On Crafting Orders

[KB Salty]

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;

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!

I like the changes, but when I w

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;

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!

I like the changes, one thing I noticed today about orders is that you can get all the stats in the green, yet still make a subpar when. I don't know if this is a bug or something in the mechanic that I don't understand. The only thing I can think of is what we see is rounded and what the computer is not rounding the made item's stats. It going to be annoying to adjust the parts and lengths to hit all the required stats with the required skill and still fall without understanding why.

 

[Foxwell Covington]

Am I the only one who saw "Crafting orders" and thought it would mean the player would be the one placing orders with npc blacksmiths? That's what I really wanted to see.

That is a good idea. Also let us buy recipes and unlock parts, I say.

 

[Bannerman Man]

It might be a good idea to ensure that the item in first order slot is only composed of parts you have already unlocked. When you're first starting out, it can be frustrating to go from town to town just to see that you can't craft the first order, especially considering this mechanic is meant to help with training the skill.

Spoiler: Relevant Screenshots

 

[Foxwell Covington]

It might be a good idea to ensure that the item in first order slot is only composed of parts you have already unlocked. When you're first starting out, it can be frustrating to go from town to town just to see that you can't craft the first order, especially considering this mechanic is meant to help with training the skill.

Spoiler: Relevant Screenshots

100% agree

 

[cadadr]

while it is random, can unlocking be a bit faster please? i have a maxxed out smith character (via cheats) and even he takes ages to unlock anything.

 

[Some Rando]

Here is an idea that will help with there being too many parts to unlock, and help prevent cheesy speed leveling, plus allow people to be more likely to make what they want. Seperate material and weapon shape. There doesn't need to be a seperate warsword to unlock for each material, instead it would just be a warsword blade. Then, depending on smithing skill level, you can use any material that you're skilled enough to use to make that weapon shape. You'd unlock the ability to use different metals when you hit the level with the perk to smelt it, so crude iron at 25, iron at 50, steel at 75 and so on. Before 25 you could only make the wood versions. Using better material would just improve the base stats of the weapon. That would make for less parts to unlock while making more different things you could actually make, since a number of weapons aren't available in different materials.That way, let's say someone really wants a falx, but the only have 25 in smithing, they could make one from crude iron which wouldn't be as good as the fine steel one, but it would give their character the weapon look they want. Also since smithing level unlocks materials, they can't super power level smithing if they get lucky to unlock a few high tier parts early, they could only make cheaper lower stat versions that would give less exp.

 

[ArturMorhghain]

Here is an idea that will help with there being too many parts to unlock, and help prevent cheesy speed leveling, plus allow people to be more likely to make what they want. Seperate material and weapon shape. There doesn't need to be a seperate warsword to unlock for each material, instead it would just be a warsword blade. Then, depending on smithing skill level, you can use any material that you're skilled enough to use to make that weapon shape. You'd unlock the ability to use different metals when you hit the level with the perk to smelt it, so crude iron at 25, iron at 50, steel at 75 and so on. Before 25 you could only make the wood versions. Using better material would just improve the base stats of the weapon. That would make for less parts to unlock while making more different things you could actually make, since a number of weapons aren't available in different materials.That way, let's say someone really wants a falx, but the only have 25 in smithing, they could make one from crude iron which wouldn't be as good as the fine steel one, but it would give their character the weapon look they want. Also since smithing level unlocks materials, they can't super power level smithing if they get lucky to unlock a few high tier parts early, they could only make cheaper lower stat versions that would give less exp.

I like that method. Also reminds me of RuneScape for some reason.

 

[RandyOglestein]

Here is an idea that will help with there being too many parts to unlock, and help prevent cheesy speed leveling, plus allow people to be more likely to make what they want. Seperate material and weapon shape. There doesn't need to be a seperate warsword to unlock for each material, instead it would just be a warsword blade. Then, depending on smithing skill level, you can use any material that you're skilled enough to use to make that weapon shape. You'd unlock the ability to use different metals when you hit the level with the perk to smelt it, so crude iron at 25, iron at 50, steel at 75 and so on. Before 25 you could only make the wood versions. Using better material would just improve the base stats of the weapon. That would make for less parts to unlock while making more different things you could actually make, since a number of weapons aren't available in different materials.That way, let's say someone really wants a falx, but the only have 25 in smithing, they could make one from crude iron which wouldn't be as good as the fine steel one, but it would give their character the weapon look they want. Also since smithing level unlocks materials, they can't super power level smithing if they get lucky to unlock a few high tier parts early, they could only make cheaper lower stat versions that would give less exp.

