"Endgame" gear question.

[Lidralyn]

Question to everyone, I have checked all over the place and wanted to ask a quick questions as I'm sure someone here knows. The best items in the game, stat wise, are they from crafting? Or from random drops in the world? Or from venders for karma? I know that dungeons end up giving cosmetic looking items which are awesome to transmute other stats on to. Is crafting the same way? Is it mostly cosmetic changes? I seem to remember somewhere a dev stating that crafting was going to give the best gear available, but I cannot find it anymore, also think in that same post he stated that crafting would give stat combinations that would not be found elsewhere. Is this true? Or is mostly random world drops/karma going to get you to the best gear/gear combinations available?

I know there is no treadmill, so I am trying to find what part of the game gives the best gear.

Thanks,
Lid

[rhandric]

Any and all of the above
To clarify:

There is a very short progression of gear once you get to 80. At that point (and throughout leveling even), you're going to focus on optimizing your gear stats. You can obtain the best statted gear from many sources (rare drops, crafting, dungeons), though they might not be optimized for what you're gearing for. Crafting will allow you to focus your stats through the insignia you apply during crafting, allowing you a way to get specific stat combinations easily. I expect each of the 3 level 80 dungeon sets will also have its own stat layout, though at this point it's just speculation.

[Delias]

Yeah.. basically if you want the highest stat allocation gear, you buy it from the trading post/craft it/buy it from a vendor/buy it for karma/do a dungeon. After that you just have to worry about itemization. It's like if every single item at 85 in WoW was an item level 300 epic, including crafted gear and vendor gear.

[grandpab]

There will also be the legendary weapons that you can get with skill points.

[Lidralyn]

Ok, Well I was mainly trying to determine if crafting was "worth it" I love crafting in games, and most likely will end up crafting in this game. But if the best gear is probably attained another way other than crafting I would end up just doing cooking and another random profession for the consumables.

From what it sounds like tho, I could need a scepter from karma, a random world necklace, a crafted pair of pants, and a legendary weapon, or something like that. So the crafts are probably worth leveling.

Thanks all!

[Zilong]

From what I know, the best gear in the game is attainable in a wide number of ways. Karma, random, crafted, dungeon. And since the best gear in the game is "easy" to come by (Aka no grinding) to set everyone in equal foot, its just about how you wanna approach your gear (however you find it fun).

Keep in mind that some of them are cosmectic purposes which you can just mix and match.

[DrakeWurrum]

So the crafts are probably worth leveling.

Don't forget that, although you can only have two active crafts at a time, I'm pretty sure that you don't lose progress in them when swapping them out.

[Valeron]

Crafted sets look pretty nice. If you like the look, might as well craft some. Or I'm sure they will be on the tradepost if you didn't want to bother with crafting.

---------- Post added 2012-07-05 at 12:29 PM ----------

Don't forget that, although you can only have two active crafts at a time, I'm pretty sure that you don't lose progress in them when swapping them out.

You don't lose progress at all. They are just paused until you pay to go back to that crafting profession.

[grandpab]

Don't forget that, although you can only have two active crafts at a time, I'm pretty sure that you don't lose progress in them when swapping them out.

Yup, you can have all 8 disciplines on 1 character, and even level from 1-80 entirely from crafting. Maxing out a discipline gets you 10 levels for each one.

[Binaris]

You don't. But it does cost gold based on how high the skill is at the time of the swap.

[Delias]

Don't forget that, although you can only have two active crafts at a time, I'm pretty sure that you don't lose progress in them when swapping them out.

Correct. You can swap crafting disciplines for a small fee and keep progress in every craft after swapping. You also get EXP for leveling your craft, and they balanced it to be 10 levels per crafting discipline maxes. Which means that if you max all 8, you will hit level cap. It's not an ideal way to level (very VERY heavy on the bank) it is possible.

(Grandpab beat me to it by typing half as much. Jerk.)

[Mif]

Ok, Well I was mainly trying to determine if crafting was "worth it" I love crafting in games, and most likely will end up crafting in this game.

You may like this then: In GW2 you gain XP from crafting. Maxing a crafting discipline will give you 10 levels worth of XP, and there are 8 different crafting discipline (which you can learn and unlearn without losing your progress).

So that means you can level all the way to 80 just by crafting.

[Lillpapps]

The market also works with buy and sell orders. Never have mass production been this simple! Crafting also speeds up the more of an item you craft so you dont have to go afk all day to craft. When you level your character through PvE and you loot a crafting reagent you have the option to right click it and send it to your bank from where ever you are.

[draykorinee]

I am looking forward to trying crafting out, I havent yet because I didnt see a particular need during beta, I like not losing progression, my druid was fully levelled in lw and skinning and now its an alch/herb, I can never go back to all my recipes i had

[Lillpapps]

I will most likely be a full time crafter when Im done with lvling. Just havent decided if Im going to keep all crafting profs on one toon or have them on alts. Its probably cheaper to relog than to change crafting profs every day.

[Smokinya]

Well I've tried crafting its pretty cool! The best crafting system I've ever seen in an MMO!(I've played WoW for 8 years, AoC, Darkfall, LOTRO, Warhammer etc.) I like this system because yuo need to find recipies in a way instead of just running to a trainer to learn them. I believe thats what WAR orignally wanted to do but couldn't!

[MrSerious]

Well I've tried crafting its pretty cool! The best crafting system I've ever seen in an MMO!(I've played WoW for 8 years, AoC, Darkfall, LOTRO, Warhammer etc.) I like this system because yuo need to find recipies in a way instead of just running to a trainer to learn them. I believe thats what WAR orignally wanted to do but couldn't!

I had a brief look at crafting some leather items and the trainer taught me some recipes but never reached a high enough skill to see if it opened up more recipes from the trainer. I did get some dropped for me in the world from killing random mobs.

I'm really keen to try out crafting where you just experiment with different crafting mats to 'discover' items.

[Merendel]

I had a brief look at crafting some leather items and the trainer taught me some recipes but never reached a high enough skill to see if it opened up more recipes from the trainer. I did get some dropped for me in the world from killing random mobs.

I'm really keen to try out crafting where you just experiment with different crafting mats to 'discover' items.

You get the basic recipe patterns from the trainer initially but you never have to go back and train higher level versions, they appear in your craft list as you reach the appropriate levels. You will not get every pattern this way, only the basic templet for a specific type of item and all relevant sub componants and you experiment by swaping out parts to find other variants of that weapon.

For example a basic bronze pistol takes a bronze pistol barrel and a green pistol frame with a weak blood as an added component, this pattern you get when you train the skill. If you then go to the experiment window you can drop in the barrel and the frame along with an inscription to get a different version of the bronze pistol. Each tier of inscription causes you to make slightly different leveld variants of the bronze pistol, you can make bronze items that are lvl 5, 10 15 and 20 level requirement with different inscriptions. After you get up to makeing level 25 items you get a pattern for an iron pistol to craft and you follow the same basic steps you did with the bronze ones.

This holds true for all of the weapon and armor proffessions. I heard cooking and jewlery was a bet less intuitive and harder to find the recipies.