I dinged 29 tonight and sped through about 40% of it in Training Camp (I went in at 98% through 28 so that I could ding 29 inside and get exp there. 29+ can not enter). I decided that tonight was going to be an ideal night to craft because family was coming over and I didn’t feel like being super attentive and grinding. I already had a general idea of how grindy the crafting is and how it works, but tonight was the first time I experienced it.
The crafting is really quite simple and resembles many other crafting systems. You need A, B, and C combined to make D which is either a final product or an intermediate product used to be E or can crit to make F. That’s the extent of the crafting complexity as I know it. Crafting is one of those “AFK” hobbies in Aion. I grew tired of doing the work orders, so I bought a ton o oranges and made orange juice (okay, it was called something else but they look like oranges and it was juice).  I literally put 100 oranges in and said “Craft all”. I went afk and 30 minutes later they were done. I went up 4 kill points. /cough
I’m a cook in Aion. I thought I would be making lots of useful food. I can live with the crafting being simplistic and even grindy…but I’d like to make useful stuff. Turns out that most everything Cooks make is useless. One of the few things worth selling is called “DP Food” and gives DP which is used to activate good abilities. It’s skill level 400+ though… which is a huge investment of time and money. In SWG I could make really useful stuff almost immediately. Nothing I make is even remotely worth using. It’s really similar with other crafts too, although weapon and armorsmith do make useful stuff, it’s just really freaking expensive — In my opinion not worth it since you can quest or do dungeons for stuff almost as good.
Sorta a bummer, but not an deal breaker for me. I’ll just grind up my cooking skill to whatever is needed for the DP food at a slow and steady pace on nights like this. Eventually I’ll get to the point where I can turn a profit — I hope.
It would be nice if MMO’s would have better crafting systems.
I’ve never liked crafting, stay away at all costs. But you may have heard of Fallen Earth. Suddenly I love crafting and can’t get enough of it. It IS nice that this MMO has nice crafting system.
Its nothing terribly new. You still need stuff to make stuff. Its considered ‘real time’ which makes it seem authentic. The biodiesel motorcycle I am now crafting takes 1 day and 6 hours to complete. However crafting continues as you quest and even when you’re logged out. So I set up my big items in queue when I have big work days and they are done when I get off.
Everything is useful that you craft in Fallen Earth. Every piece of armor, weapon, vehicles. If you craft you are most likely making everything for yourself, with a few extra items here and there for skill points going to the AH for those who don’t craft. A pretty chip can be made here as well.
Food items make survivabilty easier as there are items for everything from +health, +stamina, +gamma, a wide assortment of resistance foods. Medical items are made for healing and curing. Mutagenic items are made for your mutations.
Crafting facilities can be used to speed up the crafting process and also apply when you are offline. The number of items that can be made is really staggering. And you can do ALL the tradeskills. They all use the same stats so if you are a crafter you can make anything you want and never have to specialize in only one type of item. Even common scavenged materials can be made via refining skills.
“It would be nice if MMO’s would have better crafting systems.” They do, you just have to find them.
Have not been a big problem for me. I’m an alchemist, and nearly from day one I could make lots of usefull stuff. My guess would be that I have earned at least 1.5 mio kinah on it so far, and I’m at lvl 29, and skill lvl 220.
And about food, I do not agree. I buy lots of +mana regen food, and I know a lot others from my guild do the same. Ofcourse some of it is useless, but think there’s more that’s good than you give it credit for
Get Alchemy, it´s kick ass for my Chanter!
Made tons of mana pots early on. Was even ging em away by the 15!
I’m with you on this one. Crafting is not a deal breaker for me as I’m enjoying the other elements of Aion, but I DO like crafting and I would very much have liked it to be more interesting/useful in Aion, without having to be a ridiculous time sink. As you said, 30 mins afk and you popped 4 skill points. What a waste of time.
My main character is a cook, and I love it. To say it’s useless and can’t sell? You’re not talking about the same game I’m playing. Look for some better recipes on the Broker. It’s also great for RP stuff.
If you approach crafting as “something to level up” then yeah you won’t enjoy it. But once you find a few useful things to make you can really have a lot of fun with it.
Fairly late insight!
What bothers me about crafting in Aion is the need to crit an item in order to make most of the good stuff. Most Flux’s are not cheap, so you can spend a considerable amount of kinah just trying to get a basic crit.
Cooking useless? Get past lvl 4
I’m curious, what did you think of Vanguard’s crafting?
I agree with most of the other comments here: the stuff I’m crafting in Aion as an alchemist/handicrafter have been very useful so far. The mats for potions are so easy to gather, I basically have an unlimited number of free potions of any kind I want (free mana potions for a cleric is a big plus). Plus, I’ve been crafting rings and earrings that I’ve actually been wearing. While the work order system bores me to tears, it does make the stuff we craft worth something. I think the key is to actually level your crafting as you level your character.
Cooking is a bit of an odd-craft-out as it really doesn’t offer much appeal for its crafts… but the crafting system is still the same.
