Crafting all the way to cap..?

[eschatological]

Edit with the dev post (you need beta access to read it): https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/foru...e/1#post247779

Sorry if this was posted before, perhaps in the previous BWE, but I just heard about this tonight and was wondering what other people think of it. I heard on a popular livestream tonight (Gamebreaker.tv's GW2 weekly show), who was quoting a dev, that crafting will allow you to conceivably allow you to cap without ever killing anything....

According to the dev quoted, each profession will give 10 levels worth of experience from ranks 1-400, and with 8 professions, you can get to 80 on a toon without ever stepping away from the crafting stations.

...I for one think this is a fascinating idea. Imagine leveling a toon, banking all your collectibles, getting to 80, and then leveling a new alt to 80 simply by using those collectibles to craft. Pacifist achievment, pl0x! Plus, this allows you to focus all your crafting needs on one toon.

Potential negatives (and keep in mind, I'm for this idea, just trying to be objective):

1) You won't have crafting available for your first toon, potentially your main, so if that gear is significantly better at whatever level than what's available from karma vendors/dungeons, etc, that sucks. Especially if it's your main and you're an OCD completionist like me.

2) Your newly leveled 80 will have no weapon skills unlocked, which I think is more hilarious than inconvenient with down scaling.

3) Potentially, if you ever become so flushed with gold, you can essentially buy your way up to 80 via the trading post....
3a) ...or buy your way to 80 with real cash -> gems -> gold -> crafting mats.

The last one is a bit disconcerting, yes, but ultimately I think it's a shallow experience to do it that way and not really enjoyable, so nuts to you if you do it that way, I guess it's your buck. Even if I could get 30 levels on an alt just from pushing 3 of my professions on to it, that'd be a worthwhile endeavour, imo.

[Merendel]

I dont see this as being particularly cost effective. It takes quite a bit of materials to level even half way to max, some will be very expensive to boot. Also there is less of a point of consolidating all crafts on a single character as there is a cost involved in switching. While progress is saved if you drop a craft it costs more to retake that craft from the trainer the more advanced it is. It would be cheeper in the long run to put additional crafts on an alt, you only need 4 to get all crafts and we get 5 slots.

I could see it being worthwhile to boost yourself to 30ish this way if you were in a hurry, geting your eliet is very nice particularly if you WvW. all the way to 80? just more trouble than its worth and such a waste of resorces.

[Gisei]

I think it is a great idea as well. I plan to start making use of crafting next beta. Sucks to have wasted so many materials though.

Addressing 3, honestly, I'd be perfectly fine if Anet added an item to the Cash Shop to instantly become lv80. However other people obtain their levels does not concern me. Why should it? Leveling is an entirely personal experience. There is no leveling competition with other players. We get scaled to 80 where competition exists.

[Squirrelbanes]

Worth noting though that it would require as massively exorbitant amount of materials to craft 8 professions all the way to 400....like an astronomical amount.
It will be done ofc...but it will take time. A good while I should think before someone could do this.

1) Is a school of crafting account wide? So only 1 character can have it? Didn't know that. If not, I don't get this point. Also...depends on whether the gear made is soulbound.
2) Quite an incentive to learn. But if I do this I would use the character for nothing but crafting personally so it's moot for me.
3) Conceiveably. But if anyone actually does 3a they should be banned from the game. And life. But anyway, rushing to max level is just kinda meh for me. It's possible I'd consider this though if it was like my 10th character.

[Sentinel]

I'm going to do exactly this for my 5th character slot, for sure. I'm not going to be doing it on a profession I'll actually care about at endgame though, so that throws Warrior/Ele/Guardian right out the window.

[grandpab]

I don't think I care if it levels you or not.

However, I do like how your level doesn't restrict you to only taking a craft skill to a certain point and how you can level every craft on 1 character.

[Deleted]

Well.. you can already buy your way up to 80 via XP boosts (50% xp boost and 100% XP killing streak stacks, so getting 5 lvls per hour is not hard). I was going back to the city every 5 lvls or so to craft using stuff I've collected during those levels - was enough to get up to 2 extra levels.

I don't really see it as a bad thing, 80lvl doesn't mean anything in this game anyway and it is ABOUT FREAKN TIME that some MMO introduces another way to lvl than just killing boars :P.

[eschatological]

1) Is a school of crafting account wide? So only 1 character can have it? Didn't know that. If not, I don't get this point. Also...depends on whether the gear made is soulbound.

I should have made "until you level the profession on an alt." I believe the profession is shared across the account inasmuch as you can just put the gear you made in your bank and then grab it on another toon. I believe you'd be able to have, say, 2 leatherworkers, if you wanted to, but it seems kind of pointless.

