New Tradeskill AA Ideas

[Aldier]

I didnt see anyone suggesting this although a few ideas came close...

Would it be possible to share skill up chances within a group? be it as part of the existing group make up or as a new AA? The reason I bring this up is because there's been code to share skill attempts while grouped since as far back as I can remember (probably since EQ was created).

The idea being that if all members of a group would gain skill from one group members combine each member of the group would get a skill up chance. I would probably suggest a reduced chance (maybe a fixed 1% for everyone except the person doing the combine). You could then introduce additional AAs to incorporate grouped tradeskillers.

AA group Mastery (<tradeskill>): You provide group members with an increased chance of a successful skill up when you make a non-trivial item using <tradeskill>.

AA group Training (<tradeskill>): You provide group members with an increased chance of a successful skill up when you make a trivial item of 200 or higher.

examples:
3 members are grouped - 1 has 200 jewellery crafting one has 250 and the 3rd has 220. when the member with 250 makes an item with a trivial of 260 both members with 200 get a 1% chance of a skill up. the member with 250 gets his normal chance.
If the 250 member has AA group mastery the other two would instead get a 2% chance.
If the 250 member has AA group Training and attempts a 210 item the member with 200 would get a 2% chance of a skill up while the 220 member and the 250 member wouldn't get any chance since the item is already trivial to them.
If the 250 member has both AA group training and Mastery if he makes a 260 item the other 2 members gets a 3% chance.

I wouldn't be inclined to increase the % based on group size - the fact that potentially each member could get an extra 5 chances to skill up at 3% would be enough to entice tradeskillers to group.

Perhaps limiting the skill up to successful combines only and then adding an AA that gives a chance on a failure too?

This would not work unless there was a hardcap on, you cannot gain a skillup above a certain skill through this method.

In the 290-300 skill range, the chance of a skillup for a NORMAL tradeskiller would be lower than that of the members of their group and that would be bad. I think your percentages may be a bit high too if the compound for a group of 6.

[Ame]

The examples where based on the suggested 1% above - I'm not an expert on the Tradeskill percentages and will leave that up to the devs - the 1% just helps to explain the principle behind the idea.

A hardcap might be necessary (and thus creating AAs to increase it would be viable) but given that all members must be entitled to gain a skill up chance from the actual combine I cant see it being abused. Your not gonna see people skilling up groups to 300 on tradeskill quests which grant you the items for free for example.

EQ is a grouping game and tradeskills is the only part which doesnt incorporate this philosophy. This could spawn a viable reason to form Tradeskill groups for specific trades or even entire guilds by providing an incentive to group while tradeskilling.

[GrimwoodCT]

Expendable AA: Artisan's Boon

3-5-10 AA to earn (something that is at least a moderate pain to obtain)

Activate it, next TS combine is no fail.

Pre-requisites: Must be 300 in that skill and have GM trophy.

[Xorph]

This isn't an AA, but I'd love to see...

An item that had 7 aug slots (new slot for this stuff) in it and no other stats.
Then you could take any lvl 6 or 7 trophy to our infamous bag to token person in Bazaar
she would give you back an aug that only had the +skill% MOD on it, and it fits in the new item with the 7 slots.

This way I could carry around all 7 trophies in one inventory slot, cause us TSers are already low on pack space since we keep stuff most other people just throw away.

Not gonna happen anytime in the near future.

The current limit is 5, and is not changing anytime soon.

I actually really like this idea, anything to help save those inventory / bank slots. I realize that there is a limit on Augs, but could this be done like the Geerlok Hypermodulating Tool?

Basically, after maxxing all 7 trophies, have a quest / vendor / something that gets you a "Grandmaster Artisan Trophy Frame", add your 7 trophies, click combine and get a "Grandmaster Artisan Trophy". Toss the Trophy (by itself) into a tradeskill container, and it changes to the equivalent stats on the normal trophy for that tradeskill. Same results, no augs involved!

Of course there'd be minor problems if they ever increase the tradeskill caps and update existing trophies, but nothing that couldn't be overcome!

[Ngreth Thergn]

I actually really like this idea, anything to help save those inventory / bank slots. I realize that there is a limit on Augs, but could this be done like the Geerlok Hypermodulating Tool?

Basically, after maxxing all 7 trophies, have a quest / vendor / something that gets you a "Grandmaster Artisan Trophy Frame", add your 7 trophies, click combine and get a "Grandmaster Artisan Trophy". Toss the Trophy (by itself) into a tradeskill container, and it changes to the equivalent stats on the normal trophy for that tradeskill. Same results, no augs involved!

