Elemental Crafting

[Arionthe]

They'll never implement anything like this. It's too empowering to players. It gives players too much control. Players only spend money when they're feeling frustrated and helpless.

On the contrary, I actually think this will entice players to SPEND more on the game. The reason is you have many, many more possible workable end game builds. Currently you have just one set of gear to collect for each class. There is little reason to work towards another build as the cookie cutter build dominates. This restricts choice and limits potential. Why collect a bunch of "junk" becomes the operative word.

However with all the different elements, why stop at one element set? Devs can introduce a boss that's easier for an under used element and boom a new wave of gear collecting and crafting starts. Not to mention the need for more stash spaces, boosters to speed up the process etc. This just makes a lot of commercial sense to do (give players more to do). Finally add a prismatic modifier to gear that basically changes, well I will leave that to your imagination.

So this is a win win for players and Devs. More diversity, more trade off, more hording for players. Retain the attention of playerbase for longer without needing to invest massive amount of dev resources, and more reasons for IAPs for Devs. What is not to like?

[mattks1]

They'll never implement anything like this. It's too empowering to players. It gives players too much control. Players only spend money when they're feeling frustrated and helpless.

Yea, I spent money on the last new beginnng just to get my 3rd endar. I am making sure I have more than enough gems so that do more with out the stress of being gem desperate. I was in the middle of saving 1000 gems to unlock the 5th champ during the event and I only had 300 gems at the start.

[Melchiah]

They'll never implement anything like this. It's too empowering to players. It gives players too much control. Players only spend money when they're feeling frustrated and helpless.

[Arionthe]

Their is already the Frost , Fire, and Electricity elements for the Mage and Poison and Electricity for the Bounty Hunter. Guess your wanting these elements to be able to be applied to weapons for different types of damage and on gear to offer protection from those elements like in other games.

Yes, stir the pot, mix it all up so the outcome isn't black and white.

Basically looking for more variables in the game to do trade off analysis. Besides this has all been too easy on Coda . Let's actually make him and Jose Sarmento actually need to burn a few brain cells before laying down the cookie cutter builds for the rest to copy.

[mattks1]

Their is already the Frost , Fire, and Electricity elements for the Mage and Poison and Electricity for the Bounty Hunter. Guess your wanting these elements to be able to be applied to weapons for different types of damage and on gear to offer protection from those elements like in other games.

[Arionthe]

I think this element can add a satisfying degree of complexity to the game to strategise builds and tactics.

That's exactly the goal. Of course I borrowed liberally from DnD 3.0 and other RPG sources.

There are a lot more potential layers to the proposed crafting system. Things like enchanting lower tier ingredient to higher tier. Refining ingredient. Unique crafting manuals, Unique ingredients. The system can be the end game in itself. I think build specialization can be approached via skill selections. But given every skill can be max'd (there is no trade off in skill), further customization needs to come from a different place. Right now gear customization is almost nonexistent (everyone stack the same stats and wearing same sets), this crafting system can really inject some much needed specialization/diversity.

[PeterK]

I think this element can add a satisfying degree of complexity to the game to strategise builds and tactics.

[Arionthe]

Crafting has the potential to be the true end game content. A new ingredient based crafting system is coming to replace the current one. I have some ideas to share. I will keep it high level and rough on purpose.

Monster attributes, add Critical weakness (see the other post about go big or go home), and elemental attributes.

Elemental attributes: All things are made up of elemental materials/forces. A fire monster should not fear flame as much but weaker to ice etc.

Elements: Fire, Ice, Earth, Holy, Demonic (was thinking negative but we got demons already so, Demonic it is).

Fire > Earth > Ice > Fire.
Holy > Demonic > Holy (so they are weak to each other).

How does it work?

Fire damage will do 150% damage against the element it is strong against, in this case Earth. Earth will do 150% against Ice, and Ice will do 150% against Fire.

Holy will do 150% against Demonic and vice versa.

Element is strong against itself, thus Ice damage will only do 50% damage against Ice based monster.

Element will do normal 100% damage against other elements.

Monster can have multiple elemental attributes, its type is determined by the highest elemental score.

For example Zombie:
Critical weakness: 0
Fire: 10%
Ice: 10%
Earth: 30%
Holy: 0%
Demonic: 50%

A weapon can also have multiple elemental attributes, its type is determined by the highest elemental score.

