Fan Faire Write-up, Part 3: Crafting Masteries and Misc.

[Kandrak]

Imbue Gems...

What I want to see is the ability for paladins of various faiths to imbue the gems of their deity. I'm a Dwarf paladin and need Imbued Rubies in my cultural smithing. What? I'm not holy enough for Brell that he only gives this spell to his Clerics?

[bana-zir]

I don't like JCM3 on enchanters at all.

A few months after PoP came out, I watched an enchanter make around 1,500,000 in less than a month by making val rings and bloodmetal earrings. He spent only the 15 minutes each day as he was logging out.

I personally believe JCM3 was one of the most damaging actions to the economy. It has eliminated the possibility of doing JC if you are not an enchanter.

I don't want any new TCM skills, if they are class or race limited.

I would rather see JCM removed, but I know this would be unfair to enchanters.

If it is to go in game, it should be open to anyone spending the points.

Anyone having TCM for a tradeskill, removes the tradeskill from others. In short, if someone has TCM for Smithing, then you MUST have TCM for Smithing. Because of the higher success rates, you will pay more for parts. If you pay more for parts, you shut out others from making those items. If you don't have the TCM, you can make an item to wear for less money by buying that item from someone with TCM, instead of buying (or camping) the parts to do the combine yourself.

[Angahran]

Masteries....hmmm.....

I don't know if this is new or not but I was looking at my baby shamans AAs yesterday (she's only 42 at the moment).

And I saw 'Alchemy Mastery' in the list.

Just wondering if any rogues or gnomes had spotted 'Poison Mastery' or 'Tinkering Mastery' ??

Ang.

(A.K.A Xaku - 42nd Iksar Shaman and part time smith)

[Tweedledea]

I'm for the idea of a char only being able to have 'mastery' points in one skill. Otherwise all the obsessives amongst us would just get aas for every skill, in the same way they got 1750. I'd hypothesise that everyone would have increased success rates, the bazaar would be flooded with the resulting goods and ... prices drop, everyone grumbles.

A single mastery skill would just be a nice bonus for your favourite skill.

[Fin]

The enchanter aa really annoys me. Their lock on the enchanting process of adamantite, steel, berellium etc is equally annoying.

{snip}

Enchanting the basic ores also needs ot be changed. Combining the ore, and a low end mana vial should do the trick. Enchanters still play a role, in fact its EASIER for them to, as they can bazaar mule the vials, which stack, and would be used for all ore, as opposed to enchanted ore, which doesnt stack. The difference is, you dont have to leash one down while you are doing a lot of combines.

I totally agree with Flabbo. It is really annoying to travel all the way to somewhere like the Abysmal Sea to work on a skill like smithing, only to find out that you need "Enchanted bar of velium". Do a /who and you're the only one in the zone. Then you will have to chase one down to "help" with the enchanting process.

I think there should be a vending machine (or NPC) for enchanting and imbuing metals and stones. Put the metal or stone into a container(like the birdbath at wayfarer camps), include the reagents like gems and what-not, click combine, and it automatically deducts plat from you, and returns the enchanted/imbued items.

This would remove some role-play, but would also remove the dependance of "class locks" on tradeskills.

-Fin

[Lickity]

To some point, it makes a lot of sense that enchanters can make these items, however, it would not be terribly out of roleplaying to have a few rare items that can make them for us. (They have no problem giving away the ability of shaman to shrink, why should they have problems with taking away enchanter enchants.) These would like be end game items, or high level ones at least. One possibility would be a tinkered item that allows you to make the mana vials, perhaps a container that you put the emerald, poison vial and some reasonably priced item, like maybe a CE and voila you get a vial of clear mana back. It would also be semi reasonable to allow smiths to enchant their own metal, we can make planar enchanted (nightmare iron + distilled mana = enchanted nightmare iron 160ish skill) metals, so sub-planar ones should be a no brainer.

The real balancing issue that would come up is not so much the enchanters losing the market, but the fact that enchanters use so much mana to do it, and this could be reverse adjusted, as the imbue process seems to take proportionally more mana than it should anyhow.

