Crafting in Fallen Earth happens in real time. When you set up your crafting UI to make something, you get a display of how long it’ll take to make. Stuff I’m making now (crossbows, zip guns, clothing) generally takes 8-10 minutes to make. Once you start the process, you can go do whatever you want. Hunt Bladedancers, scavenge for materials, or even log off.
I’m surprised at how much impact this system has on me.
Now this is all going to be old hat for EVE players, I know, since EVE characters study skills in a similar way.
I just laugh at myself when Angela lets me know dinner is ready and I say “Just a sec…have to start building a new crossbow!” because I don’t want that down time wasted. 🙂 I’m sure this urge to log in constantly and set up crafting queues will ease with time, but for now it’s making me feel ‘connected’ to the game in a way that most MMOs don’t.
I didn’t get much chance to play last night, since I was watching Monday Night Football, but I did log in to start making a medium level zip gun for myself.
One important tip I’ve learned too late. [Just to be clear, I read this on the forums late last night and haven’t personally tested it yet, but the knowledge seemed accepted by the community so I assume its true.] If the difficulty of an item is no more than 30 less than your skill level, you’ll earn skill points making it. I, based on years of MMO crafting, figured I needed to make “white” items (items with a difficulty level similar to my skill level) in order to maximize progress, leaving the “green” stuff behind. This got expensive because all the ‘white’ stuff was pretty complex and required lots of mats, some of which I need to buy from an NPC vendor.
I more or less went broke doing this, when I could’ve been skilling up making (“green”) crossbow bolts or zip-gun ammo, both of which require very few mats, and mats that are cheap to buy and easy to harvest. I think zip-gun ammo requires 2 bits of scrap copper — even if you have to buy it, NPC’s sell scrap copper for 7 chips (at least, that’s the cost in South Burg). Really common vendor trash loot from mobs (teeth, feathers and junk) sell for 2 chips each, so it just takes a couple kills to get enough chips to buy mats for a batch of zip-gun ammo (and if you’re harvesting you can sell tainted meat and random bio chemicals you get off your kills for even more).
🙂 I think Fallen Earth is under my skin. I can’t wait to put more time into it.
That’s a nice feeling to have, given that it was more or less a spur-of-the-moment purchase for me.
Fallen Earth sounds really interesting, but I keep hearing about its crafting systems. And crafting systems bore me. Will there be a way to completely enjoy the game without having to spend a lot of time leveling crafting skills? I’m a combat guy, personally, with a penchant toward supporting others (I’ve been a healer/CCer most of my MMO career), and making new weapons and armor or even food and buffs weighs in as being way too boring for me.
My gut says no, but I did roll up an alt that I mean to play as a combat-only character just to see how that felt. Haven’t put much time into that one yet.
I think everyone would want to at least take harvesting/scavenging skills just to collect stuff to sell.
Maybe a pure melee character wouldn’t have to do any crafting, but it *feels* like a rifle/pistol user would spend as much on ammo as you’d make on drops if you chose not to do any crafting at all. I’m guessing most characters will at least make their own ammo. And then there’s the cost of gas or horse feed, depending on if you pick wheels or hooves as your mode of travel.
I don’t even know if there’s an CC in the game, now that you mention it. My dude has a few skills but I hardly ever use them. But then I’ve been focused on crafting.
Now you have me thinking…it’s like a whole other game to explore!!
One of the downsides of trying to focus on the positive here is that I’m offering a very one-sided view of things. I certainly would *NOT* give Fallen Earth a blanket recommendation, at this point. It really feels old school in a lot of ways, and the first time you’re waiting for your turn to kill a named spawn you’ll remember that not everything about the old days was good. 🙂
To clarify the deal with vendor pricing:
As far as I saw through my adventures throughout alpha and beta, the one and only way prices differ is by how many AP you put into your Social skill.
@Pete: As far as Scavenging, Geology, and Nature go, the main way to increase them is through scavenging, so it’s fairly automatic. And for melee, you’d want to keep up with your Weaponry crafting so you’re competitive in terms of DPS.