New from the Dev Team~!

[Aameldor]

Tradeskills.

We're reviewing the current recipe line-up for any gaps in skill progression, and items that aren't appropriately rewarding for their difficulty.

Thanks for playing,

The EverQuest Team

Aameldor

[Cigarskunk]

and items that aren't appropriately rewarding for their difficulty.

/em hopes that means making items better rather than doing a repeat of smithing fix and/or desciding that certain items are too easy for thier skill and need nerfing. :shock:

[sumamael]

In case someone is wondering, this information was posted in the Developers' corner here:

http://eqlive.station.sony.com/community/dev_view.jsp?id=53816

[Jobrill]

If they create a most storebought semi-non-bankbreaking way to get to 190ish Tailoring I will, like, love them forever and stuff.

[Itzena]

/pray Add silk vendors, add silk vendors...

[Angelsyn]

I'm hoping for a few things...

1) Troll Weapons review #1. CT Imbued Troll Weapons are very inferior to Inny & RZ Imbued weapons.

2) Troll Weapons review #2. CT & Inny Imbued Reshapen Sharkbone Warhammers change the +10 Wis (on the un-imbued) to +10 Int. The RZ Imbue keeps the +10 Wis. Why? Change the CT & Inny Imbued hammers to have +10 Wis.

3) Troll Weapons review #3. Troll weapons in general are not very good, especially the 2h weapons. Change the Balanced Zweihander to 36/40 and the Imbued versions to 38/40. Further, the Varnished Wooden Crook should have the same ratios, without the 15 AC.. or be a 1h-blunt weapon like the Sceptre of the Observers is.

4) Troll Weapons review #4. The Wakizashi & Mace should both have +40 hp instead of +20. The Mace should also be Monk equip-able. (As should the Varnished Wooded Crook)

5) Cultural Smithing issue #1. Where are the BD-Cultural armours for Agnostic Ogres & Trolls? Where are the BD-Cultural armours for Vah-Shir? Where are the BD-Cultural armours for Iksar Warriors & SK's? Where are the BD-Cultural armours for Human & Iksar Monks? Where are the BD-Cultural armours for Gnome & Human Casters? Where are the BD-Cultural armours for the Iksar, Ogre & Troll Beastlords? (If I missed anyone, I'm sorry.)

6) PoP Smithing issue #1. It takes many more Tempers to make Plate armours than to make Chain armours. Add to this the fact that the Plate armours are not as good (comparatively) as the Chain armours and you have an intolerable situation.

7) Cazic Thule Smithing issue #1. CT Smithing is a joke. Tae Ew Weapons, Tae Ew Chain & Tae Ew Shields only require 1 single drop (2 for the Chain) to attempt while Tae Ew Plate requires 6 to 9 drops, most of which (the scales) still appear to be very rare.

8) Cultural, PoP & Cazic Thule combined Smithing issue #1. Previously, most "generic" (non-cultural) Chain armours could be worn by Plate classes as well. Then, starting with BD cultural armour, Plate-classes could not wear the new chain armours. While this was not an issue with BD Cultural (BD-Cultural chain armours have essentially the same "overhead" as BD-Cultural Plate armours), with the relative ease of making PoP & CT chain armours compared to plate armours, it is an issue.

[Prizzle]

Get rid of the 5% min failure on triv stuff already.

Can you imagine a car factory having to deal with 5% failures they could do NOTHING about? Ever? Sheesh.

[cattywumpus]

Hope they consider doing something about making Alchemy appropriately rewarding.

Only tradeskill I know where people advise you not to bother because it's actually lousy and not because they're trying to eliminate competition.

[Brodybeard]

I would love to see some alternatives to needing a 49th level Enchanter to be able to do high level trade-skilling.

Like, stocking some NPC merchants with enchanted metals and vials of enchanted mana with restocking quests like the high quality ore restocking quest.

[Otif]

Maybeeeeee

They'll make it where you don't have to go through 150 Shadow Scream or Sickles to get one skill up.. :/

One can only hope...

[Wyrdlan]

Things (I believe) that are poorly thought out:

Smithing:

Windstone drop rates.
NODROP NORENT components in shadowscream recipe.
Shadowscream poor for difficulty.

Acrylia and Shadowscream either need their stats reworked or they need their component drops increased.

