Crafting

[Livin]

I love crafting, breaking down my supplies and treasures to build something impressive with ever increasing complexity. I'm one of those players you'll see running back and forth to the stations and I thought it'd be nice to have a page for all crafting related hopes, expectations, and suggestions. I'll start with some of my own.

 

One thing I'm hoping for is crafting stuff outside of the traditional smiths and tailors for clothing, armor, and weapons. I'd like to see stuff like:

 

*Sculpting bones to make objects, weapons, armor, and even mounts or undead companions.

*Stitching flesh to make armor from muscles (Blood Omen 1 style) or even revitalized, living flesh suits to hide behind so as to go unnoticed by the living (T800 style).

*Turning blood to ink, then using it to tattoo glyphs or wards on to various items or even onto the characters for cosmetics and possibly to grant perks related to blood magic.

 

I've seen in some games where you could put companions to work crafting while you went off to do whatever and I'd like that here; but I'd like to extend that to any alternate characters the player may have as long as those characters have the required level, putting the characters we aren't playing at the time to work.

 

I had another thing I'd like to suggest when it comes to our characters. Not everyone is big into crafting or wants to spend the time grinding their way towards giving their characters the proficiency to do it on their own and it's understandable. So then let's allow those of us who do make our characters available to do their crafting while we aren't playing them or putting them to work with our own crafting if the first suggestion works.

• Player wants/needs something made but lacks the necessary crafting level, so they go to a menu and see which characters are available to take orders. The player provides all required materials and pays a little in game currency for services rendered, any experience that is earned from crafting goes to the character doing the work.
  

 

What would you like to see?

[Golden Xan]

Thanks for setting up this post, @Livin.

 

I honestly don't know what I want from crafting mechanics in Deadhaus. I believe crafting can make up for every interesting mechanics and ideas. There was a time I'd like any game to have crafting mechanics. Today, however, many games do and it is often lackluster because of either how simplistic the system is, or how much time it demands, or how much of a chore or necessity it becomes.

 

The people at Apocalypse have said there will be crafting in the game. I'd rather wait and see before commenting too much, I want to know what is their vision first. However, I can talk about some general directions I'd like the whole thing to take, or not to take.

 

Crafting feels best when there is a sense of progression and accomplishment to it. When you start out with small capabilities, such as merely being able to sharpen your blades, and evolve over time to be able to add intricate details that both make your equipment unique and powerful, for instance. The principle here is being able to eventually gather enough experience in the world of crafting that you are able to fulfill a particular goal, such as making a very special item of some kind that you needed for a specific mission, such as being able to create a machine that can alter the skies, an amulet that is able to contain a soul of a specific creature or thing (such as a god), a weapon that behaves in unexpected ways, or an armor with properties found nowhere else (such as self repair). That can be a personal and imagined goal, but it would get even more interesting if it were tied to a real mission you have in the game.

 

Since this is Deadhaus, they must have crafting intertwined with the macabre of the undead, such as you mentioned with bone sculpting, flesh mending, and blood scripting. It would be silly not to include the gory side into the system in some way, even if just aesthetically or in name.

 

What I definitely don't want from the crafting system is for it to be a chore.

It was interesting, for instance, to have a particular profession in World of Warcraft and be able to create certain kinds of materials and provide for others ever more fine levels of craftsmanship in your wares. At the same time, gathering a humongous amount of ingredients to produce a minimal quantity of other ingredients that people would use on widely-crafted gear is not that interesting.

A chore would be any crafting that either takes an exaggerated amount of time, an exaggerated amount of materials, or is simply menial in nature.

 

The problems of these chores are slightly mitigated when you have a lot of players engaged in the various steps of this crafting mechanic, but...

While the idea of a real economy with people from various professions who happen to all be players working together to build this community of various craftsmanships can and does work, as seen in EVE, WoW and other games, it is not nice to force players to engage in this sort of trade just so he can obtain something that everyone else can typically get this way.

 

That is where our discussions on Discord and your mentioning of "hiring" here can potentially work nicely.

If players are able to either assign NPCs, their other characters or even other people's characters to gather materials or work on the production of specific things, possibly the crafting itself, that could serve as an alternative (perhaps main) way of conducting this endeavor. It would still somewhat "force" the player to engage in the crafting system, if only administratively, if he wants to get what crafting has to offer, however.

 

You know what I would like to see? Crafting that feels purposeful or unique to our characters in some way. For example, that which you had Streyn do when forging his weapon. He accumulated rage during a week, thinking of all the things that happened to him and to others, and infused his hatred into the weapon.

 

What if, instead of waiting for a meter to fill up after hours scouring the world for mineral ores, plants and various other trinkets (like you would do in WoW), the act of crafting itself is either a minigame or a mission you have to undertake?

What if, as a Revenant, you have to fight in a battle and accumulate a lot of Rage--without spending it--in order to then craft the item you want with that Rage?

Or what if a Vampire has to use a copious amount of blood to perform a crafting ritual, more than he owns, yet with a twist--it has to be contaminated blood transferred from him to the crafting itself?

Whatever excuse is necessary for our characters to go out into the world and do something that seems to have actual purpose, lore-wise, story-wise, for performing the crafting itself.

 

Maybe that would be too much for random crafting... perhaps we won't perform crafting frequently, but when we do it is big and meaningful. Perhaps we only have to do such things once in order to unlock certain crafting potentials, instead of merely acquiring a license or learning it from a teacher after accumulating enough XP in a particular profession. Or perhaps the bulk of the crafting is done in the background, by assigned characters, and you just have to finalize things in your own way. Perhaps minigames, actually simple yet interesting and not overly frequent, are the only thing you'd need to do to complete the crafting of an item.

