Crafting system

[Cynon]

I can't find this CTC forum but I have some things to contribute if anyone is interested.

I've spent a little time on a PW with a really awsome crafting system implemented.

With regards to player gear and wealth it's the backbone of the place. Of course you can go to shops and buy stuff but there is nothing particularly brilliant washing around. Basically most shops sell mundane gear and some sell heavily overpriced masterworked stuff and the odd thing that is a little more interesting, e.g. a scimitar with +1 fire damage on it instead of +1 slashing that the usual masterwork would possess.

At the end of the day if you want a masterwork suit of Platemail you need to get someone who is a crafter of armour to make you one. it won't cost as much as it does in one of the shops that sells them but, if some dwarven cleric who is tanked up in craft weapon agrees to make you a suit you are gonna have to help him obtain a bunch of iron ore and give him some gold to cover the crafting costs and profit he needs to make, for it to be worth his time.

When it's made, he can customise the look for you and then you can buy metal dyes and get him to dye the armour for you. Having the suit of armour look just as you want it just won't happen with the off the shelf stuff. Then later when you are feeling more wealthy, you need to find a wizard or cleric of a decent level who doesn't mind the XP hit of enchanting your masterwork armour and making it +1! You pay them a couple K's of gold and they take the armour to an armour enchanting work station and do the deed. Now you are one of the lucky people to have a +1 suit of plate mail.

Forges, tailors, tanners, bowyers and all those sort of places all require expensive passes to use unless you have ammassed the wealth to build your own work stations in a house and shop of your own. You can buy or sometimes make tools that give you a bonus to your craft skill depending on whether they are mundane or masterworked. Some rescources can be bought and some need to be mined or quested for. some are rare and just turn up randomly hardly ever.

This may all sound easy, assure me it's not and it would take some good judgements by those setting it up as to how to make the rescources available in ALFA's setting. For the server this system is implemented on it seems to work out well. Most people will spend some fair time collecting the rescources and wealth to have the gear they want made and It's very satisfying when you finally get stuff made. +2 gear requires a wizard of level 12 or something to enchant it and really it starts getting hard to afford and make. In general the server has balanced wealth and a handle on elite gear. All crafting and item aquisition goes on without hardly any input from the DM's at all. Perhaps just silent eyes on who is doing what and such.

Not everyone plays a crafter, it's hard work and really becomes the career of your character. If you end up the only person on the server who can enchant masterwork cloaks to be +5 hide skill then you have all the rogues and rangers around wanting you to make them one.

Upside is that crafters have a lot of friends and always have folks come to help them delve into the mountains through hoardes of orcs to get to some old mine where they can get iron from. They have the highest wealth on the server and as such can use it to build houses and forges of their own, They can pay adventurers to go out and gather rescources for them so that they can focus on making stuff and avoid risking their asses in the dangerous places you find the ores and gems required to make things. Leather goods are obviously cheaper and easier to make but of course if you want good leather armour you need exotic hides or hides from tougher animals like dire bears and such.

Rare ores like adamantine can be used to make nice +2 gear but you really got to go to the depths of hell and back to get enough to make just a helmet. I've not seen any mithril or adamantine yet personally.

From personal experience, 'City of Arabel' has a real nice crafting system. A bit bugged here and there and I am not fond of how the ore system works with regards to mining and availabilty. Something i'm sure ALFA could do better is availability and distribution of rescources.

Of course since the crafting system makes low end gear the most makable and high end powerful gear something that requires much rarer rescources. DM's can leave the players to craft to their hearts content and just provide stuff like adamantine or mithril and perhaps certain ingredients for magical goods as they see fit. perhaps players can quest for something special when they want and also the availability of anything really fancy gear wise is gonna still be in the hands of DM's.

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Sc ... il&id=2088


This is a module that lets you try out what their crafting system can do. After reading the above posts about what you guys are trying to make it sounds like you want something similar to what they have. I just think you haven't realised yet the solutions it provides to so many other problems a player world like ALFA has to deal with, if done properly and also those it could create if done wrong.

Take a bit of time and play around with the system and perhaps even log onto the server for a mess about, seeing how it works in practice.

I promise you I'm not wasting your time and it will give you some ideas if you are serious about this. At the least it will make you realise what you do want and what you don't want and what you thought you wanted but realised now wouldn't work in ALFA.

