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Lei

Crafting Product Profitability

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Crafting Product Profitability

 

Wurm has a plethora of wonderful skills, each one with it's own functions, uses, and perks. I prefer to separate skills into four categories:Gathering, Crafting, Combat, and Leisure. I want to focus here on the crafting skills.

 

The crafting skill category consists of 8 crafting skills. These are skills  that take items from gathering skills and use them to produce a product in the game. The seven skills include: Carpentry, Smithing, Tailoring, Masonry, Pottery, Alchemy, Rope-making, and Cooking. Each one is unique to the products it produces, and many of them have sub-skills. 

 

However, even though the products from each skill are unique to itself, only two of the skills have high-end products. Smithing and Tailoring, both of which have products that sell for high-coinage value. Smithing has the creation of dragon scale armor with the use of its sub-skill, Plate Armor Smithing. Tailoring, just the same, has the production of dragon hide armor, which uses the sub-skill Leather-working.  Unless an item is won or given as a reward, or maybe if an item is fantastic, no other items sell for as much as the dragon armors do. Which sort of makes those sub-skills the best skills to have if you want to participate in the economy.

 

What I'm suggesting here is that maybe the other skills could get an economy handout. To think about how to do this, we can track back to why smithing and tailoring are profitable. They each take items dropped by uniques, and turn it into a very useful item to have. So its gathering process is the product of a unique fight. Perhaps the other skills lacking profitable products could get a gathering item from the result of a unique fight too.

 

For example, maybe the troll king could drop a felled tree(its club) of a wood type unobtainable by any other source. This when used in the creation of a weapon (think combat stave,  fancy clubs[expand that club skill gains!] or like the Staff of Land) could allow the player to have the advantage in combat, and then be both rare, and therefore valuable. ideally the item would be of equal value to that of dragon armors. 

 

That of course is just an example of what could be done. Wurm's economy fluctuates and for the devs to know what adding any given item will do to the market and to the game is nearly impossible. Personally I would just like to see all the crafting skills be equally as profitable, and therefore equally useful. Making that happen would help balance both the economy and the professions within the game, and I think may even make the skill system feel more vast than it already is.

 

Tell me below what you think of making all the crafting skills profitable!

 

~Lei

Edited by Lei

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I think I question the logic that creation of those armors is significant economically. The materials are 95+% of the cost of the item, and my experience is that improving the QL of worn out armor and weapons is the big ticket economically, even if it is spread out over time.

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Personally I've found people need more imps for weapons (since weapons take so much damage so quickly while hunting) and for tool imps.

 

That's weaponsmithing, blacksmithing, and (fine) carpentry as the big winners.

 

This doesn't include bulk goods that rely on masonry like bricks and mortar or planks that use carpentry (again).

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As Darmalus said, the value of the dragon armours isn't in the skill to produce them (there are people doing that for free), it's in the materials.  When I was PAS'ing for cash, I made a lot more off making basic plate than I ever did off scale creation or imps.

 

Having said that, while smithing is probably the most economically valuable skill, since it covers a lot of the tools, with (fine) carpentry following, we do try to utilise other skills where it makes sense to do so.  I'm not sure that adding more unique drops improves things, but we're open to new uses for existing skills.

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enchanting is probably the biggest winner of all skills, if you have the farming supplies, the cooking skill for the favor and the skill on your priest to have reliable casts, followed by the imps on weapons, armors and tools that are not directly swapped for a new one (read enchanter business again).

 

the main trouble for those crafting skils is the lack of imping needed later on (or the fact players will take care of it on their own).

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I understand the point you are trying to make, and I would like to see more profitable talents as well, but I think part of your suggestion falls short. Breeding of animals can also be very profitable if done properly. The sale of Bulk goods gained by some of the nature skills can also make decent money. 

 

it really comes down to finding something you enjoy doing and becoming good enough to make your trade goods profitable. 

Edited by koroth
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I do agree that my post is flawed now that I see it from other crafters perspectives. Imping items really is the money maker. What I'm saying is some skills dont have often-used items that make them to need imping often. How often do you have to imp a pottery amphora? not often. We need more items that are used often, so they take damage and require imps at the same rate that dragon armor needs imped.

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Rope making used to be very popular for making coin before Nahjo....

 

As folks say, the money is in imping, which is why skills such as alchemy and cooking (both creation, no real imping) are never going to be money makers.  The closest we have are dye sales, but those don't net much.

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4 hours ago, Lei said:

How often do you have to imp a pottery amphora? not often.

 

Well... technically, only once... which make pottery annoying, since they cannot be repaired or imped again once cooked. Herbs QL from pots are tied to the pot QL... so there is a job for potters... if we want high end QL herbs that is... also knowing that the pots will decay in racks (which is quite annoying for the reasons mentioned above).