This idea makes too much sense. I think they'd have to reskin a lot of parts though, like the higher tier handles and guards that have gems and stuff in them, they'd have to re-skin lower tier versions of those. But I like this idea a lot

 

[WeiKaiXuan]

I do not have any useful feedback to offer, but I really enjoy the changes made to smithing. Thanks.

 

[Flesson19]

I am looking into the crafting part unlock, the times are long indeed. I cannot see why orders would lengthen them, as they give more experience than just regular crafting. Perhaps one reason is that people have to travel while focused on crafting now to get new orders.

A simple reduction in the overall experience requirement should fix the problem. One other reason is that currently, the formula is quadratic we might change it to linear (similar to character leveling experience).

I am only quoting you but I thank all people for pointing out the part unlocking issue.



TAs always thank you for your feedback.

I'm not sure if you were made aware of it but there is a crash in crafting orders. When the person giving the order is longer in the town then completing the crafting order crashes the game. I did put it in the bug forums and uploaded a save file

 

[Some Rando]

I'm not sure if you were made aware of it but there is a crash in crafting orders. When the person giving the order is longer in the town then completing the crafting order crashes the game. I did put it in the bug forums and uploaded a save file

Oh, is that the cause of the seemingly random craft order crashes? Thanks, now I'll check to see if they're there before fulfilling the order.

 

[Flesson19]

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.

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

Has it been addressed yet as to why you make an items that is all green but the notable is unhappy with it, seems like the value of the item is just as important forcing you to make it with higher quality metals even if it is full green

 

[Calabanar]

Here is an idea that will help with there being too many parts to unlock, and help prevent cheesy speed leveling, plus allow people to be more likely to make what they want. Seperate material and weapon shape. There doesn't need to be a seperate warsword to unlock for each material, instead it would just be a warsword blade. Then, depending on smithing skill level, you can use any material that you're skilled enough to use to make that weapon shape. You'd unlock the ability to use different metals when you hit the level with the perk to smelt it, so crude iron at 25, iron at 50, steel at 75 and so on. Before 25 you could only make the wood versions. Using better material would just improve the base stats of the weapon. That would make for less parts to unlock while making more different things you could actually make, since a number of weapons aren't available in different materials.That way, let's say someone really wants a falx, but the only have 25 in smithing, they could make one from crude iron which wouldn't be as good as the fine steel one, but it would give their character the weapon look they want. Also since smithing level unlocks materials, they can't super power level smithing if they get lucky to unlock a few high tier parts early, they could only make cheaper lower stat versions that would give less exp.

Love that idea.

 

[Ozmono]

Spoiler

The problem is the number of parts overall. 383 for OneHanded alone. And the majority of them have exactly the same stats.
I will give you an example. I play Sturgia mostly and Vlandia from time to time.
For Sturgia i need 10 parts in total. 2 for OneHanded Axe, 2 for TwoHanded Axe, 4 for a Lance, 2 for a javelin.
For Vlandia i need 10 parts in total. 4 for TwoHanded sword, 4 for a Lance, 2 for Throwing Axe.
10 parts out of 1201? less than 1%. My chances to get what i want are minimal.
The overall need for parts for weapons will be no higher than 20 TOPS. I don't care how the weapon looks, i need a tool which means all i care about is functionality.
I ask you to simply understand the frustration RNG system cause. I took me 9 hours straight to unlock the parts i need. And last two parts i only managed to unlock almost at the very end. 1201 parts in total in the game, i understand all of them are assets i understand all of them are man-hours. But it is simply frustrating because my Smith hit 330 long before i managed to get all the parts i wanted. Not to mention additional levels for him and the supporting companions.
If i will decide to run Vlandia in 1.6.0 i will not engage in Smithing at all, because i don't want to and will not go through the process of unlocking all the parts again. Smithing is basically dead for me as a feature of the game.

