Guild Wars 2 Has The Best Crafting in an MMO Yet, and Here's Why

[News Portal]

No MMO can launch without a good crafting system, but, as Bane Williams explains, [app=6096]Guild Wars 2[/app] is going to launch with one of the deepest, most interesting crafting systems yet. Read on for all the details.

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[Marius]

Unfortunately all the recipes have already been reverse-engineered from the .dat file and posted on websites. So there goes the whole discovery thing.

Good article though. I enjoyed my (spoiler free) time with crafting in the beta.

[Tim Colwill]

Unfortunately all the recipes have already been reverse-engineered from the .dat file and posted on websites. So there goes the whole discovery thing.

Haha, wow.

People are the worst

[Mythor]

Guild Wars 2 is going to launch with one of the deepest, most interesting crafting systems yet

Nope. Star Wars Galaxies' crafting still thrashes anything in any other MMO, including GW2's system.

GW2's is interesting, complex and quite different to that in other MMOs but will ultimately prove unsatisfying for people wanting to make the best gear, unless your idea of the best gear is the best looking. Statistically, all gear will end up about the same, whether it was crafted by a master artisan, a journeyman or looted off some random critter in the wild.

Additionally, collecting the necessary ingredients can be incredibly tiresome as you wander all over zones looking for harvestable nodes or hoping to loot enough salvageable gear, then buy a salvage kit to pull it apart and maybe get useful items back out.
And because the game dynamically scales your hero's strength in lower level zones you can't just ignore the enemies and harvest in peace, which only makes the whole affair take even longer.

And you have to buy more mining/logging/gathering tools, if you can even find a vendor who sells them, because the relevant trainer guys sure as hell don't sell them.

Some of this can be passed off as "but it's beta" but all that's been done is insert some more guesswork into recipes and random chance into resource gathering. It looks deeper, but it's just obscure and grindy.

[Marius]

I didn't encounter those problems at all Mythor...

Mobs often dropped things like 'tattered hides' and the like which could be salvaged into several leather pieces each.

In addition, there were a ridiculous amount of crafting materials selling on the trade post. If you wanted them, you could just do events to earn silver and then buy the materials.

Not so sure what you mean about the best gear comment either... journyman crafters can only craft up to a certain level range. To make the best gear, you need to be level 400 crafting. And all the gear I created from crafting was miles ahead of the drops I found in the wild for that level.

Not to mention that crafting was the most dependable way I found to get armour upgrades. All my beta armour has filled upgrade slots due to crafting, which helps significantly.

It will have to be seen how crafting is at the end game, but crafting definitely gave the best gear in the early PvE game we saw in the beta.

[Mythor]

Did you actually try turning those hides into something useful though?

I wanted to make my Ranger a bow. I needed some wood (harvested, eventually) some string (refined from hides) and a vial of some kind of blood (I forget which, but it's a random drop off certain mobs).
That's to make *one bow*. Which wasn't statistically superior to my existing bow.

I expect some crafting professions have it easier than others and it's probably easier once you know you need to go to X, Y and Z for the materials, etc.
Or I could just go do some more dynamic events around my level with the gear I have and probably find some bits of gear anyway. Plus XP.

[Marius]

I made my thief a collection of pistols and a bow at every five levels.

I opened the trade post, and bought logs of wood from other players for a few copper each.

And the likely reason your made bow wasn't better than your held bow is because you need to discover the advanced recipes that have more DPS.

[Bluefire]

Didnt get into the beta...Compare it to edon's crafting ?

[XViper]

Fingers crossed that ArenaNet change their mind on those Oceanic servers.

and you just solidified why I'm not even going to consider this game in its current state.

[Marius]

@ XViper: There's no real lag due to distance... once the initial beta influx of hundreds of thousands of players logging in at once cleared up, I could roll and dodge in PvP with no problems.

@ Bluefire: It's kindof similar really. Except you don't get told the recipies.

So to make a bow, you'll need to first buy or harvest the raw ingredients. Then you refine them into usable materials.

Then you need to make the bow stave, and the bow string. Then you need to make the insignia for the type of bonus stat you want (so an insignia of might if you want a bow with +might).

Then you take all the parts to the 'discovery' tab, and place the stave, string, and insignia into the slots. Then you click 'craft'.

That will make the bow. Then after that you can make it without discovery, but you need to use discovery to find the more powerful items that you want to use.

[spitfires_son]

Didn't actually craft much at all during the beta.

I found a lot of the kharma vendors and random drops actually did quite fine stat wise. Got fairly lucky with a nice staff right from the start that lasted me at least 10 levels or so.

When I did look at the crafting it definitely seemed like a lot of fun but I didn't have enough materials to make anything as I kept running out of space in my inventory. (Apparently there was an option to deposit them straight to the bank but never saw that )

The tools for gathering were a bit odd. I did manage to find a vendor for the starter ones but a lot of people had no idea which merchant sold them. It's a good way to remove gathering professions from the game and only requiring you to buy the tool for the job. (Higher level mats need higher level tools)

All in all I'm dying for the next beta. It was a heap of fun.

[Bane Williams]

Did you actually try turning those hides into something useful though?

I wanted to make my Ranger a bow. I needed some wood (harvested, eventually) some string (refined from hides) and a vial of some kind of blood (I forget which, but it's a random drop off certain mobs).
That's to make *one bow*. Which wasn't statistically superior to my existing bow.

I expect some crafting professions have it easier than others and it's probably easier once you know you need to go to X, Y and Z for the materials, etc.
Or I could just go do some more dynamic events around my level with the gear I have and probably find some bits of gear anyway. Plus XP.

Hey Mythor!

I had some of those problems too at first, then I started working on discoveries. Once there I quickly realised that the base bow had something like 8 more variants, and that insignia's were the real key when it came to weaponsmithing. The difficulty of harvesting the materials, which for you is a negative, for me is a positive - as it means that the market will likely not be flooded with them, which means prices should maintain a reasonable level.

As for the similar stat levels you mentioned earlier, In my experience I didn't find this to be the way at all, at almost all points what I crafted was highly superior to those purchased from vendors... ONCE I figured out advanced crafting, otherwise it was much of a muchness.

[Bane Williams]

Unfortunately all the recipes have already been reverse-engineered from the .dat file and posted on websites. So there goes the whole discovery thing.

Good article though. I enjoyed my (spoiler free) time with crafting in the beta.

Where did you find that stuff out of curiosity? My Google-fu is weak and I've not been able to read about it at all (I figured Arena Net would have been smart and store them on the server).

[Mythor]

Looks like I know how to spend the next beta weekend, if I get into another.

[Marius]

The way the items go in crafting is they alternate between given to you and discoveries.

So if you want a level 5 weapon, you are given the recipe. But if you want a level 10 weapon, you need to make an insignia and discover it. Then they give you the level 15 weapon recipe, and so on...

If you keep your crafted gear on-level, it should be better than drops.

Where did you find that stuff out of curiosity? My Google-fu is weak and I've not been able to read about it at all (I figured Arena Net would have been smart and store them on the server).

Ta da.

http://www.gw2db.com/

It even has a full map extracted from the .dat files.

I verified it by having a quick look at the database and seeing some recipes which I had discovered.