Crafting in this game is a joke - Page 2

Terron · 10-24-2012, 07:07 AM

Crafting is easy.

There is a little to learn - use the keys proactively - but the tutorial teaches that.

Just drumming your fingers on 4,5,6 without paying attention will succeed over 90% of the time (perhaps 80% below level 20).

If you pay attention you can be a bit faster and even more reliably successful. (I can't always be bothered)

There are plenty of things for boosting the crafting process (which are not required and I don't beother with).

Uwkete-of-Crushbone · 10-25-2012, 08:27 AM

Terron@Splitpaw wrote:

Crafting is easy.
There is a little to learn - use the keys proactively - but the tutorial teaches that.
Just drumming your fingers on 4,5,6 without paying attention will succeed over 90% of the time (perhaps 80% below level 20).
If you pay attention you can be a bit faster and even more reliably successful. (I can't always be bothered)
There are plenty of things for boosting the crafting process (which are not required and I don't beother with).

That used to be true. I liked burning through the 1-9 stuff, largely because a lot of my lowbie alts could use what I could make (house items and boxes/bags are always cool!), but I really wanted to get to level 20 as painlessly as possible. I've been in EQ2 since the days of subcombines, so I know completely what a PitA it used to be, complete with trying to track down all the various skills you needed to have pre-set up somewhere on a hotbar. At least making the subcombines helped you level up... Then came the time when we got an extra XP boost for the first time we made something (a hold-over from the days when Pristine was the top level of quality, was dam' near impossible to achieve, and merited extra XP if you could do it). This was wonderful, but because the Sages got "too many recipes," it was not only yanked from all of us, but I can tell from my own experience that crafting in the 10-19 levels now, especially with my lowbie alts, seems to have gone the other way, nearly punitively; those of you at 90+ might not see how nasty it can be now. Yes, I'm glad I'm not having characters literally die at the forge any more (in the subcombine days, that was a real hazard), but sheesh. If I'm careful and watch what I'm doing, hit the 4-5-6 buttons every time the success bar advances (the "Durability" keys [1-2-3] have, at least for me, always taken Durability AWAY every time I've used them [though they could be useful if complications reared their ugly heads]; times were you could do 4-5-6 fast enough to not lose too much Durability), and keep aware of complications and solve them quickly, I shouldn't be wasting crafting materials as often as I am. I used to wonder at the exorbitant prices for some low-level materials on the Broker (especially 10-19 ["hard metals" 1-19, due to their relative scarcity]); now I understand.

I have rhythm; I understand about the 4 seconds; I've been doing this since, indeed, the days of subcombines; I watch for when things are progressing forward (or in reverse, nowadays); I've had a lot of help from my friends, the Internet, and the tutorial stuff; and I too am getting frustrated at low levels. I had recently made some new alts and trotted them off obediently to do their 1-9 tutorial, and was quite unpleasantly surprised at how much things had changed. Times were when the only crafting profession that sucked was Provisioner (2 products/make, instead of 3-4 + for other stackable items, got very old very quickly...and yes, one could EASILY make one's fuel costs back. I've yet to see any food/drink on the Broker that wasn't priced at least 10 times what the fuel would've cost. The only reason I have Provies is to not go broke buying food and drink that's actually worth anything [and because they get great house items!]). Nowadays, I have literally watched my fourth Durability bar get arbitrarily taken from me, regardless of what I did, on a regular basis. I've seen the chat window say I had a "Critical failure!" and yank away a large chunk of Success, even though the complication button went green and it had just finished telling me I'd correctly solved it. One should have the option of putting AA's into tradeskilling, yes; one should not have to devote 30-40 of them (as a previous poster remarked) in order to get the same success rate as before (even after the first-ever XP bonus was removed). The only way I can get through the purgatory that is now 1-19 any more is to be a member of a guild that has a materials vault and a lot of patience with my lowbies.

