lol... Why call it crafting? It's just gambling.

Ok let's say certain bosses in the game drop certain ingredients 100% and if you have all ingredients you get a deterministic BoS item.

Everybody would have the same item in the endgame unless the bosses are giga hard organized group content like in wow.

Without a gambling loop it would simply not be an arpg. items need to roll a certain way and it needs to be garbage 99,99% of the time.

Sure you can make deterministic crafting but that can only be either the best or completely useless or maybe some filler items for halfway through the campaign or sth.

It simply doesn't work without a gambling loop.

Poker is a good comparison. THe higher your bankroll aka the more currency you farmed, the better are your chances to win big unless you play like a fool and waste it all on bad odds.

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Strickl3r#3809 wrote:

Ok let's say certain bosses in the game drop certain ingredients 100% and if you have all ingredients you get a deterministic BoS item.

Everybody would have the same item in the endgame unless the bosses are giga hard organized group content like in wow.

Without a gambling loop it would simply not be an arpg. items need to roll a certain way and it needs to be garbage 99,99% of the time.

Sure you can make deterministic crafting but that can only be either the best or completely useless or maybe some filler items for halfway through the campaign or sth.

It simply doesn't work without a gambling loop.

Poker is a good comparison. THe higher your bankroll aka the more currency you farmed, the better are your chances to win big unless you play like a fool and waste it all on bad odds.

The gambling loop is absolutely not essential for an ARPG. Diablo 2 didn't launch the genre to fame, because it had crafting (it doesn't, unless you count the one quest reward from Charsi in act 1, or rune words).

The reason we have gambling in PoE, is because this is what GGG decided needs to be the currency sink. Plain and simple. All games with a player-driven economy need a currency sink in order to prevent rampant inflation. What better way to delete excessive amounts of currency flooding the market than to tie it to a system that lets you try to create powerful equipment? And to encourage this, they make drops RNG for everything in order to control the flow of currency in and out of the market.

You can still achieve a currency sink without gambling by making deterministic crafts expensive. People will be happy to pay premiums for convenience. Hell, it's why I prefer trading for more horrendously expensive gear, because I sure as hell am not gonna risk my valuable currency gambling for it.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

This is the amount of hoops I have to jump through just to make a decent amulet, it costs me like 10-15 divines usually to make it.

If you’re spending 10–15d to craft the one you’ve got, you’re probably doing something wrong, the item can usually be made for under 5d, and at that price you could already get something far fancier if you used the 15d properly. What you likely meant to say, though, is that you picked yours up through a trade for 10–15d, as you mentioned in a previous post, since you don’t craft items yourself.

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Pizzarugi#6258 wrote:

The last time we actually had a true crafting system was Harvest before GGG gutted it to the point it's only good for div card duping which is also gambling.

I do find it a bit funny how old Harvest used to be called “real crafting,” while everything else gets dismissed as gambling, and how some players even treat it as the ultimate one click solution.
Even Harvest still had plenty of RNG involved, rolling for the right crafts, hitting the right mods, and landing the correct tiers. It was more controlled, sure, but not nearly as consistent as players tend to remember.

Players unfamiliar with crafting often complain about having to use too many currency items, and the frustration of not immediately reaching the desired outcome. Yet once Harvest enters the discussion, nobody seems to acknowledge that it followed much the same procedure, repeatedly spamming crafts until you eventually hit your target outcome.

Even now, Harvest is still a very strong crafting method if you know how to utilize it properly.
It's not there just to gamble cards, but speaking of that, it is kind of funny how players complain about not wanting to lose hard earned currency on crafting because it feels like too much gambling for their expertise, yet they are perfectly fine throwing the same currency into card gambling. The irony is real.

Harvest was also nerfed for a reason. It had made most other crafting systems largely irrelevant, much like other overpowered mechanics that were later adjusted or never made it into core, for example grave crafting or the Breach tree.

So no, old Harvest is not really the solution here. Actually understanding and learning how crafting works in the game is what really makes the difference.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

I do find it a bit funny how old Harvest used to be called “real crafting,” while everything else gets dismissed as gambling, and how some players even treat it as the ultimate one click solution.
Even Harvest still had plenty of RNG involved, rolling for the right crafts, hitting the right mods, and landing the correct tiers. It was more controlled, sure, but not nearly as consistent as players tend to remember.

Players unfamiliar with crafting often complain about having to use too many currency items, and the frustration of not immediately reaching the desired outcome. Yet once Harvest enters the discussion, nobody seems to acknowledge that it followed much the same procedure, repeatedly spamming crafts until you eventually hit your target outcome.

Even now, Harvest is still a very strong crafting method if you know how to utilize it properly.
It's not there just to gamble cards, but speaking of that, it is kind of funny how players complain about not wanting to lose hard earned currency on crafting because it feels like too much gambling for their expertise, yet they are perfectly fine throwing the same currency into card gambling. The irony is real.