CoA's Crafting forum:

http://coa.ender.com/viewtopic.php?t=10 ... 5d80b428d9

[Mulu]

Well, the CTC forum isn't viewable without permission, so you have to ask to have access. Right now the main issue for a crafting system is workload, and after that balance and exploitability. Vulcano's system is for NWN; there is no NWN2 implementation that I've seen, and no one in ALFA is going to make a crafting system or rebuild Vulcano's for NWN2. My pitch to just use the OE with a few tweaks and limit access through guilds seems to be acceptable. It's practical, in that the workload is low, and we can test it during beta to see if it's worth having, and discard it for Live without losing much time invested if it isn't working out.

If Vulcano or another community member comes up with a comprehensive system for NWN2 that looks like a significant improvement over the OE and that will work for ALFA, I'm sure it will be given a hard look.

[White Warlock]

Sorry to interject Mulu, but there are presently three NWN2 crafting systems available, one of which is built into the game. There are also plenty of things crafting-associated:

Crafting Systems

UOAbigail's Crafting System v2.01c - http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... tail&id=21

The Complete Craftsman - http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... tail&id=18

Crafting Info/Database

Neverwinter Nights 2 Crafting Components & Books ID Database - http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... tail&id=97

NWN2 Crafting Recipes PDF - http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... tail&id=52

Crafting Recipes By Type - http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... tail&id=21

Crafting (or related) Tutorial

NWN2 Toolset HowTo - Creating items - http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... etail&id=9

Crafting (or related) Scripts/Plugins

Charlie's Item Modifier - http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... tail&id=86

Vordan's Shop Wizard v1.3a - http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... etail&id=5

Crafting Mods

Crafting.mod (to test new craft ingredients) - http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... tail&id=38

Crafting Station - http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... tail&id=70

[ballonger]

I certainly wouldn't mind sitting in front of an anvil for a long time to make an item. If I wanted to play a smith I'd have to live with my choice in my opinion. Anything else would just prove I was a very weak roleplayer.

-"Hay, I've decided to play a blacksmith but I don't like the heat, I don't have time to stay in my smithy and work, plus only girls wear aprons."

Gotta make up your mind, dawg.

[Cynon]

My main point was about what crafters can make and how it solves the level of gear available on a server.

If set up right crafters can be producing the basic character equipment and lightly enchanted stuff. This takes a lot off the hands of the DM's and also means players can work over a month or two for their nice, fancy masterwork or +1 gear without being able to simply buy it after a couple days powergaming with a character.

Anything more than this requires DM's really. Isn't this the solution to stuff i heard nagged about back in NWN1? Isn't this why there is all these oppressive wealth limits and crap? I would have thought it fairer to make wealth a more controlled thing to aquire rather then letting people have it and then taking it away OOCly.

The level of control comes from the availability of rescources. That can be organised by builders and DM's with any system.

[edit] of course i'm not saying crafters can't have some real fancy recipies for making some uber gear it's just that as i said above, the DM's could control the availability of the rare ingredients needed to make the higher than +1 stuff.

[White Warlock]

Well, to clarify, the initial goal is to ensure we have a crafting system that covers up to masterwork items. Eventually we would like to include magic items in this scripted crafting system, however it is not something urgent, since magic items would require characters of high level, which i don't expect in ALFA2 for at least 8 months after live, or at least a year from now. So, we have time.

Anyway, the greater goal here is to provide a feature that allows for handsfree (no DM) crafting activities that does not 'add' to the ingame wealth, and preferrably sinks a bit back out. It's not all cut and dry. It's not about make an item out of nothing.

[Mulu]

Neither of those systems you linked to are finished yet WW, even the Complete Craftsman gets broken with patch updates. Installing a system that's going to get broken and require fixes every few patches is not worth the hassle, especially given that the most limited resource in ALFA is tech development. One of the things that still drives me nuts about ALFA NWN1 is the fact that most widgets don't work. I'd rather they not be present at all than be broken.

Sticking with the OE and limiting it though guilding creates a system that never gets broken, assuming it works for our purposes in the first place. I'm honestly not that familiar with the OE system, since I haven't playtested it yet.

[White Warlock]

I'm honestly not that familiar with the OE system, since I haven't playtested it yet.

Oi! /me smacks Mulu


On the rest of your comments, Mulu, both of these crafting systems are far and away very much completed. There are 'more' things that the developers want to add, but that's a given for something like this. As to the fix issues required on patches, that will happen on occasion regardless of what is implemented. It simply depends on what Obsidian opts to change. Developers can only work with what is given, which accesses parts of the game engine we have no access to.

[Mulu]

Well, patches shouldn't break the OE system.

But really, it boils down to work required to implement, since we can set up rules and limit access to prevent abuse/exploitation.

[HEEGZ]

Crafting is being worked on. If you are interested in being involved in the discussion please send a PM to Rusty.

http://www.alandfaraway.org/phpbbforum/ ... hp?t=34159