I think that the crafting system is above average simply because it followed the same recipe (no pun intended) as much of the game: make it cost a lot and take a long time… and it will feel surprisingly rewarding. That is sort of a bleek and oversimplified description, but it has proven a surprisingly effective design (especially coming at a time when WoW has peaked its reputation as ‘little effort, high reward’).
The system works much more ideally for gear crafts, and is separated from typical crafting systems by one simple characteristic: luck. Unlike many crafting systems, items don’t simply equate to their material cost once someone learns the pattern; the supply/demand balance has a wrench thrown into its supply aspect making the cost of any single rare craft highly incalculable…. you could spend 100k crafting a rare weapon with a couple lucky crits, or you could just as likely spend 2 million without a single rare proc. It is a creative design to keep items from simply equating to their material supply/demand; a state where margins continually decline unless supply is manipulated by the developers.
The other attractive aspect of crafting is that most everything that is crafted is reasonably valuable and often THE high end option (next to very rare drops). NCSoft did an excellent job making the mediocre, non-crit crafts vendor for very high amounts… and making craftable items have a seemingly higher i-value for the level of the craft (you’ll constantly notice that a level 30 crafted green item is better in every way than a level 32 random green drop).
All-in-all, I like how the crafts are valuable and how the luck aspect has kept the crafting system from becoming a ‘these mats equate to these items’ system where the only interesting gameplay is acquiring patterns.
I saw the same things you saw Keen and came to a different conclusion. I love Aion crafting. In fact I wrote about it here: http://spritesarefun.blogspot.com/2009/10/crafting-in-aion.html
Shameless plug!
If you have a problem with Cooking I don’t think it’s fair to make a sweeping statement that all crafting isn’t worth it.
I’m an alchemist and at every level I’ve been able to make potions and sell them on the broker at a profit. Typically doubling the cost of the materials I bought.
I said most (or implied it), not all, crafting suffers from a similar level of uselessness while leveling it up. Why would I pay 200,000+ Kinah, that’s WITHOUT calculating the price for all the mats b/c I harvest them, for a mace at level 28 when I can get one that is *almost* as good for free? Doesn’t compute. I’m not saying crafts are useless — far from it. Cooking is VEEEERRRYYY good… 400+. Alchemy is probably the biggest exception that I know about since it’s definitely useful all the time, and I’ll give you that one. I’d like to see the other crafts become more useful while raising the skill. It shouldn’t be about “end-game crafting”.
Crafting is also not sustainable unless you’re adventuring and earning cash to spend on crafting. Aion is not built with a craft system like EQ2 or Vanguard. Aion’s crafting is an accessory to the rest of the game whereas in some games (like UO, SWG, or even Vanguard) crafting and adventuring are separate and crafting can provide an equally deep and rewarding experience.
Argue the points above all you want, but so far (aside from Alchemy) I do not see any craft being really all that meaningful while leveling it up and no one has offered a reason why or to the contrary that makes sense to me. I just see people disagreeing saying that they like the crafting where I am rather disappointed by it, or people saying that they don’t care about spending all their money on a crafted upgrade while leveling even when they can get a free upgrade.
SWG without a doubt was the best crafting system I have seen in a MMO. I hope one day, that another game can match or remotely compare to the level they achieved in that game. One of the worst/ most disappointing crafting systems in a MMO was Warhammer Online’s… shudder.
As a tailor, the items I can make at x8 at any level range are the best in slot for cloth/leather (aside from AP items). Specifically for cloth as the Worthy Durable gear has HP on it which is rare for cloth items in this game. The gear I mde at 28 took me to 38 and what I make at 38 will take me to 50 or until I replace them with Steel Rake loot, AP loot, etc.
Of course there are random blue drops that could be considered better, but for the ease of access the crafting items have, they are fairly good for cloth.
the best crafting system i have seen so far was in ATiTD, but then that was what quite a bit of the game was about.
Using crafting systems only to drain money seems to be like a kind of crutch, as in the end, you could just make less money drop.
FFXI crafting was the same way for me. It wound up costing so much more than selling the mats or buying crafted goods from auction house, although some very high-level crafters could make nice money. It depends also if the mats you harvest can be sold as is for profit. In FFXI I made more money selling things for crafters to make things with than the actual crafted goods.
Agree with you Keen 100%. I started Alchemy and really it was only for pots. I found that pots were separated by like 100 skill points for each new upgrade and no way I could keep up my craft skill to my need lvl. The stuff in between to me was all crappy scrolls or manastone upgrades which I already am overflowing with in the bank.
Even then at the time I made like 100 potions of the low lvl ones and I still have like 70 of them on me which are now useless. I will send them to an Alt down the road.
I could not handle the mindless work orders…so i have stopped for now and maybe forever. The only thing that pays off and I like doing in between adventuring is collecting. As example i had to lvl my collecting for a quest and picked like 100 Rabano in a well stocked area then I sold them all on the Ah and made a nice sum of money.
So from now on I think I will be collecting just to sell on AH.
Oh and I wanted to add I like the way Eve does crafting.