Harvest was also nerfed for a reason. It had made most other crafting systems largely irrelevant, much like other overpowered mechanics that were later adjusted or never made it into core, for example grave crafting or the Breach tree.

So no, old Harvest is not really the solution here. Actually understanding and learning how crafting works in the game is what really makes the difference.

Old Harvest, in its debut league, had no stake in its crafting. You can spend as much time as you like rerolling mods on gear at no cost beyond replanting crops, growing them, then harvesting and using the collected non-itemized lifeforce.

It became more of a gamble in subsequent leagues when GGG rolled it into core and itemized lifeforce, and when they found out people can and will buy ungodly quantities of lifeforce to create perfect items, they promptly gutted it.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

It's not there just to gamble cards, but speaking of that, it is kind of funny how players complain about not wanting to lose hard earned currency on crafting because it feels like too much gambling for their expertise, yet they are perfectly fine throwing the same currency into card gambling. The irony is real.

Who are you talking about? Personally, I haven't touched Harvest since GGG killed it. It's useless to me. I stand by my stance against gambling that I don't use its only remaining purpose to dupe cards.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

Even now, Harvest is still a very strong crafting method if you know how to utilize it properly.

You can delete Harvest and the "crafting" process will not be impacted. Meanwhile if you remove Essence, crafting bench multi-mod, crafting bench lock prefix/suffix, beast crafting, or Fossils, the system would collapse. The lifeforce market is propped up almost entirely by dupe "crafts" and without them, they'd be worthless.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

Harvest was also nerfed for a reason. It had made most other crafting systems largely irrelevant, much like other overpowered mechanics that were later adjusted or never made it into core, for example grave crafting or the Breach tree.

It was nerfed, because it was too deterministic. Chris literally wrote an entire manifesto about Harvest nerfs and he said he unironically wants you to YOLO exalts! It was nerfed for the sake of keeping gambling relevant.

And I'll repeat what I said earlier: GGG could have reworked the old Harvest crafts to keep the deterministic crafts by making them extremely expensive. It wouldn't be the first time they would've done it either. Using the crafting bench to 6link items is also exceptionally expensive and allows you to pay extra for the convenience of not gambling your fusings.

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Pizzarugi#6258 wrote:

Old Harvest, in its debut league, had no stake in its crafting. You can spend as much time as you like rerolling mods on gear at no cost beyond replanting crops, growing them, then harvesting and using the collected non-itemized lifeforce.

If there were no stakes, far fewer people would bother selling their crafts for good currency. Either way, you still had to invest hour after hour into the old harvest, no matter how you frame it. At its core, it isn’t much different from spending that same time grinding currency or essences and then directly applying them to your item.

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Pizzarugi#6258 wrote:

You can delete Harvest and the "crafting" process will not be impacted. Meanwhile if you remove Essence, crafting bench multi-mod, crafting bench lock prefix/suffix, beast crafting, or Fossils, the system would collapse. The lifeforce market is propped up almost entirely by dupe "crafts" and without them, they'd be worthless.

Without Harvest a lot of what we currently take for granted in crafting just goes poof, getting a +2 amulet poof, controlled cluster jewel crafting poof, crafting +2 weapons in a deterministic way poof, fixing resistances by swapping to a different element within the same tier poof, adding influenced mods with precision instead of relying on RNG poof, finishing near perfect items by adding mods like speed or crit exactly when needed poof, you are basically left with the old exalt and hope system where most progression is driven by chance rather than control.

So while Harvest is not in its original form anymore, it is still far from useless, it just becomes easy to underestimate if you are not actively using it.

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Pizzarugi#6258 wrote:

It was nerfed, because it was too deterministic.

Also, that’s not entirely accurate.

A big reason Harvest changed wasn’t just because it was “too deterministic,” but because the original system wasn’t well received as a gameplay loop. The garden micromanagement was widely considered clunky and unfun, and it created a lot of friction in actually accessing and using crafts. It also had the side effect of rendering many other crafting methods significantly less relevant, since it has overshadowed all other crafting options.

At the same time, players also disliked having to rely on third-party services like TFT, especially the need to hand over their items to strangers just to have crafts applied. In response to that feedback, GGG began moving away from designs that depended on external trust-based item handling.

One of the key changes in the Harvest rework was that shift in structure, Harvest was simplified into a more direct system where crafting is handled through tradable lifeforce rather than being tied to specific fixed crafts within the garden setup. Instead of the whole garden being in the spotlight, the system became more self-contained. The problem of the original gameplay loop and garden-building was also addressed and removed, moving toward more basic and easier-to-consume Harvest encounters.

In later leagues, further itemization and system changes continued in that direction, steadily reducing reliance on TFT-style crafting services and external item handoffs, making those interactions increasingly unnecessary.

And yes, this is one of those cases, despite some disagreements about the details, that shows GGG does listen to player feedback and does iterate in meaningful ways. The move toward itemization and reducing friction around third-party hubs has generally made trading or crafting smoother and more accessible, and many players see those changes as an overall welcoming improvement to the game.