Decrease prices of Sweetwater Crafting/ Increasing Ore drop rates

[snekben]

1. Significantly decrease the cost of Crafting for Sweetwater Gear
- Current prices are 55mil for bare basic crafts, 75-85mil upon addition of strengthening crystals which is an absurd amount not factoring in the ores required (To be addressed in 2nd suggestion)*
- Due to server meso rate/drop rate 55mil-85mil equates to significant hours of farming (Assuming pure monster hunting and not selling of WS/Scrolled gear to other players)
- The material alone (excluding gems) to craft the gear already poses as a "challenge"/hurdle to overcome when it comes to crafting [Weapons requiring Empress etc which is a Weekly raid makes it even worse]
- Most Sweetwater gear are Chaos Scrolled items or Weapon with Gems, placing a lot of RNG on how it will turn out. All it needs is a bad roll with the Chaos Scroll and you potentially lose up to a week's** worth of effort of preparation for crafting (Based on current server population for running expeditions to get spirit points and overall time spent to farm mesos/gems/etcs)**

Suggestions:
- Lower crafting costs and not have it increase with the addition of strengthening gems. Exact amount to be determined based on discussion with the community and considering in-game features/factors
- Increase meso/item drop rate across monsters

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2. Increase the drop rates of Ores
- Crafting gears using Maker skill is such a key feature of achieving End-Game gear and almost all of them you would want to include multiple Advanced Strengthening Gems to achieve the optimal results
- Current ore drop rates are abysmal at best. Farming with FMA mages for ores could barely get me 20-30 ores per hour (I have only tried a few times and have spoken to friends about it. But if anyone has a better grasp of the situation please let me know!)
- Assumption that a player is unlucky and in the worst case scenario he/she will need 1000 (10*10 ores for 1 Intermediate * 10) Ores to get just 1 Advanced crystal. Most gears you would place 2-3 Strengthening gems meaning a whopping total of 3000 Ores to be farmed just for 1 Attempt at RNG.

Suggestions:
- Increase ore drop rates across monsters. The current 0.7%-0.9% on most monsters feels horrible even with the 1.2x Drop buff effect.
- Increase strengthening chances percentage to skip levels and introduce Basic -> Advanced chance


Overall
I think the current state of things needs to be tweaked slightly to be realistic/ improve overall QoL. It feels as one has to either be botting or farming close to 6-7 hours per day and spend another 3+ hours to do expeditions to get the BARE MINIMUM. Of course the trade-off is always time where people can eventually reach there at a much slower pace. However I would think weeks of casual playing to get an attempt at RNG is not that desirable.

If you're one of those lucky players where all of your gears are 1 hit wonders then congrats to you! Unfortunately I am not one and I would think majority of the community aren't either, hence this post. Please feel free to comment your opinions on the points I brought up.

 

[Aralaya]

and introduce Basic -> Advanced chance

already a thing. when crafting 10 basics into 1 intermediate you have a chance of getting an advanced.

i agree, though, with the decreasing of the cost of crafting the sw gear, its intense. was around 175m to craft sw earrings when i last checked.

i disagree, however, with the increasing the drop rate of ores. i think they drop quite enough. not everyone is going to be using their ores and will be selling them, thats how i get most of my ores tbh. if we get an increase in ore drops everyones gunna be able to put adv crystals in everything. which i dont mind btw, i just dont think that would be very beneficial in the long run. i have at least 5 adv dark and wisdom crystals and most of them come from crafting intermediates and getting the lucky chance of getting adv.

 

[snekben]

already a thing. when crafting 10 basics into 1 intermediate you have a chance of getting an advanced.

i agree, though, with the decreasing of the cost of crafting the sw gear, its intense. was around 175m to craft sw earrings when i last checked.

i disagree, however, with the increasing the drop rate of ores. i think they drop quite enough. not everyone is going to be using their ores and will be selling them, thats how i get most of my ores tbh. if we get an increase in ore drops everyones gunna be able to put adv crystals in everything. which i dont mind btw, i just dont think that would be very beneficial in the long run. i have at least 5 adv dark and wisdom crystals and most of them come from crafting intermediates and getting the lucky chance of getting adv.

Hello! Ah I think I was thinking Refined->Basic having a chance of getting advanced. My bad on the initial write up.

Regarding the Ores, do you mind sharing an estimate of the Ore Farming rate that you are getting right now? Eg. Per hour.

Also, if the solution is to rely on buying from others, I do not think it is really sustainable especially at current server population levels. Based on you the Dark and Wisdom crystals + your Signature is a Bishop. I am assuming you decided to main a mage? Also, for the "not using of ores" I am assuming people are just selling ores that do not fit into their primary stat.

