Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta "Crafting System need to be broken down"

Yes, these are the things that I was suggesting for the developers to improve within the crafting system and the main features of the game. It's also very clear that many users suggests that repairing need to be changed as it's only downgrading the items and not upgrading it. Though I might have a solution.

They really need to make their features more understandable\usable for the players to use regularly. I also still haven't done any crafting as I don't need it, it's not even needed in game or it's not telling the player any indication of crafting. Yes they should add a new ability category and call it “Trades”. Also yes, remove repairing and put in blacksmithing and make the feature more useful and enjoyable for the players to use regularly and put their points in.

So thank you for Xendran for making me posting this, I might find out how they should balance the “Crafting System and Repairing System” it should have been broken in parts:

Trades:

- Blacksmithing: Ore, Bars, Fragments (Metal Types) – Repair Hammer, Pick Axe, Anvil, Furnace

- Crafting: Wood, Wood bits, Hides, Cloth, (Leather and Wood Types) – Knife, Wood cutter, Needle, Crafting Table

- Brewing & Enchanting: Ingredients, scrolls, elements, runes (If there is in game or Tenebrium) – Flask, Brewing Stand, Enchantment table

- Chef: Food, Water, Spice – Cooking Pot, Pan, Stone Oven

- Loremaster (The system is fine but they need to make a shortcut key or an easy placement to identify your items in the inventory.

Let’s talk about the minerals and equipment for each one of the trade Skills:

Blacksmith

Minerals:

Ore - I’m not sure how many kind of ore’s there will be in the game but the better the ore’s the better stats for weapons and armor it will increase. You are required to use a pick axe as same like the feature of the shovel. They already added ores but they need to be implanted in caves walls to use the axe on, instead of carrying a giant ore in your pocket it will also defiantly add allot more immersive to the environment in game like the shovels digging pile of sands. The pick axe can be used for cave walls or rocks, so players don’t get overwhelmed by traveling when there is pick axing to do as well.

Bars – They are made from Ores from the furnace which can be used to improve the stats of your weapons and armor or creating new items by using the Anvil. It will only increase the stats of defense, damage and durability. You only can upgrade your armor & weapons once to make the gameplay balance (Will talk more about that soon).

Fragments - They can be used to repair the durability of your weapons and armor, once you used a pick axe on ores from cave walls or rocks you will also be receiving fragments of it. Remember the better the ores (fragments) it will certainty increase how much durability it will be repaired. You can add the fragments to the repair hammer together to repair a weapon or armor (that is not broken fully). Repair Hammer without fragments must wait for the item to be broken to get repaired (Will talk allot more about it on balancing paragraph).

Equipment:

Repair Hammer (Inventory) – It can be used when your metal armor and weapons are fully broken. You also can add fragments to the hammer to not wait for your item to be broken. There will also be a penalty when your item is broken it will lose its durability (better than the repair skill that is implanted on the beta).

Pick Axe (Inventory) – They are used to pick out any kind of ores from cave walls or giant rocks around the map which the player will be getting ores and fragments of it. It will be needed an animation like the shovel. No skills are required to use the Pick Axe.

Anvil (Ground) – Once you’re in an Anvil you can place one of any metal weapons or armor and upto three bars on the slot bars for armor - durability, movement, armor rating. The weapons are damage, critical damage and durability) together to forge the items together to see an increase of stats of the item. They can invest into 1-3 options with the bars in one of those areas. I already can picture it on my head of the “Anvil UI” should be like.

Anvil image on the UI – One slot for the weapon or amour will be on the base, than on top of it there will be three slots for the bars to upgrade the “Sharpness (weapons damage) or Quality (Armor ratings), Movement (armor) or Critical chance (Sword) and Durability. Yes you also can upgrade the shield too by blocking, durability and movement.

Furnace (Ground) – Easy you can simply add the ores to the furnace to make the bars.

