Answering all your comments, @Livin and @CyanStargazer:

First, about weapons not leveling up and unlocking modification slots instead. If that happens, then I suppose you would end up limiting how useful one particular item could be in terms of raw power, yet you'd open even more options to make it your own. It would also motivate you to make more than one main item for each equipment slot in your character, because you'd want to make items that are more powerful as you grow in power yourself.

If that were the case, how much effort would be necessary for an item to gain a mod slot? I imagine it would have to be considerably less than the never-ending leveling mechanism, as you'd be swapping items more often. If that happens, craftable items would also need to have a rarity or quality rating, because you'd need to be able to differentiate a weaker item at a glance, adding to the complexity.

Now, if the mod slots allow you to make upgrades that are effective only in specific realms, then you could specialize it indeed, but... would there be any reason to focus on a realm that is not your main one? You should probably be crafting items that help you stay undeadly better, with some limited focus on perhaps getting back to your main form if you get vanquished. So, this possibility will only have a meaningful impact if either:
A) Being on another realm other than your main is truly a difficult situation to be in and you find yourself moving to other states often.
B) The mod slots are not freely assignable, you have the majority of mod slots allowing only for upgrades that are used on your main state, with some reserved for the other two separately.
Either case is possible, but it would depend on the gameplay itself, which we don't know enough about yet.

As for the upgrades, I vote on having to unlock the features to perform them but having them readily available to use whenever you need. For example, finding or unlocking runes that you can bring to your personal dungeon and then use them on the same Forge where you created the item to upgrade them. Because then, like CyanStargazer said, you are not forced to go out on an adventure every time you want to make a modification of any kind.

The modification methods themselves are plentiful, there is room for a bazillion ideas. You could find better hammers, you could get better blacksmiths or a higher amount of servants to work on the Forge, you could melt the materials with fire generated from different sources, you could improve the Forge by adding new forging instruments, you can have incantations prepared around the Forge, you could set cores in the molds themselves (like giving hearts to your items), you can have candles lit and offerings sacrificed on a pyre before creating the item, and the list goes on and on.
Whatever it is, I believe it should be something that, once acquired, stays usable forever.

I think modification slots is something that could be implemented to good effect, and it might or might not have anything to do with crafting itself. But it's a good idea on its own.

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Second, about raid items being more powerful than craftable ones: I believe this only depends on what the game will feature in terms of missions and content. Raids, as we've heard about today, will likely not have the same format in DHS than they do in other MMOs. It will likely not be an instance-based mission that last a few hours with a handful of people, it will likely have a nature more akin to a seasonal event with a meta story or gameplay associated with it... For example, an evil that threatens everyone in which all players can take part of across an entire Age.

Also, raids or events won't necessarily be replayable in order to achieve more or repeated rewards. I believe there are other ways of "grinding" that can be just as enjoyable or more than repeating the same subset of missions over and over to achieve a particular set of items. Namely, working on a long and possibly never-ending project of developing your own set of tools and equipment, yet in a way that doesn't discourage you (because there is no viable way of getting to the end). It will depend on how DHS handles missions themselves.

Naturally, the things you get in difficult missions should be proportionally rewarding. As Denis mentioned in one of the streams, this is something they are striving for. However, I believe people will feel much more attached to their characters if they had to put a lot of work into making something out of nothing than if they simply had a collection of powerful items gained throughout the Ages that they know will be replaced once a new, harder, event comes out.

Which is why I think being able to sacrifice these powerful items that you get to improve your own craftable item's power is such an interesting concept. You are, after all, still working hard to attain powerful items and you are also giving up on them to make your own item just as amazing--if not more.

On the other hand, that does sound a bit hardcore... Fighting on a difficult event, achieving a complicated goal, acquiring a powerful and rare item and then never seeing it again because you decided to sacrifice it.

So, thinking of that, perhaps there is an alternate way of having your craftable gain experience that is neither direct use on combat nor the consumption of other items. Perhaps a mixture of that. Here are some alternatives:

A) Craftable items need a "core" in order to be created. That core is like the soul of the item. It gains experience as you fight against enemies, just like your regular character would. You can remove that core from a craftable item that has already been created in order to use it on other items, including non-crafted ones, but the craftable item becomes unusable until its own core is inserted back (cores from other items cannot be inserted).

This way, you can still give the item an identity that you'll use to work on and associate with, and you can still use other items, including the ones you find on missions as rewards, to grind it. Once you're ready, you can put the core back in its original item so it absorbs all the experience it acquired. You don't need to lose your rare items, and you don't need to give up on your craftable. Cores may or may not be used on other non-crafted weapons only--So you can only level up one core at a time, yet when not leveling it you can attribute it to any kind of item.

B) You still absorb power from non-craftable items, but they are not consumed. Items can only be absorbed once per kind (duplicates cannot be absorbed) and cannot be absorbed by multiple craftables.

This way, you can maintain a large collection of all the rewards you got in your journey, you still gain something for your craftable, and you still have the value from all the combinations you could make, mixing craftables and regular items in your kit. The main problem with this is that either the power gained from absorbed items is very, very small, or you'll have a combination of items that can have too big a payoff, or you can have people who distribute their item experience between many craftables and then they end up wasting their potential.

