Suggested dye/improvement solution to crafting

Lynx7386

We all know that dyes are coming up with 1.3, but the dye system only applies to armor (head, shoulders, chest, waist, hands, legs, and feet armor slots). Weapons and shields will not be among the items you can alter the colors for. This thread offers a solution to this through crafting (and improvements in general to the crafting system).

Step 1: Add additional sections to the crafting interface when using blacksmithing and woodworking to create weapons and shields. These would be located beneath the section where you choose a trait stone to add a trait to the item.

Section 1: Alloy (blacksmithing) / Lacquer (woodworking)
In this section, you pick a temper (just one) to use in the weapon's creation. For blacksmithing this section would allow you to add a honing stone, dwarven oil, grain solvent, or tempering alloy. For woodworking, this section would allow you to add pitch, turpen, mastic, or rosin.

These additives would have two effects:
-They would change the color of the blade/metal portion of shields, staffs, and blacksmithed weapons
-They would increase the durability of the item, allowing it to last longer (and take less durability damage when you die).

Any item created without a temper in this manner would have either a dull, grey metal appearance or a rough wood appearance.

Items created with the green-quality temper would have a more polished grey blade/metal components, or sanded-looking wood.

Items created with a blue-quality temper would have coppery-colored metal components/blades and a more saturated/stained wood look.

Items created with a purple-quality temper would have gold metal and a lacquered/polished wood look.

Items created with a legendary-quality temper would have golden metal components with glowing runes carved into the blade or surfaces, and wood items would have carved runes in them as well. By default, the runes would have a teal/cyan color.

That final step would really make legendary crafted items stand out, visually, from drops or other crafted gear. It would also give a perk to crafting your equipment rather than upgrading a drop, as you wouldnt get the same visual effect by upgrading gear anymore.

Section 2: Wrapping (blacksmithing and woodworking)
In this section, you're able to add vendor-purchased components added to all of the blacksmithing and woodworking vendors. These would include:
-Black Wrapping
-White Wrapping
-Red Wrapping
-Blue Wrapping
-Yellow Wrapping
-Purple Wrapping
-Orange Wrapping
-Green Wrapping
-Brown Wrapping

When you pick one of these and add it to the crafting process, in this new section, it will change the appearance of the grip, straps, and any other non metal or wood portions of the item you're creating. The default color for these parts of the item would be grey.

For example, if you create a greatsword and utilize a blue-quality temper as described above, your sword will have a coppery-colored blade and a basic grey grip. If you were to add a green wrapping during the crafting process, you would wind up with a greatsword that had a coppery blade and green cloth wrapped around the grip.

These wrappings would also affect the color of the glowing runes on items created with a legendary alloy/lacquer. If you were to create a destruction staff with a rosin lacquer, you'd normally wind up with a staff made of polished, stained wood that had rune shapes carved along it's length, glowing cyan, and grey cloth grips. If you were to add a purple wrapping during the item's creation, the cloth grips would now be purple and so would the glowing runes along the staff's surface.



Step 2: When upgrading, through the use of tempers, any crafted item (note that this does not apply to dropped items), upon successfully improving the item to legendary-quality the crafting interface will provide the crafter with a text-input prompt, allowing the crafter to give a custom name to the item. Obviously strict naming restrictions will have to be put in place here - such as only allowing one space and no numbers or symbols - in order to prevent abusive names.

This gives crafters another step up on customizing gear over drops, by allowing them to create named items of legendary quality. For example, I could upgrade a restoration staff to legendary and then name it "The Purifier", or upgrade a battleaxe to legendary quality and then name it "Skullrend".

Combined with the visual improvements in Step 1, this would help create a market for legendary crafted items, and get crafters some return on their investment in the trade.

Lynx7386

No comment?

Artemiisia

think its hard to comment on something most of us haven't seen yet, waiting to see how things work actually with the upcoming dye patch.

hard to know, if its needed.

Though gotta say well thought out post, maybe just a bit to early to come with extra ideas for something we know so little about in the first place