Additionally, you could add crafting minigames to the companion app.

 

Finally, what I would also not like having that much is randomness in the items themselves or their quality.

Diablo 2 had extensive crafting with the magic cube. While that added longevity to some players, it also extended the gameplay extraordinarily needlessly, as I've watched some players play the game for almost a decade before they would get what they considered to be their perfect set, as the results never quite perfectly aligned. By then, getting those variants was completely meaningless.

 

If you're going to put hours into crafting something, let it be granted that you'll get it. The more effort, the bigger the reward. Depending on chance, especially fake chance (as is the case in gaming), is far too unrewarding and cumbersome.

 

To summarize:

1. If there's crafting, hopefully yes, it will tie in with gory aspects of the macabre, as is fitting for the undead. As well as it should tie in with the lore of other houses, when their respective time comes.
   
2. Crafting is only rewarding when you feel that you are putting in the time and effort to achieve a meaningful goal, often related to a personal objective that isn't mere statistics, and even better if it is a goal that is a part of a bigger in-game story.
   
3. Crafting shouldn't feel like a chore, so menial tasks should either not exist or have viable alternatives to them. If something takes time to do, it should be time that you're having real fun while you're at it, such as overcoming challenges or just playing the game.
   
4. Forcing people to have to craft in order to get something that everyone else has or will have is not ideal. It would be best if there were alternatives for people who don't enjoy going through crafting. Hopefully, the crafting system is so interesting that everyone would like to participate, though.
   
5. If the crafting itself requires an action, challenge, specific creative mission or related minigame to complete or perform the crafting, it will be miles ahead of the player watching a meter being filled up as your character waves his hand in the air, pretending to do something.
   
6. Randomness doesn't have a pleasing place in crafting. I believe it is best if you can either get or not something. Failing a crafting by failing a challenge or mission is fine, but having to go through extensive trials and losing all your effort because of luck in the generation of item attributes is as frustrating as it is an aged mechanic, unfortunately still used to this day.
   

As for the rest, I'm really just waiting to see what Deadhaus has in store for us. Maybe they have ideas that supersedes all our expectations and we're here just wondering things that won't even matter.

 

Hopefully we'll help nudge their ideas in the right direction.

[CyanStargazer]

I would like to add that making the crafting a minigame would be a fun thing, because some other MMO's I've made have crafting as a rng chance. One MMO I play has an infamous crafting system among those who craft in that game. Namely for being horrendous. High Tier crafted weapons and armor are highly sought after, and leveling that far to be able to craft is not only time consuming but expensive. But the thing that hits the hardest for crafting in that game is the HQ (High Quality) system. While you're crafting you have a chance for a "Good" or "Excellent" proc to appear, using a quality raising ability then will double it for "Good" and quadruple it for "Excellent". The thing is, at the high tier crafting, you NEED those procs to do anything and even have a chance at a HQ and there are times where those proc's never appear during a craft, effectively failing you. Not only are items for crafting those end game crafted gear expensive, but you buy them with endgame currency, which means that you can only get a few a day at max. The devs of that game tried to "Rework" it which just increases the max HQ% with HQ items being used to craft it(From a default 15% to a max 47%). But the crafting RNG is so broken, getting a 99% HQ chance is like Xcom logic. You won't get it unless it's 100%. RNG crafting is really unpleasant because sometimes you're just doomed to fail because of bad RNG, effectively making you waste lots of expensive items for nothing. Making it a minigame that players can learn to perfect would make it that players could reliably make those items, and not be messed over by poor luck.

[Livin]

@Golden Xan

Oh the memories, running back and forth to different areas waiting for animals or plants to respawn so I'd have another roll of this dice hoping I'd get what I was after. Truly, those were the dark times. I liked what Fall Out did for some elements of the crafting. You bet your butt I made it my mission to plant those seeds for the plants I needed the moment I found them so I'd have a replenishing supply of what I needed for veg starch and never get low on adhesives.

 

That is why I think the answer to that grind might be the ability to cultivate. Have a garden area in your stronghold to grow your own vegetation and pens where you can breed the creatures whose part you prize.

 

For those who don't want to cultivate there needs to be a way to expedite the respawn or bypass it entirely. Find the plant that produces what you're after but it's already been picked, cast a spell or pour a potion to accelerate the growth. The same goes for animals you harvest once you've picked it clean or find their carcasses that way, resurrecting them whole so you can harvest them again and again until you have enough or run out of whatever you're using to resurrect. I am all for minigames being another means of acquiring materials. Perhaps events like hordes, gauntlets, or mini bosses

 

 

My Crafting Pipe Dream

Picture multiple different types of enhancements or upgrades that can fit into various combinations as you build up your gear that would also have been built from many different combinations of materials, coming together like teeth on a key to unlock one of many ultimate forms that are possible. I don't want random though, not a probability of this or that based on an algorithm; but I would like the element of discovery, not knowing what you are crafting will entirely amount to if it's your first time making it while a record is kept of those discoveries you make in said crafting so you have a guide/recipe index that you could reference and even share with others as they share with you.

[Golden Xan]

An alternative to mindless hoarding of materials is to not have materials at all. Or at least, not generic ones such as "cloth, stone, wood". Instead, if you make crafting depend on just a few ingredients, 2 to 5 or so, then require only one of each ingredient, and then make the ingredients truly unique and interesting to acquire, you've got yourself a solution for a lot of the problems we talked about.

 

But it all depends on how crafting is crafted.

[Golden Xan]

Alright @Livin, you got me. This topic too interesting not to speculate on it.

 

I came up with some ideas that I believe make a lot of sense for the whole crafting system in Deadhaus.

