Forging lower-tier materials

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I recently had reason to posit that maybe the reason that we experience our character’s output massively shoots up once you hit top end-game tools is because there was some expectation from the Developers that we would be forging low-to-mid (stone, iron) level tools in some way, and that the imbalance was a matter of not using systems as intended. A response I got was:

To which the answer was: I don’t exactly know. I’ve delved deeply enough into forging to know that I really don’t like much about forging, and stopped there. However, I do play on PC, so took a little time to investigate it more on the test server. My ultimate conclusion was: No, it’s really not economically viable.

I appreciate that the new tier of materials has a severely limited flexibility rating, making them harder to forge than gem. I think this is definitely a step in the right direction.

I also appreciate that gem does have a lower base flexibility than iron, and so is theoretically harder to forge. However, a forger who wants to be in any way efficient (these would be the players providing tools for market, if it were viable) will have maxed out their forge power and accompanying skill set, and will have a flexibility with diamond of 197. That’s 3 points less than the cap, which I would call negligible. You then ask yourself:

If you are using the exact same materials to forge gem as you would do to get the same affects with iron, why would you use them iron?

Is it actually a developer intention that we should be getting into forging as a general tool supplement before end game materials, or is it intended to just be the big exponential bump that we see? I think either or both of these would be improvements to make a wider range forging viable:

NOTE: These are intended at starting points for conversation, not complete suggestions

Re-balance the base flexibility of tier 6 and below materials so they don’t (nearly) cap out anyway when you’re equipped for it.

This is the easiest to implement, though I don’t think this is the best solution. You’d always have a draw a line somewhere that it isn’t efficient to forge bellow. Oh, and it’s technically a ‘nerf’, and you know how whiny people get about that :roll_eyes: .

Increase or remove the flexibility cap.

Experienced forgers would always be able to make a meaningful choice between forging more powerful, lower tier tools or less powerful higher tier resource tools for the same ingredient cost,

This would have the drawback of make lower tier tools easy enough to craft that you easily get maxed forges out of it, though even this could be viewed as being a positive side-effect. It’s a shallower learning curve than jumping in at the deep end.

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A few thoughts.

I think the only time forging metal or alloy gear makes sense is if you’re still climbing the centraforge progression. If your character is maxed out on the forge stats and you got coils on your forge, there’s no longer any reason to do lower tier stuff. The forge ingredients are most of the input cost.

It’s pretty easy to toss your tools in and get some beneficial effects at any level, but that doesn’t change how daunting the forge UI looks to a newer player still getting a handle of the game. So by the time a player sits down to figure out the forge, they are ready for high tier tools which can get them coils. Alloy tools don’t get you gems. AoE gem tools get you gems. The game would need cave mining to still be a thing for alloy tools to be viable gem finders.

The boundless economy is small and dominated by the top of the player curve. It may even be that the entire active playerbase is top heavy due to rock+pie exploit. The standard advice to players entering the mid progression was “go mining and powerlevel off stone”. So there’s not really any mid game content and there’s also not any mid game players to notice.

These thoughts don’t really lead anywhere. I guess as more content is added to the game and the player progression smooths out then mid tier forging may pick up. But I think there’s quite a few reasons why newer players are not forging, and they’re the only ones who would use forged low tier tools.

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I used to beg for iron aoe tools when I first started. well beg is a very loaded term, I asked around in chat a bit until folks pointed out it took the exact same mats for low tools as it did for higher end tools so why use them on low end tools and lose profit.

You’re right that the forging system is complex out the gate. Hell it’s complex for a majority of end game players as well.

I know they really want rng to be a thing for forging but I just don’t find it fun or interesting to deal with rng. Luckily enough the majority of items have plummeted in prices that I’ve been able to stock up on needed tools to last me until they put zombies in the game and I have to go all walking dead against them.

I’m just keeping my fingers crossed they change the system again some time down the road. Maybe make the forge UI cleaner looking. Maybe just rethink the need for rng period. Til then, I’m good for a few more months.

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I think this really sums up my point. As it is, it’s just not viable. If you could give maxed characters an incentive to forge lower tier tools, I’m fairly certain that there would be either someone industrious or community minded and well-meaning enough to start supplying them in shops.

