As part of the Combat and Progression Update, we are bringing more of the planned systems for crafting gathering online, beginning with progression and difficulty systems. These two parts build on the framework we already have to create a richer and more engaging gameplay experience and lay the groundwork for additional features we want to bring to both gathering and crafting in the future.
Core Concepts
Let’s start with some core concepts for Crafting and Gathering Progression:
- Crafting and Gathering will have their own experience and leveling progression with 50 levels in each, separate from your progression in your Adventuring class.
- You will earn experience for your chosen Crafting and Gathering professions through pursuing those activities.
- Both Gathering and Crafting will be set up so that new players can try many different activities at low levels and then specialize further into their chosen professions as they level up.
- Players will not be able to level every crafting or gathering profession up to 50 but will have to choose what they want to do on each character.
- Crafting will have a chance of failure, and that chance will be higher for making more difficult items.
Got all that? Good. Let’s dive in, starting with Gathering.
Progressing as a Gatherer
When you start a new character, you will have an opportunity to visit a gathering trainer in your starting city. This gathering trainer will unlock all the gathering professions up to Level 10. They will also provide you with an initial set of starter tools to use.
You will initially level up as a gatherer through completing any related gathering activity or related quest activity. Each time you improve your level, three things will happen:
- Your skill caps for your relevant gathering skills will increase (up to a maximum of 50 skill at level 10 in a profession).
- You will gain a Gathering Mastery Point.
- Your Gathering Precision and Gathering Fortitude stats will improve.
We’re taking this approach to make it easier for new players to get started, try different types of gathering and and crafting, and to let them be reasonably self-sufficient (in terms of being able to gather their main crafting materials) up through mid-level crafting.
Gathering Mastery
At level 10, you’ll unlock the Gathering Mastery System. This system works a lot like Adventuring Mastery but is more tightly integrated with your overall progression. You will have to spend some of your gathering mastery points to unlock level cap increases, and you can only unlock a level cap increase for two of your five professions. This means that to progress past level 10, you will have to choose which two out of the five that you want to progress further with. You will still be able to use the others up to their maximum level of 10, which will allow you to continue to gather basic low-level resources with those professions. However, you will need to rely on other players to help gather high-level resources in the professions that you didn’t choose.
As an example, let’s say that at level 10 you decide you want to raise the cap for your Mining and Woodcutting professions. Once you make that choice, you’ll be able to continue leveling both up to Level 35. However, your Skinning, Harvesting, and Fishing professions will be capped at a maximum of level 10. Later, if you find that you need a rare plant, you will have to rely on other players to help get that plant, either through working with them directly or purchasing the plant from the Player Market. While many players will level up additional characters to be more self-reliant, working with other players will generally be faster and less time-consuming, which is in line for our goals for Pantheon to be a very social game.
You will find a similar choice awaiting you at level 35. You will have to choose one of those two professions to specialize in. The profession you choose will have its level cap raised to 50, while the other profession will remain capped at level 35.
In addition to allowing you to choose which professions to specialize in and ultimately master, Gathering Mastery points will also be used to unlock other useful bonuses, including stat bonuses and special gathering techniques that can help make you more effective while gathering resources, especially if you need to venture into an extreme climate or gather a special resource from within a fracture.
Gathering Precision and Gathering Fortitude
Gathering Precision and Gathering Fortitude are new character stats that will impact several aspects of the gathering process. Depending on which profession you are using, one of the stats will matter more. For example, if you are mining ore, you will rely more on Gathering Fortitude for your effectiveness, although Gathering Precision will still have an impact. If you are harvesting plants or fishing, you will rely more on Gathering Precision, although some Gathering Fortitude will still be useful to you as well.
You will gain points in these stats through leveling up, through Mastery bonuses, and through finding and equipping better gathering tools and gathering-specific clothing. For example, a pair of Farmer’s Work Gloves may not do you much good in a battle, but they will grant you additional Gathering Precision which can help you while harvesting plants.
In addition to your stats, your skill ranks in the different Gathering Skills will still be important, as will the Effectiveness Rating of your gathering tools. All these aspects together form the basis for some advanced gameplay aspects that we plan to add to gathering in future updates – but for now, they will primarily influence your base speed while gathering different resources.
Progressing as a Crafter
Crafting progression is going to work in a similar way to gathering progression. However, as a crafter, you have many more options to choose from. Just as with Gathering, in your starting city you will be able to unlock all available professions up to level 10. This will give you access to every crafting skill initially.
For reference, here is that list of crafting Professions and a basic explanation of what they do:
- Weaponsmiths make metal weapons and tools.
- Armorsmiths make metal armor, shields, and useful items.
- Tailors specialize in cloth goods including armor and some bags.
- Leatherworkers craft leather armor and utility items including some bags.
