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style="font-weight: bold;">Previous
Rift
Interviews
style="font-weight: bold;">#1
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/interviews/reader-submitted-questions-part1">General
Questions

#2
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/interviews/reader-submitted-questions-part2">The
Rift System

#3
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/interviews/reader-submitted-questions-part3">The
Soul System

#4
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/interviews/reader-submitted-questions-part4">Combat

#5
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/interviews/reader-submitted-questions-part5">Lore

#6
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/interviews/reader-submitted-questions-part6">Loot
and Gear

#7
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/interviews/hartsman-community-event-nov2010">Crafting
&
Community

#8
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/interviews/reader-submitted-dungeons-and-raids">Raids
& Dungeons

#9
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/interviews/crafting-gina-reams-1-4-11">Crafting:
Part 1


In this second part of our exclusive interview with Trion Worlds, Ten
Ton Hammer delves deeper into the recipe book of crafting in the
upcoming Rift
MMOG. To get all the necessary materials, we talked with Gina Reams,
Crafting Systems Designer, and Adam Gershowitz, Producer.



In the href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/interviews/crafting-gina-reams-1-4-11">first
part of the interview, we
learned many of the basics of crafting in the style="font-style: italic;">Rift
game. Now, talk turns to the augment system and what that entails. As
always, if you have any questions you wish us to ask Trion Worlds in
future interviews, please post them in our href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/forumdisplay.php?f=742">official
Rift
forum.





Ten
Ton Hammer:
With
augmentation, it sounds like you’ll be able to customize
items more to suit your taste or needs.



Adam
Gershowitz:
That’s
exactly how that works. You go out and find these materials that will
augment different types of stats and you attach them to the item. We
can go into augments now if you wish.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
Let’s
roll into it!



Adam
Gershowitz:
The augmentation
system, at the current time, allows one augment on an item.
We’re playing around with ideas of expanding it, but that
depends upon alpha and beta feedback. Basically, any item in the game
that is an equipable item can be augmented. These augments you can
find, right now, primarily through rift content or doing crafting
dailies, but Gina is playing around with other ways of delivering them
in the world.



Say you’re going to build a sword. I’m going to
take that level 17 uncommon green sword. It’s got some good
stats on it, but I’m making this for Gina, who is our
group’s tank, and she needs more endurance because she needs
to take more hits. I can go out and find an endurance enhancing augment
which will put endurance onto that item.



One of the things that are really nice about this is that it allows you
as a crafter to kind of break the item rules. The way that the game
kind of balances itself is by the fact that the more a single stat is
on an item, the less of it you can kind of have – there are
diminishing returns. That encourages people to look for items with more
than one stat on them. Augmentation breaks that by allowing you to add
more stat without any penalty on top of it. It allows you to push that
item farther and farther more than it would normally be able to, in
order to make exceptionally different items.


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alt="rift" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/93673">

The other thing it does is kind of almost bumps it up a rarity level,
even though the color code doesn’t change. For example, if
you augment a green item, it could be the quality and have the same
stats as a blue or purple item, depending upon how powerful the augment
you put on it is. Obviously, there is a little risk that goes along
with it. The more powerful the augment that you are attempting to
attach to a lower power item, the greater the chance of failure. In
that particular case, if you fail, you lose the augment, but keep the
material. The only investment loss is losing the augment that you were
attempting to put on the item and the time spent getting that augment.


" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> style="font-style: italic;">We do have guild perks.
Every level that your guild gets, you get two perk points. You put one
point into adventuring perks and one into non-adventuring perks. (We
call them combat and non-combat.) The non-combat perks do involve a lot
of crafting-related things in that they help your crafters be better at
what they do."

Gina
Reams:
Right now, the only
time that you can fail and lose items in crafting is if you are
gambling and doing the augment system.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
Just for
clarification, this is only for crafted items?



Gina
Reams:
You can only augment
equippable items that are crafted.



Adam
Gershowitz:
So any crafting
recipe can be augmented. I believe that augments stack with runes,
which are normal enchantments. It’s not like you’re
pre-enchanting an item; you’re creating an item of higher
quality.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
Getting back to
the mechanics of crafting then, is there a maximum amount of skill
points that you can have in a crafting skill per adventurer level? Is
it capped out so at level 10, you can only have 100 of this particular
skill?



Gina
Reams:
We don’t
have your crafting skill based upon your adventuring level, so you can
technically be level 5 and have a max skill of 300. That being said,
the higher level resources and materials that you will be using will be
in higher level zones.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
Do you have any
no-drop materials or no-trade materials?


href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/93672"> style="border: 0px solid ; width: 580px; height: 363px;"
alt="rift" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/93672">

Gina
Reams:
Not at the moment.



