any luck selling bows?

[Talan Va'lash]

Just to note, Talan has sold many many many oak bows he made, though only a handfull of mahogany ones (lots more new characters are created that never reach level 10+, so the market is acctually much larger for lower level items.)  A handfull is still... maybe 12-15 over his career.  Yes I made probably 60 or something obscene while I was practicing. But there aren't 60 characters that regularly use those weapons and don't already have them, so it would be ludicrous to expect to sell them in that kind of volume.

The Pawnshop in hampshire gave me... i think it was 254 each *grins*

Just to note, of the three bows Talan has used, he didn't make a single one.  I don't even think he's ever done ANY of the work (cams, bow parts) on any of his own bows.  I remember where they all came from too:

1st - Erred Windancer - Bought it from him a week or so before Duur started going crazy in hlint on Rhiz's Ithillid quest and killed the smithy dwarf and ended up in jail, where Erred stayed to comfort him.  No idea where he is now.  Kobal upgraded it to a composite bow after I committed the faux pas of asking him about "bow rods" *snickers*  Later I bought bow parts II from Enzo for it.

2nd - Kobal - I'm not sure if Kobal made everything on this when I originally got it, but the bow parts III were the ones I won at enzo's raffle to raise funds for Folian's temple.

3rd - Aleister - Made from yew the late mage purchased from some brave/foolish woodcutters.  I made the cams, Triba put them on and made the bow parts III for me from 100 nuggets of platinum that I hired Kaizer Thell to mine for me.  Including one failure, EVERY SINGLE nugget was consumed in the making of this bow, with the addition of one I found in my house and one I had to beg from Derrick.

So yeah, I could do the same thing with every sword I've ever used.  and I could tell a more colorfull and epic story about all of them too, about what they were used in and for and things.. but this is the short version just about where they came from.

Items are so much more fun when they're not just a list of stats.  Acctually, they're rather boring if they're just a list of stats

-TV

[Variable]

Talan Va'lash - 1/27/2006  4:35 PM

Items are so much more fun when they're not just a list of stats.  Acctually, they're rather boring if they're just a list of stats

I completely agreed with that although quite a few of my items have such intricate stories they all have stories and i have had most of them for a long time and most likely will never sell them.


Then onto the limited crafts, while this would most likely succeed at reducing the the number of items entering the economy it would also devastate the established crafters. Aralin has 3 crafts in which he is above level 10 in, 11 in gem crafting, 14 enchanting and 15 tinkering. I have spent hours and hours of work on each of those honing them until i could get to those levels, if i had to choose two of them it would completely destroy the hours of work that have been out into each of those (apart from those i have several smaller crafts that i have invested time in but not the amount of these).

Limiting crafts by feat again would destroy those established crafters that have spent these astronomical amounts of time developing. The characters that are already developed and mid-high levels that are crafting characters would(might) be completely useless at crafting because they were not built with the feats that would be needed.


On limiting items:
I do however agree that something needs to be done further with several of the crafts that are not difficult to progress in hence have a surplus of those items. The limits now imposed on crafts along with the badges is a good step in this direction however.

Woocrafting, in my opinion this is the easiest craft for producing final products, and because of that the economy has been flooded with oak and even mahogany bows.
My suggestion on these would be to include more ingredients in the recipes for bows, preferably materials that are either difficult to gather and/or need to be purchased. Requiring a Wood Oil for each bow, for example, would hopefully work the same wasy as Enchanting Oil, imposing a gold cost to the crafting of each object. (in my opinion this "oil" or whatever other ingredient should have a price on par with enchanting oil)

Tailoring, this is another of the quite easy crafts, while i don't have much experience with the craft there are several things which i believe would help control this craft. Requiring another ingredient(as above) but another idea which i believe would do more is have each skinnable animal not automatically drop a pelt but rather have a chance to drop a pelt (maybe 50-75%?). This would limit the raw materials therefore limiting the craft much more than a purchaseable ingredient.