I agree with the above that there are just too many parts for the functionality of the end weapon. Whilst the weapons are beautiful and it's cool to just design something that looks amazing, as is mentioned, there just isn't enough functional difference to justify the count of parts. I think there is room to stretch the functionality out a little but yeah, 350 or so one handed parts is a tough ask.

I have three suggestions on how to make use of more of those beautiful parts.

1. Have a more detailed physics and combat system. I could elaborate on that, such as if you hit with a handle it would only do a little blunt damage and so on for varying degrees of cut, pierce damage and so on and I'm sure we could beat it to death but I think that ship has sailed.

2. Add non combat benefits such as aesthetics or a simple buff to social skill. A golden hand guard wouldn't provide as much hand armor for instance but it would be impressive. So you could add some variety that way too.

3. Have tags, such as material, or general style to parts whilst having certain orders requesting aforementioned tags. As in, wants a double edged or curved blade etc.

Or better yet some sort of combination of the above but even then I don't quite see the need for so many parts.

I've noticed a few bugs.

I've failed crafting quest and been significantly underpaid even when overdelivering on specs.
I've also had succesful attempts when I haven't got relation increase with the notables when using a companion even when the companion had the related perk.
Unfortunately I can't report them as I play ironman mode.

Also still seems widely unbalanced. That I can supply and arm (sometimes better than I bother arming myself) a small army with the profits of indvidual weapon sales doesn't help to create a suspension of disbelief. That said I still enjoy the feature and it's coming along nicely. It seems a step in the right direction, as mentioned in this thread, seems less cheaty.

Finally I'd add my name to everyone who would like to be able to supply their own troops and craft armor.

 

[Askey]

Developers,

At the moment I'm struggling to unlock crafting recipes, as the orders available are requesting weapons I simply can't make - not even a basic sub-standard one. I'm struggling to complete any orders at all. This was the proposed way for us to gain our recipes. Several orders are just sat there, that I cant complete, do they go away and are replaced by others - potentially giving me a chance for an order I can make (even if it is of a lower quality because of the current limitation of my recipes).
If I am lucky and an order pops up and I complete it (albeit the customer isnt happy with the low quality), I don't unlock anything and go back to the grind loop again.

So I'm currently stuck in this grind loop. Crafting and smelting repeatedly, hoping I can gain a recipe through this method instead. But you lowered the chances of us gaining a recipe through this method (if I manage to unlock the recipe I need).

Am I the only one experiencing this? In the end, I just gave up on this character....again.

Please give us the basic recipes to craft all the different types of weapons from the beginning. E.g Pikes, one handed swords, two handed swords, one handed axes, two handed axes, daggers, javelins, throwing daggers etc. That way, I can complete some orders, but of lower quality. Giving me a better chance to gain more recipes and move on from there.

 

[fragonard]

There's a lot of luck involved in the latest version. It's made me change the way I approach Smithing. The way that seems to work best is to grind refining wood until you get to 75 Smithing to take Curious Smith perk. Then you have a half decent chance to unlock but still less than before.

 

[Meaning481]

I've been running a new sandbox campaign since the last hotfix and I have some feedback.

1. When more parts get added, it would be nice to have some default unlocked parts for all weapon categories.

2. The random unlocking of parts adds some nice variety every time I want to roleplay a clan of arms dealers. I wouldn't change it.

3. I get some hand pain after repetitive clicking. If the smelting or refining interfaces get any more updates, item transfer sliders such as the ones in the trade and inventory menus would speed speed the interface up, reduce hand stress, and make it less repetitive.

4. The smithing perks still have a very optimal path for maximizing value, profit, and parts unlocking. As a player who wants to roleplay a smith, it feels constraining to choose other paths. Some further info as to plans to rework them would be nice.

Overall I love the crafting update and think it greatly improves the system. I know people want armor crafting as well, but I understand the interface changes and clipping issues need a lot work. Hope you are having as good a time making the game as we are testing it.

 

[Pejot]

Are there any plans to add an option for the player to order personalised weapons from Smith?

Maybe some wandering smith that shows up once in a while in random city or ability to order anywhere but with the risk You lose your money for poor stats?

 

[SkullSplitter]

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;

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!

Thank so much for your work! I love crafting and the new implementations are awesome! Keep up the excellent work, please. The game is already GREAT.

 

[InsanoPotato]

Nice addition, but they need to fix its bugs ASAP.