On Crafting Orders

[SadShogun]

Greetings Warriors of Calradia!

In this post, as one of the designers working on this feature, I wanted to make this thread to explain some of the changes on smithing that came with 1.6.0 and share a bit about our future plans and gather your thoughts and feedback.

Let me first quickly recap the patch notes;

• Crafting
  • Added a new feature named Crafting Orders which can be accessed via the "Enter Smithy" game menu option in towns. It allows players to craft weapons for nobles and notables with open orders. Consequently, weapon crafting has been split into two modes: Crafting Orders and Free Build.
    • Fulfilling crafting orders will grant you with crafting experience and research points needed to unlock new parts, in addition to a gold reward and relationship gain with the noble/notable based on the value of the crafted item.
    • After taking an order, you'll need to create a weapon design that satisfies the stated requirements. Exceeding expectations or underdelivering comes with its own bonuses and penalties, such as an increase or reduction of the gold reward.
    • Relationship gains from Crafting Orders need to be unlocked with perks.
    • The crafting experience and research points needed to unlock new parts gains received from the "Free Build" have been greatly reduced.
    • We will continue to evaluate the values of items produced via the crafting process.

As you can see there are quite a lot of changes and additions, let me go over and give you some more details about how the new system works.

Crafting Orders

With 1.6.0, the crafting orders will take place as the main method of getting experience for smithing, and the current system(current system in this post will refer to 1.5.9) will be labeled as "free build" mode.
The main difference between the free build and the crafting order mode is that in crafting orders the items you craft/smith instantly given to the NPCs giving the order and in free build, the item gets added to your inventory.

There are also several slight changes in terms of smithing experience and part unlocks.
First of all, the experience and "part research" gained are lower than the current crafting system, however, the amount of experience you can get through crafting orders is higher (respective to the current experience gained for crafting the same item). Also, crafting orders will provide a good amount of gold income, as well as they will almost always be priced higher than the maximum market value of a given weapon. This means you can nearly always turn a profit while fulfilling crafting orders.

Currently, orders spawn in towns and can be accessed by a tab in the smithy.
Orders are generated periodically throughout Calradia (and unfulfilled ones are replaced with some chance) we hope there will always be some orders you can fulfill.

Here you will be able to select crafting orders. The crafting order's difficulty should be at most 50 higher than your current smithing skill to attempt an order.
Each order will have a weapon type (e.g. one-handed sword) and minimum stat requirements (e.g. swing damage, handling, etc.), and going below these requirements will incur hefty penalties on both the experience you gain and the gold reward you obtain from completing these orders.

This means you can attempt orders which are higher difficulty and push your luck to attempt harder(and more profitable) orders.

Going above the expectations will similarly cause a small bonus to be added on top of the usual reward of the order.
We also added effects to two perks which enable you to gain relation with nobles and notables giving the crafting orders. A more thorough update to smithing perks is underway.

Another change we made is about crafting pieces and their weights on how they affect the difficulty. Before each piece affected the same amount. Now, this is not the case and pieces like "blades" and "handles" are weighted higher than "pommels" and "guards" when determining the actual crafting difficulty of a weapon.

This means it will be a bit harder to craft high-valued items with low smithing skills, but players will be able to add pommels and guards to improve the aesthetics/stats of their weapon without too concerned about its difficulty.

Future of Crafting

1. Perks
   We already introduced perk effects which provide relationship gain with each completed order this is not the final improvements coming to the perks.
   Something we were postponing for a while was updating the perk tree of smithing to bring them in line with our other perks (i.e. two effects per perk) and streamline some of the "non-choice" perks so that they become more meaningful again. With the crafting orders completed, this is possible and we are working on updating the perks.
2. Crafting Pieces and Unlocking
   Another issue we had was the fully randomized part unlocking system and the lack of pieces for certain weapon types. We will try to address these issues together as we make the unlocking system more "controllable" such that the items player crafts and the item pieces they unlock are inline and players can focus on smithing certain weapons to progress faster in the crafting pieces.
   For this reason, we also plan to expand the "piece catalog" of some weapon types. These will be the types in which we currently do not have many parts available (e.g. two-handed maces).
   
   
3. Crafting Issues
   The nobles and notables will be able to take advantage of the new order system and we will be able to provide you with smithing-based quests Perhaps you can provide weapons to a local gang or work on the most legendary weapon ever ordered by the Empress herself. Who knows what the future holds?

Item Valuation
We also worked out some improvements on item valuation and with 1.6.0 we curb some of the worst offenders such as javelins to have more realistic prices. We are actively working on improving value calculation for weapons. More so, a lot of crafting pieces had their stats readjusted to better reflect their tiers.

I hope this post gives you some information about the future of crafting and smithing in Calradia as we improve on it. We look forward to your feedback on crafting orders.
Thank you for taking the time to read this long post!

