Good ways to obtain recipes [Archive] - EQ2 Forum Archive @ EQ2Wire

Terron

03-23-2007, 11:49 AM

When I am tradeskilling with one of my toons I am roleplaying a crafter in the world of EQ2, i.e. I am pretending to be such a crafter. So for me good ways to obtain recipes are ones that make sense in the story of a fantasy crafter's life, with allowances made for the limitations of game mechanics. I think these are all the current methods. <ol> <li>The introductory quests - Basic training mixing tasks to do, which teaching of basic recipes - Good but correctly limited to basic stuff.</li> <li>Buying recipes from crafting training in home city - Paying to be taught more as you become ready - Good but needs to be limited as it is so you get the feeling of your skill growing beyond what can be taught by ordinary teachers. Up to T1 advanced and T5 essentials is OK. More would be too much.</li> <li>Buying recipes from remote trainers - Having to travel to learn from advanced teachers - Good</li> <li>Getting books from adventurers - Buying books of exotic 'lost' knowledge found by those who venture into dangerous places, which involve using special, rare ingredients from those places - Good. Besides advanced books, this covers the old "Secrets of ..." books, and generally any unlimited tradable recipes that could be found when adventuring </li> <li>Buying advanced books after gaining faction - Secret knowledge that will only be taught after you have proven yourself - Good, except that currently in the only place this is used you can not gain faction unless you are a fairly high level adventurer. There should be a way to earn faction with at least one of the courts by crafting. Coins should be willing to accept someone who is willing to work for free (do writs with no payment other than faction) for the chance to learn their secrets. It would also make sense for Truth to accept scholars on similar terms.</li> <li>Recipes as a reward for adventuring quests - Do dangerous work for someone in return for being taught their secret knowledge - Good in small amounts and and for recipes only slightly better than normal. A reward for being both an adventurer and a crafter is OK, provided it is not so good as to effectively make non-adventuring crafters into second class crafters.</li> <li>Limited recipe - secret and powerful knowledge fround in very dangerous places, which you forget after using a few times - YUK - makes no sense from a roleplaying POV, tends to make non adventuring crafters into second class crafters, confuses recipes and components, adds nothing that a second special componenet whould not have done.</li> <li>Buying books from adventurers who earned the right to buy the book - A combination of 4 and 5 - Good (these are the bloodlines recipes). </li> </ol> Combinations and extensions of these current methods (excluding 7) would provide lots of good ways of obtaining special recipes, but if you want a few more: <ol> <li>Recipes books that need a specific language to read - from things halfling cooking secrets written in stout through secrets of cooking halflings written in trollish to special magical recipes written in druzaic - the languages should be ones that a high level crafter/low level adventurer should be able to learn, i.e. ones that do not involve killing, or at worst can be learnt by killing T1 solo mobs. </li> <li>Recipe books that are found in pieces - book collections where no page only drops from mobs. </li> </ol>

Maroger

03-23-2007, 01:38 PM

<cite>Terron wrote:</cite><blockquote>When I am tradeskilling with one of my toons I am roleplaying a crafter in the world of EQ2, i.e. I am pretending to be such a crafter. So for me good ways to obtain recipes are ones that make sense in the story of a fantasy crafter's life, with allowances made for the limitations of game mechanics. I think these are all the current methods. <ol><li>The introductory quests - Basic training mixing tasks to do, which teaching of basic recipes - Good but correctly limited to basic stuff.</li><li>Buying recipes from crafting training in home city - Paying to be taught more as you become ready - Good but needs to be limited as it is so you get the feeling of your skill growing beyond what can be taught by ordinary teachers. Up to T1 advanced and T5 essentials is OK. More would be too much.</li><li>Buying recipes from remote trainers - Having to travel to learn from advanced teachers - Good</li><li>Getting books from adventurers - Buying books of exotic 'lost' knowledge found by those who venture into dangerous places, which involve using special, rare ingredients from those places - Good. Besides advanced books, this covers the old "Secrets of ..." books, and generally any unlimited tradable recipes that could be found when adventuring </li><li>Buying advanced books after gaining faction - Secret knowledge that will only be taught after you have proven yourself - Good, except that currently in the only place this is used you can not gain faction unless you are a fairly high level adventurer. There should be a way to earn faction with at least one of the courts by crafting. Coins should be willing to accept someone who is willing to work for free (do writs with no payment other than faction) for the chance to learn their secrets. It would also make sense for Truth to accept scholars on similar terms.</li><li>Recipes as a reward for adventuring quests - Do dangerous work for someone in return for being taught their secret knowledge - Good in small amounts and and for recipes only slightly better than normal. A reward for being both an adventurer and a crafter is OK, provided it is not so good as to effectively make non-adventuring crafters into second class crafters.</li><li>Limited recipe - secret and powerful knowledge fround in very dangerous places, which you forget after using a few times - YUK - makes no sense from a roleplaying POV, tends to make non adventuring crafters into second class crafters, confuses recipes and components, adds nothing that a second special componenet whould not have done.</li><li>Buying books from adventurers who earned the right to buy the book - A combination of 4 and 5 - Good (these are the bloodlines recipes). </li></ol>Combinations and extensions of these current methods (excluding 7) would provide lots of good ways of obtaining special recipes, but if you want a few more: <ol><li>Recipes books that need a specific language to read - from things halfling cooking secrets written in stout through secrets of cooking halflings written in trollish to special magical recipes written in druzaic - the languages should be ones that a high level crafter/low level adventurer should be able to learn, i.e. ones that do not involve killing, or at worst can be learnt by killing T1 solo mobs. </li><li>Recipe books that are found in pieces - book collections where no page only drops from mobs. </li></ol></blockquote>You have some good ideas there. I especially like finding Trainers in out of the way places. I agree with you on the view of Limited recipes. I think that is really terrible idea -- having to raid to get recipes makes pure casters 2nd rate crafters and belittles our work.I feel now that SOE views crafter as 2nd class not woth the time and effort to put work into enhancing the tradeskills. EH- NO DROP raiding recipes was nothing but a quick and dirty fix hoping to make more people happy than it made them mad.That is why I am looking at Vanguard crafting so closely as there it is holding true to the original EQ2 design where crafting would be a separate profession from adventuring.