Ask the Experts

[Billybgame]

[quote=Metropolis Man";p="304421"]Crafting has always confused me a bit. I remember the first time I crafted an item in ES and I couldn't use it because I was below the required level. I thought I had done something wrong. To me it still seems like a crap shoot — put in your item, perfect gem, Dragon Stone variation, jewel, and cross your fingers for good affixes.

It's the affixes that confuse me. How are these determined? Is it my character level? Is it the level of the item I am crafting?[/quote]

This was hidden away in my old Crafting items question thread. I'm thinking you'll find this useful. Of course it's right at the Arreat Summit site, and Tsuru said, at least at the time, that nothings changed from vanilla LoD. Invaluable info, for sure. Enjoy!

Crafted Items have 1-4 Random Magical Prefixes/Suffixes
On top of those fixed properties, a Crafted Item can have from 1-4 standard Rare and Magic Prefix and Suffixes. These are generated pretty much the same way as a Rare item.

At ilvls 1-30, there's a 40% chance of 1 affix and a 20% chance each of 2, 3 or 4 affixes.
At ilvls 31-50, there's a 60% chance of 2 affixes and a 20% chance each of 3 or 4 affixes.
At ilvls 51-70, there's an 80% chance of 3 affixes and a 20% chance of 4 affixes.
At ilvls 71+, there's a 100% chance of 4 affixes.

[Metropolis Man]

Thanks, Bill. What really confused me was not so much how many affixes you get in Crafting, but if there's any rhyme or reason to what you end up with in each affix.

I think my general strategy when I start Hans' tourney will be to focus on getting decent Rares and forging Jewels for them to get me through Normal. After I kill Baal, I'll go back and do the Special Areas and pick the highest level Exceptional Magics that drop and Craft from those. And that chart is really helpful, Bill — I'll make sure I don't Craft the first time until I'm level 51 or higher. I'll already have the forged Jewels ready to socket.

[Billybgame]

Ok. Nope, no rhyme or reason to WHAT affixes. That's why they're RANDOM

[Blinn]

There are some other factors to consider Metro.

More random affixes means a higher level penalty, in the case of having 4 affixes a crafted item will incur a huge +22 level penalty over the normal level requirement. Thats how at level 70 something I crafted a helm with level requirement of 92. Doesn't do much good to get back a result like that.

You need to have 8 crafts before you start Nightmare. I don't know if you want to stay in normal until 51, but either way I think for the early crafting you should stick with the legacy crafts since they are cheaper. Save the expensive crafting for when your clvl allows you to get better affixes, because no matter what you will run out of resources.

[Metropolis Man]

I forgot about the Crafting penalty. Probably because I've never seen it in the database. What are the specifics of the penalty?

[Blinn]

from the wiki:

Code: Select all

Recipes	                         Level Requirement
Crafted item with 1 random mod	  +13
Crafted item with 2 random mods	 +16
Crafted item with 3 random mods	 +19
Crafted item with 4 random mods	 +22

[Metropolis Man]

Thanks, Blinn. I'm on the Wiki every day now, and I had never noticed that. Wow. Those are pretty insane penalties.

[Logger_120]

[quote=Metropolis Man";p="304502"]Thanks, Blinn. I'm on the Wiki every day now, and I had never noticed that. Wow. Those are pretty insane penalties.[/quote]

No kidding. I didn't know that either. That really makes crafting suck bad. I wonder if tsuru can do something about this.

[Blinn]

I suppose the penalties made sense in LoD, since crafting was a way to find very rare properties, like crushing blow gloves, knockback gloves and fast cast belts and amulets. Eastern Sun is much further along when it comes to enhancing items though, so crafting here offers essentially nothing you can't get with D-stoning, socketing, and forging. Losing forging, ingredient costs, and getting the level penalty makes crafted items probably the worst way to go to equip a character.