Uwk

Mermut · 10-25-2012, 10:59 AM

Uwkete-of-Crushbone wrote:

Terron@Splitpaw wrote:
Crafting is easy.
There is a little to learn - use the keys proactively - but the tutorial teaches that.
Just drumming your fingers on 4,5,6 without paying attention will succeed over 90% of the time (perhaps 80% below level 20).
If you pay attention you can be a bit faster and even more reliably successful. (I can't always be bothered)
There are plenty of things for boosting the crafting process (which are not required and I don't beother with).
That used to be true. I liked burning through the 1-9 stuff, largely because a lot of my lowbie alts could use what I could make (house items and boxes/bags are always cool!), but I really wanted to get to level 20 as painlessly as possible. I've been in EQ2 since the days of subcombines, so I know completely what a PitA it used to be, complete with trying to track down all the various skills you needed to have pre-set up somewhere on a hotbar. At least making the subcombines helped you level up... Then came the time when we got an extra XP boost for the first time we made something (a hold-over from the days when Pristine was the top level of quality, was dam' near impossible to achieve, and merited extra XP if you could do it). This was wonderful, but because the Sages got "too many recipes," it was not only yanked from all of us, but I can tell from my own experience that crafting in the 10-19 levels now, especially with my lowbie alts, seems to have gone the other way, nearly punitively; those of you at 90+ might not see how nasty it can be now. Yes, I'm glad I'm not having characters literally die at the forge any more (in the subcombine days, that was a real hazard), but sheesh. If I'm careful and watch what I'm doing, hit the 4-5-6 buttons every time the success bar advances (the "Durability" keys [1-2-3] have, at least for me, always taken Durability AWAY every time I've used them [though they could be useful if complications reared their ugly heads]; times were you could do 4-5-6 fast enough to not lose too much Durability), and keep aware of complications and solve them quickly, I shouldn't be wasting crafting materials as often as I am. I used to wonder at the exorbitant prices for some low-level materials on the Broker (especially 10-19 ["hard metals" 1-19, due to their relative scarcity]); now I understand.
I have rhythm; I understand about the 4 seconds; I've been doing this since, indeed, the days of subcombines; I watch for when things are progressing forward (or in reverse, nowadays); I've had a lot of help from my friends, the Internet, and the tutorial stuff; and I too am getting frustrated at low levels. I had recently made some new alts and trotted them off obediently to do their 1-9 tutorial, and was quite unpleasantly surprised at how much things had changed. Times were when the only crafting profession that sucked was Provisioner (2 products/make, instead of 3-4 + for other stackable items, got very old very quickly...and yes, one could EASILY make one's fuel costs back. I've yet to see any food/drink on the Broker that wasn't priced at least 10 times what the fuel would've cost. The only reason I have Provies is to not go broke buying food and drink that's actually worth anything [and because they get great house items!]). Nowadays, I have literally watched my fourth Durability bar get arbitrarily taken from me, regardless of what I did, on a regular basis. I've seen the chat window say I had a "Critical failure!" and yank away a large chunk of Success, even though the complication button went green and it had just finished telling me I'd correctly solved it. One should have the option of putting AA's into tradeskilling, yes; one should not have to devote 30-40 of them (as a previous poster remarked) in order to get the same success rate as before (even after the first-ever XP bonus was removed). The only way I can get through the purgatory that is now 1-19 any more is to be a member of a guild that has a materials vault and a lot of patience with my lowbies.
Uwk

1-9 is trivial with the tutorial... I'm not sure what sort of bad luck you've been having, but I've never failed on any of the tutorial combines. Add in the New Halas crafting quests once you hit 10.. and the work orders they've added that you can start at 10 to get you through the gap between those quest and 19... Starting crafters definately have a fairly good time of it. Yes, low level crafting can be a bit painfully slow after you've gotten used to 90s.. and you have to use 1,2,3 instead of 4,5,6 quite a bit at low levels, but it's actually less painful then it used to be.

Vifarc · 10-25-2012, 06:28 PM

The better craft system. In EQ2 you don't just click on one button and go washing your tooths.

