but if you look at a majority of games,  tradeskills,  though time consuming,  typically are not challenging.   I just want there to be some sort of challenge to get a raid quality item. 

    Now as I said,  if you can create 1 item that's bis from items gathered from raids,  I'm very much ok with that!

    I'll be excited to learn more about the crafting system. That's for sure. 

    • 557 posts
    October 15, 2017 12:15 PM PDT

    I'm definitely of the mind that the top gear in the game should be a combination of boss mob drops and crafted elements.

    ie A dragon wouldn't drop a breastplate, but a set of scales which could be taken to a master craftsperson to be fashioned into that top tier piece of armour.  Then perhaps it's augmented further by rare drops and a different trade skill.  We accept this model for epic weapon quests - ie you don't get an epic drop from a mob, you have multiple steps with many people (traditionally NPCs) assisting along the way.

    Not all gear would have to work this way, but I'd like to see the norm be less immediately usable gear and more components - at least for the nicer items at any level of play.

    I do like the idea that there may be a unique forge as a common example which is required for the top tier gear and that forge is only found deep in some scary place.  I'm not sure how that translates to other trade skills though from a lore perspective.

    The more we do to integrate the adventurers and the craftspeople, the more community we build.  It's fine if you want to be a solo craftsperson, but like the solo adventurer, you shouldn't expect to be able to experience all aspects of crafting/adventuring without the help of friends.

    • 174 posts
    October 15, 2017 12:39 PM PDT

    I think it would be great if they have a robust enough crafting system to allow it to stand alone, so that a truly rare item could be crafted without necessary adventuring requirement. Add in adventuring to spice things up at times, that would be a welcome addition to bring variety and tie the spheres together at times. If they can find a way to do that I think they need to find a way to "lose" crafting experience also. Maybe you drop from grandmaster to master, in a particulary case of bad timing when crafting. Perhaps you decide to go for a pristine quality item, the highest level possible (for example). Chance of achieving this with a mythical item is 33%. You can "swap" crafting experience for increased chance at success, with a to be determined ratio, say 1:1 for rare, 2:1 legendary, 3:1 legendary up to a maximum benefit. Example: you after much harvesting find a mythical ore and decide to try and craft (assuming you are also a crafter) a knife of amazingness, chances for success are 1 in 3. You could try, but maybe you are going to trade 100% crafting exp (a full level) to boost your chance to 66.67% success. If you succeed, enjoy your mythical knife. Fail and you lose a full level of crafting (I'd still award a legendary knife, in this case, as a consolation). These are just food for thought numbers, as well as a food for thought concept.

    I think it would be nice for crafters to be able to craft top of the line items while staying in their sphere, at least sometimes. Sometimes you would need to have the help of an adventuring group or raid. Variety is the spice of life after all.

    • 11 posts
    October 15, 2017 12:54 PM PDT

    Chimerical said:

    I think it would be nice for crafters to be able to craft top of the line items while staying in their sphere, at least sometimes. Sometimes you would need to have the help of an adventuring group or raid. Variety is the spice of life after all.

    I think crafters should be able to craft almost top of the line gear if you are just gathering from regular mobs or from some deep dark hole that doesnt require alot of effort. Compared to raid crafted gear though it should be a notch below. Have the crafters of the world (or guild) get everyone into awesome gear to be able to successfully fight X raid boss, which isnt impossible without the crafted gear but makes the fight easier. After you kill said raid boss then you can harvest it for other crafting materials (and the customary loot from its hoard) that you can use to make something that is better then what the top tier crafted item is or use that harvested material to improve the original piece. 

     

    • 1120 posts
    October 15, 2017 1:34 PM PDT

    Kefo said:

    Chimerical said:

    I think it would be nice for crafters to be able to craft top of the line items while staying in their sphere, at least sometimes. Sometimes you would need to have the help of an adventuring group or raid. Variety is the spice of life after all.

    I think crafters should be able to craft almost top of the line gear if you are just gathering from regular mobs or from some deep dark hole that doesnt require alot of effort. Compared to raid crafted gear though it should be a notch below. Have the crafters of the world (or guild) get everyone into awesome gear to be able to successfully fight X raid boss, which isnt impossible without the crafted gear but makes the fight easier. After you kill said raid boss then you can harvest it for other crafting materials (and the customary loot from its hoard) that you can use to make something that is better then what the top tier crafted item is or use that harvested material to improve the original piece. 

     

     

    Completely agree.  If its 10-20% less stats than a raid item, im perfectly ok with it.  On par with high level dungeon loot.  Give people 2 paths to gear for raids, crafting, or dungeoning.


    This post was edited by Porygon at October 15, 2017 1:35 PM PDT
    • 174 posts
    October 15, 2017 1:38 PM PDT

    I sometimes contemplate whether they can have different, but similar, drops depending on nodes vs. adventuring, such as ore vs an already refined peice of metal. A shard of mithril from a dungeon mob is already refined and therefore being processed already can be more successfully crafted, vs. raw ore which needs more steps to final success. 

    Philosophically how did that uber mob come to get his "best possible" sword? More than likely it was crafted somewhere before coming into the mobs possession. Maybe lore says it's a lost process from an age gone by, and can no longer be crafted by current smiths/tailors etc. Still all swords were crafted at some point...