Hi all, this is my first post on the forum. I have been reading Grinkles's suggestions, which have gotten me thinking about my own. This started off as a small thought, and kind of went directions I didn't expect. I plan to develop a more complete post/proposition about some of the ideas nested here later.
That thought: I propose that the feed stock of metals and gems for jewelrycrafting be shifted away from a merchant-based system to a resource gathering system. Why?
Reason 1: If you have enough cash, it is entirely possible to skill up to the highest quality aug, simply by purchasing materials. This leads to several unfortunate results. First, the prices of the materials were set rather high (to prevent people from becoming master jewelrycrafters too fast?). Second, this discourages new players from taking up the trade - because their plat is far better spent elsewhere. And third, it artificially inflates the cost of crafted rings and earrings beyond their real value to players (in other words, in general you can buy better BoE jewelry for less than the cost of crafting inferior jewelry).
Reason 2: There is already a mining system in the game. There is at least one zone where lore seems to suggests gem mining (Oggok Mines).
Reason 3: It would be nice to have more SoD specific metals than the standard EQ fare. I personally like the idea of using the same kinds of metals for jewelrycrafting as for blacksmithing (and perhaps adding gold, electrum, and platinum crafting into blacksmithing). This would allow for SoD to show off a more unique crafting system. There are complications with this proposition, the obvious one to me is: Enchanted metal bars - I personally favor eliminating this altogether and simply assigning certain base stats to each type of metal. How many enchanters ever use these enchanting spells? From a lore perspective perhaps using some kind of brewing-crafted analog of tempering/ointments as part of the "enchanting" of the jewelry should replace spell-crafted metals.
Reason 4: As far as my numbers check out so far (at 181 skill), when I'm mining I get ~35% ore and ~65% loose rocks. This is on iron/copper/silver ore so I can't comment on the ratio of ore to rocks on higher level ores, but I assume there is less ore and more rocks? And frankly, loose rocks are terribly boring - not to mention the carpal tunnel from combining 60 of them to make mineral dust! Shifting even 10% to gems would make mining far more exciting - especially if there was a (small) chance at high-end gems.
Thoughts?
That thought: I propose that the feed stock of metals and gems for jewelrycrafting be shifted away from a merchant-based system to a resource gathering system. Why?
Reason 1: If you have enough cash, it is entirely possible to skill up to the highest quality aug, simply by purchasing materials. This leads to several unfortunate results. First, the prices of the materials were set rather high (to prevent people from becoming master jewelrycrafters too fast?). Second, this discourages new players from taking up the trade - because their plat is far better spent elsewhere. And third, it artificially inflates the cost of crafted rings and earrings beyond their real value to players (in other words, in general you can buy better BoE jewelry for less than the cost of crafting inferior jewelry).
Reason 2: There is already a mining system in the game. There is at least one zone where lore seems to suggests gem mining (Oggok Mines).
Reason 3: It would be nice to have more SoD specific metals than the standard EQ fare. I personally like the idea of using the same kinds of metals for jewelrycrafting as for blacksmithing (and perhaps adding gold, electrum, and platinum crafting into blacksmithing). This would allow for SoD to show off a more unique crafting system. There are complications with this proposition, the obvious one to me is: Enchanted metal bars - I personally favor eliminating this altogether and simply assigning certain base stats to each type of metal. How many enchanters ever use these enchanting spells? From a lore perspective perhaps using some kind of brewing-crafted analog of tempering/ointments as part of the "enchanting" of the jewelry should replace spell-crafted metals.
Reason 4: As far as my numbers check out so far (at 181 skill), when I'm mining I get ~35% ore and ~65% loose rocks. This is on iron/copper/silver ore so I can't comment on the ratio of ore to rocks on higher level ores, but I assume there is less ore and more rocks? And frankly, loose rocks are terribly boring - not to mention the carpal tunnel from combining 60 of them to make mineral dust! Shifting even 10% to gems would make mining far more exciting - especially if there was a (small) chance at high-end gems.
Thoughts?
