tmbrinks wrote: »

I voted Yes and No.

...

Cutting the master writ drop rate for jewelry in half would be a fine compromise. The overall (non-master writ) economy really needs the extra resources from jewelry daily writs though, so those should stay.

I agree with pretty much everything you said. I have no problem with the changes at large, but the master writs are still iffy in my opinion (for all the reasons you already stated).

Personally I have completed a number of blue jewelry writs, specifically the ones for the basic three traits (Arcane, Healthy, Robust).

I'm doing them, when I have the platings. That's the problem, not enough platings. Maybe make surveys drop more often? Give nodes a chance to drop plating dust?

I'm sure there's plenty of options, and frankly I don't care if more platings and dust and stuff mean that the prices crash in the guild stores, I'm playing a fantasy game where I'm crafting stuff, not a finance simulator.

pdblake wrote: »

frankly I don't care if more platings and dust and stuff mean that the prices crash in the guild stores, I'm playing a fantasy game where I'm crafting stuff, not a finance simulator

Thank you for telling everyone else their enjoyment doesn't matter so long as you get your way.

redlink1979 wrote: »

@pdblake Nodes already have a change of droppping dust. Be sure to have the "Plentiful Harvest" passive active.

Do they? I was aware smithing nodes drop jewelry dust. Are you saying jewelry nodes drop plating dust? if so I've never seen a single drop, which isn't impossible tbh

I still receive way more blue quality master writs than I'd ever choose to do. I just immediately toss any blue writ unless it's one of the three basic traits. There is no reason to spend extra gold on materials outside of the basics since it doesn't really increase the reward and I have so many anyway.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, purples and golds are a good return and you can be a bit choosey with the purples you do if you want, filtering out traits you feel are too costly (like triune).

If I were to suggest a change it might be to increase the rewards slightly on blue quality writs containing non basic traits (and either remove triune or increase rewards accordingly). Purples seem to be in a decent place and golds are rare enough that the huge rewards are not affecting the economy much.

Either way, the current system in place is miles ahead of anything we've had since the introduction of jewel crafting. It's not perfect but none of the crafts are really. There will always be some master writs that just aren't worth doing for a variety of reasons. As long as at least some are worth doing, we're on the right track.

I voted none of the above... while the new blue master writs are a "Step in the right direction" it still fails to fix the issue with JC... platings are still too expensive to be wasted on writs if you want to craft and improve items for use.

Do the Grains from the jewelry writs help? sure, but it takes 10 grains to make a plate... if I do the writs on 10 characters I may get 1 or 2, if I decon a piece of jewelry I may get 1 grain, when I decon a piece of armor or weapon I may get the whole item, so I need to decon 10 times the jewelry to get the same number of upgrade materials... I need to refine 5 to 8 times the raw material to get the upgrade materials needed to upgrade the items I use for my "Adventuring" characters...

I have seen and kept some of the new master writs, but yet to complete one, I may in the future when once I find the materials and can see my way to use them for the writ and not for the items I need to continue the rest of my play time.

tmbrinks wrote: »

Hamfast wrote: »

I voted none of the above... while the new blue master writs are a "Step in the right direction" it still fails to fix the issue with JC... platings are still too expensive to be wasted on writs if you want to craft and improve items for use.

Do the Grains from the jewelry writs help? sure, but it takes 10 grains to make a plate... if I do the writs on 10 characters I may get 1 or 2, if I decon a piece of jewelry I may get 1 grain, when I decon a piece of armor or weapon I may get the whole item, so I need to decon 10 times the jewelry to get the same number of upgrade materials... I need to refine 5 to 8 times the raw material to get the upgrade materials needed to upgrade the items I use for my "Adventuring" characters...

I have seen and kept some of the new master writs, but yet to complete one, I may in the future when once I find the materials and can see my way to use them for the writ and not for the items I need to continue the rest of my play time.

You only need 1/2 the materials to upgrade jewelry (4 chromium platings vs. 8 wax/alloy/rosin). You also only have 3 jewelry slots, compared to 9-11 slots of the other crafts. They're fairly even for gear in terms of drops. For master writs though, they are not.

each character needs 0 to 2 wood items, 0 to 7 cloth, 0 to 11 blacksmithing and 3 jewelry items...

If I use the averages I can refining 3k wood and have all the resins I need for upgrading every item a character needs to gold...
it takes about 6k cloth and 8k metal to refine enough to gold up everything... it takes me 18k plat grains to get the materials needed to gold up 3 pieces of jewelry... even if, as you point out, it only takes 4 platings as opposed to 8 on the other crafting types

Hamfast wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

Hamfast wrote: »

I voted none of the above... while the new blue master writs are a "Step in the right direction" it still fails to fix the issue with JC... platings are still too expensive to be wasted on writs if you want to craft and improve items for use.

Do the Grains from the jewelry writs help? sure, but it takes 10 grains to make a plate... if I do the writs on 10 characters I may get 1 or 2, if I decon a piece of jewelry I may get 1 grain, when I decon a piece of armor or weapon I may get the whole item, so I need to decon 10 times the jewelry to get the same number of upgrade materials... I need to refine 5 to 8 times the raw material to get the upgrade materials needed to upgrade the items I use for my "Adventuring" characters...

I have seen and kept some of the new master writs, but yet to complete one, I may in the future when once I find the materials and can see my way to use them for the writ and not for the items I need to continue the rest of my play time.

You only need 1/2 the materials to upgrade jewelry (4 chromium platings vs. 8 wax/alloy/rosin). You also only have 3 jewelry slots, compared to 9-11 slots of the other crafts. They're fairly even for gear in terms of drops. For master writs though, they are not.

each character needs 0 to 2 wood items, 0 to 7 cloth, 0 to 11 blacksmithing and 3 jewelry items...