One example:

A 4-affix crafted weapon loses 11 D-stone applications. Using +12% ED D-stoning, that means by being a crafted item you would be missing out on a potential 132% ED. Here is the new class crafting weapon recipe:

Magic Amazon Weapon
Spider's silk
Perfect Emerald
Any Jewel

+1 To Amazon Skill Levels
25-35% Increased Attack Speed
+125-175% Enhanced Damage
1-4 Random Affixes

The loss of D-stoning room and the loss of the forging almost negates the plus skill and the ED%. So what is left compared to a rare?

You pay 1 perfect gem, 1 d stone, and a jewel for a single random roll of an item with 4 affixes and some IAS. Or you can gamble with gold or buy 2 flawless gems to reroll a rare weapon with up to 6 affixes. Not to mention the ancient scroll recipe for ethereal rares.

Crafting loses, and it loses big. Any other item type, be it rare, runeword, unique, or set is much easier to get something useful from and they will be orders of magnitude cheaper at the same time. In terms of gold cost, each class craft costs over 1.5 perfect gems. That is roughly 1 million gold for what is essentially a single gamble. How many crafts does it take to get something usable? And then imagine how many things that money could have gambled.

edit:

my math is bad, real bad. its not 1 million, but ~650k. Still very very high.

[Nameless]

Two of the crafting mods can be equalled with forging/dstoning (more or less) which esentially gives you a rare with 1 fixed mod and 4 random mods. They can be as good as a rare, but not better and they are quite a bit more expensive.

Basically a crafted item (class craft) costs one ancient scroll (2 dstones for the gem and one more for the craft), a junk jewel and the base item.

AFAIK there is nothing that can be done about the level penalty, except maybe turning the item into a rare with the same mods, but then you couldn't prevent forging the item (maybe)...

I can understand that the full forging could be too powerful for a REALLY good crafted item. But how would it be if weaker forging was allowed, say the same as jewels (1 skilltab, 2/3 rune forging, maybe a 1/2 stat forging) ?

[Blinn]

I wouldn't mind just seeing the preset mods changed to something else. Right now they give pretty standard mods that you can find everywhere like stats, resists, enhanced defense and damage. There isn't really a point in crafting if that is all you get, there is nothing special about those mods even if they are useful. If crafting gave you mods that are hard to find elsewhere than it would make more sense to actually make them, just like the gemwords which may be weak but are still very useful for their proc spells.

[Nameless]

There aren't really very many mods that can't spawn on rares, except for a few quite powerful ones (CBF, Freeze, RIP, oskills, on-equip-aura, ...)

I find that the non-class weapon crafts are quite weak, especially the elemental damage is quite neglible. The only useful ones are the ones with CB and DS. It would be better to add similar mods to the other classes' non-class crafts (Freeze Target, Open Wounds, Flee, Slow Target, RIP, Blind for a few possibilities).

It would also be nice if the weapon crafts were not automatically determined by the weapon type, but by a different recipe. e.g. Normal Recipe = current class weapon craft; with ID scroll = non-class weapon craft; with TP scroll = class craft with caster mods (Mana, FCR, Mana regen instead of %ED and IAS).

[Blinn]

Thats true that many of the non-rare mods are generally very powerful, but given the overall mediocrity of the crafting recipes in their current state I think some of them in moderate amounts wouldn't be that unbalancing. I mean for the price and limitations, crafted items need to give something back...and right now they aren't giving enough to bother with.

Aside from some of the things you mentioned, there are also tough to find mods like:

% piercing
% DR
% magic resistance
absorb and % absorb
+X% elemental skill damage
-X% enemy elemental resists
CtC on striking/attack/struck
spell charges

Such mods aren't booleans like CBF or RIP, so they can kept in low amounts to keep the crafts from being overpowered while still being desirable. Some "based on clvl" mods would be an option too, so that crafts can actually grow with the character.

Things like CBF, on-equip auras, and oskills are definitely way too much for crafted items. Unless the crafting cost for those items is something ridiculously expensive.

