There's been some talk about crafting recently, and I thought I'd formalise my thoughts on it. Atm, in my mind there are three main issues with Crafting
-Its too easy to be a crafter and fighter, which makes dedicated crafters less important
-Once you've a full kit of weapon/armour/enchantments you never need to visit an Artificer ever again aside from getting that PRISTINE status back every five years
-Crafters largely benefit only the combat side of the game.
As such, I present my ideas on how to make the Crafting trees a bit more interesting. Probably worth noting I'm basically not touching Alchemy atm in this suggestion.
-Make enchantments temporary, but reduce their energy costs. Artificers become significantly more useful if that +2 vit wears off after a year.
-Add Witchcraft/Druidism-like utility trees for Artificing and Alchemy. For artificing, something like Runescribe, Weaponsmith, Armourer that encourage Artificers to specialise as both subsets of artificer and as crafters in general, as opposed to 'I'm a blacksmith, runescribe and alchemist who also is a master fighter because I have a bunch of spare RPP and I figured 'might as well put them to use'.
As has been suggested at least a few times before: Tailoring tree. Let people make clothes too. Make a seed for a plant that yields 'textile material', that is the only required ingredient for tailoring to make it relatively easy, but still and option. Maybe only two tiers of it, with the second allowing you to make clothes with that +1 vit bonus or something. Add a 'dye' ingredient to allow a recipe for recolouring clothes as you can do now when you buy them.
Basically, get rid of as much NPC-interaction as possible in favour of putting it in player hands and create constant demand for crafters, and not only is it likely they will they become more prevalent, but it'll maybe simulate an economy a bit better. This brings me to my last -probably most radical- suggestion. The Essharan merchant? Remove everything from them except starter weapon and a small number of clothing options so people can get out of newbie garb, but still have a reason to go to tailors. Instead, give the Essharan Merchant reagents, ores and textile material that can be bought direct for prices that are decently high, so while its more cost-efficient to go mining or buy ore from player shops, you can still get the materials you need if you've the coin so people don't have to worry about being bottlenecked by bad luck when going looking for ore thats been mined ten minutes earlier.
I'll not deny that a timeskip presents the best chance to seamlessly add this as opposed to potential jankiness with adding it to the game currently, but this suggestion is still valid even without a timeskip. Leave thoughts and whatnot below!
-Its too easy to be a crafter and fighter, which makes dedicated crafters less important
-Once you've a full kit of weapon/armour/enchantments you never need to visit an Artificer ever again aside from getting that PRISTINE status back every five years
-Crafters largely benefit only the combat side of the game.
As such, I present my ideas on how to make the Crafting trees a bit more interesting. Probably worth noting I'm basically not touching Alchemy atm in this suggestion.
-Make enchantments temporary, but reduce their energy costs. Artificers become significantly more useful if that +2 vit wears off after a year.
-Add Witchcraft/Druidism-like utility trees for Artificing and Alchemy. For artificing, something like Runescribe, Weaponsmith, Armourer that encourage Artificers to specialise as both subsets of artificer and as crafters in general, as opposed to 'I'm a blacksmith, runescribe and alchemist who also is a master fighter because I have a bunch of spare RPP and I figured 'might as well put them to use'.
- Runescribe has abilities that allow you to increase duration of enchantments/gain even stronger ones/maybe enchant normally unenchantable things like shoes?
- Weaponsmith add small bonuses to weapon making- less materials required for weapons, maybe a +5 power/phys boost, maybe making weapons that take longer to lose PRISTINE or that weigh less?
- Armourer adds small bonuses similar to weaponsmith, but instead relevant to armour. Less materials required, minor boosts to vitality, slight boost to agi (skill with armouring allows them to make superior armour that is easier to move in), reduced weight, (if the temp enchant becomes a thing) armour that holds enchantments better and thus increases their duration, etc.
As has been suggested at least a few times before: Tailoring tree. Let people make clothes too. Make a seed for a plant that yields 'textile material', that is the only required ingredient for tailoring to make it relatively easy, but still and option. Maybe only two tiers of it, with the second allowing you to make clothes with that +1 vit bonus or something. Add a 'dye' ingredient to allow a recipe for recolouring clothes as you can do now when you buy them.
Basically, get rid of as much NPC-interaction as possible in favour of putting it in player hands and create constant demand for crafters, and not only is it likely they will they become more prevalent, but it'll maybe simulate an economy a bit better. This brings me to my last -probably most radical- suggestion. The Essharan merchant? Remove everything from them except starter weapon and a small number of clothing options so people can get out of newbie garb, but still have a reason to go to tailors. Instead, give the Essharan Merchant reagents, ores and textile material that can be bought direct for prices that are decently high, so while its more cost-efficient to go mining or buy ore from player shops, you can still get the materials you need if you've the coin so people don't have to worry about being bottlenecked by bad luck when going looking for ore thats been mined ten minutes earlier.
I'll not deny that a timeskip presents the best chance to seamlessly add this as opposed to potential jankiness with adding it to the game currently, but this suggestion is still valid even without a timeskip. Leave thoughts and whatnot below!