[Ruldar]

More properly, they indicated that cold add soemthing to the lore (or notes?) field to indicate what the bag is.

Is there any way of checking the lore of something that is on a vendor in the bazaar before you buy it? I am not aware of any way to do this, and as such it would seem to me like this wouldn't be a complete solution to the problem. I know I have several times looked at bag tokens in the bazaar, and ended up not buying any because I didn't know the stats. True you can always check lucy, but once you consider out-of-game tools it seems like you lose the point of adding the in-game method.

[Meryddian]

I want Fletching Mastery because Im a ranger and we use bows and arrows all the time!
He wants Tailoring Mastery because he is a druid and druids are in tune with narute and should be able to fashion skins and hides into terrific armor!
He wants Smithing Mastery because hes a strong warrior and all good Smiths are strong people who like to beat on things.

Ok. Before there ever was AAs in JCM, enchanters ALWAYS had the lock on JC - why? because we imbue all the metals. In POP you at least saw multiple classes be able to enchant the gems and anybody could imbue planar bars of metal. Great improvents for tradeskillers.

Now. From a ROLEPLAYING standpoint - and remember, Everquest is SUPPOSED to be a role-playing game - enchanters having JCM makes perfect sense. And yeah, I think that it would make perfect sense from a RPG standpoint to have rangers only be able to have fletching mastery, physically strong classes like warriors and paladins and so forth get smithing mastery, etc. But on most tradeskills it's hard to say "who" should get what ability over another.

From a player standpoint, yes, I do think it's rough on other players that enchanters have the lock on JC, but then nobody complains about hunting down shamans for sow potions. :P Like any market, the few who really exploit it makes it rough for the rest.

I'm sorry that so many non-enc resent my class for our JCM ability but you know, not every player is in a position to "take advantage" of the market - think about it, who is benefitting the most on a new expansion - those people of the level etc to get into zones first and get the loots necessary first, doesn't matter if they have AAs or not!

There's no point in removing Alchemy or Poisonmaking Mastery AA's; these are CLASS-restricted skills and therefore have zero impact on any other class in the game. Tinkering AAs likewise should be made available (but clearly only gnomes would find any use for it) and stand seperate like JCM does now.

The only downside for everybody to get AAs in tradeskilling would be the market would have more saturation of product; however, I think making it so that you are either restricted to only one skill (of the "big 7") going to TSM3, or that you can only get 1 point in X number of skills (ie 1 point in 3 diff skills). Either that, or instead of 10/25/50 improvement (current mastery curves), make it 5/10/20 and you can get all skills.

On a side note, as an enchanter AND as a tradeskiller, I have always wanted to see more classes able to imbue, especially gems. Why can't paladins, rangers, and shadowknights imbue gems when they MUST pick a diety and are considered priest/melee hybrids? Why can't any caster (whether INT caster, priest or hybrid) of a race imbue their cultural metal? I never did understand that. It's not like imbuing gems or metals would throw off the balance of the game.

[Lickity]

/agree.. I would like to see a lot more imbued things, and possibly more uses for them. My personal wish would be to have musically imbued bardic metals! That would rock!

[Lickity]

Hehe, just reread my post...that would rock...no pun intended,but if I had noticed it before I wrote it, I certainly would have done it anyway!

[Kendricke]

Tradeskill Crafting Mastery AAs are necessary to even the playing field. All players should have a chance to purchase TCM3 for the skill of their choice, with the exception of the ‘restricted’ skills (alchemy=shaman, poison making=rogue, tinkering=gnome, spell research=spell caster)

In my opinion, this is how it would work:

You could only choose one and only one skill to get TCM3. Chanters would be refunded JCM3, (Shamen would be refunded Alchemy mastery, Rogues would be refunded Poison mastery) and they could choose to re-purchase it or go for TCM3 in another skill instead.

Shamen, rogues, gnomes and Int Casters would have the additional option of their class specific skills in terms of what skill they could choose TCM3 for , but they could not have TCM3 in more than one skill. For example, if a Gnome rogue wanted to re-purchase Poison Mastery, he could not get TCM3 for Tinkering too (or for any of the other skills for that matter.) They already have the advantage that only they can use that skill, which should be sufficient.

