"A well Socketed Piece" is the crux of the issue though.
You can't make a blue item unless a special resource drops, lets say tin for example. Maybe I am unlucky I don't know, but I got my first tin after mining over 400 pieces of copper. That's allot of copper in my opinion and the effort expended just so the NPC trainer can take it and keep it and give me 3500 XP is a joke. Ok, yes they increased the drop now and my 2nd tin dropped after only around 150 coppers were mined. Ok now given that my online time has no value and also I have all this copper, lets say that one tin was free!
Ok so now I make one blue armor piece and it has three slots. Ok now on to gems. Only a Oblique cut level 40 and 50 or a Cabochon cut level 60+ will make a gem to fit into a armor item , so no problem there, the cuts are in the recipe book.
In order to slot a blue item you need a blue gem and that only comes from a flawless stone, again no problem. The real headache arises from the fact that even if you know which gem = which effect, the cut results are purely random.
As an example, the following gems can be used for the following random results:
Azurite, Lapsx Lazuli, Turquoise, Aquamarine, Sapphire, Star Sapphie - anyone can be used and the level of the stone from lowest to highest determines how much of a buff you will get.
The random results are as follows:
+ to Intellect
+ to Wisdom
+ to Max Mana
+ to non combat mana regeneration
+ to cold based spell damage - usable by a necro only as they are the only casters that have cold damage
+ to Fire based attack defense
+ to increased chance to totally resist a spell, any spell
+ to chance to generate, upon being hit, a shield that inflicts cold based damge on a attacker
To make the issue even more daunting is after you cut all the gems hoping to get the effect you want, they no longer stack and to sell them, the minimum trader listing fee is 10 coppers. So not a huge amount of per se, but it can add up! Also you could go through every gem you have and still not get the one random result that you were looking for.
So, I am not disputing that 1 in 100 results may be useful, its the effort, cost, the inventory space etc. Taking on TWO crafts IMO is pure insanity as you would need 3 alt banks just to hold all the resources lol.
If there is a way to determine what your cut result would be, I haven/t found it yet.
So, in closeing the:
Cost
Time
Space Needed
Results
This has made crafting, to me anyway, a huge time/money sink with questionable results. There are simply to many random effects and to many different resources.
Now since its easy to bitch about how screwed up something is, here are some thoughts on how to change it, which I sent to Funcom "Feedback"!
Perhaps a different system that would include a specific recipe for say + to Wisdom.
Level 40 gem nets a +6, Level 50 gem = +12 etc. so then you know what level gem to use, so instead of six different gems you have 1 name with 6 levels. Easier to remember. Taking that a step further, rather than 6 gems you have 6 cuts based upon your skill level. So if you cut a azurite with a level 40 cut, you get a level 40 *6 boost to Wisdom! So now you have:
One gem type instead of 5 X 7 level groups (40,50,60,65,70,75,80) Imgaine the bank space just freed up.
Ok so now we come to gem types, yes in the real world a flawless is different from a non flawless, but c'mon, in the real world there are no rideable Rhinos, or magic. So lets stop trying to inject reality into fantasy
Lets add in a Polishing skill that enables you to create a flawless gem from a std gem. So now we have eliminated 7 more gems from the list.
What I am imagining is less resources and more crafting options. Easier to print Polish 1,2,3 etc into a craft book than have a different gem for each possibility!
You remember the Quest in Tortage at the Acheronian Ruins, the one with Genzio and the Talisman? Was making you run back and forth 6 times a way to make the quest fun or interesting? What they did was take a pretty good story idea and made it seem more than it was by eating up more time than it had to be. It seems that Funcom's concept of fun = tedium because not enough time was spent on developing the system or the quest.
Please don't construe my ideas or thoughts on what is wrong as whining or complaints resulting in the usual response of "if you don't like the game, they why do you play"? If I didn't like the game, I wouldn't put the effort into discussing what I feel is wrong and I wouldn't bother sending ideas or thoughts to Funcom.
By the way if you have ideas that you want to see in the game send them to
feedback@ageofconan.com
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Thu Aug 20, 2009 9:46 am by Thodrin
Subject: Some armor craft info 