Crafting

Minerals:

Wood – They only added wood from wood piles around the town, though maybe they should also add logs or breakable trees around the maps which you must use a wood cutter or an axe. Wood can be used for crafting the main base of the bows, crossbows, wooden shields, empty cups and so on. Maybe also add different kind of woods for certain differ type of bows to improve them in crafting.

Wooden bits – Alright you can use the wooden bits to repair hammer to repair the durability of the bow, crossbow, or any wooden weapon such as the staff. Wood ashes can be collected from chopping down wood with the wood cutter or axe from “breakable trees or logs around the map”

Hides – Can be found from different wild animals around the map, I think they should add wildlife animals to the world, as far I know you only can get hides from wolves. They also removed the deer in the BETA, so probably maybe they can add spawnable friendly animals like rabbits, squirrels, or any fantasy animals “Larian” can come up with around the maps. Also the better the hides from animals the better it can increase the leather armor stats. You also need a knife animation same as the feature of the shovels. This will defiantly bring a high immersive to the world and the game allot.

Cloth – Can be looted from clothes around the map leather and can be tarred down to strings or ropes (depends of cloth) with the “Crafting Table”. Cloths also can be made into leather armor if they are not making the world with wildlife animals. Strings will produce the final crafting for the bow.

Equipment’s:

Knife (Inventory) – Getting Hide from animals. Needs an animations for collecting hide from animals. Though when killing a wolf from BETA they drop the hide instantly which is fine but make sure there are different kind of hides from each animal.

Wood Cutter or Axe (Inventory) – They already add wood in wood piles but they also should add logs or breakable trees around the map, this will also bring more gameplay and immersive for them to do while travelling. Using the wood cutter or axe also must have an animation like the shovel feature. No skills required for using Axe.

Needle (Inventory) – Can be used to repair the durability of your leather armor when it’s completely damage. You also can use the strings on the needle to repair the durability of your item before it’s completely damaged.

Crafting Table or Hands (Ground & Hands) – You can use it to upgrade your leather armor, wooden weapons, (Upgrade only once as I said the game need to be balanced, will talk about that in my balancing paragraph) arrows, wooden furniture’s, you can make allot, I really don’t know much many items you can make in this game yet.

Brewing & Enchanting

Really not sure on this one as there are allot of possibilities you can do with ingredients and there have been not enough information from the developers about Tenebrium, though I hope all I’m suggesting gave them an idea how this should be balanced and bring allot of immersive to the game

Minerals:

Ingredients – Yes they are all the ingredients you can find in the game to craft different kind of potions. I don’t need to go further in depth with this as there are allot I mean allot of ingredients to craft potions. You can use the flask to add the ingredients in (simple ones up to 2-3 inside).

Scrolls – These empty blank scrolls can be looted from mostly in book cases and more can be made with sheet of paper.

Elements substance – As far I know the developers added the attack on ground feature for melee weapons, so where can we get elemental substance? As far I know you only can these elemental ingredients Air, Water, Fire, Ice from demons. Maybe you can craft elementals substance with the ingredients?

Runes (Tenebrium) – What are Tenebrium? Is it a substance that can be used on a weapon like a rune? If it is an enchanting table is required.

Equipment’s:

Flask [Inventory) – You can use up to three ingredients within the flask for hand-held brewing.

Brewing Stand (Inventory) – You can use up to 5 or more ingredients together (Like I said I really don’t know much about the current crafting system in BETA as I only know is a drag and drop which is not immersive or helpful at all for players to understand).

Enchantment table (Ground) – You can make weapons and armors to be enchantable or add new effects from brewing ingredients such as bleeding damage, leech, poison (permanent) etc. You also can craft the weapons to use elemental damage such as fire damage, Ice and so on. You also can make scrolls and spells.