List of theoretical TCM AAs, 3 levels

Alchemy Mastery (shaman only)
Baking Mastery (all)
Brewing Mastery (all)
Fishing Mastery (all)
Fletching Mastery (all)
Jewel Crafting Mastery (available for ALL, not just enchanters)
Poison Mastery (Rogues only)
Pottery Mastery (all)
Smithing Mastery (all)
Spell Research Mastery (all)
Tailoring Mastery (all)
Tinkering Mastery (gnomes only)

I could not have worded this better. I agree completely and wholeheartedly.

In addition, I'd like to see MORE diety restricted tradeskills as well as MORE cultural.

[Meryddian]

Shamen, rogues, gnomes and Int Casters would have the additional option of their class specific skills in terms of what skill they could choose TCM3 for , but they could not have TCM3 in more than one skill. For example, if a Gnome rogue wanted to re-purchase Poison Mastery, he could not get TCM3 for Tinkering too (or for any of the other skills for that matter.) They already have the advantage that only they can use that skill, which should be sufficient.

Shaman potions do not make shamans a fortune in quite the same manner as say, JC or smithing does. If somebody sells a player-made item for 100K, a shaman would have to sell 1,000 potions to "make" the same money (and they wouldn't even really make 100K, due to the cost of components; many high-end tradeskill items are farmable and thus "mostly free").

Likewise, poisons do nobody except rogues any good. Poison can only be applied by rogues, are used as weapon procs. (only one poison falls outside this rule - the one used in the Thurgadin quest). How is it possible to resent rogues getting PM when nobody else in the game benefits from it and they can't really do much with the finished product except share with other rogues?

So taking away either of these class-specific tradeskills or saying that if somebody uses these skills *and* wants to do a lucrative tradeskill like JC or smithing or tailoring, too bad, you already picked your class-specific skill.

Tinkering could more easily be restricted, as they cannot create AAs which are race-specific, but clearly, who else but a gnome will spend AAs on them?

[Tudani]

I think that adding more crafting masteries to the game would be a bad idea. Though I also think that JCM should be opened up to all classes or removed. Any crafting masteries that are added would both force tradeskillers to spend ~18 AA per skill in order to still have the skill viable to use for profit/friends, and it would dramatically change the in game economy as the items became more common. I personally worked my ass off to get 250 in some of the skills I have it in, and I'd not be happy to have to grind (I hate grinding!!!) 18 AA's (or more) just to be able to keep making a profit on my skills. Limiting it to one skill would be a mistake (especially only giving classes with a class specific skill 1 choice). I may think that things might have been better before NTCM, but again, I don't want my time and energy getting my skills up wasted. JC was a total waste, I've never once tried to do a single combine for myself. The only reason I even got it is because I like having skills maxed, and I'd already started it for the shawls. With most of my other skills I have and can still make items for myself/my alts/friends/guildmates.

On a slightly off topic note, do crafting masteries other than JCM currently work? I know they were broken at least for a while, and possibly still so.

[dmuerte]

Um if you want to defend the lock on jc that enchanter have based on role playing then fine Im a mage i want summon x, x is whatever part i need for the craft skill i am doing. As the master summoner, no longer allowed to be a elementalist, its perfectly in character to have it :P

[Proctus]

Funny to see a lot of people from my server (and guild) complaining about JCM and enchanters. A good portion of our spells are dedicated to enchanting imbueing things for tradeskills, which limits our versatility in other areas. The fact that it's called "Enchant" such and such kind of gives you an idea of what class it was made for. There are a lot of Race specific recipes that give people advantages over others in tradeskills (i.e. fletching, tailoring, smithing) yet you come here complaining about Enchanters having a lock in Jewelcrafting. How about a nerf likewise in fletching/tailoring/smithing for skillups to every race? Personally, I think Humans would be hit the hardest....

Oh, welcome to my banned list Renjah! (No imbues/enchanting for joo!)

Just had another thought. Maybe they should just make Jewelcrafting an Enchanter only tradeskill (like alchemy). Har!