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Crucible Curios! (also commodity/salt discussion)
First, the current idea is to change the breaking down of aether crafted items as follows:
- Sugar to break down aethercandy
- Salt to break down aetherbuttons
- Sulfur for aetherscarves
- Mercury for aetherspheres
Next, I would like to introduce new curios. We haven't seen any in awhile and I thought this was a neat idea. But I wanted to present the idea to you guys first in order to get some input so there's no backlash if people think this is actually a bad idea. These would be simple to code so we wouldn't be taking away resources from other projects. It addresses maybe some commodity imbalances among individual crafters who may need certain commodities but have excess of others. It doesn't create new commodities (it actually reduces commodities). It's not meant to be a fix to anything or a bandaid to solve any particular problem, but rather a convenience to players, especially crafters, who want to invest in these curios.
Metal Crucible
- Converts any of the following commodities to another commodity (in this list): iron, gold, silver, platinum, mercury
- Conversion is 5:1
- Limited to 50 comms/game month
Glass Crucible
- Converts any of the following commodities to another commodity (in this list): grain, milk, fruit, vegetables, sugar
- Conversion is 5:1
- Limited to 50 comms/game month
Stone Crucible
- Converts any of the following commodities to another commodity (in this list): leather, cloth, rope, silk salt
- Conversion is 5:1
- Limited to 50 comms/game month
Crystal Crucible
- Converts any of the following commodities to another commodity (in this list): poultry, fish, meat, eggs, sulfur
- Conversion is 5:1
- Limited to 50 comms/game month
2
(c) Iron Realms Entertainment 2012.
Comments
Why the glass, and only the glass? Because it has a commodity that can easily be generated by player initiative (milk, and sugar to a lesser extent) and converted into quite a few others that'd I'd find useful as a cook, and otherwise must rely almost solely on for village production to obtain.
The metal crucible isn't bad either, but all the metals are more on the rarer side as well. Only the mercury can be easily produced by player initiative. Might be more tempting for forging-heavy players.
Pretty much everything in the crystal crucible isn't too hard to generate by player initiative, so the conversion rate feels overly painful for simple convenience. Everything in there except for sulfur is really only appealing to cooks.
Stone is mostly textiles, which is the odd one out because cloth and leather aren't too bad to generate by player initiative, while silk is more tedious, and rope is very hard to generate but in general abundance due to underuse. I'd foresee a lot of rope getting burned away with this one, especially for producing salt. Comm conversion here appeals primarily to tailors.
I understand you're going for themes with the commodity groupings, but if you want more people to have/use these, it might be prudent to spread out commodity groupings. One metal, one food comm, one textile option per crucible or so. This would give more incentive to collect them all, but I'm not sure if that is desired and if the speccing is intended so that people can just go for the one they really want.
Still strongly recommend a gold cost option for breaking down goop items too, that comes with a loss of the gold reimbursement on breakdown.
It's a fine idea on its own, but a poor solution to goop craft problems.
EDIT: And coal! All of them would be better balanced if each received one of coal, marble, wood, and gems, honestly. Or maybe those four could be their own extra crucible.
Converting comms is a way to re-introduce salt (and other comms) into the game, but any produced in the current environment will not re-enter the game's economy. They will be horded by a small number of players, who will use them to turn an upfront real money investment into goop. These players would then have no need to purchase any further goop promos, as they would have a supply of the resource that would not be available to other players.
This would bring down the cost of salt, I think, although not by a whole lot. And all the comms suggested are also relatively rare to get (as far as I know) but is not limited to a profession, which is good.
Will these curios only be available to buy on the market? Or will it be possible to get curio pieces through doing comm quests? (If not, I think it would be a good idea to be able to have a small probability to get them through doing comm quests)
If these would be available in curio packs (costing goop) that would be even worse. Then it would be a way of turning goop into more goop, which could then be used to buy more of the curio, and therefore more goop - similar to what happened with crates and coins a while ago.
Of course, the people who have goop to spend on this, rather than spending real money, would be the ones who would benefit - not the people who need the comms for trades.
For the people who actually need the comms, this is just making it worse. "Sure, you can have your comms back for the skills you probably learnt with lessons bought with credits, but now you need to pay either money or goop to get them."
- Sugar to break down aethercandy
- Salt to break down aetherbuttons
- Sulfur for aetherscarves
- Mercury for aetherspheres
So:Cooks will need to get sugar from alchemists if they want to break down aethercandy.
Jewellers just gemcut to get more salt, without having to trade with anyone.
Tailors need to get sulfur from jewellers if they want to break down aetherscarves.
... and I forgot who makes aetherspheres, and am finding it unnecessarily hard to find this info in the news and changelogs. Still, mercury means they need to find either a cook or forger.
Do you see the problem here? Jewellery is already the current king of aethertrading. It doesn't need this layering of self-sufficiency that other trades lack when it has brooches as a high comm item for refinement and reaps benefits from the gem comm - the easiest commodity to produce in the game via player initiative.
This would be an opportunity to not just blunt jewellery's hold over the others by a bit, but create a useful point of exchange. Proposal:
- Salt to break down aethercandy
- Mercury to break down aetherbuttons
- Sulfur for aetherscarves
- Sugar for aetherspheres
Maybe they don't thematically make as much sense, but jewellers then need to exchange salt for mercury, and cooks vice-versa. Cooks also get to decide if they want to cook with the salt or use it to break down goop things.The one issue there might be quicksilver, and potential for it to short out, but cooks still want sugar for sweets and things too.
Are we unable to just make all goop item breakdown possible by a list of commodities, or as Jolanthe suggested in the other thread as well, just remove the comm cost to also negate the gold earned from the item. The game is already flooded with a bunch of curios that are labeled as "must have" if you're going to have any amount of success, not to mention you're kind of locked out of goop generation -unless- you're one of these three aethertrades, or stumble upon genies.