Crafting changes.

[Own]

I'm not exactly against the new style of crafting, but would it be possible to change how crafting is handled slightly?

You still have player crafting, but in the menu all you have are a few basic recipes to start with. You gain additional batches of recipes as a bonus from sidequests, talking to NPCs, dug up from buried treasure or purchased from shopkeepers under the old Crafting menu, or a new one titled Recipes.

I believe this would go a long way in making the next thing the player can craft seem exciting - instead of seeing everything that can be crafted beyond that and knowing it's going to be replaced by something else you can craft sooner or later.

 

[GarlicJelly]

Yeah, some kind of progression in the crafting would be nice. I don't really like to know everything that way ahead in advance. To jump back inside the crafting menu after doing some more Main story and find out that there are new things to grind gets me all exited.

 

[MrChocodemon]

I think this idea of getting more crafting recipies was already mentioned and even now i support it.
Imagine you can buy crafting recipies only from the shopkeeper/potion maker/blacksmith/shady amulet guy.
So you can craft wherever you are, but only the items that you know the blueprint of.
And after the GUN-D4M fight the blacksmith or his daughters has the blueprint for the laser sword in store.

 

[Rokker]

I welcome this new change in the crafting system. It will make things a lot easier to sort out on the SoG-Wiki (Here for example).

And I completely agree that there should be learnable patterns/blue prints.
Some of wich should be bought, others found , but the best ones should definately be Grinded. This is Secrets of Grindea after all!

The blue print for the Stinger should be dropped by Mrs. Bee, the blue print for the Laser Sword Should be dropped by GUN-D4M or Wisps, Brawler Bots or what ever.
But the best of these blue prints should be insanely rare, we're talking Card-rare or rarer.

Maybe these blue prints should be collectable and consumeable items that can be traded amongst players in Multi-player, Maybe they should drop like cards and thus only drop once for each player with an insta-learn approach when dropped.

I'm feeling more for the Consumeable item-approach. That opens up a posibility for specializations and crafting-levels further down the road of the game development.

 

[Own]

And after the GUN-D4M fight the blacksmith or his daughters has the blueprint for the laser sword in store.

That wouldn't make much sense narratively, if you cared about that sort of thing. Boss dies and the blacksmith suddenly has futuristic weaponry available?

If I had to do recipes, I'd do them like this:

You start off with no recipes. Most recipes are obtained by exploring the world of Grindea, it's inhabitants and your surroundings.

Basic recipes you find by inspecting bookshelves or items in houses, or the school / library in town. Or you just get them after the first time you talk to certain NPCs. These would be small improvements over the equipment you can just buy in stores, if not more or less equal to them.

Advanced recipes you would learn by buying them from shopkeepers or 'apprenticing' under them for a sum of gold and having them teach you everything they know in one go, or by sidequests, or as a rare drop from any monster in a given area.

Mysteryious recipes you find by exploration following a bossfight. So after you kill the Gigaslime, if you return to the arena waiting room there'll be a shiny blueprint sitting on the floor. Or maybe in front of it's statue in the Hall of Memories instead. In the Flying Fortress, as you explore the rooms you see one monitor with a Skull'n'Crossbones displayed on it and red text saying [GUN-D4M ENCRYPTION: Access Denied] or something similar when interacted with. Returning to that monitor after GUN-D4M is killed and inspecting it prints out another shiny blueprint. You could either have these give their respective boss's recipes outright or take the blueprints to the HQ's laboratory to decipher them, but I dunno if that would be a step too complicated.

Maybe that would all be a terrible idea, but when I explore a game and find cool stuff hidden everywhere, it makes me a little giddy. Even if it's a recipe for something that isn't particularly useful, it's a secret discovered and that makes it much more appealing than being there from the start.

 

[GarlicJelly]

If most of the crafted items didn't suck I would totally be down for a blueprint hunt. Only thing is that most crafted items get outdated quicker than you can type 'main story' so most craftable items have mostly a collectors value and not an actual useful value since it takes more time to farm the materials than to just move on in the quest line and unlock new stuff at the shops. This might of cource change in the future but with the current impression I have of the crafting system is that it's not worth stopping to farm materials instead of keep on going with the story and unlock new items in the shops.

 

[Own]

Crafted items might be more worthwhile than storebought items if you had some sort of system of enchanting in Secrets of Grindea, even if the crafted item is initially weaker.

So the shop in Evergrind has a +4% Crit accessory and 0 Enhancement / Enchantment / etc slots.

Meanwhile you can craft a +2% Crit accessory with 2 Enchantment slots.

Any enemy killed in an area has a chance to drop a Grindea Essence of a number of colors.

You kill a Bee in the Pillar Mountains, it drops a Pillar Red Grindea Essence, fuse that onto the accessory and it gains +2 ATK. You kill a Jumpkin in the Pumpkin Woods, it drops a Pumpkin Blue Grindea Essence, fuse that onto the accessory and it gains +4 MATK. Brawler Bot in the Flying Fortress, Fortress Green Grindea Essence, which could boost crit, attack speed, energy regen or whatever.

Or instead of having so many varities of essence flooding in, you could just have generic Pillar Grindea Essence and fuse that into an enchantment slot for a random bonus. +2 ATK, +2 MATK, +2 DEF or whatever. That way pretty much everyone's equipment loadout would be subtly different, depending on which buffs the RNG gave them. Would also prevent people farming endlessly for one specific type of essence, or trying to minmax their entire buff loadout.

The only downside to this would be making it so equipment items could no longer stack, but I don't often see people with more than one piece of a type of equipment in their inventory. Especially since they don't need more than one.

 

[GarlicJelly]

Well in that case the crafting is worth it but right now it's not. If crafting is worth to stop you in your progress then the blueprints would be sweet.

 

[KoBeWi]

There are many items in Grindea that will become useless or already are, because you were lucky and found something better. But there are 2 ways to make everything useful:

1. Make most of gear ingredients for something better, so you continue to craft from items found on yor way or ones crafted before, until you come to ultimate equipment.

2. The enchanting system Own suggested, but essence for enchants you get from decomposing gear. Like you find an useless hat, so instead selling it, you convert it into essence to enchant your current hat. Different equipments yield different essence (maybe also giving back your enchants), that affects its own stats (like red essence for HP or some special effect etc). And some unique items could give special essence, that provides permanent boost.

 

[GarlicJelly]

Building on gear sounds nice. I mean my trustworthy old Wooden Sword that has followed me around for such a long time can now be made into something better. My old friend takes on a new shape but still follows me on my adventures.

I think that using gear as material for better gear is a good way to approach the crafting as you would have an even deeper aspect of progression. And it's good news for players that like to keep one of each kind of item in their inventory. (YAY, more farming!)