 

 

 

---Physical__|__ Magickal __|__Essential----

-----------------------------------------------------------------------|___________|______________|_____________|

----------------------------------------------_Top item part: |___________|______________|_____________|-----------------------Top Item Mold

-----------------------------------------------------------------------|___________|______________|_____________|

-----------------------------------------------------------------------|___________|______________|_____________|

-------------------------------------------Middle item part: |___________|______________|_____________|---------------------Middle Item Mold

-----------------------------------------------------------------------|___________|______________|_____________|----------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------------------|___________|______________|_____________|

------------------------------------------Bottom item part: |___________|______________|_____________|-------------------- Bottom Item Mold

-----------------------------------------------------------------------|___________|______________|_____________|

----_______________________________________----

----------------------------------------------------------Affinity: |_____1º_____|_____2º______|_____3º_____|

 

 

 

 

Explanation:

Let's say that each item has three main body parts: a top body part, a middle body part, and a bottom body part. In a sword, that could be its blade, guard, and pommel respectively. On a staff, that could be its pointy tip, its base, and its pommel. On a necklace, that could be its locking mechanism, its chain, and its amulet. The list goes on.

 

Each body part has three components to it, a physical, a magickal, and an essential component. They are all necessary for the crafting of the item, but you may or may not be able to use the same ingredient in the making of one element of all its body parts. For example, using bones for all three parts in the physical element, the same True Name in all magickal parts, and a giant's soul in all three essential parts.

 

Having each body part possess one of the three elements also allows your item to exist in other realms, something I had asked Apocalypse about in one of the streams. From what I recall, their answer was that it was something to be determined, but that it might have a place for that in the game.

 

The item molds on the right define the shape of the item. This allows for customizing its appearance, and also allows you to make quests or objectives specifically about finding the right kind of mold you want, either for looks, type of damage, or else.

Additionally, the mold system can be further improved by adding special elements to the mold, such as artifacts, or runes, or rituals around the forge (crafting location).

 

The affinity is one of the parts I liked the most. You can prioritize the affinity of the item towards any element in order of sequence. With three elements, you can have 6 combinations: 1-2-3, 1-3-2, 2-1-3, 2-3-1, 3-2-1, 3-1-2. And then, for a seventh, you can have them Balanced. Like the Vampire, as the hybrid, in the middle of the Trinary Archetype System.

 

You may have noticed that there are 9 material slots and 7 affinity combinations. 9 item slots for 9 Houses, 7 affinity inclinations for 7 classes each. They rime poetically.

 

As for which part would determine which thing, that is something we can speculate further upon but it will heavily depend on the variety of attributes and effects that items will have in the game.

 

For instance, the physical materials, together with its mold, could determine the type of damage (shredding, blunt, aggravating, piercing, etc.). The magickal materials could determine what effects the weapon/item might have, such as life leeching, or poisoning, or the capacity to launch energy bolts, and so on. The essential materials could help increase your character's influence in the other planes when they find themselves in the essential realm, or change the way you perceive the world, or something... I don't really know how the essential realm will be like yet.

 

I believe that this would be a good base to start with. But I would still like to improve on it by having ways of customizing its appearance further, or after an item's creation. Or something, perhaps, to add our own personality to the items themselves, something that no one else could do. But perhaps these would belong to other mechanics instead of crafting.

 

Does anyone have any interesting idea to improve this system further? Maybe you, @Livin?

@Denis Dyack, it would be greatly appreciated if you could share your thoughts on our speculations, on whether we are close to what you guys envisioned for the game or not, or if we should shift our ideas onto other directions to better help you people.

 

EDIT: I think it would be interesting if someone would move this post to the feedback section of the forum. Of course, with your blessing, Livin.

Edited February 16, 2020 by Golden Xan

[Livin]

@Golden Xan, I'm formulating my full response as we speak. There is so much to go through and I'm loving all of it. In the meantime I'm fine with the last bit about moving this to feedback, feedback was what I hoped for when I posted it. 😁

[Livin]

@Golden Xan First off I love the system you created, it is straight forward while also allowing multiple combinations so what a player makes has a better chance of being that much more unique to them. There isn't much I can think of to expand upon yet.

 

When it comes to essential I heard it revolved around forms, making me picture weapons or objects that impact yours when activated. Picture a ring or bracelet on your arm and when the fight is on drawing the weapon involves said arm morphing like Jack Krauser's from Resident Evil 4, becoming the weapon or shield. On a more basic level it could enhance the stats of the wielder, while physical improves the capabilities of the weapon, and magic improves upon effects or adds new ones.

 

When it comes to purely magic weapons I'm also picturing stuff like rings, necklaces, and bracelets that conjure weapons or shields of pure energy.

 

I would like to include enhancements as a way to further develop an item after its finished being made. Enchantments is of course one way, and stuff like the blood ink could also help in that regard; but I'dalso like it to be more dynamic, based on what it endures as you wield it. You undergo a ritual to augment your magic, performing the same on your weapon or carrying it with you when you performed it on yourself has the same effect on it. These enhancements could also help to shift the alignment of a weapon between the physical, magical, and essential if a player so desired.

 

Edit

Now that I've said it actually sounds like a nice way to divvy up weapons based on the realms they belong to. Physical weapons that are traditional with its focus being centered around increasing its stats but can also have effects added with magic enhancements or improved stats for the wielder through essential. Magical energy weapons (we must avoid making them resemble lightsabers) that do less damage on their own but make up for it in effects that can be increased or added to on top of existing ones, potentially being refocused to deliver greater damage through physical enhancements or improved wielder stats with essential. Essential weapons that alter your very form to become the weapon, a literal living extension of yourself, that you could increase the damage of with physical or add effects with magical enhancements.

Edited February 16, 2020 by Livin

[Livin]

Just thought I'd ask this suggestion I made earlier today on ask a dev.