 

[murtega]

Is there a plan to have an option to unlock specific parts we want after maybe we reach a preset level or experience? It feels like parts are unlocked based on luck (I suppose actually not?) and as someone who likes to craft my own weapons, I find it frustrating at times. Knowing what exactly is needed to unlock something would be nice.

Overall the Crafting Order idea is appreciated though, it shall bring a purpose to try crafting something.

 

[ArturMorhghain]

The fulfilling orders for notables is interesting. Is there an expected rate of orders you’d expect us to see per town/culture/game over a set amount of time?

Will companions still be able to help craft in the “order” phase?

What are the plans on how individual pieces unlock? Any thoughts on displaying the unlocked achievements in a single screen and by tier? Or by having a set number of items by tier that unlock with gaining craft levels (on top of the current system)?

Do you envision fulfilling gang leader orders to have any criminal rating related gains?

Probably an obvious question folks will have is if it’s in the plans to have the player character able to place an order ourselves?

 

[Mad Vader]

Do you plan to add smithing competitions where competitors from all Calradia will try to make a certain crafting order and the best ones will be rewarded? The competitions may also have "free form" events where smiths would craft arbitrary weapons, that would be evaluated by judges for quality, utility and beauty.
I hope you could do this later today, it's just past midnight right now and you need to sleep.

Spoiler

Just kidding. It's good to see a thread like this, with good thinking how to solve open game design problems and inviting feedback.

 

[vito397]

Will they actually equip the weapons and use them in battle or scenes?

Also, seeing that the ordrers that the player doesnt do just resolve themselves, can we expect to see noble weapons equiped by lords of Calradia that are made by other blacksmiths?

 

[Nalgasucia507]

About unlocking parts of weapons in a more controlled way, I think a good way of achieving this is that pieces need to belong to a culture type, and the more you work on creating weapons that utilize that culture's pieces, the more you unlock on that corridor of pieces.

That way, as long as you are working on ~ culture ~ that have an Empire or Vlandian or Battanian style's pieces or parts, you will be a master smith in that. Maybe have a cap or make it exponentially difficult to learn different's culture style so that the player has to choose which character will learn what.

 

[vonbalt]

This is a very interesting feature, anything added to the RP aspect of the game is more than welcome to me

About unlocking weapon parts i think it would work best if it was directly tied to weapons that are being deconstructed for materials so if i liked the piece of a certain weapon i looted/bought i could deconstruct it to learn the pieces and unlock them.

No need to make this part of smithing too grindy beyond finding the weapons with parts you want to unlock if we already have the skill to level and materials to gather before being able to craft higher tier weapons anyway.

Simple, effective and direct instead of relying on randomization.

 

[SadShogun]

Is there a plan to have an option to unlock specific parts we want after maybe we reach a preset level or experience? It feels like parts are unlocked based on luck (I suppose actually not?) and as someone who likes to craft my own weapons, I find it frustrating at times. Knowing what exactly is needed to unlock something would be nice.

Overall the Crafting Order idea is appreciated though, it shall bring a purpose to try crafting something.

Currently, the system is fully random, in the future, the new system might have some(less) randomness and more control over how the player unlocks the parts. Basically, it will unlock going from lower tiers to the upper tiers (and also the amount of experience required will be adjusted(reduced). So the player will know that crafting a One-Handed sword will unlock as a one-handed sword part and if the parts until tier 2 are unlocked it will unlock a tier 3 part.

The fulfilling orders for notables is interesting. Is there an expected rate of orders you’d expect us to see per town/culture/game over a set amount of time?

Will companions still be able to help craft in the “order” phase?

What are the plans on how individual pieces unlock? Any thoughts on displaying the unlocked achievements in a single screen and by tier? Or by having a set number of items by tier that unlock with gaining craft levels (on top of the current system)?

Do you envision fulfilling gang leader orders to have any criminal rating related gains?

Probably an obvious question folks will have is if it’s in the plans to have the player character able to place an order ourselves?

On average 0.3 orders spawn per day in a town. So with the number of towns we have in Calradia, you will have plenty of orders. The main limiting factor is how fast you can travel and your stamina.

Companions are currently able to help with crafting the orders.

See my previous reply to Murtega (up top)

For the gang leader orders, the issue team is already designing some prototypes for the crafting order issues. This is of course possible, I do not know how the exact implementation will be.

Interesting suggestion, we thought about this and currently decided we didn't require it. Of course, design can change in the future and the player might place orders for themselves.

Do you plan to add smithing competitions where competitors from all Calradia will try to make a certain crafting order and the best ones will be rewarded? The competitions may also have "free form" events where smiths would craft arbitrary weapons, that would be evaluated by judges for quality, utility and beauty.
I hope you could do this later today, it's just past midnight right now and you need to sleep.

Spoiler

Just kidding. It's good to see a thread like this, with good thinking how to solve open game design problems and inviting feedback.