PoP smithing seems to be a mixed bag in my opinion (I don't know the opinion of the community, I don't associated with the great unwashed masses). While good things were done with tempers, ie 3 midnight stones makes 4 powders and 1 powder is used per temper, bad things were done with risk versus reward: Each one of those powders requires a mephit blood, which takes at bare minimum a very solid group of 60s to get, yet yeilds armor of quality debatably slightly less than blue diamond armor ( Mostly only helping agnostic large race warriors).



Tailoring:

It's time to reduce to trivial rates on velious armor. I wouldn't suggest dropping them as drastically as the smiths got hit, but I do think they should drop to the 210 to 220 range and have the drop rates for panther/haze panther increased, and the forage rate for the yew leaves increased as well. That would put them more in line with the quality of the armor. (Most of it is lower quality than the easier to make acrylia armor)

Acrylia drops have been reduced recently. This should be looked at to see if it was intentional or a factor of adding poison supplies to the mobs that also drop acrylia. In powerleveling 8 levels in the Tenebrous Mines I managed to walk away with 22 acrylia bonings recently. This seems low to me. I also think acrylia reinforced should have it's trivial lowered to the lower 230s.

A viable alternative to POTC robes should be added that is of sufficient quality for INT casters as a means of skilling up beyond the 230s to 240s. Currently Ice Silk is the only upper level non-PoP crafted armor set besides Erudite Cultural for int casters.

[kiztent]

The best thing they could do is to differentiate between skill up recipies and selling recipies. Those 10 wis acrylia cloaks were all well and good when PoP first came out, but the market for them has been completely hammered because people also skill up on them. This has also completely trashed the market in priest class back slots.

Although this is easily open to rampant stupidity, I like the idea of a skill cap on certain salable items. Certain items will be "useful" to make, and certain items will have appropriate sell backs (and worthless stats) to be used for skilling up. The skill max will help preserve the market for tradeskilled items that are useful in midranges (banded say, or old cultural) but once you skill past you can't flood the market if the item sells sufficiently well.

The current planar smithing model sort of works here, except it's pinned against 250 (and the temper requirements are just like High Elf cultural, i.e. insane). Having intermediate recipies of correspondingly lower quality (ignoring for the moment the quality of the smithed and tailored pop stuff) that are skill capped to provide intermediate markets would be nice. Requiring farmed components as well as selective top and bottom skill caps would provide better marketing to tradeskills. As it is now, it is IMPOSSIBLE to introduce a good tailored or smithed item that doesn't have a 250+ trivial, since the market will be trashed withing a month of introduction. Meaning anyone without 250 skill is sitting out in the cold.

[Lilosh]

Get rid of the 5% min failure on triv stuff already.

Can you imagine a car factory having to deal with 5% failures they could do NOTHING about? Ever? Sheesh.

Please oh please oh please. I wish.


But then again, this counts as neither a Gap in the skillup progression, nor a Risk Vs Reward.


So probably not, billy.


-Lilosh

[Ilona]

As it is now, it is IMPOSSIBLE to introduce a good tailored or smithed item that doesn't have a 250+ trivial, since the market will be trashed withing a month of introduction.

/agree

I also don't think that the velious tailored armour difficulties should necessarily come down. Most monks I know still prefer black panther over acrylia for almost every slot - plus it looks cool :P

It's a really difficult thing to do. I have a tailor (227), smith (214), potter (209), jeweller (250), and at the moment the potter is getting the least skillups, and the smith has the hardest time getting ingredients. I also have another smith at 188 that won't increase skill unless I somehow manage to get a lvl 35 cleric a creator's hammer (no, I'm not in a guild that goes anywhere near ssra)

To fix smithing, they ought to have something that doesn't require norent, nodrop ingredients. It really doesn't need to have great stats, just let it sell back to the vendors at a reasonable price, OR make it not cost 400pp per attempt (eg sickles)

Tailoring is a pain, but with the advent of solstice robes, there are at least 5 other tailors on my server skilling up a whole lot faster than me (since they are lvl 65, have 2+ accounts, etc). Make these sell back to vendors for the cost of the chain, and I don't think the market would be flooded so badly (currently 1kp on Rodcet, and looks likely to fall lower...)

Whatever they did to the pottery skill-up rate completely broke it...

Unfortunately, there's no "fix" for these problems, we can just hope that the next round of "tweaks" won't break it completely.

-----------------------------------
As an aside, I've found if you can't hunt drops yourself, finding them to buy off others is a REAL pain

[Gello]

If they're poking around gaps in the cultural tailoring, I hope Bristlebane can break Karana's monopoly on vale tailoring for chainwoven and steelweave. I've run across no halflings in Karana's plane and hordes of them in Bristlebane's.