 

What if we had randomly generated symbols and letting that be what we are remembered by when telling events in history that we took part in?

 

The symbols could also get placed on everything we create like a maker's mark to identify who it came from.

[Livin]

Recently thought of a way to expand essential weapons, existing as drones or pets with a dual state. In one state they're the pets, fighting on behalf of the wielder or providing support. In the other state they merge with the wielder and functioning like I previously suggested. At the very least It would make stuff like this possible.

 

[ATTACH]32[/ATTACH]

-Click to enlarge-

Edited February 19, 2020 by Livin

[Golden Xan]

Do you mean only weapons that are built with Essence in mind or any weapon in their Essential state, if there is such a thing?

What about items other than weapons?

 

The only thing I came to think of that could be easily implemented in that system I thought of earlier was that items could glow colored auras according to their balancing. Magick-focused items would glow with a blue aura, Essence-focused a green one, and Physical-focused would glow a red one. That's cute, but doesn't really serve any particular purpose other than that, unless there's a particular gameplay mechanic related to that that we can't know of.

 

I recently asked a question about whether they could give us some examples of how the essential realm works so that we could further speculate on how Essence-focused items could potentially be.

 

The best example that Denis gave us was the Vampire's transformation: a Magick-specialized vampire could have its dodge ability be him shifting to and from a mist form, while an Essence-specialized Vampire could transform into rats and move elsewhere, and a Physical-specialized one would just dodge faster/regularly in his common form.

[Livin]

Sort of the later but with conversion being possible as you alter a weapons alignment. I'm gonna use Raziel as an example. You could have him in the form of the soul reaver sword with heavy destructive potential in the physical alignment. You could have him in the magickal alignment as the wraith blade, not as destructive on it's own but making up for it with elemental damage or possibly with health regeneration. Finally you could manifest Raziel as a wraith to fight for you with the essential. All are possible and none are fixed, meaning you could go from one form to the other as you work to increase the physical, essential, or magickal. (Which ever one they are most aligned with is what they shall be.)- Disregard this bit of the paragraph where whatever alignment a weapon has determines its form. Changing a weapon's form should be the player's choice and part of crafting.

 

I'm now realizing that this might be another pipe dream. I'll have to think for a minute about how to apply it other items.

 

That example of essential makes sense but also feels kind of hollow, like it's not much more than cosmetic changes.

Edited February 20, 2020 by Livin

[CyanStargazer]

Sort of the later but with conversion being possible as you alter a weapons alignment. I'm gonna use Raziel as an example. You could have him in the form of the soul reaver sword with heavy destructive potential in the physical alignment. You could have him in the magickal alignment as the wraith blade, not as destructive on it's own but making up for it with elemental damage or possibly with health regeneration. Finally you could manifest Raziel as a wraith to fight for you with the essential. All are possible and none are fixed, meaning you could go from one form to the other as you work to increase the physical, essential, or magickal. Which ever one they are most aligned with is what they shall be.

 

I'm now realizing that this might be another pipe dream. I'll have to think for a minute about how to apply it other items.

 

That example of essential makes sense but also feels kind of hollow, like it's not much more than cosmetic changes.

I did just have a thought to how to go about that. Now this will probably be a bit of a long winded thing. But let's say that weapons grow with the player, the player can craft a weapon, but it'll be at sort of a default power. Going with the legacy system the devs brought up it can gain innate power when it is used in a grand situation. A difference thought is that while say, a picked up item will usually have higher stats at first, you can say that picked up weapons have a higher start but slow or limited growth. That would give crafted weapons a low power start but faster power gain or higher possible end result. They can absorb power their wielder uses passively. Such as if an axe is used by a lich, after a few casts from the lich the axe gains 1 rank. After a set number of ranks, the axe's alignment changes to channel magic more effectively. That could either instead of physical damage help boost cast speed or resource efficiency. It'll start out weak at first but as more ranks and more levels are gained the higher the number can get. Physical changes can also appear as it levels up, sort of like orcs in the Shadow of Mordor series. The higher they go, or after certain events, they're appearance changes. Now the weapon can cover multiple alignments, magick and essense, however if levels and ranks up slower based on how it's aligned. If it's aligned with 1 it ranks up reasonably fast, aligned with 2 would be a bit slower, and aligned with all 3 would be a more grueling grind but is the most even spread.

Another idea is a sort of creature level up system, you can infuse certain items or creatures into the weapon to increase it's power in a certain catagory. Certain monster pieces hold unique properties that when infused gives your weapon a powerful ability or function. (Maybe like stores blood that a vampire can drink if he's in a bad spot). Either of these things could give the players more customization to their equipment, and while I'm not 100% on board with heavy grinding, the fact that the player could somewhat control what they got at the end would help encourage more time spent grinding up weapons to fit with their playstyle.

[Livin]

@Golden Xan which would you prefer actually, weapons built with a realm in mind or ones that change as we go from one realm to another in order to follow us?

[Golden Xan]

I certainly prefer to imagine it would be possible to have items/weapons that could move with us to other realms, but that would raise the complexity of it all unless they retain their form and change only their general appearance, such as becoming transparent.

 

Also, there's the gameplay aspect to take into consideration. All classes belong to one plane by default, and they only swap when defeated (or if they can do so through their skills). But when changing forms, I believe it should either be a punishment or a condition to, in either case, play in new ways. It wouldn't make much sense to have your weapon accompany you to another realm only to be used in the same way.

 

So, I guess it depends on how complex will they make the game when shifting to different planes. If the gameplay changes considerably, it may not even make sense for a weapon to switch phases together with us unless they too changed their nature. Like an axe turning into a sort of formless magickal capability (shooting magick blasts, or something).