And yeah, I don't really see 3 as a cost-effective (or fun) method to level. Maybe as someone said, after 4 toons worth of leveling you can basically get the fifth one free, like a buy 4 get one free deal.

---------- Post added 2012-06-13 at 07:19 AM ----------

Also, did anyone have any experience of how much the crafting costs went up in terms of raw mats? I only dabbled in it, but 1-50 didn't seem too bad, and if they go on a tiered system of materials (1-50 is the green wood logs, 50-100 is soft wood logs, etc), it may not be that bad.

Anyways, I love crafting (and farming) in general, I love crafting in this game, and I look forward to this like, a lot.

---------- Post added 2012-06-13 at 07:23 AM ----------

Also, I didn't really consider the cost of switching between professions. From the same livestream, I read in the comments that it's around 10 copper per rank to switch to a profession. So if I'm an artificer and jewelcrafter, and I have my LWing to 400, it's something like 40s to switch back to LWing - that may not be that bad a deal at end game (no idea what kind of coin inflation we'll see at 80), especially if you're making gear for one character at a time as it levels. That cost may be totally off though, you know comment sections.

[Sentinel]

The only thing that irked me about crafting was getting the basic stuff was very easy (Logs for dowels and planks, and Ore for bars) but the secondary materials like insignia-creators (vials of blood and jute scraps) were actually quite the random thing to gather and I ran out of materials from my 34 levels worth of playtime for Armorsmithing at 30 and Weaponsmithing at 27.

Okay, okay I know both of those use half of the materials together like jute and bronze, but still, just about every crafting item has 4 professions or so that use it (Except for jewelcrafters, but I'm pretty sure I saw that food was also used by Artificers! (For some reason?))

[ZerOKami]

That's how GW2 rolls. If you want to do it, you can. Of course you'd be able to powerlevel to 80, but would you want to? There's a whole world to explore and you miss out of it.

You can have any two craftskills at any given time and switch to any other whenever you want (this last BWE though it costed some gold to switch to a craft where you had recipes unlocked, nothing major, gold sinks are good) and not lose profess to it. You can have as many craftskills as you want of the same line on your characters because they're not bound, neither is the gear made with these craftskills (so you could profit too). But, if you're oldschool, your 5 character slots will give you just enough space to level each craft on a different character should you choose to do it.

[Squirrelbanes]

I should have made "until you level the profession on an alt." I believe the profession is shared across the account inasmuch as you can just put the gear you made in your bank and then grab it on another toon. I believe you'd be able to have, say, 2 leatherworkers, if you wanted to, but it seems kind of pointless.

And yeah, I don't really see 3 as a cost-effective (or fun) method to level. Maybe as someone said, after 4 toons worth of leveling you can basically get the fifth one free, like a buy 4 get one free deal.

---------- Post added 2012-06-13 at 07:19 AM ----------

Also, did anyone have any experience of how much the crafting costs went up in terms of raw mats? I only dabbled in it, but 1-50 didn't seem too bad, and if they go on a tiered system of materials (1-50 is the green wood logs, 50-100 is soft wood logs, etc), it may not be that bad.

Anyways, I love crafting (and farming) in general, I love crafting in this game, and I look forward to this like, a lot.

---------- Post added 2012-06-13 at 07:23 AM ----------

Also, I didn't really consider the cost of switching between professions. From the same livestream, I read in the comments that it's around 10 copper per rank to switch to a profession. So if I'm an artificer and jewelcrafter, and I have my LWing to 400, it's something like 40s to switch back to LWing - that may not be that bad a deal at end game (no idea what kind of coin inflation we'll see at 80), especially if you're making gear for one character at a time as it levels. That cost may be totally off though, you know comment sections.

Ahh ok yh I get it then
It should be viable to have a crafting dedicated character then...but it does depend on whether items are soulbound to that character. If everything can be put in storage and sent to who can use it it would work great...if not and u'd miss out on some really nice pieces I don't know how viable it would be.

I totally love crafting and AH myself and such and will love having a dedicated character, but didn't try crafting at all this beta so can't comment.

[Merendel]

Ahh ok yh I get it then
It should be viable to have a crafting dedicated character then...but it does depend on whether items are soulbound to that character. If everything can be put in storage and sent to who can use it it would work great...if not and u'd miss out on some really nice pieces I don't know how viable it would be.

