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Beta Crafting Preview (continued)

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Personal Experiences

Now that we hopefully understand how to craft, let’s talk about my crafting experiences. I arrived in Mekalia and finished the tutorial crafting quests advancing me to level three. I then started taking work orders. Each crafting encounter takes roughly one to two minutes. On its face it may sound a little boring. But what I noticed is that I quickly gained a feel for how far I could push each encounter. Almost every crafting encounter I end up with between zero and three hundred points left. I seem to barely survive each crafting encounter but it’s rare that I ever fail. This uncertainty has the effect of keeping me on edge each crafting encounter. A couple things that quickly become apparent is that crafting in Vanguard requires thought...and that crafting is addicting.

After a few hours of crafting and reaching level eleven I did a search for a few friends that might be in beta. I found one of my friend’s names and sent him a message. He told me he was a Weaponsmith and was crafting in Tursh and could use an outfitter to make some parts for some weapon recipes. Although it was pretty late and I should have been asleep hours earlier I decided to run to Tursh, which is on the continent of Thestra.

I could write many pages about my journey to Thestra. But let’s say it just took many, many hours to get there. Maybe I should say many more hours than it should have taken me to get there. The world is huge. On the way there I learned many elementary lessons about traveling in Vanguard.

• Even if you are level four you drop all your items on death if your crafting level is level 7 or higher.
• If you are being chased by a high level giant vulture-type bird it’s not a smart idea to jump into a river to avoid him as there probably is a high level crocodile waiting to greet you and then camp your corpse.
• Once you get to Thestra stick to the roads and whatever you do don’t think that because you may have already died a gazillon times it does not matter if you die a gazillon more times just to see what is over that next hill. The roads are not straight but they are much safer than taking a shortcut off road.

It was quite a humbling and embarrassing journey. After many hours, and many corpse runs I arrived in Tursh close to daybreak real life time. My friend and probably most other players on the server were asleep by now. But I was there and had somewhat survived the journey. I was just happy and thankful that there was no item decay upon death or all my valuable level four and seven equipment would have been turned into dust.

I decided to go to sleep and try again tomorrow. My friend said I needed to be level 19 to make grade A quality parts for him. I was so excited about the game and it was so late, or early, I could barely sleep. After a couple hours I just decided to get up. It was Saturday morning and there was no reason to sleep when there were levels that could be gained.

Upon starting crafting in Tursh I met a very nice crafter who offered to give me some free crafting gear. He then explained to me how to place my attribute points which I had so far completely ignored. The crafting gear and possibly the attribute points made a huge difference. I was struggling to make C quality grade on easy crafting work orders before the gear. After getting new gear I was able to make B to C quality grade items on difficult work orders which greatly increased my experience rate. It took me about another ten hours of playing that day to reach level nineteen.

One thing I have noticed is that I make much better quality items when I am more awake. I have tried crafting while tired and it’s much harder to make the same quality items when I am not thinking or paying as much attention. What might be most exciting about Vanguard crafting is there is actual thought involved, not just mindless button mashing.

Likes and Dislikes

 Here is what I like about crafting:

• It’s addictive.
• Crafting actually takes thought and some skill.
• It seems like every crafting encounter I am on the edge a little bit. Complications can be very bad and almost crippling. Every encounter seems to be a close call.
• There is a real feel one develops when crafting as to how hard to push the envelope.

There is really not much I dislike about crafting right now. Most of my dislikes will be fixed as Sigil adds new content and balances experience and the classes.

• Leveling at this point seems too fast.
• Crafting might be very confusing for new people. It would help to give people a lot more direction.
• There are not many player made recipes in game yet and there need to be more work order recipes added.

I was very scared coming into beta that crafting would be a lot of mindless button pushing like some other game I won’t mention. I was not expecting much in terms of crafting being fun but I was excited there was building and construction. The crafting in Vanguard is very well done and far beyond any hopes or expectations I had. Everyone I meet in game seems to love it. It is very well done.

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