\ Smithing: The big issue here I think is that most of the better/cooler stuff is in hidden recipes. The problem is, there aren't that many bookshelves per floor, and even then you're very likely to find stuff that is either useless to you or not reliant on your personal crafting skill...And even if you do, it's entirely possible that you just won't find the right crafting components. This problem exists with Alchemy and Tinkering too, but it seems to be less of a problem because the basic recipes are a bit more useful later on (Sewer Brew -> Dwarven Rot is always amazing). Suggestion (This applies to the other crafting skills too): Increase the rate at which crafting recipes are found. Other than that, it's good. Tinkering and Alchemy suffer from the fact that they're pretty much purely resource-builders. You go tinkering because you want crossbow ammo, and you get alchemy because you want to make valuable drinks. Let's start with Alchemy. You can make the odd cool staff or some orbs, but realistically the only real point of it is to make drinks. This makes it a magic support skill that is largely indistinguishable from Leywalking or Blood Magic, except that it requires a bit more micromanagement and has some cool perks. First, I think the ability to make drinks with the porta-still should be reduced, if only to balance out the suggestions I am about to make. Wands should be added to alchemy (alchemy may need to be renamed to something more fitting, though I suppose it already makes staves), and some basic potions should be known by default. This would add some utility and interest to the skill beyond infinite mana. Tinkering: Right now, you get it so you can fuel your crossbow, and not much else. The components required to construct traps are way too steep for too little return. I suggest the amount of traps crafted should be increased by a factor of 2-3 at least, so that if you manage to get the materials you should be able to make a lot of them (and you will need to, as they are individually pretty meh). Furthermore, there should be more throwable items added to the Tinkering lineup, so that throwing weapon users have some way to replenish their supply other than praying for a dispenser.
You don't need to find the recipes in game for them to work. You can spoil yourself on one of the wikis. Alchemy can also make good staves and a couple magic armor pieces. It used to make wands too, but they disabled that (you can remove the comments in the xml and reenable them, though.) They considered it too powerful. Pretty sure they're adding recipes for this in 1.04. Tinkering is getting throwing recipes added in 1.04. If you increase your tinkering skill, you also increase the yield of traps you make. The non-hidden ones make five at tinkering 5. I think the hidden ones are supposed to make five too, but a typo is making them all produce 3.
For a mod I'm working on I've been testing out gold transmutation: Any ingot + Solution of gold = Gold ingot This would work similarly with other solutions that could be added.
Using the wiki shouldn't be necessary for the game to be balanced. I'm aware of how increased crafting skill affects yields, but given the rarity of the required materials for such trivial traps, even 5 (at Tinkering 5) is too little. Traps are not all that powerful.
...... um.... adding more bookshelves doesn't balance the game; it just gets around RNG woes. But the number of things crafted gets odd on disposable items, when you go rogue. The damage stays the same through the difficulties, but monster HP goes up.... Granted, I'm not sure if the devs ever thought of 'trappers' being a viable build, especially considering that there is no skill set for it (while bolts and thrown weapons do). Traps just simply don't do that much damage. Maybe make it so tinkered traps do more damage? And it scales up a bit with skill? Even if you made 20 per craft, it would still suck as a build. Traps would have to change some how, like craftable traps that stun or something.
Do they? That wouldn't make much sense 'cause of the fact that you can pick them up. You find the same ones on the ground as you make with tinkering.
I mean all traps scale with magic power. This is why acid bolt traps can be so deadly to powerful mages.
Wand Lore having the ability to craft Wands makes more sense imo, especially as the skill is seen as a bit lacklustre right now.
@IanExMachina Well wand lore can turn one wand into another. The skill is actually pretty good if you get it up to lvl 5... the real problem with it is that burning out is fairly random, and you pretty much have a chance of burning out at anything past 0. At lvl 5, you can spam your wands quite a bit, and then recharge them (with a long cooldown), which is fairly effective.... but you'll STILL break your wands once in a while, so..... I dunno. With a bit of luck on floor 1, I'm sure you could make it work. Those tentacle wands are really good, the coral wands are very useful, bone wands can get you out of a pinch pretty well, etc. If you get a few extra 'useless' wands, you can just recycle them.