I totally love crafting and AH myself and such and will love having a dedicated character, but didn't try crafting at all this beta so can't comment.

for the most part gear is NOT soulbound when you craft it although some items are bind on equip. I seem to recall mention of a few high end food items that were soulbound as soon as they were crafted, not sure if thats a bug or a perk of cooking but I didnt hear about any other soulbound craftables. I still dont think a dedicated character for all 8 crafts is a good idea if your planing to make money off it. Switching between proffesions costs money when you have them all maxed out and that will cut into any profits you might make. On the other hand 2 different crafts on 4 different character slots costs you nothing other than a few seconds to switch characters.

[Sentinel]

for the most part gear is NOT soulbound when you craft it although some items are bind on equip. I seem to recall mention of a few high end food items that were soulbound as soon as they were crafted, not sure if thats a bug or a perk of cooking but I didnt hear about any other soulbound craftables. I still dont think a dedicated character for all 8 crafts is a good idea if your planing to make money off it. Switching between proffesions costs money when you have them all maxed out and that will cut into any profits you might make. On the other hand 2 different crafts on 4 different character slots costs you nothing other than a few seconds to switch characters.

The only thing I hope happens is that if some gear that you can craft is for some reason BoP/BoC (Bind on Craft) then it should be at least set to BoA until you equip it. I know discovered dyes are BoA once you buy or identify them, and it's the same for cosmetic Gem Shop items as well.

[Squirrelbanes]

for the most part gear is NOT soulbound when you craft it although some items are bind on equip. I seem to recall mention of a few high end food items that were soulbound as soon as they were crafted, not sure if thats a bug or a perk of cooking but I didnt hear about any other soulbound craftables. I still dont think a dedicated character for all 8 crafts is a good idea if your planing to make money off it. Switching between proffesions costs money when you have them all maxed out and that will cut into any profits you might make. On the other hand 2 different crafts on 4 different character slots costs you nothing other than a few seconds to switch characters.

I'll likely have different profs on different chars tbh. I like the sounds of a crafting only toon.....but don't know if i'd have the time lol.
Do we know of anyone who managed to reach 400 in any armor or weapon crafting discipline? I'd love to know if the top recipes were soulbound...but likely these will come from discoveries and such so would be (pleasantly) surprised if someone made those.

[Allanon the Mystic]

My Post from the Dev Q&A Thread:

That is actually pretty cool. It's definitely not easy to level a disc from 0-400, though. xD

Yea the amount of mats needed is ridiculous. Sell mats. Buy gems. Salvage. Make tons of money.

Definitely not, but just leveling up one character up to 35 I easily obtained over 500, and I am short guessing I know the number I got was more closer to the 1.000 number. And if you level one or two characters to 30ish, that's several 1.000 copper ore (I gather all the nodes I can see) and that will most likely push you over the number you need. Around level 75-100 you switch from Copper to Iron regardless, which means that you can use the remaining ore for other professions.

At launch I might do just this, just collect all the collectible materials while buying every recipe I find (via Karma Gold or Glory), put it in my bank and horde it all until I start crafting. Crafting while playing my 35 thief, I noticed that the 30-35 blues/greens I made were slightly less better, or around the same stats as the vendor white gear (it's sometimes hard to find the right materials for signets/insignia's to make the gear you want while 35 whites have power and precision). Which means that I don't need to waste time making my gear at low levels and using that time for leveling instead or getting more materials.

Don't forget, all the gear you make while leveling up you can just dump into the mystic forge and if RNG likes you, get some amazing gear you can sell or use for other characters to gear up.

[nalle]

I plan on having 2 crafts per character, I don't really see a point to have all on one character.

So maxing out 2 crafts per character would give me 20 out of 80 levels on each one.

Sounds good.

[Rooflesstoofless]

I originally saw the article on Joystiq...was more surprised by the hate/blatant misinformation/etc in the comments section than anything that was actually in the article.

So gathering and crafting give XP...I see absolutely nothing wrong with it; especially in a game where hitting level cap is of minimal impact. It gives people who might normally pass on crafting a reason to gather and partake in the economy of the game.

[VibrantViolet]

I actually didn't try crafting in the last beta, but I plan to next time. I mostly did SPvP this time around. Next time, I plan on crafting, doing WvWvW, and some exploring. I want to find at least one jumping puzzle.

[Mif]

I originally saw the article on Joystiq...was more surprised by the hate/blatant misinformation/etc in the comments section than anything that was actually in the article.

I actually always find it reassuring that people can't find valid problems with GW2's design and need to resort to blatant lies and bullshit to make their point.

[Exroyal]

I like what the dev. wrote on that thread. People don't see the that rushing lvl 80 isn't going to make u something really special. Say i got to lvl 80 within the first 3 days, then what? About no one else lvl 80, and i have to go back to do fun stuff without gaining anything from it, no fun if you ask me. You want to pay so much money just to lvl up to 80? Go ahead, no one stops you from achieving...nothing.