Of course there'd be minor problems if they ever increase the tradeskill caps and update existing trophies, but nothing that couldn't be overcome!

And it breaks your trophy never to evolve again if we do get to raise skill caps.

[Jinaabu3169]

3-5-10 AA to earn (something that is at least a moderate pain to obtain)

Activate it, next TS combine is no fail.

Pre-requisites: Must be 300 in that skill and have GM trophy.

Then, all high skill combines would be 100% successful. People would never get anyone to combine unless they had the top AA, and I know I would never attempt a high level combine until the AA was ready.

That will never fly

[Stephen51]

1. Weaponsmith. Smiths and Fletchers can make an item that enhances a weapon permanently. The item is subject to fails in the making as are its subcombines, but the final combine, to be done by the user which involves the weapon will be no fail (for obvious reasons).
Enhancements could include;

+ Damage (e.g. +2 dmg)
-delay (e.g. reduces delay of weapon by 2)
a proc effect
a click effect (for casters, eg heal, nuke etc)

The weapon would be tagged as modified after the combine, so that it couldnt be modified again, made no trade if not already, and possibly given the users name, so Soulfire would become Glomane's Soulfire.

2. Increase no fail combine by 50 trivial, 3 ranks, basically makes anything with a trivial of less than 150 impossible to fail.

3.Trademasters boon. When summoning a tradeskill bag you summon an item appropriate to the tradeskill involved. Items a bit like the mage spell that summons random things, so a fletcher would get some arrows, a baker some stat food, a brewer some stat drink.... the GM items could be really nice, useable every 24 hrs-every 3 days?

4. Cultural. It seems SOE want to move away from cultural armour, why not try to move to other areas, specifically one to plug dwarven tailoring. I was thinking of Tapestries. The portrail of battles gone by in the form of a sort of woven picture. These could be crafted by dwarves to be used as maybe Banner or campfire parts that increase stats on them.

[Xerius]

1. Weaponsmith. Smiths and Fletchers can make an item that enhances a weapon permanently. The item is subject to fails in the making as are its subcombines, but the final combine, to be done by the user which involves the weapon will be no fail (for obvious reasons).
Enhancements could include;

+ Damage (e.g. +2 dmg)
-delay (e.g. reduces delay of weapon by 2)
a proc effect
a click effect (for casters, eg heal, nuke etc)

The weapon would be tagged as modified after the combine, so that it couldnt be modified again, made no trade if not already, and possibly given the users name, so Soulfire would become Glomane's Soulfire.

An interesting idea, but one with so many complications, I cannot even come up with a way to start making it work.

Probably the most primary issue with it is that each item is defined by EQ as a certain item number, which is associated by the game with the stats of the weapon.

Every weapon in the game would have to have its number of ID's doubled or tripled to cover the various enhancements, since people would be wanting enhanced damage on one weapon, or reduced speed on another, or a proc of choice. Additionally, to give the item the name of its owner rather than a generic name (Glomane's Soulfire rather than Enhanced Soulfire) would probably be beyond the ID method of data storage.

Without recoding the baseline way items are stored and recalled by EQ, there is likely no way anybody would be willing to add that much data, and simply adding data is the easiest way I could think of to do it.

As well, it would require virtually every weapon in the game to be considered seperately for limitations to the process, since adding two damage to a dmg 21 dly 19 dagger is significantly different than adding two damage to a 53 dmg 37 dly 2hs.

Finally, was this done to weapons, there would be an immediate outcry that the same advantage be applied to armour, adding a few AC or a few HP, or adding a focus.

I like the initial concept and wish I could say it would be something that could be hammered into a useable form, but I do not think it is something that could be added to the game.

[skabe]

If these have been suggested already my bad I admit I haven't read every post in this thread

An AA to summon an appropriate temporary tradeskill container to do combines in (2nd rank cultural where that applies) IE GM Blacksmith would summon a forge, Baker an oven, etc. Some of the code for such a thing might be in existence with the collapsed items that are in game. Additional ranks could be added for increasing capacity of the summoned container and or Trivial level of combines that could be attempted in it. Optional ranks (AA line) could give the player a % chance to succeed when using this container or a % increase to skill when using it a la trophy does. I originally thought of this as an epic style quest for tradeskills.

An AA to bind yourself to a tradeskill container AND another to transport yourself to that container at will. This would be seperate from Bind point and Gate as well as Origin.

