Smithing costs

Accipiter

With the introduction of Adventures and the reward of low level weapons for a reasonable amount of work, it feels like a time to look at the costs to get Legendary smith.

Currently to get to legendary costs huge sums of money. There is very little possibility of recouping anywhere near this cost because essentially everything a smith can provide is covered by artefacts. For illustration here is a spreadsheet using fairly conservative pricing that shows how much it is to create pikes with the relevant descriptors. Anyone who is rich enough to spend a decent amount on the items will instead simply buy the artefacts and avoid the system completely, or in the case of armour interact with it once.

I like the levelling mechanic and I don't especially mind the costs aside from the fact that no one really wants weapons or armour compared to the other trade skills which have 0 investment other than lessons and require everyone to interact with them.

I don't have a reasonable idea on what to do to fix this, my unreasonable idea is to allow legendary smiths to customise weapons/armour much like the crafting skills do but that would take from the revenue and so won't happen. Does anyone else have any thoughts?

Minifie

Is it possible to make it so artefact weapons can be "overlayed" with mastered descriptors by legendsmiths? Some are wonderful, and I'd love to just go to a legendsmith, have them reforge my rapier into one of the descriptors. I know it may not get much use, but if it could be added to the system rather painlessly compared to other things, it could add a cool way for people to get "customised" arties for cheaper than the figurine - 50 credits? 

Accipiter

Well, it seems no one wants to talk about it so I will put one final thought: It seems like the change to smithing was 2 separate solutions to the same problem.

Normalizing the stats was one solution, the result being that you don't need to forge a million things to get something decent anymore.

Adding all the descriptors was the second solution, so people who did make a million things were rewarded for it.

Either of them on their own would have been a good solution, but both together make it so you still have to make a million things but there is no longer the payoff of getting that god-tier weapon.

Lenn

It'd be cool if weaponsmithing at the legendary level dealt out artefact weapons in some way. Right now, armoursmithing does, but weaponsmithing basically only exists for people who don't have artie weapons, and artie weapons are a very common artefact to want or have.

Telendrieth

I'm not entirely sure what to say on this topic. I definitely feel the cost for what it gives is way too high. I don't often try and weigh in on a system or dynamic unless I can offer a solution, which is why I haven't spoken up about this topic. The system just feels a tad clunky with the arte and non arte parts not really working together in harmony. Forging is one of my favorite skills in games, so I would definitely like to see something done, I'm just not sure what the best solution would be. 

In one of the other IRE games you basically purchased a weapon core at level 1, 2, or 3. You attached that core to a forged weapon to buff it to the respective level. The weapon still decayed but the core was perma. To not completely shunt out custom descriptions you could add a toggle like "Weapon core display" and "Weapon core hide" To make the weapon take on the appearance of the forged version or your custom? I'm not sure if this would fully address the issues though. 

Austere

I support any change that lets me customize my morphing weapon(s). Amirite, @Cooper

Cooper

Austere said:

I support any change that lets me customize my morphing weapon(s). Amirite, @Cooper

Definitely right.

Synthus

I mean, granted, I don't have the experience to back it up, but a weapon core sounds an awful lot like a blademaster band. If that's the case, I don't see any reason why similar artefacts can't replace what already exists. Though I would think that the cores would have to be locked to weapon types, such as scimitar, longsword, broadsword, etc in order to maintain credit parity. Beyond that, I think that's an excellent way to increase the use case of forged weapons.

Mercer

I absolutely agree with the premise of this thread. I have no problem with Legendary Blacksmith being a massive gold sink to reach, but as it currently stands, there is no meaningful reward for doing so given the immense cost and time involved.

I hit master, took one look at what it would cost to hit LB, realized I'd get basically nothing cool for doing it, and said Nope!