I would love it if the ingot press smelted useless weapons and armor into ingots. This would help a lot with RNG scarcity and makes crafting on the fly a lot more fun. For instance, if you specialize in swords and pick up a mace, just smelt the mace into iron and re-craft. There can be a penalty for doing so to avoid exploitation; so maybe one ingot per smelting?
The problem with that, other than the fact that that would take a LOT of extra recipes with the way it's programmed now, is multicrafting. Granted, as far as I know, smithing can't make multiple things from one recipe, but alchemy and tinkering can.... and people will whine forever about how tinkering and alchemy are nerfed and the devs like smithing more and melee guys are overpowered because they get big weapons and big armor so easily and they gave heavy armor a big bonus in 1.04 and blah blah. Honestly, scrapping materials makes more sense to me with tinkering. Pick up a trap from the dungeon and scrap it for a pressure plate, or something... but then you'd end up with unlimited pressure plates because you can use one to make five. Granted, that wouldn't give you free mechanical parts, but.... I think if you could scrap weapons/armor into ingots, the whole crafting system would have to be retooled to fix this (you'd end up with like 5x as many ingots as before!), and right now it's not too hard to craft the best weapons if you wait until lvl 5 to press anything. The way I'd think to balance that would be to have smithing NOT increase how many ingots you get. That way you can scrap items for one ingot from beginning and start getting extra ingots from the start, and not feel like you have to wait until lvl 5 smithing as to not 'waste' ores. The way crafting is now, you either leave it at lvl 1, or immediately rush it to lvl 5. This would also help tinkering with the same problem, other than making multiple traps/arrows/bombs from materials. Did that rambling make sense?
Yes it does. It could work either by nerfing smithing or increasing the number of ingots required for the more badass weapons and armor (or requiring a rarer additional item in the recipe)
Well, like I said, it could be nerfed by just making it so you can't get multiple ingots from one ore anymore, which would double as a way to make low level smiths feel less useless.... granted that would make ores pretty much 100% useless, but....
@fishofmuu Na that will just make Smith useless. I mean, where do you guy even see badass items in the whole craft list? Aside from the Embossed Serpentine Platemail and Ring of Iron Thorn, all I see are mediocre stuff you can pick up by floor 6. Hell even the Embossed Serpentine Platemail gets toss once I pick up an Armored Archmage Plate. Unless of course they actually start putting really good items in there, many pure melee without spell will be stuck late game just the same.
@123stw How would that MAKE the smith useless? If it lacks recipes, then it lacks recipes. I don't see how that relates to getting your crafting materials more fluidly from slvl 1-5. Also... the recipes are fine. You can make some of the best items in the game with smithing, so I don't know what you're talking about. The maces, for example, have very few options that are better. It's a bit imbalanced between the weapons, though.... but the idea that you'll be able to get them by lvl 6 is laughable, because it's all random. Good luck basing your character on that. Again, I don't see how changing how smiths and tinkerers get materials will change what they can make.
@fishofmuu I think he was talking about the making it so you couldn't get multiple ingots from one ore. The gear you make from Smithing is very nice, I love Smithing, never stop playing it. I just hope it gets converted into a warrior skill someday. It makes as much sense to be a rogue skill as Math-magics.
@fishofmuu You make it sound like the amount of steel you get isn't random. And yes I can base my character on picking up an item half as good and make up for it with 4 skill points on an offensive skill........ The fact that items just as good start showing up by floor 6 is just an added bonus.
You stop getting mutliple ingots from one ore, but you get ore from equipment. One copper item will make a copper ingot. One iron/steel item will make an iron ingot. One plastic item will make a plastic ingot. Etc. That way lvl 1-5 smiths get the same amount of ignots at the same rate, instead of waiting for slvl 5 to make any ingots, thus having to wait until slvl 5 to craft anything.