Chef

Maybe it should not be within the trade skills or should not use any skills for cooking.
Yes it’s funny but there are allot of food in the game that you can craft, I know that the developers were putting more effort on crafting food but I really don’t much know how it can help the gameplay but here are my thoughts. (Again Larian might have an idea on how to balance this with the other “Trade Skills” as I still have no clue what food can help us with there was not enough information from the developers about it or its completely not needed in the game)

Minerals:

Food – There are allot of food like tomato, flour, apple, pumpkin, meat, etc that you find allot of around the game. The better food you produce the better the HP you will receive than health potions. You also can pick up meat animals after the hide is been taken out from the animal.

Water – I only think you can have water for food, no other water substance such as oil, vinegar etc. You can collect water from rivers or ponds (Though you can use other water spells which not might be needed in game).

Spice – I think there was some spices in the game, I am not too sure.

Equipment’s:

Cooking pot – You can store hot food on such as, potatoes or food that can be made into a soup.

Pan – Meat, eggs, pancakes

Stone Oven – Pizza, Cake,

Like I said I can’t think of any suggestions to improve how or what equipment’s will be best for chef or what effects it can do, maybe they can give you hastes, more AP, give certain abilities for a short amount of time in battle. I will let someone suggestion or if the developers are planning to do something with it.

Now onto the Skills:

Blacksmithing Skills:

Level 1 – You are able to repair broken normal weapons and armor [Repair Hammer Required]
Level 2 – You are able to use the fragments to repair normal weapons and armor
Level 3 - Able to upgrade normal armor and weapons with basic bars or ores [Furnace and Anvil required]
Level 4 – You are able to use higher quality ores and bars to upgrade & repair magic weapons and magic armor.
Level 5 – You are able to upgrade a “Tenebrium” weapon and repair it. [Master at blacksmithing increase 5% when upgrading metal amour and weapons]



Crafting Skills:

Level 1 – You can craft hand-able items and sew completely damaged leather amour [Needle Required]
Level 2 – You can now craft more and use strings and glue to repair damaged leather clothes and repair wooden weapons and wooden items.
Level 3 – You can now use the Crafting Table to upgrade your leather armor with hides or wooden weapons (low quality of woods), wooden items, furniture and other crafting items you can make on the table.
Level 4 – You are able to use higher quality of wood and hides to upgrade leather amour, wooden weapons and furniture.
Level 5 - [If Tenebrium weapons can be bows, staff and crossbows as well they can be repaired] Master at Crafting increase 5% of stats when crafting leather amour, wooden weapons and wooden items.

Brewing & Enchanting Skills:

Level 1 – You can brew hand-held ingredients together [Flask Required]
Level 2 – You can use the blank scrolls and make basic spells
Level 3 – Advanced brewing on ingredients and on blank scrolls. [Brewing Stand Required]
Level 4 – Enhancement table Unlocked, Weapons and Armor can be enchanted.
Level 5 – Tenebrium weapons can be Enchanted [Master at Brewing & Enchanting Skills increase %5 of stats when brewing potions and enchanting weapons and amour]

Chef Skills:

Level 1 – ?
Level 2 - ?
Level 3 - ?
Level 4 - ?
Level 5 - ?

As I said I really don’t know any suggestions how we can approve the “cooking system” though these are the suggestions that must implanted and hopefully they have an idea.

Balancing:

I think I may will get these questions:

Upgrading items will make them OP for certain levels of areas in the game?

Why only upgrade once, why not keep upgrading the weapon?

Why not just use the repair hammer just to repair the item instantly without the Fragments?


Alright here is my solution for question one and two.

In twitch “Larian” has confirmed that you will able to get different visuals of weapons and you will certainly get a newer (tier) class weapon within every three of four levels which means better weapons and amour in stats.

(Let’s just make up some bars up with low quality to high quality)

Level 1-4 tier weapon and armor (repair fragments too) - 2% increase in copper, %4 in Iron, %7 in silver and %11 in gold

Level 4-8 tier weapons and armor (repair fragments too) - %4 increase in copper, %6 in iron, %9 in Sliver and %13 in gold

(Remember you can only upgrade in three different stats (Damage, Durability, Armor rating) on one slot each not three times)

The percentage isn’t much but it’s just an idea for players not use the same weapons and armor by upgrading and upgrading, when only one upgrade is allowed as you will be getting a better weapon from the next tier and much more improvement in upgrading as the monsters will get tougher each tier.

