Forums » Crafting and Gathering

Exploration for Tradeskills

    • 259 posts
    July 13, 2018 5:17 AM PDT

    While reading through the questions and answers that The Fires of Heaven posted on their forums, thank you for that by the way, great post, I came to a two-part question and an answer that really caught my attention as a Crafter.

     The questions were: 

    Q. What is your betting guess on how long it will take players to discover every dungeon or zone in the initial release? :) 

    With a stated focus on exploration do you think the team is focused on rewarding that with many hidden or keyed dungeons/even zones or are we just trying to get some base content out.

     Here was the reply: 

    Tim: We’re always wanting to reward exploration the game won't feel right without it. Especially with the perception system being a big part of our game. Exploring may not always lead to some undiscovered dungeon but there has to be areas where players feel off the grid so to speak and have a potential payoff. For me, personally, it’s a big focus when being in design meetings for a zone. I know Joppa feels it as well. Current example, we’re working on a large wilderness area in one of our zones and we want it to feel wild and untamed, we also want people to get excited about the possibility of a reward due to their exploration. We can leverage so much to accomplish that feeling. It doesn’t always have to be uber loot, it can be more subtle, from a camp of bandits that drop good coin, to a few rare animals that have valuable pelts or even a secluded fishing hole. It’s really one of my favorite things to think about as we build our world.

     This is what caught my eye: 

    It doesn’t always have to be uber loot, it can be more subtle, from a camp of bandits that drop good coin, to a few rare animals that have valuable pelts or even a secluded fishing hole. 

     As a crafter I can spend many hours doing nothing but searching for tradeskill items. To me personally I find this to be a very relaxing time. Sometimes it’s just nice to get away for a little while from the fast pace of adventuring and fighting. I love the thought that in Pantheon while doing what I love I may come upon that rare animal that has that rare pelt that I have been searching for in the most unexpected place. If I had not been exploring I would not have found that animal. To be a crafter is to be an explorer, always searching and on the lookout for those rare items needed to create those very rare recipe items in your chosen trade. Thank you to Tim Wathen Game Designer for that exciting response and for letting us know that we can look forward too many more valuable items to appear where we least expect them. Do you like exploring for tradeskill items?

    • 151 posts
    July 13, 2018 8:58 AM PDT

    It depends on the game for me. In SWG I loved it. In EQ2 everyone ends up with the same recipes anyway. I hope they can make crafting feel like SWG and EQ2 had a love-child. I would love to see crafting gear that was as varied and detailed as SWG with static loot that dropped from MoBs like EQ and EQ2.