Forums » Crafting and Gathering

Portable Crafting

    • 259 posts
    September 20, 2018 4:50 AM PDT

    Some MMO’s give you the ability to carry and use a portable crafting device for some tradeskills. You keep it with you and can use it from your inventory while you are out exploring and adventuring. These devices go all the way back to the first MMO’s and are widely used in many of them.

    On the P99/EQ server we have a quite a few of the devices available to us. As an example, I will refer to a device that I use on my Mage quite often which is a sewing kit. Sewing kits come in different sizes and types depending on the type of tailoring that you are doing at that time. From the beginning of your crafting career you will have these kits available to you.

    As you progress through the tailoring tradeskill you begin with just a basic sewing kit which has just a few slots for combining your materials. As you earn more coins and increase your crafting skill you can upgrade your kit to a larger model which will hold more components for higher level and more difficult combines that require more items.

    Once you have reached a higher skill level your tailoring becomes more specialized and requires a specialized sewing kit to continue your crafting career. In P99/EQ this happens with the Velious Expansion and requires you to purchase and use a Coldain Tanners Kit for most of your crafting combines with the items you find in this expansion.

    Most towns do offer a stationary device such as a Loom for your crafting needs and allows you to stay around town and do your crafting. These are usually available for everyone to use from the beginning tailors to the more advanced. Some Looms are for available and needed for specialized tailoring such as cultural tailoring.

    I personally like having the option to keep a portable crafting device on my character for the more basic combines. This saves a lot of problems with the number of items that you must carry while you are out gathering materials. You can do most of your basic combines which reduces this number to a more manageable amount. Are you a fan of portable crafting devices? Would you like to see these implemented in Pantheon?

    • 1479 posts
    September 20, 2018 6:34 AM PDT

    While I think it's convenient, I don't think a portable sewing kit should be able to perform every recipe. Transforming material maybe, to save a few slots and make harvesting less painfull. But making a full item should need more than a few needles in a box. That's how I see it.

    For Fletching it never bugged me because mostly you should be doing arrows on the field, and it doesn't seem to need (at least at my eyes) complex apparels to perform. However I'm not a pro in arrows.

    • 2419 posts
    September 21, 2018 1:55 PM PDT

    So long as it makes sense that you could perform some tradeskill out in the field I think having portable version of crafting machines should be included. Some portions of every tradeskill should require a more permanent fixture which you find either in cities or in special locations out in the world.

    • 2886 posts
    September 21, 2018 3:15 PM PDT

    I agree with what has been said. think it usually makes a lot of sense to have kits that you can carry around to do basic recipes on the go. Having to run all the way back to a specific crafting device just to craft one little thing you need might feel like a waste of time for some people. Just think pretty realistically - can you carry a little sewing kit in your backpack that has the basics: thread, needle, thimble, etc. to do repairs and maybe make some small basic components? Absolutely. Can you carry an entire loom in your backpack? Of course not. There's the answer :P

    • 1479 posts
    September 21, 2018 3:42 PM PDT

    Bazgrim said:

    I agree with what has been said. think it usually makes a lot of sense to have kits that you can carry around to do basic recipes on the go. Having to run all the way back to a specific crafting device just to craft one little thing you need might feel like a waste of time for some people. Just think pretty realistically - can you carry a little sewing kit in your backpack that has the basics: thread, needle, thimble, etc. to do repairs and maybe make some small basic components? Absolutely. Can you carry an entire loom in your backpack? Of course not. There's the answer :P

     

    I have to disagree sir !

     

     

    For joke purpose.

    • 259 posts
    September 21, 2018 5:18 PM PDT

    HaHa that is awesome.

    With that portable loom i'll never have to go to town again to work on my crafting.

    • 255 posts
    September 23, 2018 1:12 AM PDT

    Bazgrim said:

    Can you carry an entire loom in your backpack? Of course not. There's the answer :P

    I disagree here. You are mixing reality with fantacy / magical world. It's like saying you can only have 1 bag as you can't carry 6 oh them and if you loot a piece of armor thats it, you have to leave and go back to town as you really can't fit 6 plate brestplates into your pack, or 6 Two handed swords in your large sweing kit (EQ).

    Now pulling out a forge and doing smithing is a bit beyond my imagination.

    It's like having Heromine's bag from Harry Potter. Just need to think outside the box. When you open a bag you hand glows. What item you then touch gets shrunk and put into a 10x10x10cm cube and you put it in the bag. Depending on the power of the bag it may or maynot reduce the weight as well. When you pick a cube out of a bag and place it on the ground, when the bag is closed it revets to it's full size/weight.

    But I do agree there should be limits to what you can do, for the sake of the playable game.


    This post was edited by Boulda at September 23, 2018 1:22 AM PDT
    • 1315 posts
    September 24, 2018 5:13 AM PDT

    I am still hoping that crafting will be a conscious choice of how you spend your game time not something that is done between pulls by button mashing a mountain of materials.

    I can see the value in “harvesting kits” that might let you refine some raw materials into smaller and lighter versions of itself that are directly used in crafting but at the expense of a lower chance for a high quality refinement vs a stationary refinement station.  The highest quality refined raw materials would be an optional ingredient in basic recipes to create highly player desired equipment.

    More time should be spent crafting than harvesting for crafting to be a value added system and portable crafting stations would be counter to that design philosophy.  I would personally prefer a 5 time units crafting for every one time unit farming but even a 1 to 1 ratio would be a value added system, anything less than one to one and the harvest materials are more time valuable than the crafted items.

    Again a certain amount of raw material refinement could be done in the field for inventory management reasons with your harvesting skills but no actual crafting with your crafting profession.  The exception to that might be some form of field repair if item decay gets added to the game.

    Here is hoping we hear from Ceythos soon on the general design of crafting in Pantheon.

    • 319 posts
    September 25, 2018 12:31 PM PDT

    I want a video of the halfling with a forge on his back and an anvil in his backpack fighting an ogre. I really need a good laugh.

    • 21 posts
    September 30, 2018 4:46 AM PDT

    I can honestly say that recent MMO's have truly ruined crafting of the old days. I want crafting to be meaningful. Do I think that having portable systems in place to turn basic mats in the field would be an issue? Not at all, I don't think that this devalues it , it just makes it more fluent.


    This post was edited by SinisterJoint at September 30, 2018 4:49 AM PDT