I do 6-5 to hurry the blue bar, until the bottom green bar is down to half, then 3-1 to make the green full again. Repeat.

Terron · 10-30-2012, 07:12 AM

Uwkete-of-Crushbone wrote:

Terron@Splitpaw wrote:
Crafting is easy.
There is a little to learn - use the keys proactively - but the tutorial teaches that.
Just drumming your fingers on 4,5,6 without paying attention will succeed over 90% of the time (perhaps 80% below level 20).
If you pay attention you can be a bit faster and even more reliably successful. (I can't always be bothered)
There are plenty of things for boosting the crafting process (which are not required and I don't beother with).
That used to be true. I liked burning through the 1-9 stuff, largely because a lot of my lowbie alts could use what I could make (house items and boxes/bags are always cool!), but I really wanted to get to level 20 as painlessly as possible. I've been in EQ2 since the days of subcombines, so I know completely what a PitA it used to be, complete with trying to track down all the various skills you needed to have pre-set up somewhere on a hotbar. At least making the subcombines helped you level up... Then came the time when we got an extra XP boost for the first time we made something (a hold-over from the days when Pristine was the top level of quality, was dam' near impossible to achieve, and merited extra XP if you could do it). This was wonderful, but because the Sages got "too many recipes," it was not only yanked from all of us, but I can tell from my own experience that crafting in the 10-19 levels now, especially with my lowbie alts, seems to have gone the other way, nearly punitively; those of you at 90+ might not see how nasty it can be now. Yes, I'm glad I'm not having characters literally die at the forge any more (in the subcombine days, that was a real hazard),

It is true now. It didn't use to be.

I too have been crafting since the days of lots of subcombines, though after forge deaths were removed.

Pristine was easy to achieve even then once you started using the abilities pro-actively, but it was made easier when Rok came out. That was when it became possible to craft without paying any attention and get 90%+ pristine.

I have tried taking a alt up from 1-20 recently, and yes it is a little harder than at higher levels, but it is still very easy.

Trebien · 10-30-2012, 08:59 PM

After getting 10 (oops, forgot, one dinged recently, so 11) level 92 crafters, and having 4 others working their way up through the apprentice recipes before going to the next tier, I found that the level 1-9 crafting on the newer crafters was a little more difficult than I expected. I had to use more of the durability buttons (1-3) than I was used to. However, there was an easy solution to that, if the toon was level 10+. Simply lock aa, get 40 points saved up, put them in all but one spot in your tradeskill aa selection. That helps quite a bit, taking advantage of the durability aa can make a huge difference. Not sure how things will be handled with the expansion coming out, I've heard tradeskill aa is going to be handled differently at that point, but the advise is valid until then.

snowhaze · 11-02-2012, 05:27 PM

Several good writeups in here about proactively using your buttons. I missed that part in training in game and leveled to around 80 without realizing that and I was really hating crafting and because buttons 1-3 and 4-6 looked the same, I thought they were, it never occured to me to look at the descriptions. I was failing at probably a 1/3 of the rush orders and the rest I was barely finishing with a few seconds remaining. Any failure at all meant starting it over from scratch and just reacting to the buttons didn't always guarantee success, which frustrated me and in the back of my head, I kept saying to myself, I must be missing something here, it shouldn't be this hard. I mostly did the double orders that took nearly twice as long.

Unfortunately, when I started searching the internet to see if I could find out 'secrets' about tradeskilling, my searches really didn't turn up much, the descriptions I found were very old and things had changed since the old days and they just didn't explain it very well. I wish I had ended up here a long time ago.

Once you know you can use all the buttons proactively and that they do different things, it becomes SO much easier and I quickly leveled up a 2nd crafter and don't mind helping my wife with hers. Finishing the timed rush orders usually leaves me with 4+ minutes remaining.