Interesting quest idea, I will forward this to our issue team. Currently, I do not know of a such plan though.

As always thank you for your feedback!
I will continue to post more answers as I find time (and the actual answers themselves heh).

 

[svelok]

It would be neat if lords equipped the items they order once the order is fulfilled (if it's the same type as but better than one of their current items)

 

[AndrewArt]

This is great news, I thought the perk implementation is going a bit slow but now knowing that smithing is getting plenty of new perk effects it's actually really good news. I hope the bonus attribute points to endurance and the focus points Smithing gives won't be removed (please), I really love these kind of rewards from smithing!

2) @SadShogun Speaking of perks, do you have any information on the roguery perk that lets us create a big army of bandits? If you are in charge of perks I can't help myself but ask you about it, I've been really fretting over it. Was this idea removed or is it still a planned feature?

3) And charm perks also need a rework and more perk effects, especially the ones which are only governor-specific at the moment. But I can wait for this no problem, I'd say smithing and the roguery trees would make me happiest to see come alive.

 

[Lord Grindelvald]

This is absolutely great! Really ties smithing more into the game, instead of feeling like an elaborate cheating mechanism.

Perhaps a redundant question (havent played in a while) but could you gear up your troops with your own made weapons?
And in later stages (or already, again, havent played in a while - I know nothing), armor as well? Then custom troops (or atleast armor/weapons) would be possible as well?

 

[Nalgasucia507]

This is absolutely great! Really ties smithing more into the game, instead of feeling like an elaborate cheating mechanism.

Perhaps a redundant question (havent played in a while) but could you gear up your troops with your own made weapons?
And in later stages (or already, again, havent played in a while - I know nothing), armor as well? Then custom troops (or atleast armor/weapons) would be possible as well?

When you discard weapons/armor, the troops in your party will gain exp. Look at 1.6.0 patch notes, my Lord Grindelvald

 

[ArturMorhghain]

When you discard weapons/armor, the troops in your party will gain exp. Look at 1.6.0 patch notes, my Lord Grindelvald

I hadn’t connected discarding smithed items to leveling up. That’d be quite the connection between systems.

Currently, the system is fully random, in the future, the new system might have some(less) randomness and more control over how the player unlocks the parts. Basically, it will unlock going from lower tiers to the upper tiers (and also the amount of experience required will be adjusted(reduced). So the player will know that crafting a One-Handed sword will unlock as a one-handed sword part and if the parts until tier 2 are unlocked it will unlock a tier 3 part.



On average 0.3 orders spawn per day in a town. So with the number of towns we have in Calradia, you will have plenty of orders. The main limiting factor is how fast you can travel and your stamina.

Companions are currently able to help with crafting the orders.

See my previous reply to Murtega (up top)

For the gang leader orders, the issue team is already designing some prototypes for the crafting order issues. This is of course possible, I do not know how the exact implementation will be.

Interesting suggestion, we thought about this and currently decided we didn't require it. Of course, design can change in the future and the player might place orders for themselves.


Interesting quest idea, I will forward this to our issue team. Currently, I do not know of a such plan though.

As always thank you for your feedback!
I will continue to post more answers as I find time (and the actual answers themselves heh).

Thanks for the thoughtfulness!

 

[Dean Beecham]

I like what you have done in the smithy, it works well i would like to see more added but for now great work and thanks for the changes it was needed .

 

[Nalgasucia507]

I like what you have done in the smithy, it works well i would like to see more added but for now great work and thanks for the changes it was needed .

+1

 

[SanicK]

I like what you have done in the smithy, it works well i would like to see more added but for now great work and thanks for the changes it was needed .

+2

 

[Askorti]

There is a mod which makes it so that you research parts by smelting weapons. So by smelting a spatha, you learn spatha parts. By smelting a menavlion, you learn menavlion parts etc. I think this is a very simple solution to the randomness, though perhaps a bit too OP. But I think looking into this way for inspiration could be a good lead.

 

[Althix]

Who knows what the future holds?

I don't know, Whisper in the Darkness is currently silent, it probably on vacation. However, as it now crafting system is polluted with parts that have no use. Like pommels for spears and javelins. Like pommels, handles and guards for swords which share the same attributes and the only difference between them is how they look. Mind you that all of this useless stuff i have to unlock through RNG system. And hence crafting system is polluted with this stuff that basically does nothing for me in one way or another, unlocking parts needed is a chore. It's not fun, not entertaining, it takes a lot of time on each and every PT. When all i need is to craft a tool to stab enemies of the kingdom with.
Any plans to optimize this, cut doubles. unlock parts that share the same stats all at once? anything?

 

[guiskj]

(snip) Who knows what the future holds? (snip)

Well, damn, you should! If not you guys, who the hell then?

 

[Lord Grindelvald]

Well, damn, you should! If not you guys, who the hell then?

Our lord and savior, Aramagaman.