 

4 hours ago, Lei said:

We need more items that are used often, so they take damage and require imps at the same rate that dragon armor needs imped.

 

Careful on that, adding tedium and new chores help no ones, as long as the items are new and have a valid use without being an extra step for anything, it can be helpful. Decay for no others reasons than boosting the economy will only get people to work on the skills themselves to be able to get decent quality for free (or make more players leave... as usual).

 

I suggested a long time ago to have new parts to add to the boats just like we outfit horses (or unicorns now), higher QL sails, oars and ropes to increase the boat speed (and not only the hull speed like it is now tied to shipbuilding)... or like others suggested new weapons / throwable weapons tied to others skills why not acid flasks made out of pottery and lye (or another alchemy based poison), dealing damage in a small area... throwing bolts crafted through carpentry/fine carpentry and so on.

 

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I agree for more high end materials, new spider like unique that drops spider silk for highly durable priest friendly armour comes to mind maybe, or some special wood from forest giant like you mentioned but cant quite find use for it, also you forgot about moon metals for smithing which also can be considered as high end mats for smithing. But the premisse that proffessions are more profitable because of these mats is completly wrong. From creation aspect you always get more money from selling those mats which requires none skill whatsoever than to make items/set and imp it. Tbh drake hide sets are only thing that needs imping from leatherworking items more often but does it make more profitable from imping iron weapons for living, hell no i would say, so whater skill is profitable or not doesnt realy depend on those high tier mats, but on skill itself...

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Just reading about profit and coins gain as being the end-all of a skill makes me a bit sicks, I think that the purely economical aproach to ANY aspect of the game should be inmediately dismissed, and the proponent shunned, and his house probably egged... maybe kick his dog in the process.

 

Bringing more end-game, utilitarian, high quality products for skills that dont have any is something I can agree with, but the list of skills you mentioned is not the one that should be looked at, cooking was recently reworked, carpentry and masonry have apropiate perks from leveling them up, you dont need a magical OP club to make high carpentry skill an asset.

 

its the dumbest aproach to an issue I have seen in ages in this forum, so a huge -1

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As i do agree that economy is a part of the game i don´t think that the game should be changed around which skills can make money and which not. There is always a market for everything just sometimes hard to find. For example potters can still make money by mass producing items and so forward. Same with other skills. I think the game should not pay players for any specific skills which are "out of the making money skillset".  So a -1 from me. I do understand that many people gain extra IRL resources by playing this game, but i think its a nice bonus instead of the point of the game. 

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19 hours ago, Lei said:

I do agree that my post is flawed now that I see it from other crafters perspectives. Imping items really is the money maker. What I'm saying is some skills dont have often-used items that make them to need imping often. How often do you have to imp a pottery amphora? not often. We need more items that are used often, so they take damage and require imps at the same rate that dragon armor needs imped.

 

I can't get behind messing around with damage on items for the purpose of trying to further an in-game economy, I get the fact you need to sell things to allow some coin to come into your pocket as you believe others are.

 

One thing I think your fail to grasp is that whatever skill you have in mind to see an increase in sales on your end will be bloated with crafters in weeks, Wurm is very long in the tooth thesedays for many to really make the game free solely by in game item sales, it does happen but nowhere close to what it once was.

 

 

 

 

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not going to bash about the economy side of thing. people did it well enough already. i'd going to talka bout this:

On 24/10/2017 at 9:14 PM, Lei said:

For example, maybe the troll king could drop a felled tree(its club) of a wood type unobtainable by any other source. This when used in the creation of a weapon (think combat stave,  fancy clubs[expand that club skill gains!] or like the Staff of Land) could allow the player to have the advantage in combat, and then be both rare, and therefore valuable. ideally the item would be of equal value to that of dragon armors. 

this means more people will hog the uniques, not sharing in the loot and instead sell those are super high cost along with the bloods potions and hides. 

as it was pointed in an other post suggesting uniques be easier to find. there is a 'mafia' running most hunts, and they hog all the loot so making them more reasons to hog it wont help, only make things worse.

and i know i'm going to get ###### for this message, but it has to be said: a few people run the show and dont share. its the harsh truth.

 

and if you want rare wood things gather up the failed rift bush logs. oleander wood here :) 

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On my WU server i have create new properties for 2 of the standard metals to both lessen the gap between glimmer/addy and add more value to metalurgy.

 

Bronze weapons have 5% swing timer.

Steel has 5%bonus damage.

 

Both have cause a large increase in the production of weapons and more people doing metalurgy. Little things like this can change the game.

 

However, the biggest issue with wurm is the lack of solid item sinks. People keep occumulating, then eventually a deed pops and someone collects all that stuff. Redistrubites it rinse and repeat.

Edited by JockII

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