A variation of or change to Packrat that when activated has a set duration that allows you to temporarily stack items that are normally limited to 20 per slot to 40, 60, 80, 100 per slot. This probably would be a major code issue but I had to take a shot at it

I really liked the tool belt idea. Cannot tell you how many times i have had to go back to the bank to retrieve a specific hammer, pie tin, baking spoon, needle, etc etc. AA to create the implement storage. Quested/farmed bits to create the tools?

[Bonzz]

My 2-cents

I know this thread is a bit old, but I just read thru it and have some feedback.

Some of it isn't necessarily AA's -- but they are all tradeskill related... and some of them expand on other posts:

1) AUTOCOMBINE

You can AUTOFIRE (or throw), how about an Auto Combine ability? Once you buy the AA, you can make a hot key. Pull up the recipe and hit AUtocombine and it will combine (and inventory) until you run out of components, you move or you end up with a No Trade item in hand (your hands are full...).

It does come with a danger.... if you don't make sure you have the space in your bags, items may drop on the ground and are fair game to walk by looting or rot.


2) Salvage AA increase

More levels of Salvage I like. It seems most of th items worth making these days involve rare ingredients and/or costly ingredients. And of course, it always sems like the component that is salvaged is never the rare/costly one.


3) /submit recipe

A direct feedback to Ngreth for recipe suggestions.

Often I see recipes that would seem very logical but are not allowed.

For example, if an Item is made with 2 components, and there are 10 slots in the combine device... why can't we make 2, 3, 4 or even 5 at a time?

I have also seen recipes that should work but don't, when experimenting (experienced tradeskillers will know that combines often have a logic to them and will understand what I mean). So, submit that "new" recipe and if accepted, maybe Ngeth will even consider naming the item for the player ("Bonzz's Neato New Item" LOL).


4) CULTURAL DIVERSITY

I see many players of different races that truly have a very hard time finding Master cultural tradeskillers and are thus out of luck unless they go thru the entire skill-up and quest process.

This skill would allow players, even if a quest is involved, to learn to make the armor for races other than their own. Even if the AA is one level per race (and even if the race sequence is pre-determined) is fine with me.

The complications with the patterns/books/special devices can be overcome with new "Multicultural" devices in Abysmal and Crescent Reach and maybe the Guild Hall (there REALLY should be one in the Hall anyway, in my opinion).

The books can still be quested by race.. but the molds/patterns they make would be changed. AFter all, it is the special ingredient, unique to each race, that defines the combine, if you think about it. Therefore, all the patterns/molds can just be called a "Cultural" Pattern or Mold, rather than have any race reference in the name (like Half Elf).


5) GRANDMASTER ARTISAN XXXX DIVERSITY

This one would have some strict requirements. First, max AA in all tradeskill related AA's (MAstery, Slavage, New Tanaan, etc.).

Secondly, it would also come with the requirement that you are at 300 in all skills that apply to your race all ready (and 200 Fishing).

Lastly, you just be Level 85.

I figure the stringent requirements will help "soothe" over the angst Shamans, Rogues and Gnomes may have with this AA, as it will be posible by only the most dilligent tradeksillers.

After all, you are highly, highly skilled artisan and expanding your horizons is not out of the realm of logic, imo.

Anyway, the "XXXX" part would be the skill, and it would be for skills your race/class would not, otherwise, have (Alchemy, Tinkering, Poisonmaking)... (thus, "Grandmaster Artisan Tinkering Diversity" would be one of the AA's for a Half Elf).

Once you have this AA, additional Levels would allow you to go over 200.

A side note for humor, when they first allowed Paladin Gnomes, it allowed Tinkering from the Paladin Guildmaster, as a trainable skill. As a Half Elf, I was actually able to purchase it and was granted a skill of 20, LOL. When I couldn't raise it up... I asked why and they nerfed it (yea, I was a rookie 'skiller, but it would have gotten nerfed sooner or later anyway, LOL).


6) TRADESKILLERS BANKER

We all ready have the Verteran AA merchant, so why not a Banker too?

This AA would also have high requirements but would only be obtainable by dedicated tradeskillers (say, 200 all basic skills, Mastery 3 all basic skills...). It would also have a 20 hour resuse timer (once a day), but ti should saty up until you dismiss it or zone or camp.

You want it, you work for it!

This would save tradeskiller a ton of time running back and forth to the bank!

