Thanks to the Quarterstaff crafting recipe and my whopping 0 skill in Crafting, my Level 1 mage took two pieces of driftwood and made a quarterstaff that does 25-75 Crushing Damage, has an 8% Critical Chance, an extra +1 Intelligence, and the only requirement was 8 Intelligence (the default starting mage stat).
Why on earth does gear have no level requirements? There's a bunch of equipment, weapons, scrolls, etc. that are clearly meant to be used at a higher level, but there isn't a minimum level requirement in the game. It's obvious that gating it behind "must have X in stat" is insufficient.
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Spoilerish suggestion for the main quest storyline.
After Esmerelda tells you about
her suspicions of Evelyn, she takes off in such a hurry that she leaves behind her backpack. The backpack contains the key to her house, which has her diary and reveal spell lying out in plain sight (visible using the ALT key), but she keeps the key to her strongbox outside for no clear reason.
The diary and spell are the big things she's trying to hide, so my suggestion is to put the diary and spell into the Strongbox, and possibly switch the keys, so that you can find her house key outside under the bucket, but all you find inside is a locked chest and ordinary stuff. This will hide the special things from snooping via the ALT key and make her look less suspicious until the time comes to make her look suspicious.
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Cross-post from the Item Combination thread:
Higher points in the Crafting skill makes you produce better quality stuff from the same ingredients. That's good, but some things should require higher base crafting skill before you can craft them at all. If you lack the skill, the game should give you a message complaining.
Magical Items are more powerful and valuable, and so they should be harder to create than normal items. Making magical items should require a Talent, and that Talent should require something like crafting 5 or 7 as a minimum or more to unlock.
Arrow Head + Arrow Shaft should make an ORDINARY Arrow, not a magical one. That's really weird, and it makes magical arrows too cheap.
Since we don't keep track of bow ammo, this ordinary arrow would be useless on its own, so it needs to be combined with something else to become useful ammo.
Ordinary Arrow + Earth/Fire/Air/Water Essence = magical arrow of some type.
Elemental Essences should probably have all kinds of uses in crafting, maybe even with each other to make some kind of Essence of Magic.
They should probably be reasonably common in loot, and a store in town should also sell Elemental Essences.