In this case, it would be best to have them change, and I'm not sure how they could be represented. It would highly depend on what the game would play like in other realms. If we are talking about launching bolts of magick indeed, how would your current magick be represented? I find it more likely that it would all look fairly similar, such as an orb of light in the character's hand.

That would make it relatively simple enough from a graphical point of view, as the devs would only have to consider its playability and powers.

 

But if, for instance, we are not even supposed to use weapons when in forms other than our own, it wouldn't necessarily be productive to have weapons carrying over to the other realms. In this case, I wouldn't care about it because it would be a core design and we won't be bothering with the weapons then. It really just depends on them at this point.

 

But what I really liked was @CyanStargazer's idea of having items that level up, instead of the character itself. We already know some weapons will be sentient, so what about having crafting be all about making sentient weapons? Regular weapons, even powerful ones, can be found in the world, but there must be something special about crafting, because why would you bother going on missions just to craft something that would be easily substituted by something you can simply find in the world?

 

I think that the concept of having craftable items be initially weaker than most generic itens, but able to grow in power with time and use, to then surpass most items you can find just playing is a good idea, and it makes even more so if the item itself is an entity.

More than that, perhaps the craftable items leveling should be reserved to the "sacrifice", or recycling, of items you find.

 

For instance, craftable items could gain EXP by consuming items you find in the real world. That way, you still have a reason to work on everything, as opposed to either ignoring crafting or ignoring loot, and you can sacrifice really good items you find to make your craftable ones ever more powerful, even if some of the power is lost along the way.

 

Whether craftable items should acquire to some extent the capabilities of the sacrificed items or not is another story. But I like the idea very much. What do you people think?

 

Any ideas about how a sentient item could gain experience over time and grow in power is most welcome.

 

I was imagining that all items could have a power score, their attributes, any special effects, and possibly a list of ingredients that they are made of.

When absorbing items found in the world into your crafted item, part of the integrity is lost, so only a part of the power score, attributes and special effects are gained. The materials or ingredients that the item is made of could be transferred to some capacity to the crafted item, such as getting a metalic/shiny look when continuously absorbing metal items.

However, there may be differences in how much is lost depending on an item's rarity when consumed.

[CyanStargazer]

I suppose another thing I could add on with the weapon level up a crafted weapon could have is a sort of risk reward system. Should you make a crafted weapon out of the gate, you can grind up levels on early game levels (I'm guilty of doing this in Warframe since it's a safer but slower way to add ranks), so maybe the higher tier enemies you fight with a crafted weapon could slightly and slowly improve the quality of the bonuses you get when your weapon levels up. In warframe ranks in weapons are just equivalent to mod space, they don't effect stats at all by themselves. But crafted weapons in Deadhaus could not only improve faster, but get higher tier improvements for fighting tougher enemies. You risk a tougher fight and not being as effective for more long term growth and improvements.

[Livin]

I might have something, admittedly inspired by warframe. Let's take your crafting system and go from there. You build your weapon with the molds and materials, creating an initial hierarchy of affinity towards the realms. Leveling up though does nothing on it's own or very little in the way of enhancement; but it creates space for modifications through the elements mentioned before: runes, ritual sights, and various types of mini games. Each of these elements has their own alignment to a specific realm and only functions in that realm, meaning that if you go into a realm that you didn't supply your weapon with elements that are aligned to it in favor of the others then it will be next to useless there.

 

Perhaps the weakness with found weapons could be that they can't exist in all three realms or only in one, maybe being better than what you have at the time but as soon as you aren't in the realm it is aligned with then it suddenly becomes entirely useless.

Edited February 21, 2020 by Livin

[CyanStargazer]

I might have something, admittedly inspired by warframe. Let's take your crafting system and go from there. You build your weapon with the molds and materials, creating an initial hierarchy of affinity towards the realms. Leveling up though does nothing on it's only or very little in the way of enhancement; but it creates space for modifications through the elements mentioned before: runes, ritual sights, and various types of mini games. Each of these elements has their own alignment to a specific realm and only functions in that realm, meaning that if you go into a realm that you didn't supply your weapon with elements that are aligned to it in favor of the others then it will be next to useless there.

 

Perhaps the weakness with found weapons could be that they can't exist in all three realms or only in one, maybe being better than what you have at the time but as soon as you aren't in the realm it is aligned with then it suddenly becomes entirely useless.

I guess that would be good, but then that would open up the problem of finding those sites when you want to modify your crafted weapon. In Warframe since you will constantly grab mods and be able to upgrade them you'll probably have what you need 99% of the time and modify them before taking on a high level mission. I guess the problem for this method would be that any time you wanted to modify them you'd have to find one of these sites and hope(?) you get the enchantment you want. Or that you get the exact modification you want. Then if you can remove the modifications or enchantments you have, you have a sort of one and done situation. Where after you get everything you don't have a reason to visit those sites anymore, where as in Warframe new mods are added constantly and mods can be sold for money or mod upgrade material. Also in warframe you have the fact that some weapons in different equipment slots that have access to the same kind of mods, but they can't share a mod, so you have to get and upgrade another of that mod.

[Livin]

I guess that would be good, but then that would open up the problem of finding those sites when you want to modify your crafted weapon. In Warframe since you will constantly grab mods and be able to upgrade them you'll probably have what you need 99% of the time and modify them before taking on a high level mission. I guess the problem for this method would be that any time you wanted to modify them you'd have to find one of these sites and hope(?) you get the enchantment you want. Or that you get the exact modification you want. Then if you can remove the modifications or enchantments you have, you have a sort of one and done situation. Where after you get everything you don't have a reason to visit those sites anymore, where as in Warframe new mods are added constantly and mods can be sold for money or mod upgrade material. Also in warframe you have the fact that some weapons in different equipment slots that have access to the same kind of mods, but they can't share a mod, so you have to get and upgrade another of that mod.