Yes... people could also use it for other reasons (they left something in the bank or need more plat, etc.), but so what?

If not possible, see #7.



7) SUMMON XXXXX

"XXXXX" would be a device type.

It is a pain to run to PoK for Tanaan combines, or to GFay or S. Qeynos for HEF combines... so being able to summon a HEF forge or a Tanaan oven would be cool.

Even better, you can put it right by the bank or a merchant, LOL.

Different AA for each device.


8) BANK SPACE IDEA (Cultural Flagging)

Patterns, molds and such take a lot of bank space.

Remove the NO TRADE status on them so one can store them on another toon via the shared bank or a 2nd account.

Add a flag for the tradeskill cultural books, so that players a "flagged" for each level of tradeskill book they quested. This way, even though the patterns are now tradeable, one can't use them without the flagging.

It may even create a Bazaar market for the patterns/mold for folsk who just don't want to quest another book when they use up the one they have.


9) TRADESKILL TOOL SUMMON AA & TRADESKILL AA CATEGORY (TAB)

A constant bane and complaint of tradeskillers has been the massive amount of bank space needed for special tools (hammers, pots, pans, files...)...

How about AA's where we can just summon whatever item whenever we need it, then dump it afterwards?

Yea, a lot of diff AA's but so what?

Add a tab to the AA window for TRADESKILLS and move all tradeskill AA's there, for the sake of organization.


10) MASTER ARTISAN TROPHY

If we have a tool in Jewelry we can combine to another tool... why not a trophy?

Add a quest to gain the "Master Artisan Trophy," from the 7 maxed (yes, maxed) out regular trophies.

Simply combine it in the related combine device and it "converts" to a different version providing the bonus for the related tradeskill (the effect or focus changes, not the item).

Then equip it and walla! 15% modifier to the skill being used!


11) FISHING 300

Why not? LOL

And only by combines, not by fishing!

Of course, you need an AA to take it over 300 like all other skills.

[thomenthechanter]

No offense intended, Bonzz, but it seems like most of your list is a compilation of things that Ngreth has already said cannot or will not happen... most of them in this thread.

1) Autocombine: Declined to prevent automation. That's why there's a 1.5 second delay on the combine button, after all.

2) Salvage increase: Declined for complexity. The code doesn't know or care which ingredient is rare or expensive, and adding such flags to all the items in the DB would be too costly in terms of developer time. (Unless you're just talking about increasing the rate of salvage, which *might* be easily doable.)

3a) /submit: Already exists... right here.
3b) Multiple output: Requires a separate recipe for each such possibility. Costly in time to hunt out such recipes.

4) Multicultural: Declined outright, as I recall. Cultural is cultural; allowing an elf to create ogre plate is an insult to the ogre just as much as a wizard scribing a warrior tome.

5) Diversity: Good idea, though I'm not sure it'll fly. Making it as AA expensive as hybrid or priestly research increases the chance of flight, despite grumbles from the community.

6) Tradeskiller banker: I don't think Ngreth has directly addressed this one, but I can see it as declined; any "bank space" not given to all players won't make it past coding-time consideration. Even if it did, you'd have to be very careful to only allow tradeskill-tagged items to be dropped in the "bank".

7) Summon container: Declined because of the complexity involved in dymanically creating a static container. (Edit: Though I could very easily see a cultural "collapsible forge" in the same format as the "collapsible jewelry kit" --- just make it weigh 100 lbs. like a real forge. ;D)

8) Cultural Flagging: The cultural books for the armor pieces take an hour, tops, to complete. They're low-level mobs (killable at level 20, if I recall correctly). The *symbol* books are another matter, but I can't see someone burning through 200 of each level symbol pattern unless they're a tradeskiller-for-profit... at which point, they can most certainly spend the time to get another book.

9) Summon tradeskill tool: Declined, as it amounts to free plat; making it *not* amount to free plat would require a huge number of item and/or recipe changes.

10) Grandmaster Artisan Trophy: Declined because it would break if/when skillcaps get raised and the trophies gain an additional evolution level.

[Bonzz]

Response to thegnomechanter

No offense taken thegnomechanter, but I do feel you misread some of the suggestions.

1) Autocombine: It has limitations I added in (bag space, out of components, item in hand...)... but I see your point. Maybe if if is only available after you reach Master Artisan Status, that way, the fast/easy skil-up it could potentially offer is negated.

2) Salvage: Yes, I was just suggesting more levels of Salvage, not the salvage of specific items. Better slavage skill, better chance you save the good stuff.