C) Regular items gain experience just as much as craftable items, but they can be absorbed by the craftable items as you desire.

This way you get to play with whatever it is you prefer at any given moment, yet you never stop gaining resources (experience, in this case) that you can use to develop your craftables. You may or may not be able to choose how much experience from an item is converted to any particular craftable, and there may or may not be an absorption loss (making regular items help you level the craftables, but not as fast as playing directly with them).

I believe these are all viable possibilities, but each of them have their advantages and disadvantages. I'd say my favorite alternative is A) right now. And this is all IF the items will have levels themselves. :p

Further improvements on these alternatives or new ideas are, of course, welcome for discussion. :)

I also hope we get modding AND leveling with our craftable items. These are two good concepts that add to longevity and customization, of both visuals and gameplay aspects.
 
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I've been thinking back on the flesh armor of Blood Omen. I'm fairly certain something like it is planned, but I'd like to share some ideas I have for it. In Blood Omen it pulled blood from your victims and replenishing your health without having to stop and feed. This would work well for the vampire and the way they look to be played in Deadhaus, but perhaps it could have different effects for the different undead. Here are some things that came to mind with regard to the other undead we are familiar with while wearing flesh armor.

Liche's-Provides strength that increases with enhancements and leveling, enabling the liche to have melee proficiency so they can function like a battle mage if they want to. The armor absorbs the blood it draws towards it instead of feeding it to the vampire, that could be how it levels up.

Revenant-The blood being pulled to the armor also channels the rage of the slain, replenishing the Revenant's.
 
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With our bodies being replaceable for some classes and highly regenerative for others, perhaps another source of materials could be ourselves. Outside of stuff like vampire blood and liche marrow we could also cultivate.

For example, you could require flesh or bone that is infected with a specific plague at a certain stage to craft some accessory. You could infect a beast or npc with it, but you could also infect yourself and cultivate it from within.
 
With our bodies being replaceable for some classes and highly regenerative for others, perhaps another source of materials could be ourselves. Outside of stuff like vampire blood and liche marrow we could also cultivate.

For example, you could require flesh or bone that is infected with a specific plague at a certain stage to craft some accessory. You could infect a beast or npc with it, but you could also infect yourself and cultivate it from within.
That is gross, disgusting, and I love it. You could also keep some cattle and cultivate it from them if you don't want to deal with being infected. With cattle being humans/other races in this case.
 
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Hey everyone,

I've had some thoughts about crafting that I'd like to share. I figured I could use this thread rather than start a new one for that.

Considering everything we've heard about items and other aspects in Deadhaus so far, I found this system quite reasonable and interesting. I hope you will find the same.

Crafting can be done for two main purposes: an alternative and faster way to accumulate resources of various kinds, or a way to make specialized items that we intend to use. I call these Utility Crafting and Specialized Crafting respectively.

Utility Crafting is your typical MMORPG crafting system, where X and Y ingredients mixed together result in Z product. Each game has its own spin of it, but it is essentially the same. Deadhaus may or may not need such a feature, depending on how items and other aspects are handled, but if it is useful to have such a system, they would have no shortage of references to draw from and make something decent.
For this reason, let us focus on Specialized Crafting instead.

Specialized Crafting
Though these features may have changed, we know a few things about items so far:
  • Items will be procedurally generated, as well as their stats.
  • They intend to have a crafting system, but have not focused on this yet.
  • Classes may have weapon restrictions.
  • There will be sentient weapons and other items, some of which may serve as portals to other dimensions.
  • Weapons and items may evolve over time together with your character, as Ages go by.
From this, we can infer that weapons will have modules (in order to be procedurally generated, just like the maps), but they will have limitations (focus on the classes that will actually wield them) and that they already intend to have the capacity to add more and more bonuses to already powerful items over time, in some level or form.

Crafting is sometimes avoided by people for various reasons. Sometimes, they find it boring, sometimes the system becomes a chore after too long, sometimes it breaks games by allowing you to attain things that you would otherwise never find, some people believe it diminishes the thrill of adventuring, as adventuring often rewards you with the best of items.

All that said, we can focus on the reason why people would want to engage in this crafting system: to make unique items that suits your playstyle perfectly, instead of depending on luck to find something that will do so, or having to adapt yourself to the items at your disposal.

In order to more easily explain this system, I'll use a single example.

Every item has, for the sake of simplicity, 3 modules that form the whole when put together. These are the pieces that are procedurally generated, from a pool of item appearances. Let us take a sword as the subject of our study.

A sword could have three modules: the pommel, the guard, and the blade. Each module change the weapon's attributes in one way or another.

The crafting system is initiated by acquiring the modules themselves, of the looks you prefer, through regular gameplay--quests, loot, or otherwise. They may or may not have attributes of their own attached to them; I prefer that attributes are attached to something else, so that you may create a weapon with the visual that you desire without sacrificing its utility.

Once the modules are all found, the item is put together. This item will be as basic as your starting journey's wood stick, in terms of special powers, but will be as powerful, in terms of raw strength (base defense or attack, for instance), as your most powerful item found so far--or based on your character's level, or some other skill, such as mastery with that kind of item, or with crafting itself. Whatever the aspect utilized, the item is merely physical and has no secondary attribute.