 

In my vision the elements for modification are also plentiful and ritual sites would just be one of many forms it comes in, stuff like runes and artifacts; and some of them could even be created, including making your own temporary ritual sites.

 

Hope would also not be needed in my vision, you get what you're after if you satisfy the requirements for it.

[CyanStargazer]

Oh there is something I want to specifically say that needs to be said about crafting. Now different people might have different opinions about this, but I believe that while end game crafted items should be amazing, they should NEVER be better than end game raid items. Meaning while an end game crafted weapon or armor is good, it should be something that will be very useful when that player takes the push to the real most powerful item they want. I'm not sure who needs to hear that but making it clear this should be something that's on here. Crafted items of the highest tier should be an optional stepping stone to the highest tier item. There must either be a big enough gap in stats that crafted items will always be second tier to end game raid items. The main reason is because if crafted items were tied for top tier, people would mostly do an end game raid once for completion because nothing they get from that could out beat the crafted items. That means that end game content wouldn't have many players returning to grind it out to get a equipment they want/need because the best things can easily be bought by another player who's spent time leveling crafting. That saying crafted items should either be slightly better or more flexible than sub end tier raid items. Because sub end tier should be slightly more open to casual players while end tier would require coordination on players part to beat successfully. Because sub end tier is more casual friendly, players can get the equipment from it more easily which can ready them for the end tier, but getting crafted could be like a slight buffer letting players have just a bit more damage or defense before they go into end tier.

[Golden Xan]

Answering all your comments, @Livin and @CyanStargazer:

 

First, about weapons not leveling up and unlocking modification slots instead. If that happens, then I suppose you would end up limiting how useful one particular item could be in terms of raw power, yet you'd open even more options to make it your own. It would also motivate you to make more than one main item for each equipment slot in your character, because you'd want to make items that are more powerful as you grow in power yourself.

 

If that were the case, how much effort would be necessary for an item to gain a mod slot? I imagine it would have to be considerably less than the never-ending leveling mechanism, as you'd be swapping items more often. If that happens, craftable items would also need to have a rarity or quality rating, because you'd need to be able to differentiate a weaker item at a glance, adding to the complexity.

 

Now, if the mod slots allow you to make upgrades that are effective only in specific realms, then you could specialize it indeed, but... would there be any reason to focus on a realm that is not your main one? You should probably be crafting items that help you stay undeadly better, with some limited focus on perhaps getting back to your main form if you get vanquished. So, this possibility will only have a meaningful impact if either:

A) Being on another realm other than your main is truly a difficult situation to be in and you find yourself moving to other states often.

B) The mod slots are not freely assignable, you have the majority of mod slots allowing only for upgrades that are used on your main state, with some reserved for the other two separately.

Either case is possible, but it would depend on the gameplay itself, which we don't know enough about yet.

 

As for the upgrades, I vote on having to unlock the features to perform them but having them readily available to use whenever you need. For example, finding or unlocking runes that you can bring to your personal dungeon and then use them on the same Forge where you created the item to upgrade them. Because then, like CyanStargazer said, you are not forced to go out on an adventure every time you want to make a modification of any kind.

 

The modification methods themselves are plentiful, there is room for a bazillion ideas. You could find better hammers, you could get better blacksmiths or a higher amount of servants to work on the Forge, you could melt the materials with fire generated from different sources, you could improve the Forge by adding new forging instruments, you can have incantations prepared around the Forge, you could set cores in the molds themselves (like giving hearts to your items), you can have candles lit and offerings sacrificed on a pyre before creating the item, and the list goes on and on.

Whatever it is, I believe it should be something that, once acquired, stays usable forever.

 

I think modification slots is something that could be implemented to good effect, and it might or might not have anything to do with crafting itself. But it's a good idea on its own.

---------------------

Second, about raid items being more powerful than craftable ones: I believe this only depends on what the game will feature in terms of missions and content. Raids, as we've heard about today, will likely not have the same format in DHS than they do in other MMOs. It will likely not be an instance-based mission that last a few hours with a handful of people, it will likely have a nature more akin to a seasonal event with a meta story or gameplay associated with it... For example, an evil that threatens everyone in which all players can take part of across an entire Age.

 

Also, raids or events won't necessarily be replayable in order to achieve more or repeated rewards. I believe there are other ways of "grinding" that can be just as enjoyable or more than repeating the same subset of missions over and over to achieve a particular set of items. Namely, working on a long and possibly never-ending project of developing your own set of tools and equipment, yet in a way that doesn't discourage you (because there is no viable way of getting to the end). It will depend on how DHS handles missions themselves.

 

Naturally, the things you get in difficult missions should be proportionally rewarding. As Denis mentioned in one of the streams, this is something they are striving for. However, I believe people will feel much more attached to their characters if they had to put a lot of work into making something out of nothing than if they simply had a collection of powerful items gained throughout the Ages that they know will be replaced once a new, harder, event comes out.

 

Which is why I think being able to sacrifice these powerful items that you get to improve your own craftable item's power is such an interesting concept. You are, after all, still working hard to attain powerful items and you are also giving up on them to make your own item just as amazing--if not more.

 

On the other hand, that does sound a bit hardcore... Fighting on a difficult event, achieving a complicated goal, acquiring a powerful and rare item and then never seeing it again because you decided to sacrifice it.