The fragments (Wooden Bits also) makes allot sense as you don’t want to keep spamming the repair hammer or glue to repair your items with no work involve or no penalty. Without the fragments (wooden bits) you can’t repair it until it’s fully broken. When the item is completely damaged the durability will be halved. Where you can get fragments and wooden bits? from caves walls, breakable trees, logs, rocks or merchants. How can I use the fragments\wooden bits into the glue or Hammer, they should add an right click option on it and say “Repair with copper, gold, silver fragments” as same with the glue of different types of wood.

The game right now is very easy as there are allot of weapons that are over 80 damage and does not need a level requirement for example you can find the “Scimitar” in the beginning of the game that has almost up to 80 damage and only need an warrior that has 8 Strength, when they should also add “LEVEL REQUIREMENTS” as that sword mange to kill level 1-3 enemy’s in two-three shots. So to make this suggestion work if they add the “LEVEL REUIREMENTS” back.

Suggestions (100% more immersive)

- Make Ores implants to wall caves, rocks for the player to start collecting ores with an pick axe

- Make breakable trees or logs for player to collect wood with an Axe or Wood Cutter

- Random hostile animals (respawanable) for players to collect hides

- Indications of weapons and amour at badly damage rate or visuals of damage levels of the amour and weapons

- Weapons should have visuals effects when they have elemental damage (Must have) as most of the time I forget my weapon does elemental damage that heals the enemy.



Conclusion

This feedback will defiantly help allot to give an idea for the “crafting system” to be broken down for each category. Why? Not many users are using that feature as it feels it’s completely missing. There are over 100 items to craft there are over 200 combinations to completely go every item to craft and dragging each other. It should be broken down to “Trades” (Blacksmith, Brewing & Enchanting, Crafting and Chef) for certain skills to make the “crafting system” more user friendly, useful for the player to actually feel “these skills are worth to put on. This system will also help if users are out of an item or ingredient that they need to craft, when ores, wood can be used as the primary goal to use when crafting such as arrow shaft, wooden items, metal items and so on. The current system must change.

- Tex (Going to sleep now just figured all this out today, probably some errors here in there but hopefully many of you will understand)

Thanks Swen and Larian Studious!

Aside from "beta = no additional features", which your idea breaks about 5 times over, separating crafting into 5 categories would be annoying with the current level of ability points you get. It's stingy enough as it is.

Nice wall of text. However, don't expect to much (especially as deep world interactions go), or you could be vastly disappointed.

If the game was 100+ hours, I'd suggest a deep crafting system. But I think the game will be over before the system needs to be that deep.

@ Stabbey - Yes, I understand about the current level of ability points we get. I also forgot to mention when on twitch they they say they have another tab for crafting, maybe "crafting points" can be spend on there for each of the category's. This will work but make them spend one "crafting point" in every three levels (If level 20 is still the max on this game, I also don't know what level will be available to see an Tenebrium weapon), it will also not be that "stingy" if they made crafting into another tab or get a free point on the "Trades" skill.

@ Cromcrom - Thanks, yeah I try not too but this will improve the game in every way or hope that's what they were trying to do on the crafting development they were doing with the extra tab.

@ Horroscope - The system isn't that deep and it will put even more hours into the game by collecting wood, ores, hides and allot more players to do when they are travelling around areas, as there is no interaction with the environment when travelling long distances. They only add an shovel to interact with the environment and collecting ingredients.