3) /submit ... well yea, but who recalls what combine to suggest here? LOL. By a sumbit process, I can do it when it's on my mind, rather than forget. And what time to hunt out receipes? You /submit the idea and its right there for review.

4) Multicultural: I still like the idea.

5) Diversity: Glad you like it... but ya can never find certain items in Bazaar, or players types who will assist you, etc. when you have the time free and need them. It would just save a lot of annoyance, time, effort and aggravation... not to mention the imposition on others, to make that Tinker Part you need for that combine you want to do (like certain cams for fletching).

6) Tradeskill Banker: I am not talking a "new" banker with "new" slots. I am talking a normal banker who happens to come to you and you can access your normal bank.

7) Summon Container: I can see the problems as it becomes an item in a zone. How about this, a new zone only accessible by tradeskillers with 250 in all 7 basic skills. In that zone are tradeskill merchants of all kinds and all variations on forges, ovens, etc.. The zone might have a building for each skill type, maybe, where all the related merchants and related devices are located. Not to mention bankers.

8) Cultural Flagging: Just an idea to save bank space.

9) Summon Container: Make such items unsellable?

10) GM Artisan Trophy: A sill cap increase would mean new trophies anyway, if that is what will happen. After all, they are all ready GM tophies, Level 7 with 15% mod. Your response suggests a TS cap increase would also result in a TS Trophy increase over the "GM" level (15%). I am not so sure that will be the case.

[HaelonTT]

1.) You wont see this change because of the huge potential for misuse. While it would be handy for making those pesky CEs, I agree with Ngreth on this point.

2.) I believe Ngreth said in a prior post under this thread that he would consider implementing this.

3.) I personally dont see a problem with this, would probably work like the /bug command. Of course I also dont see a problem with noting the idea and posting it here when I make one of my many visits to EQTC.

4.) Bad bad idea. The game has enough problems with class blending as it is without adding racial blending as well. Its to the point where many classes have lost their uniqueness. I would be against this idea.

5.) Same answer as to 4.

6.) 2.) I believe Ngreth said in a prior post under this thread that he found this idea interesting and worth further consideration.

7.) This is EVERquest, emphasis on EVER. If they didnt want you to leave your home city they wouldnt have gone to all that trouble of adding all those other zones.

8.) I think we need a new item tag. We currently have essentially untagged(ie tradeble) items, items with an attunable tag so they can be traded up to the point where they are used, and nodrop(yes I am old school and still say FT for mana regen as well).
Call the new tag accountable or something and make it so an item can only be traded between characters on the same account. Make all cultural patterns/molds with this tag, and possibly other items as well. this could also make it possible for some older content gear that is currently nodrop to still be usable by the person who earned it, without making it possible for that gear to end up in the bazaar.

9.) An interesting idea that may be possible with the addition of a few new items, such as a Smithy Hammer (summoned, no trade, temporary). This would absolutely have to be implemented as a spell or aa skill since a clicky item would only summon one thing and having 10 clicky items to replace 10 tools pretty much defeats the purpose.
Having a TS tab for AA would be very sensible if this was added since it would require an aa for each summoned item.
(Addendum) After considering this more I can see some other problems with it that arent so trivial. Mainly the recipes themselves. Recipes that return the result + the tool would require a 2nd recipe that would use and return the AA summoned tool. I cant see that huge a change happening because it would require the changing of 3/4 of all the recipes in the game, or the addition of that many new recipes.

10.) I believe Ngreth answered this one also in a prior post on this thread and said No Way. I think it was due to insurmountable coding issues that would prevent this from happening. I wish this werent so because I would love an item like this, but it isnt going to happen.

[Aldier]

There is already a way to submit feedback while in game that would go to the devs about wanting multi item combines. It is /feedback.

You don't petition, or bug it, just sends feedback to SOE.

/feedback Combine X using part Y+Z should have a way to create 3X from 3Y+3Z. Whatever. Again, the limitation on this will be how much time will Ngreth or any dev have to create the new recipes.

[Nolrog]

/feedback Combine X using part Y+Z should have a way to create 3X from 3Y+3Z. Whatever. Again, the limitation on this will be how much time will Ngreth or any dev have to create the new recipes.

There are some kind of restrictions based on the containers or something. Ngreth explained it one time, but I forgot what he said. That's the reason you have to buy a different component for the CEs that give you 3, instead of just putting 3 of each in the container.