Crafting dropped items through research

Stormwalker · January 2016

I would like to see the ability for players to research dropped item bonuses and craft new items with those bonuses added to ESO. It could be done by expanding the trait research mechanism to include dropped item bonuses in the following manner:

Add a 5th skill to Metallurgy, Carpentry, and Stitching available at skill level 50.
This skill would allow crafters to research dropped item bonuses and craft new items with those bonuses.
The crafter would have had to have researched all 9 traits of the type of item (cuirass, inferno staff, jerkin, etc.) they wished to research.
The dropped item would be destroyed during research.
Researching a dropped item would take up a research slot while the research is conducted.
Researching a dropped item would take the maximum research time (since the crafter will have researched all 9 traits for that type of item already.)
Once the research is completed the crafter would be able to create new items with the dropped item’s bonuses.
The new items would have to be the same type of item as the dropped item that was researched.
The new items could be of any material, style, and trait the crafter knows how to use.
Dropped items that are bind-on-pickup could be researched but newly crafted items with the dropped item’s bonuses would be bind-on-pickup as well.

There would be several advantages gained by adding this feature to ESO:

It would mitigate a great deal of the dropped item vs crafted item power level argument since dropped items could be crafted…eventually.
It would supplement rather than replace the item dropping mechanism since players would still have to have the desired item drop to start the crafting process.
It would allow players to replace dropped items that have undesirable traits with items that have more desirable traits.
It would allow players to customize the appearance of items with the desired bonuses.
It would retain the rarity of dropped items that are only available through specific types of content since the bind-on-pickup mechanism would be retained.
Newly introduced dropped items would retain their exclusivity for a reasonable amount of time since it would take several weeks of research before crafted versions would be available.
Most importantly it would allow crafters to specialize. As it stands now there is little difference between maximum level crafters since there are limited crafting goals to obtain. Due to the long research times and the large and growing amount of dropped items available it would be impossible for one crafter to know how to create all of the different dropped items. Crafters would have to carefully choose which dropped items to research which would lead to crafter specialization.

AverageJo3Gam3r · January 2016

Stormwalker wrote: »

I would like to see the ability for players to research dropped item bonuses and craft new items with those bonuses added to ESO. It could be done by expanding the trait research mechanism to include dropped item bonuses in the following manner:
Add a 5th skill to Metallurgy, Carpentry, and Stitching available at skill level 50.

This skill would allow crafters to research dropped item bonuses and craft new items with those bonuses.

The crafter would have had to have researched all 9 traits of the type of item (cuirass, inferno staff, jerkin, etc.) they wished to research.

The dropped item would be destroyed during research.

Researching a dropped item would take up a research slot while the research is conducted.

Researching a dropped item would take the maximum research time (since the crafter will have researched all 9 traits for that type of item already.)

Once the research is completed the crafter would be able to create new items with the dropped item’s bonuses.

The new items would have to be the same type of item as the dropped item that was researched.

The new items could be of any material, style, and trait the crafter knows how to use.

Dropped items that are bind-on-pickup could be researched but newly crafted items with the dropped item’s bonuses would be bind-on-pickup as well.

There would be several advantages gained by adding this feature to ESO:
It would mitigate a great deal of the dropped item vs crafted item power level argument since dropped items could be crafted…eventually.

It would supplement rather than replace the item dropping mechanism since players would still have to have the desired item drop to start the crafting process.

It would allow players to replace dropped items that have undesirable traits with items that have more desirable traits.

It would allow players to customize the appearance of items with the desired bonuses.

It would retain the rarity of dropped items that are only available through specific types of content since the bind-on-pickup mechanism would be retained.

Newly introduced dropped items would retain their exclusivity for a reasonable amount of time since it would take several weeks of research before crafted versions would be available.

Most importantly it would allow crafters to specialize. As it stands now there is little difference between maximum level crafters since there are limited crafting goals to obtain. Due to the long research times and the large and growing amount of dropped items available it would be impossible for one crafter to know how to create all of the different dropped items. Crafters would have to carefully choose which dropped items to research which would lead to crafter specialization.

Good ideas, but I'd like to see this combined with jewelry crafting too. I'm tired of having to default to willpower or agility jewelry.

Mansome · January 2016

Only one big problem with this. I am at a point now where research takes forever to do and I can't justify the skill point movement to research something that will be obsolete as soon as the new content gets released. If anything it would would only help my alts but not my main character. If this capped the research at say 30 days but make it so you have to have all 5 pieces to be researched at the same time. To be fair all while this is going nothing else can be researched on that craft until that 30 days was up.

NBrookus · January 2016

This is not a bad way to revitalized sets that don't level up to max level or have weird gaps in availability. In order to be feasible, tho, I would think you'd need to do ONE research for the set bonus. So if you want to research Footman, you need a single piece of the set and 30 days. Then you could move on to another set.

Otherwise, if it takes 7 research slots and 7 unique items - a minimum of 3 months and potentially a high cost of aquiring the items - I don't think anyone would bother.

Hamfast · January 2016

While I like the idea, I see a few issues...

Adding a trait to an item requires an item, what item would be used for an "Item set"?
Many of the dropped item sets have what could be best called multiple traits, would each have to be learned and could they all be applied?
Some quest rewards have unique traits, could those be learned too?

My only idea to answer this would be to allow a similar item (armor for armor, weapon for weapon) with the desired traits/effects instead of a trait item. I would also limit this to a special crafting site... or perhaps 3, one for each Tailor, Blacksmith and Woodworker at 3 different locations where the crafting interface includes a way to include the item to be used for the trait/effect.

Kensei_ESO · January 2016

Stormwalker wrote: »

I LOVE this idea. Here are a couple of my thoughts:

1. I think researching set bonuses should be on its own set of progressive timers with the first piece of each set taking minimal time but each subsequent piece taking longer than the previous. But, you could only be researching one piece at a time. So for example (arbitrary numbers):

Set 1 -
Item 1 - 24 hours
Item 2 - 48 hours
Item 3 - 4 days
Item 4 - 8 days
Item 5 - 15 days

Then if you move on to another set, it would follow the same format with the first piece only taking 24 hours, etc.

2. You might as well expand the idea to include all the sets currently craftable by players for convenience. So you could research the Hunding's Rage set for example if only to save the effort required for actually going to the special crafting station out in the boonies.

I like the restriction of only being able to research a piece for which you know 9 traits. It might be cool also to implement a special crafting location dedicated to this facet of crafting.