User:Ekko/Sandbox/Crafting

• Scholars can take tailor and artificer/weaponsmith and have no conflicting materials.
• Adventurers can take leatherworker and weaponsmith and have no conflicts or leatherworker and huntsman and have only some leather for bowstrings (not a concern for engineers and a small one for thieves).
• Soldiers can't take armorsmith and any of their weapon disciplines without having a large conflict in metal (especially armorsmith/weaponsmith).
• This could be alleviated in part by having refining count for multiple disciplines (eg. crafting a bronze bar should award points to both weaponsmithing and artificing).
• Cooking sort-of conflicts with everything, since it uses karma and money.
• Soldiers also can't really do jeweling, since metal is needed by armorsmithing or weaponsmithing.
• Guardians can probably do OK with armor+artificer or weapon+artificer, but the best warriors can do is armor+huntsman or weapon+huntsman. Both of these still have conflicts over metal.
• Increasing the ease at which metal can be gathered could help, but it would still give scholars and adventurers an edge (if, at least, a smaller one).
• Having multiple characters can make this kind of pointless.
• If someone doesn't take an armor discipline, they have no use for cloth.
• If someone doesn't take a weapon discipline, they have no use for wood (or metal if they're not a soldier).
• No soldier needs leather except for warriors crafting longbows.
• Ideally, a character should gain 5 levels in their crafting disciplines for each character level.
• Experientially, this doesn't happen.
• Experientially, after character level 10 (theoretical skill level 50) (when you can start wielding discovered recipes) crafting stops making upgrades for your character until you reach the next level of crafting (skill level 125, theoretical chacter level 25).
• Crafting then bogs down into "discovering" all possible permutations of inscriptions/insigniae and weapons/armor pieces.
• Gathering from plants is so useless unless you have a chef.
• Having a chef when you start playing is a bad idea, according to the game itself.
• Gathering from plants is so useless until you have a bunch of gold and karma lying around.
• Karma is non-transferable, so any chef ingredient bought with karma either requires an already established character choosing chef as a secondary discipline to go back and buy ingredients from lower-level areas or a new character to give up on buying weapons/armor from renown vendors.
• Crafting a bunch of intermediary products (wooden dowels, axe hafts, etc.) to pump up crafting is inefficient and will murder your inventory.
• It shouldn't take two logs to make one plank. That's so dumb.
• By extension, two logs can make one dowel.
• Anyone with an armor discipline is going to look very similar to everyone else in their armor class and level.
• It seems weird to craft wood into a longbow shaft and leather into a bowstring before crafting those into a longbow. Why can't we craft leather and wood directly into a longbow?
• It's especially weird when recipes bought from karma vendors have you do exactly that.
• It's a shame that recipes from karma vendors can only use one kind of inscription.
• Recipes from karma vendors are mostly useful for transmogging.

Crafting Disciplines by Category

Armor

Armor disciplines make armor (duh), but also craft runes and bags. All armor disciplines use "activators" and cloth as secondary materials (though tailoring uses cloth as a primary material). No profession benefits from having more than one armor discipline.

Armorsmithing

Armorsmithing uses metal and produces heavy armor. Guardians and warriors benefit most from armorsmithing.

Leatherworking

Leatherwokring uses leather and produces heavy armor. Rangers, thieves, and engineers benefit most.

Tailoring

Tailoring uses cloth and produces light armor. Mesmers, necromancers, and eleentalists benefit the most from tailoring.

Weapons

Weapon disciplines make weapons and sigils. All weapon disciplines use wood, metal, and activators. No one discipline produces every weapon for a profession--indeed, no one discipline produces every terrestrial weapon for any profession.

Artificing

Artificers make staves, scepters, foci, and tridents. They also craft consumable potions that work similarly to food produced by chefs. Wood is their primary material.

Huntsmanship

Huntsmen make longbows, shortbows, warhorns, torches, and harpoon guns. Wood is their primary material and they also use leather as an additional secondary material. Engineers do not wield any weapon that requires leather.

Weaponsmithing

Weaponsmiths produce swords, greatswords, axes, maces, hammers, daggers, shields, and spears. Metal is the primary material.

Other

Jeweling and cooking are dissimilar to all other crafting disciplines, but none of them use cloth, leather, or activators. Both are also equally useful to all professions.

Jeweling

Jeweling produces rings, necklace, and earrings, as well as jewels that can be used as upgrade components. uses metal as a primary material and gems as a secondary material. It is the only discipline that uses gems.

Cooking

Chefs are unique in that they only use ingredients, a crafting material that no other discipline (save for some overlap with Artificing's potions) uses. They produce consumable food that gives temporary buffs.