For example Holy Avenger:
Critical Base: 5% oops, another attribute I inserted here. Basically the base critical chance of a weapon that is modified by player's CR rating. Thus some weapons will be more crit prone while others are not so much.
Fire: 5%
Ice: 5%
Earth: 30%
Holy: 60%
Demonic: 0%

So the Holy Avenger will do 150% damage to the example zombie. A demon weapon will do 50% damage and the rest will do 100% damage.

However there are exceptions to this rule, called Elemental overload (think critical block).

Let's say we have a weapon that is so dripping with evil, even the evil monsters cower in its presence.

Ragamont's Morning Breath:
Critical Base: 5%
Fire: 5%
Ice: 5%
Earth 30%
Holy: 0%
Demonic: 160%

there are special crafting methods involved here to breach the normal 100% elemental rule. I will detail later.

This weapon, a demonic weapon, will normally do 50% damage against the example zombie. But since its evil is so wretched (as 160% - 50% demonic attribute of the monster > 100%), it actually does 150% damage as if it's a holy weapon. So in effect this weapon becomes strong against two types of monsters, demonic AND holy.

Recall the highest elemental score determines the monster's type. The same weapon however will not be able to overcome let's say something more evil than a regular zombie. Elban for example might have a demonic stat of 80% or even 100%. Thus for a demonic weapon to become strong against it, its demonic attribute will need to be further enhanced.

Crafting Methodology:

Crafting an item will need:
1 crafting manual.
5 elemental ingredients.

crafting manuals for more mundane weapon types should be sold in the Hometown. Things like Long sword, Scimitar, Falchion, Staff, Mace, Pistols, Hand-canon etc. More fantastic stuff should be event rewards or high end boss drops, like Holy Avenger and the aforementioned Ragamont's morning breath.

The manual will tell you which type of elemental ingredients must be used for crafting.

For example Holy Avenger will say at least 3 Holy ingredients (of varying quality) and no Demonic ingredient.

A normal long sword crafting manual will not have those kind of restrictions, you can craft your demonic longsword by using more demonic ingredients or fire sword with fire, ice sword with ice etc.

Ingredients have different levels of rareness and quality. Higher tier ingredient are more pure, able to infuse more of the specific element into the final product. For example a lower tier fire ingredient might be 50% fire, 20% earth, 20% holy, 10% demonic. A higher tier one might be 70% fire, 20% earth, 10% holy. Higher tier ingredient will have a higher % influence on the final product as well. The exact equation I will leave for the Devs to decide.

The damage range of the craft weapon is determined by the crafting manual (how rare it is, for example Holy Avenger might have a higher damage range than a normal long sword). Its weapon speed and critical base are also determined by the crafting manual. However using extremely high quality elemental ingredients will also buff the base stats some whereas lower quality ingredients will do the opposite (Plus Minus 20%?).

Armor crafting will follow a similar method. The elemental ingredients will afford some elemental protection vs elemental based damage/attacks. For example the slow/hp drain will be less effective against someone wearing a lot of negative protection armor. The effect calculation can be something simple as below:

Monster: Ghost
...
Demonic: 50%
...

Player wearing gear has a total Demonic protection of 25%. That means Ghost attacks are 100% effective against the player since player's demonic protection 25% is < 50% of ghost's demonic attribute.

If player's demonic protection is 100%, then Ghost attacks are only 50% effective against the player.
If player's demonic protection is 150%, then Ghost attacks are only 33.3% effective against the player etc.


Ok final piece, how to get high quality elemental ingredient.

Elemental ingredients are drops of various tiers. Harder the monster/boss, higher tier ingredients drops are possible. But when you first receive it, it's not in its final form.

For example: Ragamont's Tear
Highest tier Demonic ingredient.
Its final refined form is 180% Demonic, 5%fire, 5%earth
Its rough form is 150% Demonic, 20%fire, 20%earth.

You need to refine this ingredient for its effect to be maximized in crafting process. It's a very powerful ingredient in its rough form, just not quite the best. For the OCD amongst us.

To refine a ingredient, you use XP as an input. Oh yea here is another wrinkle. Cap champions level to 2000. Gained xp after that is another input cost for refining ingredients.


There is basically two tiers to the crafting process. The normal tier and the end game tier. The normal tier you are just making weapons and only worried about having one element dominate so the weapon has an elemental bias, ala fire sword, ice sword etc. The end game tier is for people that is looking for elemental overload gear (along with that +20% buff to the base dmg attributes by using the highest tier ingredients).

As far as how to get other game stats onto the crafted equipment (things like CR, AR, Power etc), the ingredients can come with random attributes. The crafting process can run some math on those input and give a final stat outcome.