Given up on crafting in SSF

I was promised to be able to craft from the beginning of the game.. but it was only pain for a regular gamer like me.

They could also expand the use of the Forge by being able to get an upgraded version of the Runes & Essence. There's no need for them to make the higher tiers droppable to avoid diluting the drop table, just make the current Runes & Essense T1, if we combine 3 of the same type in the Forge we get the T2, then combine 3 T2 we can get T3, & so forth.

The higher the Tiers the higher the value, just an example for Runes, T1 = 10 resistance, T2 = 20 resistance, & T3 = 30 resistance (the values were just an example, they can balance it further).

With Essence, they can level up the tiers similar to the Essence Tiers in PoE1.

This way, we still can get somewhat deterministic values for crafting, but to the point, it is not to OP at the beginning of the progression since you still need to collect x3 of the similar items to level it up. And still make it more impactful later on you're progression (endgame) since the values we get from them level up as well as we level up.

I also agree that the Runes should be replaceable in the socket. When replaced, they are destroyed (overwritten).

In the future, they can expand this method for the other crafting items they would add to the game.

"

Antikbaka#5915 wrote:

I was promised to be able to craft from the beginning of the game.. but it was only pain for a regular gamer like me.

yeah i think they seem to have had a number of philosophies in their head that were all fine in isolation but i dont think the implementation has worked together.



1. they want the game to be more accessible to casual players

2. they want the crafting to be more about finding items and small crafting iterative upgrades rather than have 1 base and spend 5 hours and 20,000 orbs on it in your hideout til its perfect.

3. remove alt/chaos spam, make it more about trans/aug/regal/ex

4. have an item system where we wear a lot of blue items levelling and where the rares a lot of people wear have maybe 3 or 4 decent affixes, not 5 or 6 like poe1.



i can buy all these separately as fine concepts, im on board.



but the trans/aug/regal/ex process is openly hostile to new/casual players who dont understand the mod pool the way a 20k hour poe1 nerd does.

it also makes crafting REALLY frustrating for seasoned nerd players. you have to fail so many items because the item mod pool has been heavily polluted and you are supposed to have bad mods on your gear... but the crafting system is one where you add mods 1 by 1 and it bricks when u hit a bad one... you have to sometimes keep slamming a 'bricked' item which is not rly how the adding mods 1 by 1 process works but its how the having a couple of bad mods item system works and ur caught in this feels bad space between these conflicting ideas.

wish we had crafting bench just for +1 mod.
even t4-t8 are ok for me. At least i can block unwanted stats. or fix my resists

Alva, that's the answer to your problem.
Even farming t15 the drops aren't that good, only for currency.
Expedition, which used to be a way to get decent gear in SSF, is super nerfed, it's very difficult to get anything decent out of it.

Now using Alva I've made most of my gear.
Just this week I did a 150-420 physical Crossbow with it which has been excellent for my Withhunter, not the best but well above any drop.
My best drops have been a few pieces of armor and 3 Monk weapons that I didn't even get to use because I don't play the class.

"

reinero#6005 wrote:

Alva, that's the answer to your problem.
Even farming t15 the drops aren't that good, only for currency.
Expedition, which used to be a way to get decent gear in SSF, is super nerfed, it's very difficult to get anything decent out of it.

Now using Alva I've made most of my gear.
Just this week I did a 150-420 physical Crossbow with it which has been excellent for my Withhunter, not the best but well above any drop.
My best drops have been a few pieces of armor and 3 Monk weapons that I didn't even get to use because I don't play the class.

Alvas been scamming me for a while, shes great early when you can taget specific bad slots of gear but when your gesr is decent later its kinda thebsame boat as crafting is.

Spent around 10 million the past 3 days going for +1/2 gloves and amulets and have gotten nothing but a massive orb sink.

Only upgrade ive gotten in the past 3 days is a very nice 50 rarity helmet with 173 life 30 res and 33 str, but that was a t4 rare drop that was 6 mod on ID and a second svalinn drop that got a better corrupt than my previous one.

All my gear atm is OK but pretty mediocre by trade standards. My 3rd item slot upgrade besides amulet and boots is chest, which has spirit, 1500+ armor and 45 total res. Need to get that but with a good life roll instead of spirit on steel plate base and thats going to be soulcrushingly difficult to craft or gamble. 4th slot is boots which need 25% or higher ms, life, and 50+ total res, ideally str. Just not items ill ever be able to craft that are much easier to find on tiered rare drops.