Tinkering, this was the other craft in which there has been an incredible amount of mass producing, but since the updates, add more chance of breaking to sand deposits, and removing the spell components from being craftable i believe this has mostly been solved.

[Yosemite Sam]

Actually, the absolute easiset craft to level, IMHO, is instrument making.  But this is limited to bards, with an even more limited chance to sell

[Stranzini]

Um

"Actually, the absolute easiset craft to level, IMHO, is instrument making. But this is limited to bards, with an even more limited chance to sell"

We're getting off the original topic here but - Sen's puzzled by this statement, but sees from the skill stats that Perago must know something about the subject.

Sen's finding food crafting, alchemy, tinkering, gem cutting and tailoring all easier to level in than instrument crafting. Especially food crafting. Maybe he's stuck at some funny plateau in the trade because the very few things he has a decent chance to make give him a tiny number of points each. Or maybe he has a character flaw...

He'll be watching for Perago in-game to learn some tricks from a master.

Anyway, agreed that there's nobody who wants to buy the instruments - just like the real world, you gotta do it for the love of music...but you're all crafting for the love of it and the RP involved right? Nobody is ever going to make more money crafting than they will spending the same time killing ogres and taking their gold.

On the other subject - (and I'm obviously an offender but its opportunistic) - I've said it elsewhere but:

I kind of hate the idea of hard-limiting crafts or taking feats or something, but there should be something to discourage characters from doing all crafts. I found the new "badge" system a bit useless, but if we had to buy a badge for EACH craft, or each crafting device, we wanted to use, I think then we'd have a useful, real-life-like and effective way to make people think twice about how many crafts they take up. Set the price of the badge individually for each craft at the right price to balance things out, and we could do as many crafts as we want but we'd think twice about it before we jumped in, and maybe we'd look for someone else to sell us a few molds or some thread instead of taking up another craft.

[Yosemite Sam]

// this comment, like my last is really out of character.  I dont think the badge system would work, because it just uses gold, an accumulating resource anyways.  I am sure most of the high level players have stacks of it, and can get plenty more.  That is not a solution.  As to the ease, Perago is qualified to speak.  He  food crafting 13 (as high as anyone had gotten before he left), alchemy 14, tinkering 17, gem cutting 12, and tailoring 22.  Oh yea and Instrument making 16.  I am not going to try to level Instrument making, because other than Platinum harps, the rest of the things he needs to make level involve Yew.  Yew being somewhat rare right now, I cant seem to get any to make instruments.
But I found instruments the easiest to level because it took the fewest successes to level, and the ingrediaents aren't hard to get.  Silk for the strings has gotten harder, but can be obtained in Seilwood.  Hickory, just south of Hlint.I spent less time leveling instruments to 16 than I spent on cooking to 13, and tinker to 17.  You have to get a LOT of clay and sand to level tinkering.  Sorry, but you wont be learning much from Perago, he will not be spending that much time crafting.
I have discussion about trade craft with Amaduena, who has a lot, and Asher Hardrock, who has reached 20 in three different crafts.  Keeping you name on the ladders is not something everyone does anymore. We are all in agreement that most things just get sold staight to the vendor.  That you do it for love of the trade, not to make money (try enchanting if you want a money sink).  My above observation holds, that without a drastic change, there will be little market for most crafted items created in Layonara.

[Stranzini]

Hmmm, well at my level and for my character gold's a very scarce resource, and so Sen is always thinking carefully about what his next purchase is going to be. And he can't even imagine a room at the Arms or a house, which he really needs. Extra crafting badges would probably go way down on his priority list if he had to choose and so he would always probably put that off in favor of an armor, a bow, a bag, a belt...

I figure the marginal utility of one too many crafting badges would be so low that lots of characters wouldn't start many crafts until they had become superheros with lots of gold - and then they'd be starting a little late on a new craft and probably have better things to do, wouldn't they?

I guess it depends on who it is that is responsible for this "problem" of too much crafting - low to medium level players with nothing better to do or high level players with too much money?