 

So, thinking of that, perhaps there is an alternate way of having your craftable gain experience that is neither direct use on combat nor the consumption of other items. Perhaps a mixture of that. Here are some alternatives:

 

A) Craftable items need a "core" in order to be created. That core is like the soul of the item. It gains experience as you fight against enemies, just like your regular character would. You can remove that core from a craftable item that has already been created in order to use it on other items, including non-crafted ones, but the craftable item becomes unusable until its own core is inserted back (cores from other items cannot be inserted).

This way, you can still give the item an identity that you'll use to work on and associate with, and you can still use other items, including the ones you find on missions as rewards, to grind it. Once you're ready, you can put the core back in its original item so it absorbs all the experience it acquired. You don't need to lose your rare items, and you don't need to give up on your craftable. Cores may or may not be used on other non-crafted weapons only--So you can only level up one core at a time, yet when not leveling it you can attribute it to any kind of item.

B) You still absorb power from non-craftable items, but they are not consumed. Items can only be absorbed once per kind (duplicates cannot be absorbed) and cannot be absorbed by multiple craftables.

This way, you can maintain a large collection of all the rewards you got in your journey, you still gain something for your craftable, and you still have the value from all the combinations you could make, mixing craftables and regular items in your kit. The main problem with this is that either the power gained from absorbed items is very, very small, or you'll have a combination of items that can have too big a payoff, or you can have people who distribute their item experience between many craftables and then they end up wasting their potential.

C) Regular items gain experience just as much as craftable items, but they can be absorbed by the craftable items as you desire.

This way you get to play with whatever it is you prefer at any given moment, yet you never stop gaining resources (experience, in this case) that you can use to develop your craftables. You may or may not be able to choose how much experience from an item is converted to any particular craftable, and there may or may not be an absorption loss (making regular items help you level the craftables, but not as fast as playing directly with them).

I believe these are all viable possibilities, but each of them have their advantages and disadvantages. I'd say my favorite alternative is A) right now. And this is all IF the items will have levels themselves.

 

Further improvements on these alternatives or new ideas are, of course, welcome for discussion.

 

I also hope we get modding AND leveling with our craftable items. These are two good concepts that add to longevity and customization, of both visuals and gameplay aspects.

[Livin]

I've been thinking back on the flesh armor of Blood Omen. I'm fairly certain something like it is planned, but I'd like to share some ideas I have for it. In Blood Omen it pulled blood from your victims and replenishing your health without having to stop and feed. This would work well for the vampire and the way they look to be played in Deadhaus, but perhaps it could have different effects for the different undead. Here are some things that came to mind with regard to the other undead we are familiar with while wearing flesh armor.

 

Liche's-Provides strength that increases with enhancements and leveling, enabling the liche to have melee proficiency so they can function like a battle mage if they want to. The armor absorbs the blood it draws towards it instead of feeding it to the vampire, that could be how it levels up.

 

Revenant-The blood being pulled to the armor also channels the rage of the slain, replenishing the Revenant's.

[Livin]

With our bodies being replaceable for some classes and highly regenerative for others, perhaps another source of materials could be ourselves. Outside of stuff like vampire blood and liche marrow we could also cultivate.

 

For example, you could require flesh or bone that is infected with a specific plague at a certain stage to craft some accessory. You could infect a beast or npc with it, but you could also infect yourself and cultivate it from within.

[Jaina Chaosweaver of Fate]

With our bodies being replaceable for some classes and highly regenerative for others, perhaps another source of materials could be ourselves. Outside of stuff like vampire blood and liche marrow we could also cultivate.

 

For example, you could require flesh or bone that is infected with a specific plague at a certain stage to craft some accessory. You could infect a beast or npc with it, but you could also infect yourself and cultivate it from within.

That is gross, disgusting, and I love it. You could also keep some cattle and cultivate it from them if you don't want to deal with being infected. With cattle being humans/other races in this case.

[Golden Xan]

Hey everyone,

 

I've had some thoughts about crafting that I'd like to share. I figured I could use this thread rather than start a new one for that.

 

Considering everything we've heard about items and other aspects in Deadhaus so far, I found this system quite reasonable and interesting. I hope you will find the same.

 

Crafting can be done for two main purposes: an alternative and faster way to accumulate resources of various kinds, or a way to make specialized items that we intend to use. I call these Utility Crafting and Specialized Crafting respectively.

 

Utility Crafting is your typical MMORPG crafting system, where X and Y ingredients mixed together result in Z product. Each game has its own spin of it, but it is essentially the same. Deadhaus may or may not need such a feature, depending on how items and other aspects are handled, but if it is useful to have such a system, they would have no shortage of references to draw from and make something decent.

For this reason, let us focus on Specialized Crafting instead.

 

Specialized Crafting

 

 

Though these features may have changed, we know a few things about items so far:

• Items will be procedurally generated, as well as their stats.
  
• They intend to have a crafting system, but have not focused on this yet.
  
• Classes may have weapon restrictions.
  
• There will be sentient weapons and other items, some of which may serve as portals to other dimensions.
  
• Weapons and items may evolve over time together with your character, as Ages go by.
  

From this, we can infer that weapons will have modules (in order to be procedurally generated, just like the maps), but they will have limitations (focus on the classes that will actually wield them) and that they already intend to have the capacity to add more and more bonuses to already powerful items over time, in some level or form.

 

Crafting is sometimes avoided by people for various reasons. Sometimes, they find it boring, sometimes the system becomes a chore after too long, sometimes it breaks games by allowing you to attain things that you would otherwise never find, some people believe it diminishes the thrill of adventuring, as adventuring often rewards you with the best of items.

 

All that said, we can focus on the reason why people would want to engage in this crafting system: to make unique items that suits your playstyle perfectly, instead of depending on luck to find something that will do so, or having to adapt yourself to the items at your disposal.

 

 

 

In order to more easily explain this system, I'll use a single example.