Blown up 2 500+ dps maces looking for reduced attributes with chais orbs in the past 2 days, things that are 10-20ex on trade but have eluded me for 93 levels on this character and are basically required to play melee instead of totems in ssf unless you find an astramentis or get 600+ str itemization on ssf gear while maintining resists life etc

i cant target gamble with alva, as she requires to kill uniques monsters per "buy"-click. And i want to gamble specifically at lvl 41+ for specific mod, i dont need all extra weights at 70+ ilvl.

Sell your lower tier waystones it helps a lot, especially if they are magic/rare up to like 7k gold a piece.

But specific affixes can be brutal, + to skills on some items is less than 2%, haven't seen the + to melee gloves in a bit over 100 rolls, let alone +2.

"

BossOfThisGym#2062 wrote:

"

reinero#6005 wrote:

Alva, that's the answer to your problem.
Even farming t15 the drops aren't that good, only for currency.
Expedition, which used to be a way to get decent gear in SSF, is super nerfed, it's very difficult to get anything decent out of it.

Now using Alva I've made most of my gear.
Just this week I did a 150-420 physical Crossbow with it which has been excellent for my Withhunter, not the best but well above any drop.
My best drops have been a few pieces of armor and 3 Monk weapons that I didn't even get to use because I don't play the class.

Alvas been scamming me for a while, shes great early when you can taget specific bad slots of gear but when your gesr is decent later its kinda thebsame boat as crafting is.

Spent around 10 million the past 3 days going for +1/2 gloves and amulets and have gotten nothing but a massive orb sink.

Only upgrade ive gotten in the past 3 days is a very nice 50 rarity helmet with 173 life 30 res and 33 str, but that was a t4 rare drop that was 6 mod on ID and a second svalinn drop that got a better corrupt than my previous one.

All my gear atm is OK but pretty mediocre by trade standards. My 3rd item slot upgrade besides amulet and boots is chest, which has spirit, 1500+ armor and 45 total res. Need to get that but with a good life roll instead of spirit on steel plate base and thats going to be soulcrushingly difficult to craft or gamble. 4th slot is boots which need 25% or higher ms, life, and 50+ total res, ideally str. Just not items ill ever be able to craft that are much easier to find on tiered rare drops.

Blown up 2 500+ dps maces looking for reduced attributes with chais orbs in the past 2 days, things that are 10-20ex on trade but have eluded me for 93 levels on this character and are basically required to play melee instead of totems in ssf unless you find an astramentis or get 600+ str itemization on ssf gear while maintining resists life etc

You have a completely wrong mentality for SSF.

Stop comparing your items with trade, you'll never be able to get anywhere near what's possible with the hundreds of thousands of players playing and millions and millions of drops happening.
As the SSF player you should understand how insanely rare the top items really are, which works fine in trade, because of the sheer numbers of players and drops and crafts.

its true that ssf is always gonna be far behind trade when it comes to the gear curve, and thats fine, i do think boss knows that hes an experienced player.

some stuff is always just gonna be a lottery jackpot in ssf that can be somewhat reliably traded for by elite players in tradecore, like mirrors for instance. im sure i can go to the next poe1 league and walk away with a mirror if i really want one, but ive played the game for 20k hours and never found a mirror.




i cant rly comment on the exact items boss is looking for as ive not played that class and used that gear, i dont have a perspective on it.

but i would say that as a principal there needs to be some level of agency in crafting, you have to feel like theres something you can do to help get there.




i hear a lot of people say "this isnt crafting is gambling" when criticising crafting mechanics in arpgs. but if you can just put exactly what you want on the item then its not crafting either, its buying.

so what really is crafting? i dont think its anything else, its just got an element of gambling, an element of buying and hopefully if its good an element of employing knowledge to get a better/cheaper result.



i just dont know if the crafting right now feels like it has enough of the buying bit in it. i dont feel like i have a significant enough amount of control. i think essences and omens exist, sort of, theres mechanics there to facilitate control but theyre either too weak or too rare to have any impact on my game so far.





thats my take anyway.