I am looking forward to Crafting

When people didn’t find crafting useful anymore; I did. Always making something to create a stop gap item. I’ve posted about it before.

The new system, echoing the new random system (minus a few options unique to random items) allows even greater flexibility than before. Well, other than flexible shards.

This section explains the new system. The fundamental of the new system is that you create a shard for the ML you want and then it’ll automatically adjust the value of that option to the ML used. This is similar to the random system where you pull an item at say ML 15 and the values are set according to what an ML 15 item should have. However the major difference is that a random item can get a bonus to the value, unlike Cannith crafted items.

That means that Cannith crafted items are always going to be reliably X and that among random items you can find items that have an edge compared to crafted ones.

Another major change is that the augment slot, colored or not, adds nothing to the overall ML of an item. In other words; whether or not you have 1 or 2 augment slots, the value of the item will be the same regardless.

I’m glad I saved a few items with augment slots, because that makes those items super interesting, unless of course there is something about those items that won’t function the same as augmented items today.

The new crafting system will support both bound and unbound items, but no word if the BTA type items you can find in some lower end quest chains function the same as now; where you can use bound shards and the item remains BTA.

I hope it does; because we also know that BTA items generally (as far as I’ve seen anyways) do not drop with augment slots. Making BTA useful of course, but only in the context of not being the absolute best solution for everything.

Another change is also that we’re now talking about ONE school and ONE ingredient. Instead of having major and lesser of all types, there’s only ONE type plus collectibles as before. That cuts down on the need to have all type of mats in your bag, or level up all kind of schools. It’s a simplified system that keeps the complexity of crafting options intact. Minus the fact that there are no flexible shards.

And that is really the only bad thing about this system. Flexible shards represented the option to take one effect that would normally not fit on say a trinket and use it there. Which made all gear options more diverse.

Turbine states that with the new more flexible crafting options which includes not only prefix and suffix but also bonus and insightful, each item still offers a lot of flexibility over the more rigid prefix and suffix from before. And it’s true; the new system allows more stuff to be crammed onto an item; but it still imposes a rigid system of what can go on say a trinket as suppose to a ring.

Only time will tell of course how inflexible (or flexible) that might be.

I am however looking forward to being able to create ‘straight’ items. Particularly for spellpower/lore stuff. This is particularly useful in earlier levels, such as doing an iconic reincarnation where you sometimes have to rely on specific named items for some effects (like the rock boots for acid) or several to provide something like impulse damage and kinetic lore.

I crafted a trinket a long time ago that provides both lore and spell power for that, but it’s weak since it was post the new more generous system.

It will now be possible to create rings with both lore and spell power of the same type and create consolidate early level runs to fewer items, that works well with the many BTA items you can now get from many different quests in the 12-15 level bracket. And even if you can find random items that have both the same lore and spell power, they are very rare. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of items today that provide those synergies – true.

What that really means is that Cannith crafting still remain a stop gap item solution and not really one to compete with both named and better random pulls. But it allows you to standardize equipment options and especially for toons you run a lot less and that might not have all the standard item options out there. And that has always been the real strength behind crafting anyways.