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Gumbo

Improving Failures

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Sort of getting quite frustrated with the amount of imp'n failures in this game. I'm all for some things being difficult to make and all, but recently I had this episode of trying to Temper a weapon. It just seems to me that the failure rate is ridiculous. Take for example this latest run of failures on an 87ql weapon. That QL is 12 points BELOW my skill level, yet I seem to have a tremendously hard time getting successful imps. It's not only on Tempers. Whetstones imps are nearly as bad, albeit with a slightly lower QL on that tool. Pelt failures seem very high as well. Ore improvements have a drastic increase in failure when you get the item to within about 2QL of the lump QL.

Check out the almost 4 minute failure session I had tonight. Seven attempts to get a success, followed by 5 attempts to get the second success. I could understand imp'n OVER or very close to my skill level, but I was far below my skill. Nearly 4 minutes to get two tempers.   :(

 



[20:06:45] You need to temper the maul by dipping it in water while it's hot.
[20:06:49] You start tempering the maul.
[20:07:00] You damage the maul a little.
[20:07:01] You repair the maul.
[20:07:01] You start tempering the maul.
[20:07:12] You damage the maul a little.
[20:07:13] You repair the maul.
[20:07:14] You start tempering the maul.
[20:07:29] You damage the maul a little.
[20:08:00] You repair the maul.
[20:08:01] You start tempering the maul.
[20:08:12] You damage the maul a little.
[20:08:13] You repair the maul.
[20:08:13] You start tempering the maul.
[20:08:25] You damage the maul a little.
[20:08:26] You repair the maul.
[20:08:26] You start tempering the maul.
[20:08:41] You damage the maul a little.
[20:08:43] You repair the maul.
[20:08:43] You start tempering the maul.
[20:08:59] You need to temper the maul by dipping it in water while it's hot.
[20:08:59] You start tempering the maul.
[20:09:17] You damage the maul a little.
[20:09:18] You repair the maul.
[20:09:18] You start tempering the maul.
[20:09:37] You damage the maul a little.
[20:09:44] You repair the maul.
[20:09:44] You start tempering the maul.
[20:09:55] You damage the maul a little.
[20:10:00] You repair the maul.
[20:10:02] You start tempering the maul.
[20:10:13] You improve the maul a bit.
[20:10:13] The maul could be improved with a lump.

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As a fellow blacksmith with far less skill (96.8)  I concur wurm gets a wild hair  going and cant seem to help itself.

 

I do not know if this works for you but I work on another tool.  Maybe I am mind gaming myself but I imp something else that I know I can get a good pop on.  Then I go back to what I was working on before.

 

Seems for me to break that cycle.  Maybe its a standing to long on tile thing.  I applaud your  endurance Id have moved on after 5 or 6 fails.

 

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I have been through this myself and I am very much lower on my skill. I normally stop imping tools at level 50ql because even though I got 64 skill and over 80ql tools, the failures are astronomical. Higher skills and highly superior tools and the amount of failures is great. Even on creation I get a lot of failures with a 80% creation chance.

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Stepping a few tiles away and coming back seems to work too, FIGURATIVELY like changing dice (f off, code jockeys you know what i mean).

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I think ws difficulty should be lowered, maybe some other skills also.

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Well, I've made a game out of it now. Seeing if I can get 8 failures in a row now. See, I'm having fun.  *rolls eyes*

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9 minutes ago, Niki said:

I think ws difficulty should be lowered, maybe some other skills also.

 

It's not so much about skilling WS or BS. It's about how much you fail while imp'n. There are Imbues and Runes and chants for all kinds of things. These are used to make skilling easier. It's the failure rate that's been pissing me off for quite a while. Don't recall it ever being this bad. Soon as I hit about 89ql during an imp, I fully expect the failures to come hard and fast. Not sure if there was a change to the failure rate a while back, but seems so.

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Grinding BS in my 40-50's even I can say that the most amount of failures for me come from tempering. I dread everytime I get to the temper stage of my batch while grinding. Not sure if it's different, bad RNG or what, but tempering always seems to keep me going the longest.

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2 hours ago, Ayluin said:

Grinding BS in my 40-50's even I can say that the most amount of failures for me come from tempering. I dread everytime I get to the temper stage of my batch while grinding. Not sure if it's different, bad RNG or what, but tempering always seems to keep me going the longest.

 

From what I've pieced together over the years, from this rumour, that story, and some stuff I read on a public bathroom stall wall is...  that the game code doesn't handle 3 digit whole numbers very well. So 100 QL water is "broken", so to speak. When the game takes this 100 into consideration during imps, it borks the calculation a lot more, so we get tons more failures. Far be it from me to suggest they change the QL of water from 100, to 99.9.  I seem to recall it was suggested many many years ago, so not really my suggestion.  That said, there could also be some Enchant that damages water, maybe Sunder, forget the name. Some say damaged water is the best water. I've never tried.