Using cooking as the analogy. Based on your skill level you are allotted so many ovens. As well on your skill lvl the speed in which they are cooked differs. So you get your ingredients, place them in the oven and it will say they will be ready in xx amount of time based on your skills. You then have the freedom to go and do other things while they cook.
I just prefer this method way more.
Crafting always seems to come second fiddle in MMOs and, to be honest, I can understand why. I hate crafting, it’s never interested me in the slightest. I know some people love it but it’s not for me.
I would agree with a lot of the people posting thus far. Cooking IS in fact useful. However, the usefulness does not scale nearly as well as you really need it to.
Early on, HP, Mana Regen and even Accuracy food are wonderful. However, because the food does not scale well, it gets less and less useful as you get higher in level.
The real problem with cooking and food in general is that the High Quality versions of these foods do nothing more than increase the duration by 15minutes. This is where there was a real opportunity to make food scale decently with level. Food is not useless, its just its usefulness is so minimal that there often is not a real reason to use it unless you specifically are a cook. Money is such a horrible commodity in Aion, people just choose not to use it on foodbased consumables instead of flight potions, shock scrolls and health potions.
“Food is not useless, its just its usefulness is so minimal that there often is not a real reason to use it unless you specifically are a cook. Money is such a horrible commodity in Aion, people just choose not to use it on foodbased consumables instead of flight potions, shock scrolls and health potions.”
Okay, that pretty much matches my definition of useless.
Food isn’t useless… it’s just not worth what people are asking.
Healing increased by 4 for 30 minutes.
HP increased by 80 for 15 minutes.
That’s useful? Those are some of the better things I can make. That’s like saying a spoon is a useful tool for digging because technically you can dig with a spoon.
Fallen Earth has easily the best and most engaging crafting system I’ve come accross. And I’ve crafted in DAOC, EQ2, WOW, WAR, LOTRO, and AION. I’m not actually playing it much right now as my guild is split between WAR and AION (and 3 mmos is too much for me) – but Fallen Earth is an open sandbox game WITH an excellent crafting system. It really does sound like something you should try out given your posts here.
The DP food seems super good Keen. That alone has almost made me want to level it. DP food will be required at PvE raids in a few months I’d wager.
I will say that I had considered doing Cooking over Alchemy but then remembered EQ2 and how they compared. Potions are almost always a stronger trade skill for making Kinah.
What level is your cooking? I just went through some of the recipes and some seem pretty good even in the 100-150 range.
“Physical Attack increases by 6 and Accuracy increase by 30 points for 45 min.”
or
“Physical Attack increases by 6 and Maximum HP increase by 120 points for 45 min. “
I totally agree about the DP food. My main argument right now is that cooking is completely useless from 1-400. I’ve said that several times already. I’m not saying crafting is useful forever — just while you’re leveling it up.
I’m at 150 cooking right now. I’ve looked ahead at the recipes on the AH/Vendor and aside from the DP food there is nothing else worth making.
Mobs hit me for 200 damage in 1 hit. 6 physical attack translates to negligible damage.
Quote: “That’s like saying a spoon is a useful tool for digging because technically you can dig with a spoon.”
ROFL! Good one, Keen! =D
Food in Aion is great. I don’t cook (I’m an alchemist and gatherer), but I supply our guild cook with ingredients.
Food is very powerful and can really save your life.
There is relatively high level food which is not hard or expensive to make (once you get your skill there) that can help you grind or save you in a dangerous situation.
Zeller Aether Jelly? +2000 DP pts instantly? Awesome.
AionArmory is your friend… so is patience. Good basic description of what you have to do, but don’t judge cooking — much less crafting as a whole — from your one night of tinkering, that would be wrong. Cooking is an extremely useful skill.
You’d do well to skip much of the early skill points, at least get to 100+. Below that, you’re a horrible cook. Why would you expect your bland dishes to inspire more than sour stomachs among the ranks?
You say cooking 1-400 sucks (I assume you mean 1-399). I submit to you these (they have equivalents on both factions):
Wild Ginseng Pickle (385)
Available for Level 50 or higher
Asmodian Only
Physical Crit increases by 50 and Accuracy increase by 50 points for 30 min.
Lobnite Cream Pasta (365)
Available for Level 50 or higher
Asmodian Only
Evasion increases by 25 and Magic Resist increase by 50 points for 30 min.
Moonflower Sushi Roll (365)
Available for Level 50 or higher
Elyos Only
Magical Skill Boost increases by 50 and Magical Accuracy increase by 50 points for 30 min.
There is much more. It’s kinda the opposite of suck.
BTW — You get recipes from completing Work Orders… you’re likely missing out on a lot of recipes if you’re depending on the AH and the Vendor for them.
I come from the future. And cooking does indeed suck. People just do without. I sold 4 stacks of Leopis Cocktail in the last 72 hours. This is with me undercutting. Heroic food fails to sell and gets sent back to me in the mail.
Unless there’s some good recipes to make and sell the results to the vendor you’re wasting your time. But hey you can cook your own stuff