10-24-2012, 07:07 AM	#31
Terron Loremaster Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Reading, England Posts: 2,309	Crafting is easy. There is a little to learn - use the keys proactively - but the tutorial teaches that. Just drumming your fingers on 4,5,6 without paying attention will succeed over 90% of the time (perhaps 80% below level 20). If you pay attention you can be a bit faster and even more reliably successful. (I can't always be bothered) There are plenty of things for boosting the crafting process (which are not required and I don't beother with). __________________

10-25-2012, 08:27 AM	#32
Uwkete-of-Crushbone Loremaster Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Southern California Posts: 145	Terron@Splitpaw wrote: Crafting is easy. There is a little to learn - use the keys proactively - but the tutorial teaches that. Just drumming your fingers on 4,5,6 without paying attention will succeed over 90% of the time (perhaps 80% below level 20). If you pay attention you can be a bit faster and even more reliably successful. (I can't always be bothered) There are plenty of things for boosting the crafting process (which are not required and I don't beother with). That used to be true. I liked burning through the 1-9 stuff, largely because a lot of my lowbie alts could use what I could make (house items and boxes/bags are always cool!), but I really wanted to get to level 20 as painlessly as possible. I've been in EQ2 since the days of subcombines, so I know completely what a PitA it used to be, complete with trying to track down all the various skills you needed to have pre-set up somewhere on a hotbar. At least making the subcombines helped you level up... Then came the time when we got an extra XP boost for the first time we made something (a hold-over from the days when Pristine was the top level of quality, was dam' near impossible to achieve, and merited extra XP if you could do it). This was wonderful, but because the Sages got "too many recipes," it was not only yanked from all of us, but I can tell from my own experience that crafting in the 10-19 levels now, especially with my lowbie alts, seems to have gone the other way, nearly punitively; those of you at 90+ might not see how nasty it can be now. Yes, I'm glad I'm not having characters literally die at the forge any more (in the subcombine days, that was a real hazard), but sheesh. If I'm careful and watch what I'm doing, hit the 4-5-6 buttons every time the success bar advances (the "Durability" keys [1-2-3] have, at least for me, always taken Durability AWAY every time I've used them [though they could be useful if complications reared their ugly heads]; times were you could do 4-5-6 fast enough to not lose too much Durability), and keep aware of complications and solve them quickly, I shouldn't be wasting crafting materials as often as I am. I used to wonder at the exorbitant prices for some low-level materials on the Broker (especially 10-19 ["hard metals" 1-19, due to their relative scarcity]); now I understand. I have rhythm; I understand about the 4 seconds; I've been doing this since, indeed, the days of subcombines; I watch for when things are progressing forward (or in reverse, nowadays); I've had a lot of help from my friends, the Internet, and the tutorial stuff; and I too am getting frustrated at low levels. I had recently made some new alts and trotted them off obediently to do their 1-9 tutorial, and was quite unpleasantly surprised at how much things had changed. Times were when the only crafting profession that sucked was Provisioner (2 products/make, instead of 3-4 + for other stackable items, got very old very quickly...and yes, one could EASILY make one's fuel costs back. I've yet to see any food/drink on the Broker that wasn't priced at least 10 times what the fuel would've cost. The only reason I have Provies is to not go broke buying food and drink that's actually worth anything [and because they get great house items!]). Nowadays, I have literally watched my fourth Durability bar get arbitrarily taken from me, regardless of what I did, on a regular basis. I've seen the chat window say I had a "Critical failure!" and yank away a large chunk of Success, even though the complication button went green and it had just finished telling me I'd correctly solved it. One should have the option of putting AA's into tradeskilling, yes; one should not have to devote 30-40 of them (as a previous poster remarked) in order to get the same success rate as before (even after the first-ever XP bonus was removed). The only way I can get through the purgatory that is now 1-19 any more is to be a member of a guild that has a materials vault and a lot of patience with my lowbies. Uwk __________________ Giant berserker kitties need luv too! ~

