WP

Attract and keep more crafters by improving BOD rewards and/or making it easier to fill Large BOD. I have done easily over a hundred (or perhaps over two hundred) Smithy BOD now I think and yet only two of them were large. The reward for each was mostly gold and tokens, which are things that can be had via other venues. I'm not saying that they should be easy but for the time put into BOD the rewards seem to be far less than those rewards had for putting the same amount of time into Champ spawns. The time to gather resources, collect BOD, manage/search through BOD, craft and fill BOD etc. is not trivial. If there is a need to add risk that is similar to losing Fame/Karma in Champ spawns then put some risk into the crafting. Since you can gain fame by turning in BOD, perhaps you should be able to lose it when you fail to craft something? It would be nice to also have large BOD for weapons if possible.

I don't have all the answers as I'm not sure what can and can't be done. I realize that some coding is not possible without the right programmer so some things are impossible at this time. I'm just looking for ways to improve the crafting experience/rewards to balance things out a bit. It would be nice if it were possible to place treasure chests in NEW locations (undocumented) that required high Cartography to find, high Mining to dig up, high Lockpicking to open and high Remove Trap to make safe to open. Then perhaps high Stealing to pilfer. Put all or any of that into a somewhat dangerous area (but not so dangerous that you MUST be a Champ killer to survive) and you've made crafting more valuable. There can be more to a challange than just killing and surviving. Skills, wit, etc.

I'm just hoping that there is something that can be done. With all of the Fishing, Treasure Chests, BOD, etc. options for Crafters, hopefully something can be tweaked to make it more rewarding. I have no problem with adventurers being able to reap the biggest rewards but crafting should have something it can offer that you can't get simply by killing mobs. Another thought/idea... make it possible for a crafter to get to 140 skill in something without having to play 10 years and then allow that skill level to do something special. The +5 crafting gear should not be easy but the rariety of having all the parts to a large BOD and then maybe still not getting that +5 gear is more daunting than any mob. Death is easy. Spending 100s of hours for naught is to be feared.

Sorry for the long rant. I just wanted to get some ideas across and then cross my fingers. Like I said, I know that some things are simply not possible... and one more point. I have not done any treasure chests (other than the training spawns) and not much fishing so forgive me if I sell that experience short. Perhaps there is more there than I think.

I agree, I don't think I've ever filled a large BOD (but then again resoorce gathering isn't my favourite pasttime).
I can see where you are coming from regarding treasure maps too. Although I'm gradually raising my carto to 120, I'm only doing that because "its there" as you only really need 100 carto and lock pick to do a level 6 chest.
I will eventually get around to raising fishing above 100 but the rewards are quite limited as far as I know.
I remember ever since they introduced POF and repair deeds, Crafting has been in the doldruums.
Some Good Ideas here though

Just to point out a lot of skills are not pointless at 120. Some skills still don't have a 100% chance of being successful at 100, even at 120 like Keys. Although some are and some don't even go above 100 without an elixer... Difficulty makes you play longer , give you a goal and determination hehe I'm still bitter about how long it takes now to collect organics... lol but it did make bio's more valuable and no one wants to sell organics haha

cartography doesn't give a 100% chance of decoding a lvl 6 map at gm, however, it doesn't take much to decode the map at that level. The only thing we are pointing out is that there is nothing that someone at 120 carto can do that someone at 100 can't.
As for Organics.....if you think they are hard to get now, you should have tried a couple of months ago when they only dropped on dungeon bosses and the drop amount halved!. You would take forever to find a boss that was up and not being camped. I remember going a week and just getting 154 organics at the end of it!
At least they are pretty easily available now if you know where to look

SlickBlade wrote:... Difficulty makes you play longer , give you a goal and determination

This is true but I'm not speaking of difficulty such as the kind that you can overcome by persistance (learning what it takes to kill a particular champ, for example, and then killing that champ a 100 times to get what you are looking for). I mean the kind where the odds simply aren't there to give you a reasonable chance of reaching a goal. What if you needed a particular drop from a champ but that drop rate was one in a million? With those odds you may have to kill that champ 500,000 times to get your item and consider yourself lucky that it didn't take a million kills for it! Now add the possibility that you didn't even know what the drop rate was and so you dedicated 10 years of your life to it! Of course most would give up long before that but my point is that we should have better odds on some things, if at all possible.

In particular, the BOD system could use a few tweaks so that we don't have to give up on ever being able to fill out the high tier Lg. BOD.

As far as the BODs I agree. In my short time here so far I have WAY more sBODS than lBODS. Perhaps if there were a way to trade in X number of sBODS for one of your choice. Or perhaps the ability to add say two 10s to a 20.

From the commands page
"[owltrbod or [bodtime or [bt = Display a windows showing the times till your next Blacksmith, Tailor, and Taming BODs are available.
[cutbod = Allows you to cut a small 20 piece BOD into two 10 piece BODs, or transform a small 15 piece BOD into a small 10 piece BOD. Works on Smith and Tailor BODs only.
[cuttamebod = Allows you to cut a small 20 piece BOD into two 10 piece BODs, or transform a small 15 piece BOD into a small 10 piece BOD. Works on Taming BODs only.
[addtamebod = Allows you to meld together two small 10 piece BODs into one small 20 piece BOD. Works on Taming BODs only."

Thanks Blue. That'll come in handy.

Balthazar wrote:As far as the BODs I agree. In my short time here so far I have WAY more sBODS than lBODS. Perhaps if there were a way to trade in X number of sBODS for one of your choice. Or perhaps the ability to add say two 10s to a 20.

Ya so you would think you end up with "WAY" more sBOD than lBOD but that is not the case... I thought exactly as you do when I first started on them; but realizing those large will mostly just collect dust, they do add up.

So here is a bit more info, based on my experience.

* You end up with more large because you don't often get that one or two rare and missing sBOD that you need to fullfill that lBOD. You indeed might collect more sBOD from the Blacksmith but when you get duplicates of those it is best to just fill them and turn them in for a new one... and given you can cut or add BOD you don't even need to keep all 6 types (10, 15 & 20; exceptional or no requirement). This process eventually leads to tons of large BOD that may take a very long time to fullfill. (side note, I think I combined an exceptional 10 with a no requirement 10 and got an exceptional 20. I'd do a test case just to be certain, esp. if you can't afford to have that 20 in the wrong flavor.

* You do know that the best way to get more BOD is by doing a dozen or as many as you can stand, all at one time, right? Then you turn them in by dragging from your inventory onto the Blacksmith. At that time you get a reward and after that reward you immediately click on the Smith again and select "Bulk Order Deeds" to get another one... immediately. I've turned in 20 to 30 and got new ones, within a few minutes. So by running through that process you eliminate many small BOD (mostly weapons, that don't come in the large BOD flavor) and end up with larger ones that you don't know what to do with.

* Obviously you can save up hundreds of BOD as I have and have a crafting session to test the odds of getting some decent ones. I have no idea what influences it all, probably very random but if LUCK plays a part somehow that would explain some things.

Thanks Quen, I never knew about getting another BOD for each one you turn in. Does this work for all BODs or just Blacksmith ones?

Edit: Ok, I just tried it on the Tailor and it does work. However, it only works if you drop the BOD onto the NPC. If you use the "Claim" button on the BOD, you can't get another one.