 

*all this is only my speculation, pls don't hold me to any of it, thx   (maybe someone in the know can shed more light)

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No, that's not the case

 

For water it simply takes the item you're imping as the "active" item. meaning whatever ql the item being imped becomes the ql that determines success.

Thats why items with woa on them imp faster with water, it's using the woa enchant of the item in the equation.

 

This used to result in rare rolls giving rare water too, since the system applied the rare to the water

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I recently did a bunch of 90+ horseshoes and late 80s was hell. The second it hit 90 it was fine.

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@Retrogradeis this behaviour of the water (and it is only applies to smithing only) is an intended thing, and if it is so what is the reason behind it? It is inconsistent with the other crafts where you use water as a tool and also a big pain for me as a smith...

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I've been saying Miscellaneous skill checks are broke for weeks now. The Wurmluninatti doesn't want you to know the truth.

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42 minutes ago, Jaz said:

@Retrogradeis this behaviour of the water (and it is only applies to smithing only) is an intended thing, and if it is so what is the reason behind it? It is inconsistent with the other crafts where you use water as a tool and also a big pain for me as a smith...

It's an intended thing as it was decided using 100ql was a little too OP, and has been raised in the past.

 

It may change in the future

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Thank you for the clarification! But still, why smithing only then?

On the possible changes, I'm starting to hold my breath :P

 

Edited by Jaz

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8 hours ago, Retrograde said:

Thats why items with woa on them imp faster with water, it's using the woa enchant of the item in the equation.

Now that Rolf is on indefinite holiday, is it possible that we will see a logical change to that mechanic?

Because, honestly, it's quite unfair to require me to put woa on someone else's tool (temporarily), just for a little bit of speed bonus. Meanwhile, almost every other crafter has the ability to speed up their imp job via their own woa tools (aside from pottery - the hand).

You've already explained how the water itself is nerfed because of the "OP" 100ql and that's why we fail a lot with it (meanwhile, cooking ingredients are also 100ql but don't seem to be nerfed in the same regard). Why are we, smiths, crippled in multiple ways?







And to stay on topic with the thread, 99.8 BS here and imping anything from 88 to 91 is like pulling teeth . After 91, it seems to ease up a little. I always thought it was ridiculous that I had such problems imping 10 points below my skill level. I know the team (Rolf specifically) has used the excuse that they don't want everyone running around with a 90+ql tool (like he didn't want everyone running around with 90+ casts), but if I have invested the years into getting said skill, then I should be able to use it efficiently.


 

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On 9.2.2017 at 11:01 AM, Retrograde said:

No, that's not the case

 

For water it simply takes the item you're imping as the "active" item. meaning whatever ql the item being imped becomes the ql that determines success.

Thats why items with woa on them imp faster with water, it's using the woa enchant of the item in the equation.

 

 

It is also using Coc on the item.

 

Which is why you might find Coc gloves in my forge. ;) Skilling on non-coc items leaves the coc bonus out of ~20% of the time so one should skill on Coc'd items. And as Retro points out, in case of making high QL item (or even planning Woa cast on them) then cast woa early on, not later on.

 

[Point 1]

Water has been a nuisance from the beginning and its almost like the bastard favorite child of smithing.

 

[Point 2]

The reason why Whetstones and Pelts "feel like bad also" is because how accumulated DMG influences the actual QL in imping success. I've even forgot how was it exactly, allways just considered it being straight out reduced from the QL of the tool... so 95ql pelt with 5dmg equals to using 90ql pelt.

 

[Point 3]

Items vary in their imping difficulty. When reaching "almost" 100 in blacksmithing and obsessively using 100ql low dmg items and 99ql hammer I consider my situation "maxed out" for what can be achieved trough simple quality tuning.

So, testing to imp for example a shovel and a needle up from scratch and measure the QL when I first time fail and start with another one. Going trough like 20x items per shovel and needle, it becomes clear that first imping fails average around 75 for shovels and around 55 for needles. Ofcourse many smiths are aware how "resistant to imping" some items are in comparison to other items at very high QL. I go insane imping a file to 97 where in comparison imping shovel to 97 is "just a small task".

 

[Point 4]

When combining the points 1 to 3 it is evident that depending on which item is being imped and which one of the 5 actions is in question, there is a "treshold X" which is being put to challenge the "patience Y". So depending on the imper it vary alot where X:Y ratio breaks over to feeling annoying.

 

[Conclusion point]

In a way it is good thing that imping to 99+ql is insane amount of work due to 10 (or more) failures per success and needing ~5 successes to have "visible change in QL" (as in +0.01 requires ~50 imping actions). This way 99+ql items truly are "Epic".