10-25-2012, 10:59 AM	#33
Mermut Loremaster Join Date: Feb 2009 Posts: 852	Uwkete-of-Crushbone wrote: Terron@Splitpaw wrote: Crafting is easy. There is a little to learn - use the keys proactively - but the tutorial teaches that. Just drumming your fingers on 4,5,6 without paying attention will succeed over 90% of the time (perhaps 80% below level 20). If you pay attention you can be a bit faster and even more reliably successful. (I can't always be bothered) There are plenty of things for boosting the crafting process (which are not required and I don't beother with). That used to be true. I liked burning through the 1-9 stuff, largely because a lot of my lowbie alts could use what I could make (house items and boxes/bags are always cool!), but I really wanted to get to level 20 as painlessly as possible. I've been in EQ2 since the days of subcombines, so I know completely what a PitA it used to be, complete with trying to track down all the various skills you needed to have pre-set up somewhere on a hotbar. At least making the subcombines helped you level up... Then came the time when we got an extra XP boost for the first time we made something (a hold-over from the days when Pristine was the top level of quality, was dam' near impossible to achieve, and merited extra XP if you could do it). This was wonderful, but because the Sages got "too many recipes," it was not only yanked from all of us, but I can tell from my own experience that crafting in the 10-19 levels now, especially with my lowbie alts, seems to have gone the other way, nearly punitively; those of you at 90+ might not see how nasty it can be now. Yes, I'm glad I'm not having characters literally die at the forge any more (in the subcombine days, that was a real hazard), but sheesh. If I'm careful and watch what I'm doing, hit the 4-5-6 buttons every time the success bar advances (the "Durability" keys [1-2-3] have, at least for me, always taken Durability AWAY every time I've used them [though they could be useful if complications reared their ugly heads]; times were you could do 4-5-6 fast enough to not lose too much Durability), and keep aware of complications and solve them quickly, I shouldn't be wasting crafting materials as often as I am. I used to wonder at the exorbitant prices for some low-level materials on the Broker (especially 10-19 ["hard metals" 1-19, due to their relative scarcity]); now I understand. I have rhythm; I understand about the 4 seconds; I've been doing this since, indeed, the days of subcombines; I watch for when things are progressing forward (or in reverse, nowadays); I've had a lot of help from my friends, the Internet, and the tutorial stuff; and I too am getting frustrated at low levels. I had recently made some new alts and trotted them off obediently to do their 1-9 tutorial, and was quite unpleasantly surprised at how much things had changed. Times were when the only crafting profession that sucked was Provisioner (2 products/make, instead of 3-4 + for other stackable items, got very old very quickly...and yes, one could EASILY make one's fuel costs back. I've yet to see any food/drink on the Broker that wasn't priced at least 10 times what the fuel would've cost. The only reason I have Provies is to not go broke buying food and drink that's actually worth anything [and because they get great house items!]). Nowadays, I have literally watched my fourth Durability bar get arbitrarily taken from me, regardless of what I did, on a regular basis. I've seen the chat window say I had a "Critical failure!" and yank away a large chunk of Success, even though the complication button went green and it had just finished telling me I'd correctly solved it. One should have the option of putting AA's into tradeskilling, yes; one should not have to devote 30-40 of them (as a previous poster remarked) in order to get the same success rate as before (even after the first-ever XP bonus was removed). The only way I can get through the purgatory that is now 1-19 any more is to be a member of a guild that has a materials vault and a lot of patience with my lowbies. Uwk 1-9 is trivial with the tutorial... I'm not sure what sort of bad luck you've been having, but I've never failed on any of the tutorial combines. Add in the New Halas crafting quests once you hit 10.. and the work orders they've added that you can start at 10 to get you through the gap between those quest and 19... Starting crafters definately have a fairly good time of it. Yes, low level crafting can be a bit painfully slow after you've gotten used to 90s.. and you have to use 1,2,3 instead of 4,5,6 quite a bit at low levels, but it's actually less painful then it used to be. __________________ I'm willing to suspend my disbelief, But not hang it by the neck until dead.

