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Crafting
I watched a few streams on Twitch and the game looks really good. I know there is some talk about lots of hacking and such.
My question really revolves around the crafting. It seems like there is a lot to do. Is very in depth and does the crafting items actually mean anything?
How is the farming? The only game I played with farming was LOTRO and I loved it.
Comments
The crafting is good, with a huge BUT...
AA gates crafting activities through the use of "labor points". Even if you pay the patron sub, you will EASILY blow through the amount of labor points in a normal game session, at which point, you are forced to go to the cash shop to buy labor potions to keep up the crafting grind (and it is a huge grind) or log off until the next day (or stay AFK I guess).
And that is on top of the fact that later on, you'll have to BUY a good many of the crafting materials for a lot of things from the cash shop as well, unless you want to spend an eternity grinding mobs for drops.
So, although the crafting is better than average, the system in which it operates is TERRIBLE.
Unless you plan on playing AA like a job (and I literally mean for 6-8 hours a day, like a Korean teenager) save yourself the time, money and aggravation and skip the whole thing.
That is book on AA as a whole: good game: terrible game management and cash shop funneling (for Western players, at least).
Hacking/BOTing is a separate issue, that Trion has done a poor job dealing with, and is a big problem, yes.
(And no, you can NOT get "everything you need without buying from the cash shop" unless you plan on spending 3-4 years doing just that.)
(Edit: I was a big crafter in original SWG, EvE, and UO a bit, so I have played some games with good crafting.)
At higher levels crafting is also very heavily RNG based. Meaning that it requires a huge amount of luck on top of the labor and expensive materials. This probably more than anything turned a lot of players off crafting altogether. It can be very disheartening to spend a lot of time, gold and labor gathering the materials you need only to find you have a 1 in 5 chance of crafting the item you need, if you don't get lucky then it's all wasted.
And it only gets worse the higher you go. You really need to treat this game like a full time job if you want to be moderately successful at crafting.
Archeage crafting in few words
- Rich crafting itemization in quantity and quality.
The crafting process itself isn't very complex but the sheer amount of items and components needed as ingredients and can be crafted is overwhelming.
Crafted goods retain their value on top through the masterpiece invention of labourpoints.
Caution about gear tho : dropped gear is easier to get through quest- with crafted gear being better at similar level-, so people tend to rely on crafted gear as "end game". (means armors and weapon crafter demand for high end gear mostly and less for lower lvl crafted gear)
Labour system and rng makes the value of crafted gear retain its high value but asks for your determintation and to be able to focus on set goals longterm.
if you not able for longterm commitment go play shooter.
Crafting in AA is fatally flawed. The first problem is, unless you win the lottery and manage to make a t3 or t4 upgradeable weapon, it won't sell for even close to what it costs. This is mostly the result of the welfare weapons they give out from Hasla that were never supposed to be in the game early on. They were intended to be for new players way down the line so they can get something decent to fight top geared players until they can earn better weapons and armor of their own.
Then there is the problem with labor. Its scaled back so far that anyone that plays the game more than 2 hours a day will not have enough labor to craft unless they are spending $ (or gold which = $) every day for labor potions. They decided to make good weapons and armor so rare due to a lack of item degradation (fail) so the entire progression of AA boils down to how much money you spend on the marketplace and how lucky you are.
Steer clear is my best advice.
Crafting items is what means more in AA, but isnt a easy task. Playing as a Patron since lunch day without spend money in CS things go slow, but i dont mind at all, step by step im reaching my goals and can advance to new ones. manage LP is the most chalenge part, is not easy at all, but guild give a helpfull hand, we have crafters for everthing selling stuff for a low price, this way i dont need to craft pigments if i want to craft gear for example. Today i was crafting one more piece of gear form t1 to t5, had to stop in t4 because i need labor for other stuff in game, i will end crafting tomorow, i have no hurry. I understand that some people dont like, but i do.
Farming, gather and hubandary? this is what gives you the inicial mats for everthing crafted (dont give it all but the most part), if you like it you will find a home in AA, i have 2 friends that only focus in that, im trying to call them to pvp and sea action but no sucess untill now
, but they have much more land and gold then me, each one have their own prioritys/objectives.
My advice: try the game for free for 2 or 3 days just see things around, if u thing u like it, spend 13 bucks and try it with acess to full features. If in the end you dont like it, well wasnt a big lost imo.
nice to meet a total MMORPG newbie.
RNG belongs to MMORPGs since 30 years now, you a bit late...
It's another dichotomy of a game, and the reason AA received so much backlash is because it has so much potential.
The crafting and fields of bots in the upper 40's zones pretty much did this game in for me. The farming is fun...to a degree.
My advice would be don't play AA for the crafting. It is something I enjoy in games and I left after they started add major crafting components to the Cash Shop a while back. Planting is very boring as it is just Farmville basically. Could take over 30 mins just harvesting and planting again unless you use bundles which take a bit to be able to make unless you have multiple farms going at one time.
Probably the biggest problem that crafting had when I was still playing was hackers buying up ever piece of land. Unless you have a good guild that is helping out it can be frustrating finding a plot of land to use. Not sure if this is still the case or not since I stopped playing.
The game had lots of potential but the lack of support from the creators of the game XL left the game with a lot to be desired. It has a very eastern grind feel to it, which I didn't mind but the problems with the game just over shadowed it to much.