Craft Q&A

[Brar]

His stats match those of my not so intelligent ranger, but not my super stats dwarf...

Which makes me think stats do matter, I rarely take more than initial time for my dwarf to make any weapon while it took me 3 in game week (instead of an estimated time of 0 days) to make a bunch of bullets with my ranger and many critical failure :p

But then, my ranger is not tailored for crafting at all and only do some on very rare occasion so I eagerly accept his difficulty to craft even the simplest thing.. it's even an integrant part of his roleplay.

[Nysan]

Oh no. Not saying Selveem is lying about his troubles or anything. I'm just having problems recreating his failure rates and think it has more to do with his character's stats/feats setup and not so much a issue with the system overall. Maybe adjusting stats' impact on crafting may correct the problem, if it is a stat issue?

Edit: Side thought... One of you caster types want to test something for me? Does logging in/out with a stat spell, like Slink for armorsmithing, have any impact on your success rates?

[Nysan]

Random question for the gallery.

I recently acquired some mithril and started an armorsmithing project, not masterwork just a test (no, you can't have any). This project's required time is a fair bit longer than prior steel/titanium projects.

Here is the question...

Do you think a non-masterwork mithril should take longer than masterwork steel/titanium projects of the same item?

I'm torn on this topic myself. On the one hand, yes it is mithril, the hardest stuff around to work. On the other hand, its lesser quality, not masterwork, and I am not sure it should take longer than "perfect" titanium/steel projects. Not even going to think about masterwork mithril project times...

[Brar]

Somehting else to take in consideration is the bonus given by both...
I will take a non masterwork mithril item over a masterwork anything anytime a day...

I think a normal quality mithril should take the same time than a masterwork titanium/steel

But a lower quality mithril (as in don't give the full ac bonus) should take less time than a masterwork steel

Yet a masterwork mithril should takes a mad time, that's my opinion anyway

Brar

[Nysan]

I need more hands-on work with mithril on live before I comment on its bonuses. To the best of my knowledge, all current mithril is pre-change armor (anyone made any new stuff outside of testport?). I want to see any differences between pre and post change mithril before jumping to any conclusions. This 'low quality ingot' piece compared to old mithril will be a base line for bonuses since low quality will likely be the poorest quality mithril used in armor. After the project is done, I will compared it to Gilain's armor and post anything interesting here. Might not be any differences, but considering some oddities in old steel vs new steel, I want to be sure.

Masterwork mithril is a dream I am not even thinking about right now. Considering the odds of mining mithril and then add on to it the smelt/resmelt odds of getting outstanding ingots... yeah, not anything I am worried about in the near future. Normal mithril is feasible for anyone that has found a mithril-capable mining area, so I want to be sure the craft times are within reason.

[Hrosskell]

Something I was wondering.. are items made from mithril in FK always considered masterwork? I looked it up in an old sourcebook and then on the internet and it suggested that they were, and included the price table for mithril items, etc.

[Nysan]

Something I was wondering.. are items made from mithril in FK always considered masterwork? I looked it up in an old sourcebook and then on the internet and it suggested that they were, and included the price table for mithril items, etc.

As it stands, no. The test item I mentioned earlier was crafted with low-grade ingots and is not masterwork (still waiting for that to finish for further information). And pieces made on testport were regular quality, unless made with outstanding ingots.

I can tell you it is a pain to craft even low-grade mithril armor. A great deal of "not as much progress as you would have liked" and "1 week" checks compared to titanium/steel projects, even masterworks, that mostly gave "2 week" progress checks. Masterwork will be worse, I am sure.

Soon as this piece finished, I'll be doing some comparing to old mithril and new steel/titanium, masterwork if I can get the ingots together. In part to see if it matches my testport results (or have screwy results like I have seen before) and because I didn't have old armor on testport to test with. Hoping the checks will be nice to me and I'll get some results posted by the end of the week.

Edit: As for pricing... Appraising Gilain's old mithril full plate says mithril is fairly expensive, more than any steel masterwork I have made. Not sure about new stuff yet, didnt have appraise on testport. If you are interested, I can PM you some appraise results on Gilain's old stuff to consider.

[Nysan]

Well, after 16 weeks (9 RL days) of crafting, my first mithril test subject is completed: full plate vambraces. Putting aside my thoughts on the invested time for a non-masterwork piece, lets get to some results.

My first concern was an odd result I experienced with some steel/titanium pieces' quality/AC. After appraising, wearing, and examining this piece, I didn't see those issues. So, I'm marking those past oddities to the brief rough patch we went through while adjusting ingot qualities and close that particular personal bug report. Still, if anyone see any odd AC stats on their projects, post them here. (Be sure to check things like medium/heavy weight limits before you do.)

Unfortunately, I could not find masterwork steel/titanium pieces for a side-by-side comparison and cannot craft any at the moment (rather, I don't want to wait another week for results). However, AC and equipment damage resistance does seem on par, or better, than what I can recall from prior steel masterworks, even though this piece is 'low quality'. The damage resistance is a guess, based on a small number of fights. A larger test may show masterworks last longer.

Even though they are low-quality, appraise lists these vambraces to cost more than any NPC sold arm location armor I have see in-game. On the other hand, appraise lists Gilain's pre-change 'mithril full plate arm guards", outstanding quality, to be worth more than a complete set of NPC full plate armor. I personally rarely, if ever, put trust in Appraise's item's worth, but some asked so there is a rough estimate.

There were a few other things I tested, however they were mostly to dispel concerns I stumbled across on testport I wanted to be sure were fixed on live. Not sure if anyone found this little trip as useful as I did, but there it is anyways. I plan to keep the vambraces for future testing. Questions, concerns, random comments about my obsession with crafting... feel free to post them.

[Selveem]

It's been a pretty long time since the crafting change.

Has anyone else been able to compile their crafting results like I did to see if they were flush?

[Algon]

I will admit that I certainly did not go back and read everything on this thread, after 3 pages my eyes were crossing lol. But was it ever decided about somehow allowing any time spent in the forge room to go towards the crafting process?
My dwarf is only there for one thing...to mine and craft. I wanted a character that I did not have to worry about leveling combat based skills and could just have fun with. Now with the new system would you like to know how I play him? I log in, put my finished crafting project in my cart, start a new one and quit. Rp wise, it has killed him. There is never anyone in MH and he just does not leave much, he is a Smith not a traveler and now he is just no fun anymore.
I used to love sitting in my forge and rping banging out a red hot ingot of metal into the shape of a sword, but now there is no point because it does not count for anything if I am actually in game with him.
This is the ONLY aspect of the changes I do not like, everything else is awesome. I would just like to maybe revisit the discussion on this if at all possible.
Thanks!

[Nysan]

It's been a pretty long time since the crafting change.

Has anyone else been able to compile their crafting results like I did to see if they were flush?

What? Something like this?

Materials: Steel ingots, various qualities.
Trades: Weaponcrafting and Armorsmithing. (Will not post stats/feats/skill levels, make your own assumptions.)
Time between log-ins: 8-16 hours
Items crafted: (1) Full platemail breastplate, (1) brigandine bracers, (2) dagger, (1) greatblade.

Results:

- (4) 2 weeks closer to completion.

- (6) 1 week closer to completion.

- (8) "Some progress"

- (2) No progress.

- (1) Critical "add more raw material" failure.

Edit: The critical failure resulted in a tradeskill that is not GMed.

Seems fairly balanced to me. But I still believe stat and feats play a part in this.