 

Every item has, for the sake of simplicity, 3 modules that form the whole when put together. These are the pieces that are procedurally generated, from a pool of item appearances. Let us take a sword as the subject of our study.

 

A sword could have three modules: the pommel, the guard, and the blade. Each module change the weapon's attributes in one way or another.

 

The crafting system is initiated by acquiring the modules themselves, of the looks you prefer, through regular gameplay--quests, loot, or otherwise. They may or may not have attributes of their own attached to them; I prefer that attributes are attached to something else, so that you may create a weapon with the visual that you desire without sacrificing its utility.

 

Once the modules are all found, the item is put together. This item will be as basic as your starting journey's wood stick, in terms of special powers, but will be as powerful, in terms of raw strength (base defense or attack, for instance), as your most powerful item found so far--or based on your character's level, or some other skill, such as mastery with that kind of item, or with crafting itself. Whatever the aspect utilized, the item is merely physical and has no secondary attribute.

 

But now the actual crafting begins: the weapon evolves over time as you use it, but in the direction that you tell it to develop.

Let us say our character of choice is a Vampire that wants his sword to drain blood from its victims, instead of having to drink it directly. He will put together a sword with the looks that he believes is fitting with its purpose. Now, he will enter in synchronicity with the weapon and assign it the duty of developing a vampirical attribute of blood stealing.

 

The way in which this synchronicity is attained can vary. Every crafted weapon may be sentient, or they may all have their own pocket dimensions, or they may simply be magickal artifacts that react to your thoughts. I particularly like the idea of the item having a mind of its own, created as the item was formed, and that it needs to learn how to behave with its newfound consciousness, such as a child learning more about the world, and that you can communicate with it in some way to teach it how to develop.

 

Additionally, in order to be able to teach the item to gain a specific attribute, such as blood stealing, the Vampire himself has to go through a quest, or find something in the world, or talk to a specific character, any of it, that might allow him how to teach such characteristic to the weapon. Characters may, perhaps, have a list of aspects they already know how to teach the items, such as subjects that pertain closely to their nature. In this case, the Vampire can teach the item to vampirize individuals, as this is innate to him.

 

After the Vampire speaks to his sword and assign it the duty of learning how to blood steal, the weapon needs to gain experience. This is done in form of challenges that the weapon has to overcome. These challenges may be integrated with the regular gameplay--so that you may continuously develop it as you go about your heroic undead quest normally--or it may be part of a separate experience where you have to focus on the challenge specifically. Both can do nicely, it depends on how well that would integrate with everything else in the game.

 

An example of a challenge would be delving into the weapon's mind and going into one such pocket dimensions. For the blood steal attribute, you need to feed the weapon as much blood as you can before your demise. So you are put in an arena with endless enemies of growing power and all you have access to is the weapon itself, and your abilities pertaining to that weapon kind. The more enemies you are able to kill before dying, the stronger the blood steal attribute will be on the weapon. Once a peak is achieved, any repeated attempt that results in a lesser result will wield no effect, but the attribute can be further increased by achieving a higher "score" in a repeated attempt. The thing is, the weapon also grows in power over time, and so does your mastery with it, making it easier for you to achieve better results in its challenges later. And once a particular result is achieved, you don't have to go back to it if you don't want to, because you can now teach other items of the same kind the same attribute learned, if you want to make variants of it.

 

Otherwise, if not through separate challenges, then perhaps gradually through the use of the item in regular play. Every enemy slain adds to the weapon's experience. As your own character, the weapon gains "levels" as it becomes more experienced, and every level takes longer to be reached as the experience requirement increases considerably. Initially, every level gives the weapon a high amount of the chosen attribute, but this amount diminishes over time as it grows stronger and closer to the "limit". This limit may be a form of control so that weapons never become overly powerful, yet they may be raised with the passing of Ages.

 

If you want to take this a step further, you can also make the weapon's individual modules acquire specific visual elements to them pertaining to the attribute they are acquiring. Such as becoming blood-red by learning to steal blood, or glowing with a magickal aura as it learns to deflect projectiles, or elongating itself and getting more curved as it learns to increase its own speed, or acquiring serrated teeth if it grows armor penetration or bleeding capabilities, and so on. This could be done with specific modules, so that you don't have to create variants of weapon looks for every potential combination, and it could also potentially be influenced by the player's desire (if it wants the weapon to change its look or not over time, for instance).

 

If the system is to be made even more complex, you can have each module capable of learning a different attribute. And then you can add more modules, or new levels of improvements, through the various forms of enchantments and upgrades that the game may have available.

 

I believe this system is more interesting than regular minigame crafting because:

• It is not tedious or repetitive, necessarily.
  
• It doesn't force you to depend on luck in getting specific values in ranges of attributes or kinds of loot, only skill and effort.
  
• It doesn't remove the complexity of the regular crafting, it is to be kept.
  
• It creates a much higher value in every weapon crafted as you have put literally time and effort in them.
  
• It allows you to tailor your items to your very specific needs and playstyle.
  
• It creates opportunities to create interesting quests related to crafting, or your relationship with the crafted items.
  
• It doesn't break the game by allowing you to become overly powerful by just being good at crafting.
  
• It doesn't remove the aspect of adventuring and finding loot and knowledge.
  
• It doesn't force people to go through things they don't want to do necessarily.
  
• You do not rely on gimmicky systems to simulate the crafting itself.
  
• Once a challenge is completed, you may not have to repeat it ever again with another item if you don't want, as you may be able to copy your results (if you go with the challenge route instead of gradual evolution).
  
• There is a major potential for integrating this with the game's various other story and gameplay features.
  

We haven't heard much about crafting so far, but hopefully this contributes to the concept further when the devs do decide to tackle it.

 

Would anyone like to add anything to it?