 

But in a way, if this tediousness with some items might begin as low as 80 for one who is "perfectly maxed quality smith", it feels like something is missing. Once hitting the hard wall of not being able to get more skill nor more QL, its just "duh" when... you know, "Grandmaster blacksmith" fails to make a small needle.

 

Gumbo has a point. I agree with him.

But I cannot see it working differently.

Issue is not that we fail alot.

Issue is that there is a point of reaching the pinnacle of productivity. Cannot get any better, and still its hard to imp things. Expectations are facing the reality and in general this is difficult to cope with for humans in all areas of life. With acceptance it is solved individually as there is no external solution to this, only endless cap-raising battle that so many MMO games has chosen as their path. Which Wurm seems to be choosing aswell. We get potions and runes to work trough to the new pinnacle and there same thing happens.

 

My prediction is that at some point Wurm also might choose to implement a system how we can break over the 100 skill limit. Being able to go, for example 102 or 105 skill which will create the illusion of "getting better" once again. Perhaps reaching the new pinnacles becomes more and more tedious... so one does not just get to 102 skill within 5 years, but it takes 10 years. Surely would quiet the veterans who "just cant get better anymore" for a long period of time.

 

 

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I'm not nearly as high as you folks in skills, but I've noticed that Pottery does similar stuff to this.

I've been working on it lately and just hit 54 pottery, and it's going crazy slow for long periods. Like, I do a set of 6-7 planters, imp them to 50+..and at about 25-32ish QL it just starts creeping...doing a single batch of them can take upwards of an hour and a half to 3 hours or so...and when I get up to 50's it's like pulling teeth and numerous failures. Extremely tiny imps when they do succeed.

Maybe some people would think this is fun, but I'm starting to see why people don't even do this skill/imp their pottery stuff up. Imagine trying to get a 90 QL batch of pottery items. (With a double set of planter racks, I'm just simply trying to fill it since they removed the herb QL equalizing the planter QL up). You'd be spending over 6-9 hours just making a small batch of them. Add that up over a bunch of items, and it turns into exponential waste of time...

I get that we need to have a challenge, but some of these are ridiculous.

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I experience this run of imping 'fails' between about 86 and 89: after that, it's all good.

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yah, reaching 90QL seems to be the annoying point. The amount of fails on all type of actions and no matter the skill or tools involve is insane. it's a bit silly to have 89 > 90QL harder than 90 > 91QL.

 

On 09/02/2017 at 3:02 AM, Mordraug said:

(f off, code jockeys you know what i mean).

 

WU code = WO code, mostly, we know from seeing how the game is working on a daily basis they didn't changed a lot of things... though seeing how bad things are from time to time, we can wonder how many of the bad mechanisms they did remove for WU.

 

#WurmConspiracyTimeOnline

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Last night I made a batch of 10 pottery jars. They were 70QL. My pottery is 81. Normally I can put a batch of 10 70ql out in an hour or so. (BOTD or woa on tools). They took me 3.5 hours. I started getting repeat failures in the 40s. 

 

Not happy. 

 

FWIW, as an 80 skill potter I have yet to be able to get any piece to 80, despite great tools. Failures with hand and water, which I have no control over quality of.

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A new record !!

I've set the bar a bit higher today. Imp'n an 82ql carver (17 pts below my skill level) with a 96ql pelt with 1.60 dmg on it.

9 Failures in a row ... Yay!

 

 



[19:34:39] You will want to polish the carving knife with a pelt before you improve it.
[19:34:42] You start polishing the carving knife.
[19:34:48] You damage the carving knife a little.
[19:34:49] You start polishing the carving knife.
[19:34:55] You damage the carving knife a little.
[19:34:56] You start polishing the carving knife.
[19:35:02] You damage the carving knife a little.
[19:35:04] You start polishing the carving knife.
[19:35:12] You damage the carving knife a little.
[19:35:13] You start polishing the carving knife.
[19:35:22] You damage the carving knife a little.
[19:35:23] You start polishing the carving knife.
[19:35:32] You damage the carving knife a little.
[19:35:33] You start polishing the carving knife.
[19:35:43] You damage the carving knife a little.
[19:35:44] You start polishing the carving knife.
[19:35:54] You damage the carving knife a little.
[19:35:55] You start polishing the carving knife.
[19:36:05] You damage the carving knife a little.
[19:36:07] You start polishing the carving knife.
[19:36:17] You need to temper the carving knife by dipping it in water while it's hot.

 

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Indeed, I have also noticed an increased rate of failure. It starts at 10 points below my skill on both Fine Carpentry and Blacksmithing (55 and 60 respectively).

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