Ugh gods no. The last thing Lusternia could support would be a WoW style commodity system.

You've convinced me. I still think it's a little unbalenced but that could be worked out.

Yes.

Let's see now, we want to fix a skillset that has non-functional skills, and takes an insane amount of time to produce anything to make profit with. I know, we'll do it with a grind skill! While we're at it, we'll stop that ship over there from sinking by airlifting the people on board a couple of tubes of liquid cork! Problem solved!

/endsarcasm.

Seriously, though, it's not a bad idea, but, as the other thread pointed out, one major, major problem with forging is that it already takes an insane amount of time. Yes, this says 'right, smiths need an income, so let's give them an easy one', but that's not what is actually needed here - it'd be better and far more effective to see actual improvements to things like forging times, an implementation of the long-awaited repair/damage system in armours, or even the (admittedly more drastic) redistribution of the armour market so that it's not totally dominated by greatrobes.

Two things. Technically if it makes sense anything listed below can currently be used in any design, just because there aren't any designs that use them in a tradeskill doesn't mean there can't be (well 'cept the ones that would never make sense)



And... if something like this were implemented I would hope that the comms could be... processed in groups not sure how gemcutting works though.

Refinement would happen in groups at higher skill ranks.. mainly to prevent Inepts running around spamming the market and ruining the entire thing, which is to give a base income to tradesmen.

I did put forth the Forging Gloves Caedryn which would 'reduce' forging time, I imagine that would stack with hammer... Honestly, I think forging needs to be faster, and everything else needs to be a bit slower. Maybe 4 or five messages describing the activity. IE:

You heat the metal bars over the forge, before pouring the molten metal into a mold.

As the metal in the mold cools, you take it out with a pair of tongs, and reheat it in the forge, before hammer refinements to the blade/head.

You continue to labour over the blade/head, making sure it is as perfect as can be, before finally dipping it into the bucket of water causing a vast amoutn of steam to fill the air.

Finally finished with the blade/head, you get to work fashioning the hilt/haft for the weapon.

Finally you put it all together, and smile at your finished product.


This would not need refinement, it would give stats as if you had refined it. All trades should have something similar that lasts a minimum of 30 seconds, and no more then 1 minute. *Shears, Hammers and such, would make it 15 seconds.

*DELETE*

Of course, the problem with this is that bars ARE ingots. So there's really no point in turning ingots into ingots. And then of course, you give ore to the villages for them to turn it into bars. So we've pretty much ruled out raw ore and refined ingots. I suppose this idea would work out if you could somehow replace all these terms with something that would work out properly. You'd need three forms of metal of course; a raw quest item form, a comm form, and a processed apres-refinement form.

How about we decrease the villages' current comm output and increase commodity gathering quests to allow people to harvest raw comms more readily (IE ore and all that from the villages). Then, they can hand it in to the villagers to refine, or if they happen to be an artisan, forger, etc. they can refine it themselves and make a pretty profit?

And by increase raw comm gathering, I mean add in quests or the ability to (for example) dig in underground locations and perhaps turn up a bit of metal ore?

I like the getting more ore part; I can them finally confirm who buys what and the prices they pay for them. I don't understand the rest of your post very well though Folkien.

Sorry, my head isn't what it used to be.

Basically, the administration adds in a lot more comm gathering quests that, in one way or another, provide the player with raw commodities (metal ore, raw lumber, animal corpses, etc.). They also add in, to some of the ailing tradeskills, new abilities to refine raw materials (forgers refine metal ores into useable bars, artisans refine raw lumber into useable lumber, cooks butcher corpses into cookable meat).

Players who have high enough skills to refine materials can do comm quests and either use the results to produce an item that effectively had no material cost just more labor time (which may or may not be in their favor), or then sell the refined comms on MARKET or to their organization's comm shop. OR they can offer their talents as a refiner to the larger community for a small price (IE a forger could charge 5 gp to refine metal ores, so a jeweller goes out and mines the ores, pays the small fee, etc.). That makes four new methods and markets for profits for the less demanded tradeskills.

OR, if no one is around who can use the commodities, or the player is uninterested in getting the commodities for themselves and just want to turn a quick profit, they can give the items to the currently existant commodity refiner mobs in the villages, and things will work as they currently do.

This change would also give new benefits to being unenemied to villages, or other organizations in the Basin. It would perhaps encourage many of the high level tradesmen to get back to the grassroots basics. It would provide new opportunities by which a whole mix of peoples, at any level, can help their organization. It also allows the underdogs access to the same materials as all other organizations, provided they have the patience, even if no villages able to process the comm.

I'm sure there's more to be said about it, I just don't have enough time to delve all the way into the economics of this...

Argh, and by new comm quests (and I know a couple of these suck), I mean things like:
1. Easier influencable charitable mobs carrying the raw stuff.
2. DIGging multiple times underground having the chance to unearth metal ores or marble or gems.
3. Fishing.
4. New areas, or changes to existing areas, that have mobs who are killable, nonaligned, and carry raw commodities.
5. "Go fetch" quests where you ask the commodity salesman of a village for a certain comm, he gives you a commodity order, and tells you to go to one of the other villages. You turn in the paper and get a couple of the raw comms in return.
6. Wandering merchants on the roads who keep their own stock of raw comms.

Etc.