Turbine Nation
Bearcat has some exciting plans in mind for expanding the crafting system to support new materials. Let us be clear from the start, though...new crafting professions are NOT something that will be showing up in the near future. These are long term plans, unlikely to appear until at least the second half of 2005. However I found it interesting to hear where his thoughts were headed, I'm sure you will, too.
Right now, everything created by a crafter has durability, resulting in a slow wearing down of the item. There was a deliberate choice to make durability large enough that a character will most frequently level out of an item before that item will run out of durability. There is a certain amount of randomness in the system, but the majority of weapons/armor will do that. The random factor of durability makes things a little less sterile than a strict numerical accounting of 'X' hits or 'Y' many times being struck.
However, Bearcat's future vision for crafting is in both more and less durable items. What exactly does that mean? Well, more durable items means things that look cool but don't do much. Fluff...items just to show that you have the money to spend. Since this kind of display is something dependant on a place to display it, I believe that Bearcat isn't going to do much more than think about this kind of until they have a chance to do housing right. But we shouldn't be distracted here, I have another article about housing and land ownership, so I don't need to put it in this one.
The next type of crafting we are likely to see (please note that this is not guaranteed, since it is so far out) is Alchemy. This will be another crafting skill path. Bearcat has some early ideas for it, but they need a lot of polish. In addition, it is low enough on the priority scale that it stands no chance of being seen until at least the middle of 2005.
However, Alchemy does sound pretty interesting, based on what Bearcat did have to say. Firstly, he envisions this and any future luxury crafting as being gold sinks...ways for gold to exit inventories. So, in addition to using basic crafting materials and possibly trophies, it will use more purchasable components.
So, what will we get from this? All kinds of potions. With all sorts of effects. Bearcat has a vision of crafting base potions, which would then be improved or changed by adding other ingredients. Things like adding ingredients to a small Heal over Time potion and making it do a tremendous Heal over Time and a small Vigor Drain over Time. Or duplicating an effect that otherwise appears in the game, but isn't usually ingestible. Oh...and there will be no choice. There must be booze. Whether it will have any direct game effect is still something for debate. ;)
At one time Jewelry Crafting was a part of the Craft 2.0 plan, but it is likely to be quite some time before it is added, if ever. For one thing, there isn't a great deal of reason to craft jewelry. Any effects would be dealt with via spellbinding, leaving not much that could be done directly in crafting the jewelry. As such, it is likely that the province of Jewelry Crafting will be left for the moment to the great crafters of old whose items we discover in random treasure and those few who supply Questers (such as Gallus) with rewards.
From statements made by Citan about the entire craft rewrite, the base structure is explicitly designed to allow expansion into new crafting professions. Bearcat has every intention of taking advantage of it. It won't stop with Alchemy, have no fear. But it is quite likely it will begin there.