But now the actual crafting begins: the weapon evolves over time as you use it, but in the direction that you tell it to develop.
Let us say our character of choice is a Vampire that wants his sword to drain blood from its victims, instead of having to drink it directly. He will put together a sword with the looks that he believes is fitting with its purpose. Now, he will enter in synchronicity with the weapon and assign it the duty of developing a vampirical attribute of blood stealing.

The way in which this synchronicity is attained can vary. Every crafted weapon may be sentient, or they may all have their own pocket dimensions, or they may simply be magickal artifacts that react to your thoughts. I particularly like the idea of the item having a mind of its own, created as the item was formed, and that it needs to learn how to behave with its newfound consciousness, such as a child learning more about the world, and that you can communicate with it in some way to teach it how to develop.

Additionally, in order to be able to teach the item to gain a specific attribute, such as blood stealing, the Vampire himself has to go through a quest, or find something in the world, or talk to a specific character, any of it, that might allow him how to teach such characteristic to the weapon. Characters may, perhaps, have a list of aspects they already know how to teach the items, such as subjects that pertain closely to their nature. In this case, the Vampire can teach the item to vampirize individuals, as this is innate to him.

After the Vampire speaks to his sword and assign it the duty of learning how to blood steal, the weapon needs to gain experience. This is done in form of challenges that the weapon has to overcome. These challenges may be integrated with the regular gameplay--so that you may continuously develop it as you go about your heroic undead quest normally--or it may be part of a separate experience where you have to focus on the challenge specifically. Both can do nicely, it depends on how well that would integrate with everything else in the game.

An example of a challenge would be delving into the weapon's mind and going into one such pocket dimensions. For the blood steal attribute, you need to feed the weapon as much blood as you can before your demise. So you are put in an arena with endless enemies of growing power and all you have access to is the weapon itself, and your abilities pertaining to that weapon kind. The more enemies you are able to kill before dying, the stronger the blood steal attribute will be on the weapon. Once a peak is achieved, any repeated attempt that results in a lesser result will wield no effect, but the attribute can be further increased by achieving a higher "score" in a repeated attempt. The thing is, the weapon also grows in power over time, and so does your mastery with it, making it easier for you to achieve better results in its challenges later. And once a particular result is achieved, you don't have to go back to it if you don't want to, because you can now teach other items of the same kind the same attribute learned, if you want to make variants of it.

Otherwise, if not through separate challenges, then perhaps gradually through the use of the item in regular play. Every enemy slain adds to the weapon's experience. As your own character, the weapon gains "levels" as it becomes more experienced, and every level takes longer to be reached as the experience requirement increases considerably. Initially, every level gives the weapon a high amount of the chosen attribute, but this amount diminishes over time as it grows stronger and closer to the "limit". This limit may be a form of control so that weapons never become overly powerful, yet they may be raised with the passing of Ages.

If you want to take this a step further, you can also make the weapon's individual modules acquire specific visual elements to them pertaining to the attribute they are acquiring. Such as becoming blood-red by learning to steal blood, or glowing with a magickal aura as it learns to deflect projectiles, or elongating itself and getting more curved as it learns to increase its own speed, or acquiring serrated teeth if it grows armor penetration or bleeding capabilities, and so on. This could be done with specific modules, so that you don't have to create variants of weapon looks for every potential combination, and it could also potentially be influenced by the player's desire (if it wants the weapon to change its look or not over time, for instance).

If the system is to be made even more complex, you can have each module capable of learning a different attribute. And then you can add more modules, or new levels of improvements, through the various forms of enchantments and upgrades that the game may have available.

I believe this system is more interesting than regular minigame crafting because:

  • It is not tedious or repetitive, necessarily.
  • It doesn't force you to depend on luck in getting specific values in ranges of attributes or kinds of loot, only skill and effort.
  • It doesn't remove the complexity of the regular crafting, it is to be kept.
  • It creates a much higher value in every weapon crafted as you have put literally time and effort in them.
  • It allows you to tailor your items to your very specific needs and playstyle.
  • It creates opportunities to create interesting quests related to crafting, or your relationship with the crafted items.
  • It doesn't break the game by allowing you to become overly powerful by just being good at crafting.
  • It doesn't remove the aspect of adventuring and finding loot and knowledge.
  • It doesn't force people to go through things they don't want to do necessarily.
  • You do not rely on gimmicky systems to simulate the crafting itself.
  • Once a challenge is completed, you may not have to repeat it ever again with another item if you don't want, as you may be able to copy your results (if you go with the challenge route instead of gradual evolution).
  • There is a major potential for integrating this with the game's various other story and gameplay features.
We haven't heard much about crafting so far, but hopefully this contributes to the concept further when the devs do decide to tackle it.

Would anyone like to add anything to it? :)
 
Love it @Golden Xan

Perhaps the changes could also involve conflicting opinions between the player and their weapon over its evolution, with the weapon pushing for certain changes that the player opposes or vice versa with the challenge being to defeat it.
 
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