Yes it's in BETA but the way of their crafting system needs to improved dramatically and for players to actually notice there is a crafting on this game or at least an indication that make the players actually use the crafting feature more frequently. I played the game around 5-7 times and there was no crafting needed for this game to complete the ALPHA or BETA. If they have time to brake crafting into groups or if that's what they were planning it will certainly make the players to choose one of the "Trades" skills for their character, and it will show allot of progression into the game.

Warrior > Blacksmith
Ranger > Crafting
Wizard > Brewing and Enchantment
Knight > Lore master
Chef? (:P) - Cooking Skills (Like I said I really don't know why the dev's put allot more effort on crafting food)

They also don't need to follow my idea, the developers can figure a way to allow players to use their system frequently and understandable for the players to use. We also know that crafting isn't 100% complete yet.

Having them under existing categories would work too, it just feels a lot better to have repairing integrated with crafting, and having crafting be more toward your character type.

Instead of just having your rogue repair and craft everything, he will repair and craft rogue gear.
Also, having a very high luck stat should be a viable alternative or accessory to crafting. I personally would have Loremaster and Enchantment both under Wizard, and not include repairing in enchantment, since wizards use magic so often that they rarely need to repair their staves.

The wizard has already to much skills they can learn such as Air, Fire, Water, Earth, Telekinesis, Willpower and Witch craft, so putting lore master and enchantment will make it more difficult to spend your skill points as Stabbey have mentioned. So it might be better for lore master to be on the survivor skill or just move into the Trades skills.

Yes wizard don't repair items but they can enchant armour and weapons to add one ability, add elemental effects onto melee weapons or bleeding, leech, poison damage (permanent). Enchantment will not be a skill but a development to use the "Enchantment table" for the items they have collected such as the air,fire, water, earth orbs (from demons) and Tenebrium substances (which no one has a clue what they ill do).

Uh...
Moving loremaster from one category to another doesn't change the number of points you need to spend in it.

Oh oops almost forget that you can use skills from other category's no matter the character you are. Yes it will might make sense to but lore master into wizard but enchanting might not be a skill but just a development to use the "Enchanting table" if they are added to the game. The wizard already has brewing and making spells, we don't want to go over board with the Wizard with crafting. Yeah as you said it will also work to put them in each category instead of a "Trades" category.

On the latest update they made an giant ore on the ground and it has an indication but no interaction.

They also have added an pick-axe, hmm seems like they have read this or they were planning to add ores around the map for the players to collect with the pick axe

They also added small animals like rabbits too for hides but they did not drop anything.

I've also liked how they change repair into "Blacksmith" though still the same mechanics as repair, which is still bad as most players agreed that they really need to make "Blacksmithing" fun to put your points onto. Though I know that they are still working on "Blacksmithing" and hopefully they go with my idea by adding "fragments" into the hammer to repair the items without spamming the hammer or GET to level 5 to repair almost broken items (no players likes this system).

Hope they have an idea to make Blacksmithing better or have finally have a plan.

There are already dozens of ores in the game. They can be found in various caves/mines...

Yeah I already know they've added ores but they were small ores, big ores now they are actual a boulder stuck on the ground for players to use the pick axe which I'm guessing.

I don't know if I understood correctly what you want to tell me...

Right now there are already mines and caves in the game with ore or silver veins with which you can only interact if you have a pick axe in your inventory. In return for the mining you get the respective resource as you could expect...

Umm which caves and mines have the "veins" implanted?

So far I just open the game heading to the new tunnel under Cyseal and don't see any veins. This is what I'm talking about with the boulder:

[Cyseal Tunnel] - The boulders were used to be small ores in the alpha, than changed to pick-able giant ores and now a boulder.

There is an interaction but no action.

Edit: Just found another boulder (Vein) in one of the burial mounds and that one worked with the pick-axe. When did they implant this? I remember not seeing them in the alpha builds or the first beta build. It's wonderful, it's just that one did not work as it says "Can't Reach"!

I think they just forgot to make the veins in the tutorial level reachable... :P

Most of the other veins work quite well with the pick axe IIRC. I think it was invented with V1.1.28.