The proportion of Non-Mages to Mages main is probably 80-20 (Just a ball park figure). Considering that mages have Elemental staffs that do not require crafting, this split might even become ~ 85-15. In this case the reason why you might be able to get wisdom/dark crystals is because this 85% of the population is supplying the 15%. But on the flipside, is the supply of "ores not being used" from the 15% able to satisfy the demand of the 85%? How will the Non-Mage classes get their ores if there isn't much to buy on the market.

That could be a benefit of playing Mage - Cheaper ores because of over supply and lesser reliance on Maker. But not everyone will want to main a mage and even if more people do and the server becomes primary mage based, the demand and supply will just flip and the same issue persists.

Additionally to the point of putting adv crystals into crafted equipment. Taking an end-game weapon for example, if you have to commit to an average of 60 White Scrolls just to perfect it. Wouldn't you want the best stats available as the starting base.
For other non-weapon end-game gears, a potential 5-10 stat boost from crystals is almost 2x good rolls from a Chaos scroll. Seeing how tough it is to craft those gears, I think most people would rather hedge the RNG risk by putting in crystals.

The only time where not putting in advanced crystals is recommended is in the current game state where everyone is using "temporary" gears as the server progresses towards End-Game gears. Eg. Heavily investing in the cheap to craft reverse gear for marginal gains which will eventually be replaced by timeless/sweetwater very quickly does not seem very enticing

 

[4thJobHokage]

Admittedly I didn't read your entire post, but I disagree in general that things should be made easier, though I do agree that there shouldn't be extra cost for using better Crystals, the extra cost is already present in the Advanced Crystal costing 30m or whatever more than intermediates, so 3 Advanced Crystals is already an extra cost of 90m, I don't see why on top of that the crafting cost itself increases.

Maybe I'm being too elitist, but Sweetwater gear isn't for "casual" players, it's the best gear in the game, it's for the players who want to put the hours in. In saying that, when you're high enough level gradually it won't take weeks for 1 gear, closer to 2 efficient days. 2x CZAK + 2x nHT + 2x CScarga + 2x nZak is enough points for all of the supreme crystals & spirit coins. At the levels where people are making sweetwater gear a lot a CZAK is maybe 30 minutes, Horntail 20, CScarga 15, nZaK 6 minutes? So for 2:30 hours, maybe 3 including preparation you can cover all that stuff. 1000 Dark Ancient Stone Golem etc can be hunted in an hour & that is the hardest of the etc out of the SW gear that is currently made. People buy the etc because they want SW gear right at level 180 where it's too hard to kill Ancient Dark Stone Golems. Another 3 hours of bossing a separate day gets 90 points (this is without a single CHT), so 2 days of this much bossing is 180 SP or 3 Chaos Scrolls, so you could use that to have enough mesos to pay the maker cost + some crystals. So at 3 hours/day I think 3 hours is enough time to maker a Sweetwater item. A week if you're playing maybe 1.5 hours/day. A hardcore player who does say 9 hours in a day could maker 7 SW items in a week.

For the maker stuff that needs Empress Diamonds, I think the cost of maker is so negligible compared to the total cost that it's a non-issue that the maker cost is high, even with 3 Advanced Crystals (though I do agree it doesn't maker sense the maker cost so much more when using better crystals) is miniscule compared to number of WS needed. 60 WS is 4.8B, so having to pay 150m to maker something + 120m worth of Spirit Points imo isn't an issue.

I would rather gearing take a long time so that there is something to do other than just level up past 200. Some players may even want to hit 250 & still play in order to improve gear, but if it's "normal" to get perfect SW weapon, & every SW item chaos'd to good attack pre-level 230~250 it discourages higher levels to play in my opinion.

I don't think ore drop rates need to be higher. I've never had to hunt for them, I just buy from people & have made multiple Advanced Strengths, an Advanced Dark, Advanced Dex, etc.

 

[chinny]

Can we have a npc that allow us to exchange 10 chaos scroll for 1 chaos scroll of goodness with 50% success chance? Just suggesting.

 

[Aralaya]

Regarding the Ores, do you mind sharing an estimate of the Ore Farming rate that you are getting right now? Eg. Per hour.

i wish i could, but my ores get collected while i farm other things. i dont pay too much attention to the ores i collect.

Ah I think I was thinking Refined->Basic having a chance of getting advanced

i think this is a terrible idea. i think it would make adv crystals way too abundant. also a lucky person shouldnt be rewarded with an adv crystal for farming 10 ores when normally its 1k ores.