10-25-2012, 06:28 PM	#34
Vifarc Loremaster Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 317	The better craft system. In EQ2 you don't just click on one button and go washing your tooths. I do 6-5 to hurry the blue bar, until the bottom green bar is down to half, then 3-1 to make the green full again. Repeat. __________________

10-30-2012, 07:12 AM	#35
Terron Loremaster Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Reading, England Posts: 2,309	Uwkete-of-Crushbone wrote: Terron@Splitpaw wrote: Crafting is easy. There is a little to learn - use the keys proactively - but the tutorial teaches that. Just drumming your fingers on 4,5,6 without paying attention will succeed over 90% of the time (perhaps 80% below level 20). If you pay attention you can be a bit faster and even more reliably successful. (I can't always be bothered) There are plenty of things for boosting the crafting process (which are not required and I don't beother with). That used to be true. I liked burning through the 1-9 stuff, largely because a lot of my lowbie alts could use what I could make (house items and boxes/bags are always cool!), but I really wanted to get to level 20 as painlessly as possible. I've been in EQ2 since the days of subcombines, so I know completely what a PitA it used to be, complete with trying to track down all the various skills you needed to have pre-set up somewhere on a hotbar. At least making the subcombines helped you level up... Then came the time when we got an extra XP boost for the first time we made something (a hold-over from the days when Pristine was the top level of quality, was dam' near impossible to achieve, and merited extra XP if you could do it). This was wonderful, but because the Sages got "too many recipes," it was not only yanked from all of us, but I can tell from my own experience that crafting in the 10-19 levels now, especially with my lowbie alts, seems to have gone the other way, nearly punitively; those of you at 90+ might not see how nasty it can be now. Yes, I'm glad I'm not having characters literally die at the forge any more (in the subcombine days, that was a real hazard), It is true now. It didn't use to be. I too have been crafting since the days of lots of subcombines, though after forge deaths were removed. Pristine was easy to achieve even then once you started using the abilities pro-actively, but it was made easier when Rok came out. That was when it became possible to craft without paying any attention and get 90%+ pristine. I have tried taking a alt up from 1-20 recently, and yes it is a little harder than at higher levels, but it is still very easy. __________________

10-30-2012, 08:59 PM	#36
Trebien Server: Nektulos Guild: Raging Phoenix Rank: Alternate Characters of Mains Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Las Vegas Posts: 117	After getting 10 (oops, forgot, one dinged recently, so 11) level 92 crafters, and having 4 others working their way up through the apprentice recipes before going to the next tier, I found that the level 1-9 crafting on the newer crafters was a little more difficult than I expected. I had to use more of the durability buttons (1-3) than I was used to. However, there was an easy solution to that, if the toon was level 10+. Simply lock aa, get 40 points saved up, put them in all but one spot in your tradeskill aa selection. That helps quite a bit, taking advantage of the durability aa can make a huge difference. Not sure how things will be handled with the expansion coming out, I've heard tradeskill aa is going to be handled differently at that point, but the advise is valid until then.

11-02-2012, 05:27 PM	#37
snowhaze Journeyman Join Date: Oct 2012 Posts: 6	Several good writeups in here about proactively using your buttons. I missed that part in training in game and leveled to around 80 without realizing that and I was really hating crafting and because buttons 1-3 and 4-6 looked the same, I thought they were, it never occured to me to look at the descriptions. I was failing at probably a 1/3 of the rush orders and the rest I was barely finishing with a few seconds remaining. Any failure at all meant starting it over from scratch and just reacting to the buttons didn't always guarantee success, which frustrated me and in the back of my head, I kept saying to myself, I must be missing something here, it shouldn't be this hard. I mostly did the double orders that took nearly twice as long. Unfortunately, when I started searching the internet to see if I could find out 'secrets' about tradeskilling, my searches really didn't turn up much, the descriptions I found were very old and things had changed since the old days and they just didn't explain it very well. I wish I had ended up here a long time ago. Once you know you can use all the buttons proactively and that they do different things, it becomes SO much easier and I quickly leveled up a 2nd crafter and don't mind helping my wife with hers. Finishing the timed rush orders usually leaves me with 4+ minutes remaining.