[Metropolis Man]

http://homepage3.nifty.com/miyoshino/es ... n.htm#drui

Okay, so the Crafting penalty would be applied to the required level of 20 for a Druid Shaman wand, not the ilvl of 30, correct? If 4 affixes come up in Crafting this it would then have a required level of 42. What exactly are the chances of staff mods turning up on class-specific equipment?

[uman]

Other than the obvious face-value, is there anything else useful to stuff like the Mountain Dew potion or the grass?

[Nameless]

@Metro:

I'm not 100% sure the Crafting level penalty works exactly the same as the normal level penalty, but I'm 99% sure. Then the penalty is added to the highest level req of the item, any of the affixes or socketables.

The lv 30 of a Shaman Wand is only used to determine if monsters can drop it or if it upgrades when gambling. Pretty similar to the item level needed to get affixes. You WON'T get any Shaman Wand with an item level below 30. (Actually I think I have seen items drop with a lower level, but they were all of low quality).

e.g.
If that wand had spawned with oskill Melee Mastery, then the level req would be 36 + 22 = 58.
Now if you socketed it with a Sescheronya's Spark, then the level req would jump to 60 + 22 = 82.

[Metropolis Man]

Thanks, Nameless. I had never really payed attention to affixes before and required levels. They never seemed to be an issue before in other tournaments. Obviously, it's a big issue in the Crafting tournament. One final question —

[quote=Metropolis Man";p="304545"]What exactly are the chances of staff mods turning up on class-specific equipment?[/quote]

I guess what I'm really asking is — are my chances greater in getting Druid Staffmods when Crafting Druid class equipment vs. if I Crafted other equipment?

[Nameless]

[quote=Metropolis Man";p="304557"]I guess what I'm really asking is — are my chances greater in getting Druid Staffmods when Crafting Druid class equipment vs. if I Crafted other equipment?[/quote]
I don't know what the to get staffmods on Druid item are...

but you can ONLY get them on Druid items (Druid Rings/Ammys, Pelts and Oak Branches).

Apart from that you can only get them on items with fixed mods (sets/uniques and runewords).

Or have you EVER seen a maul with + to a druid skill (not oskill) ?

[uman]

Is there any way to upgrade a non-merc set item? My guess is "no", but I wanted to ask. I don't see anything in the cube recipes to upgrade sets (although maybe I missed it). Maybe a re-roll of a set item affect its base defense (for example) or just the add-on stats?

I ask because I finally finished getting all of Achilles' set, but the base defense is just horrible.

[Metropolis Man]

You can't upgrade non-merc Set items. But, rerolling a Set item for a chance at a better mod is simple. Scroll a little down to Set Reroll — http://homepage3.nifty.com/miyoshino/es ... _n.htm#set

[Hans]

@Metro
I believe Nameless has it right that the level penalty applies to the affix or the level of the item, whichever is higher. I will test on my test character a high level jewel on a low level craft and check to see if the penalty is added to the level of the jewel.

[Marqs]

Hi all !
I was confused when D-stoned assasin claws with +mana and +life per kill when used Blade Sentinel - is it bug or feature, dunno but it wont work. Can anyone enlighten me which mods work with assassin traps ? I am especially interested how Crusing Blow and Deadly Strike are calculated.
Thx in advance.

[Xc0n]

It doesnt work with traps because they are considered minions in the game. Only thing that works AFAIK with the +mana per kill is Cold Blast, i think you better try to get some meditation merc or oskill meditation and alot of regenerate mana, or try to get a good damage weapon with lots of mana leech that could solve your problem right there.

[Rripperr]

Here's something that's been nagging at me for a while:

What exactly is pierce and how does it work?

[Metropolis Man]

If a skill pierces a monster than it travels right through its body and has a chance to hit another monster. Some skills do this 24/7 such as the Sorceress' Fire Bolt and the Druid's Arctic Blast; other skills pierce based on a "chance to" percentage.