If I use the averages I can refining 3k wood and have all the resins I need for upgrading every item a character needs to gold...
it takes about 6k cloth and 8k metal to refine enough to gold up everything... it takes me 18k plat grains to get the materials needed to gold up 3 pieces of jewelry... even if, as you point out, it only takes 4 platings as opposed to 8 on the other crafting types

So, by your math... it takes 17k materials to upgrade all your non-jewelry gear... and it takes 18k materials to upgrade your jewelry. I'd say that's pretty close, especially when jewelry is supposed to be "special" compared to the other crafts

Also, there is a guaranteed way to get gold jewelry to drop (complete veteran trials, double if it's Hard Mode) There is no equivalent way to guarantee gold gear drops (only way is on the weekly leaderboards, and you're limited to once per character per week). So, technically, you can "grind" for gold jewelry materials, but you can't do the same for gold gear materials through refining.

I'm with ZoS that gold jewelry is supposed to be a luxury, so I'm perfectly fine with it being more difficult to obtain than the equivalent of the other crafts.

Hamfast wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

So, by your math... it takes 17k materials to upgrade all your non-jewelry gear... and it takes 18k materials to upgrade your jewelry. I'd say that's pretty close, especially when jewelry is supposed to be "special" compared to the other crafts

Also, there is a guaranteed way to get gold jewelry to drop (complete veteran trials, double if it's Hard Mode) There is no equivalent way to guarantee gold gear drops (only way is on the weekly leaderboards, and you're limited to once per character per week). So, technically, you can "grind" for gold jewelry materials, but you can't do the same for gold gear materials through refining.

I'm with ZoS that gold jewelry is supposed to be a luxury, so I'm perfectly fine with it being more difficult to obtain than the equivalent of the other crafts.

So the requirement to upgrade 9 to 11 items is close to the requirements to upgrade 3... even when you only need half the items to upgrade the 3... oh, and by the way, only the gold upgrade is half (4 platings vs 8 items) not the other 3 steps. It also needs to be the right mix of 17k materials and a prayer to RNGeses that you have a consistent return.

Right. Terne is a 50% reduction as well. Iridium is 33%. Zircon is only 25%. You also get those grains from daily JC writs (weighted to Iridium/Zircon/Chromium at max level). You don't get blue/purple improvement materials from daily WW/Cloth/BS. Yes, those have a hireling and jewelry does not, so call it a wash (even though jewelry really comes out ahead, there's enough fuzzy math here to make this math teacher's head spin)

Hamfast wrote: »

Gold Jewelry is supposed to be a luxury, is gold armor also a luxury? if gold armor and weapons are not a luxury, why don't they drop more? But wait, you already said they only drop in the weekly vet trial...

Gold armor, yes. The only thing that really "needs" to be gold is the weapons as there's a significant change in weapon damage there. The difference for gold armor to purple armor is for min-maxing only, same with jewelry.

Hamfast wrote: »

You are also wrong about the "Grinding" for upgrade materials, you can grind for all of it, except the grind is gathering the raw materials, not just doing vet trials.

Yes, take my comment out of context. Yes you can "grind" resources, that's an equal playing field. I'm talking about INDEPENDENT sources of the materials.

Hamfast wrote: »

And lets not forget that the best gear in the game was supposed to be crafted gear... at least that was what was said during beta testing... they could say that they kept this promise because the only way to get gold armor and weapons is to have a crafter upgrade it... until the gold gear seller in Cyro and the gold drops in trials.

Source?

Hamfast wrote: »

In truth, I don't mind the idea that the it's harder to get the upgrade materials for jewelry then the other crafts, I just think it needs to be toned down a bit. 3k wood, metal or cloth will net me enough to upgrade 2.5 items to gold, 6k to upgrade 1 piece of jewelry... or perhaps I should use the drop rates for you, on average, 3k raw materials nets me 20 gold upgrade materials, 20 gold upgrade materials allows me to upgrade 2.5 items... except for jewelry, that will upgrade half of one... as long as the raw materials are of the proper type (wood for wood crafting, cloth/leather for tailoring)

They've already reduced by approximately half (I say approximately so you don't yell at me again because Iridium and Zircon are not EXACTLY half). AND in the last patch they give us the grains from doing daily writs to make them even more plentiful.

Hamfast wrote: »

And yes, I have talked to Matt (member of the powers that be) and he did say they were trying (hence the blue master writs and upgrade mats dropping from normal writs) but that they wanted it to be harder to upgrade jewelry... fine, make it harder, but don't expect me to do any JC master writs...

There's the namedrop. You've talked to "Matt" so whatever others say is meaningless now? (That is exactly how "namedropping" sounds, you're seeking to de-legitimatize anybody else's argument) "They want it to be harder to upgrade jewelry" It is harder... by what... a factor of 2? Isn't that reasonable? Or does it need to be 1.5? They used to be off by a full factor of 10 (when it was still 2-3-4-8 to upgrade with grains), they've come down to an approximate factor of 2... that's a HUGE reduction.

Any further reduction is just going to make them essentially equal. Jewelry master writs become the de-facto writ voucher currency because they will become 1) easy to get 2) cheap to do and 3) give lots of vouchers. Voucher market crashes (even more than it has already). All master writs become useless because the writ voucher currency is worth next to nothing. Furnishing plans that can be bought with vouchers packs become practically worthless because people can buy them cheap. They've done a decent job of toeing that line already to keep the voucher market stable. No more changes are needed.