Adam
Gershowitz:
We
haven’t really gotten into our high end crafting right now,
but almost all of materials are economy tradable.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
The reason why I
ask is that it seems that with a crafting system like this, we can have
crafting alts if we have the money to just feed them the materials.



Adam
Gershowitz:
That is exactly
what we’re trying to do. It’s not to punish people.
Obviously, crafting alts may have a disadvantage in that it may be
harder to get hold of things such as raid recipes or recipes that come
off the notoriety merchants. It’s going to take a long time
longer to grind that notoriety by crafting than it would take by
adventuring. There is a slight advantage to the player who levels and
crafts versus to the player who just sends goods to their alts.



Gina
Reams:
Having a crafting alt
is a tough battle, but it is possible.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
Will there be any
disadvantages if somebody chooses not to craft?



Adam
Gershowitz:
That’s
a tough one. Obviously, the disadvantage I see personally is that by
not crafting, you’re shutting off a portion of the game and a
portion of your options. Crafting, the way that Gina and the item
designers have laid it out, is that we put crafted gear and items at
places where they may be blanks in the quest gear. Say for example, you
might not see a level 16 chest piece in one area of the world, but
there is one that can be crafted. Players who don’t craft
aren’t necessarily going to be missing out on anything, but
players who do craft have the potential to make more money and easing
their leveling a little bit. Admittedly, that time is being spent
crafting, so I don’t know if you’ll call it easier
or break-even or more time investment. I guess it depends upon how you
like playing the game.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
By the sounds of
it, it sounds like there will be rare components.



Gina
Reams:
There are rare
components.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
Are these rare by
dropping randomly in the world or is there some other mechanic?
Obviously, raid drops are going to be considered rare.



Gina
Reams:
There are rare
components that are rare drops throughout the world. We have drops off
of rifts that can be rare. We also do have certain harvest nodes that
spawn very infrequently in the highest level areas or in instances, so
we can get very rare with those. There also will be rarer hides and
cloths that will drop off of mobs. It’s just the frequency
with which you can harvest them or their drop rate.


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alt="rift" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/93671">

Adam
Gershowitz:
The other things
that we have are, while they are not necessarily rare but are a little
more difficult to craft, are composite materials. Where as your normal
progression would be to use tin, then copper, then so on, there are
these hybrid materials that you can get quests as a harvester to make
to allow you to make stronger weapons or different recipes. I
wouldn’t necessarily call those rare, but you do have to
adventure to find the material at first, then you can make it. They are
more difficult. There’s a second level between common
materials and “Oh my God, it’s a 2% rare raid drop
off a monster!” materials.


" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> style="font-style: italic;">The way that the game
kind of balances itself is by the fact that the more a single stat is
on an item, the less of it you can kind of have – there are
diminishing returns. Augmentation breaks that by allowing you to add
more stat without any penalty on top of it. It allows you to push that
item farther and farther more than it would normally be able to, in
order to make exceptionally different items."

Gina
Reams:
An example of that
would be that you would get an iron recipe followed by a chromite bar
recipe. If you did the crafting dailies and you got the steel bar
recipe from putting in the effort into crafting, that’s a new
material that you can make that not all the other crafters can make.
That’s kind of our advanced materials that take more
resources or more expenses, and those will be used in rarer recipes.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
We know that
there is guild progression in style="font-style: italic;">Rift.
Are there any rewards to guild progression when it comes to crafting?



Adam
Gershowitz:
On the guilds, we
haven’t tied guilds and crafting super-heavily together.
There are some tie-ins right now. We do have guild perks. Every level
that your guild gets, you get two perk points. You put one point into
adventuring perks and one into non-adventuring perks. (We call them
combat and non-combat.) The non-combat perks do involve a lot of
crafting-related things in that they help your crafters be better at
what they do. Things like increasing your crafting skill so you can
harvest special nodes or having lesser chances of failing your
augments. We haven’t fleshed that out that heavily yet. We do
also have a guild merchant that offers items and goods based upon your
guild’s level, but at this point of time, we
haven’t thrown any specific crafting recipes on it, even
though we are playing around with the idea of certain things that
guilds would want for raid utility, those recipes would come from the
guild merchant.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
Is there any
system in place for consignment or commissioned work? Basically, if
somebody has the materials, they don’t have to necessarily
give you the materials to craft it. You can kind of group up. That way,
you don’t risk people scamming others and stealing their mats.



Adam
Gershowitz:
The easiest way
to answer this is to say that it is on our list of things we would
greatly desire to do for launch. The real question is if we get there
before the game comes out. It’s on the short list. At this
moment, it does not exist in the game.



Our thanks to Gina Reams and Adam Gershowitz for the interview.



To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our RIFT Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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