I'm a bookbinder actually i just know artisan sucks. i heart tome

That you bring up supply-demand, just proves that you did not understand what I was saying.


Many tradeskills requre other tradeskills in order to make goods.

Alchemists reuie an herbalist, cooks, and blacksmiths.

Blacksmiths for a time required Jewlers. etc etc. (I'm pretty much out of the trade skill loop on the ohter skills and have forgotten exactly what needs what)

Herbalists however require no other person from another tradeskill, nor do they require any upfront money to produce thier goods. So the only thing you have in the equation is Time.

I did not say that all the equations are equal, only that they all have the same basic equation, which trades Time for Money and people.

Alchemists don't require cooks or blacksmiths... mercury isn't essential to the trade. It COULD be argued that they require either jewellers OR artisans, though (gems for vials, or kegs, as well as powerstones). Neither vials nor kegs really have an impact on what an Alchemist can sell their goods for, though. The main things that impact an Alchemist's trade is the price of herbs, and the price of powerstones. Yes, these may need to be purchased, but that doesn't at ALL cancel out the fact that if they were NOT purchasing herbs, Herbalists would have much, much less business (and much lower prices)-- so, again, you haven't disproved anything at all. Without alchemists, an herbalist putting in the SAME time would earn a fraction of the amount.

Doesnt that prove dags point? the herbalist needs teh alchemist to make most its money?

Stop thinking about amount of money made. I'm not talking about profit, I am talking about goods produced. Once the stockrooms are filled with goods, what the price of those items are is a compeletely seperate topic.

No, that's my point. His point is that the alchemist doesn't matter. Somehow. See his post above.

People buying your stuff completly matters... it would be retarded to think other wise.

Both herbs and alchemy have the benefit of mass consumption. High demand versus supply. The only reason alchemists can charge what they do for the relatively small total effort is because of the amount of product needed versus alchemist manhours made available. And to a smaller extent, the worry of being unable to procure another alchemist.

It's a likewise equation with many of the other tradeskills, in inverse. Small demand versus a high relative supply. If there were fewer Tailors, for example, the ones that exist would be able to charge more for their services.

Reducing the attractiveness of tradeskills so as to reduce numbers of tradesfolk seems counterintuitive, though. So the solution is creating higher demand - and we do this by bumping up their products' total utility. This is the logic I applied when coming up with some of my suggestions above.

In the system of trades, there exists a tendency to self-equilibriate. If a trade starts getting short on practitioners, this prompts people to fill in the niche by adopting that trade - either they see an opportunity due to short supply, feel the sting of short supply themselves, or profit potential increases there and players are more apt to select that trade than they might otherwise have been.

What skews this is when people select trades based on personal benefit (how many tailors are tailors -just- because of splendor robes, versus other options?), or personal perceptions with regards to trades that are limited by required skills/guilds. How many forgers exist versus need?

The overall solution seems to be altering the tradeskills to provide roughly equal total impact on gameplay. This isn't to say that they should provide the same functionality, but rather... for example, make artisan goods affect the daily lives of characters as much as potions, directly or indirectly.

While the admin should try to make all guildskills a) more profitable, if they aren't already, and more widely useful, if they aren't already, you also have to consider the fact that there's a certain level of artistic satisfaction in the tradeskills that have been mentioned as not making enough money. Although krin thinks:



I honestly enjoy being an artisan more than I ever enjoyed being an herbalist. Just being able to design stuff and see it be -made- and demanded is cool, and the feeling you get when your design goes through is rewarding (despite the 5k gold cost for making it cartel private). Maybe it's just because I have my own cartel, but honestly, the creative benefits a person can get from the designing tradeskills should be a consideration. Herbalism and alchemy may be more profitable, but at the cost of just pressing a few aliases or macros to use the skill.

That being said though, it -would- be nice to let artisanry have a bigger part of life outside of manses. Instruments has helped with this; can we see more?

What would be nice for enchanters is the ability to enchant normal enchantments onto scrolls (e.g. waterwalk and mercy). I know that enchanters do this for jewellery already, however this is usually on lower end jewelleries (bracelets and rings).

If for example, I have a heirloom that usually holds scry. I run out. I have to find an enchanter, who are rare, and only those of my city. I'm not going to go buy another piece of jewellery over this one. Make it so enchanters can enchant scrolls to 10 charges, which can recharge a piece of jewellery, any jewellery, of the enchantment at 10 charge.

Get a cube?

A cube can only recharge if there still is an enchantment on the jewelry, and is much more difficult to make (requires a higher skill rank) than a heirloom object, or any other enchantable object.

Cubes are expensive. Is the cost of making the cube actually worth the added convenience of having a portable charger? Instead of a cube, you can just put the heavy-use enchantments, ie scry, on bigger jewelry, and keep an eye on the smaller ones.

I like Arin's idea, if I'm reading it correctly. It's like a safeguard to make sure fewer people will be caught without an important enchantment and can't an enchanter to get it. Kinda like a keg for enchantments, except personal, one-time use refillers...

Interesting idea, enchantments on scrolls. One-shot use, puts a single charge on an unenchanted item? Cube recharge from there. It has the added bonus of jewelers not having to force enchantments onto certain jewelry... instead, let the buyer buy a ring and then a scroll, and choose which enchantment goes on which article of jewelry. The jeweler couldn't then charge for the extra legwork of getting the enchantment done, but they could instead put that legwork into acquiring these new items.

What's the cost of scrolls, again? Perhaps this should be put on a cheaper item, or a new item type made inexpensive just for this purpose.

It would mean bookbinders sell more scrolls (or whatever item is selected for this). Enchanters could pre-enchant them and keep them handy, selling them rather than spending the extra time meeting up with the buyer, etc. It would be cheaper for the buyer if they did the meet up to enchant rather than including the extra cost of the scroll in the purchase. But then, alchemists don't do a whole lot of vial filling these days.

A related concept, a 'book' of these charge items that you could 'charge (jewelry) from (book)', thus allowing a similar service from a storefront rather than face to face. And of course, this is yet another sellable in the bookbinder repertoire that goes great with the jeweler storefront.

It depends what you are discussing.

One way to increase the amount of herbs that one can gather, and to give some trade viability to forging, is to have forgers create some metal item which allows the herbalist to grab 5 herbs in one go.


Also, all those unused weapons and armour in forging need to be replaced with something more usefull.

Actually... (completely ignoring the forging part)... this ties in great with the contraptions ideas for Artisans.

Harvester Contraption - lets a herbalist HARVEST (number) (herb). This also reduces the total balance time by some small percentage, though it will still mean the herbalist will be off balance for a fairly long time if they elect to harvest a large number of herbs at once. Harvesting gloves still function to halve the total harvest time.

Just to rant about forging...

*Scale
*Chain
*Polearms

These never get used for anything. someone might use scale, or might use chain, but they are redundant and not used in Lusternia. They come from old legacy Achaea code. *grumble*

If any artisan contraptions are created, please don't make them last a long time. 30 months is plenty.

Yes, the idea would be to promote repeat business. The trick is to make the contraptions worth the price to enough tradesfolk, without making them too potent in effect.