- Jewelcrafters work with precious metals and gemstones to create magical accessories.
- Scribes create magical glyphs that help with resisting extreme climates, along with other items involving quill and ink.
- Carpenters create large and complex items with wood, ranging from shields all the way up to building entire sailing vessels (with the help of other crafters).
- Fletchers create wooden weapons and tools.
- Provisioners create food and drink with longer-lasting beneficial effects.
- Alchemists create powerful and potent potions and elixirs which can provide unique, short-duration effects when used.
One of the most common questions that new players ask when they join the game is: “What crafting professions should I choose?” This approach allows new players to try everything and decide how they want to move forward, instead of worrying about making the wrong choice right at the beginning of the game. Of course, experienced players may already know what kind of crafting they want to do with that character and can just move forward in their chosen areas.
Similar to Gathering, leveling up in a crafting profession gets you some immediate benefits:
- Your skill caps for your crafting skills will increase (up to 50 skill at level 10).
- You will gain Crafting Mastery Points.
- Your Crafting Precision, Control, Blending, and Appraisal Stats will improve.
Crafting Mastery
Once you reach level 10, you will need to use the Crafting Mastery system to choose which two crafting professions to take forward. Once you make this choice, these professions will unlock up to level 35. At level 35, you will need to choose one of those two professions to take forward to level 50. This means that by level 50, you will be fully specialized in a single crafting profession, although you’ll have a secondary profession that is capped at level 35 in terms of effectiveness.
Crafting Mastery is also used for a variety of things, including stat increases and bonuses when making certain types of items. For example, as a weaponsmith you might decide to specialize even further in making daggers, which would make it easier for you to make extremely rare and powerful crafted daggers. Alternatively, you might choose to take more general bonuses that help you with making any type of weapon.
Crafting Stats and Crafting Difficulty
There are four crafting stats, and those stats, along with your skills, will impact your chance of success when making items. All four stats will matter, but they will be weighed differently depending on what you are making. Crafting Precision and Control will apply primarily when you are working with durable materials such as cloth, leather, wood, or metal. Blending and Appraisal will apply when you are working with substances and ingredients for cooking, brewing, inscription, or alchemy. Blending and Appraisal will also be important for situations like smelting metal alloys or working with precious gemstones. As a crafter, you will find it beneficial to understand which stats matter most for the types of items you are crafting and find or equip gear or crafting tools, along with bonuses from mastery, to help boost those stats.
As part of these additions, we are introducing a chance of failure when crafting any item. That chance will be determined by the difficulty of any craft you are attempting. Difficulty is determined by:
- The skill level of the schematic compared to your skill level.
- Any rare or optional ingredients you choose to use in the schematic.
- The overall rarity of the schematic (a rare dagger is harder to make than a common dagger).
Once the difficulty is calculated, it is compared to your crafting stats to determine a base success chance. You will be able to see an indicator of that chance before you begin crafting, so that you can decide if you want to proceed based on the risk of what you are attempting. If you fail a craft, you will lose some or all the materials you were trying to use, although rare materials may be protected from loss in some circumstances. It will be to your advantage to try and maximize your chance of success before you craft an item.
A Note on Trivial Crafts
Under this system it will be possible to get your skill high enough that some crafts would be an automatic success. Whether a crafting action can be an automatic success will depend on the rarity of the schematic. A common schematic can be trivial and will automatically succeed, but an epic schematic would still have a small chance of failure, even if your skill is very high.
Mastery Resets
We recognize that sometimes players start down one path and then realize they really want to go in a different direction. Just like how Adventuring Mastery works, we will be allowing players to reset their Gathering Mastery and Crafting Mastery – with one important distinction. If you reset your Gathering or Crafting Mastery selections, any levels gained above level 10 will be lost, and you will have to earn those levels again in your new professions afterwards. This means that the choice to specialize is something you will need to carefully consider, and not something to be undertaken on a whim.
More to Come
We have more that we want to do for crafting gameplay in the future, including introducing the ability to use special techniques at the right time during crafting for better chances of success, as well as complications that can happen on difficult crafts that you will need to respond to in some way. However, for this update, we are just focused on enabling the base difficulty calculation – those other aspects will come in future updates once the foundation for them is fully in place.
When this update is released, we will rework all our crafted items and many of our looted items, as well as introduce new ways to buy, sell, and trade items with other players. We’ll talk more about that in our dev diary Monday.
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More from the Combat & Progression Update Details Series
Part One: Overview
Part Two: Unified NPC Templates
Part Three: Combat Formula Adjustments
Part Four: Kill Credit & NPC Spawning
Part Five: Leveling & Experience Progression Adjustments
Part Six: Skills & the Evolution of Techniques
Part Seven: Adventuring Mastery