Although I do have to agree, the UI and lack of immediate information (without checking an out-of-game guide) is daunting. There could definitely be improvements made. Even better, they could implement a ‘practice mode’ alongside it that lets you try out things and see what you ‘could’ make, without consuming ingredients or creating forged items. That way PS players could have a real dig into it too.

As a complete irrelevant side suggestion: I wonder if it would be possible to set conditions on sale prices in shop stands? So you can buy at X coins if [condition met], such as ‘account less than Y days old’, or ‘player is in guild Z’ (although I guess the latter can be achieved with a locked room in a guild beacon). That would really facilitate newbie shops.

Yeah, I generally feel the same. I get that other people like it and feel it’s rewarding, but it’s just not for me. Still, I think it’s good to try and find ways to make it work for more smoothly for more people though, even if those people are me.

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My experience forging low level tools:

When I was still new after the free weekend in february I tried out the forge to get some better tools.
Gathered some ingredients to make lvl 1 boon compounds and forged a silver hammer with my 900 vigour/stability. Got something like 400 dura, 15 speed and some crit effect.
Then respecced for better effectivity, vigour and stability. Got like 600 dura, some damage and glow and another one which hits 2 blocks with energy save and something else. Speed was nice to work a bit faster and damage reduced mining by 1 hit, glow was worse than a torch. Real improvement was the 2 hitter for tunnel digging.
So wanted to make more of those but just got some other things like critical. In the end I gave up forging because it took more time than just making more tools and directly go mining.
Returned to forging when I got coils and titanium gear which was then followed shortly by gem and high end forging.

To summarize my experience:
Low level forging was not really worth it due to the material cost combined with random outcome which is also a result of not knowing about gums back then. There is no tutorial in the game which I can take when I open up the forge the first to learn all that stuff. The forge learning curve is quite steep and requires research from player side to master.

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It’s even worse. You use the exact same amount of the exact same centraforge items to forge a 3x3 iron hammer or a 3x3 diamond hammer. But the diamond hammer has about twice the durability of a iron hammer! Which means you get twice the worth out of all your expansive centraforge ingredients.

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Yes please!

This is something that I think is pretty important to implement, it’s currently the only thing that I think gives a significant imbalance between PC and PS4 and this would go a long way to resolve this!

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I honestly had thought that the forge was intended to add an extra level of tools.

So:

Wood - stone - metal - alloy - gem - forged gem

For it to go this way:

Wood - stone - metal - forged metal - alloy - forged alloy - gem - forged gem

Would take a significant rethink of how it works.

Increasing the efficiency of mats in lower level tools is the only way I can think without a complete overhaul.

If it took a quarter of the mats to max forge an iron hammer compared to a gem hammer, it might make sense to make (and sell) these tools.

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I agree forging low tier tools is a complete waste of time/materials. My suggestion to fix this is changing how forge materials are consumed. Instead of a stack of 100, change it to a stack of 100=1000 charges.

For example, using boon compound on gem hammers would consume the normal amount, 10 charges in this case. Going down to say 8 charges for titanium, 6 for alloy, 4 for iron, 2 for stone, 1 for wood.

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This would make them viable, but it’s another layer of complexity and would make forging even more daunting for a new player :confused:

What if they made effectiveness lower on all tools so that only lower ones would get to 200. Or maybe even modify the cap so BPC1 and BPC2 are viable on lower tools. Then to make things as effective as now, reduce the amount of boon points needed for the boons? Idk how that’d play out in practise, just thinking aloud.

I also liked this suggestion to make the UI more user friendly when starting out. The other balance things in there are also worth noting imo.

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Good improvements in that post. I must’ve missed that thread. The UI could definitely be improved. Saying what gums do what would be a good start. I’m not sure lowering effectiveness of gem tools is a good idea though. The first nerf was enough in that department lol

A practice forge in live would also help people new to forging get into it. I wouldnt mind trying some new techniques myself without wasting mats. But forging is honestly not hard once you get a feel for it

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I think you missed the next sentence

Then to make things as effective as now, reduce the amount of boon points needed for the boons?

It could be balanced with the boon point requirements to not change the current gem forging, like you’d have for example 80% effectiveness on them (instead of the current 200), but to get lvl8 damage boon you’d require 40% of the boon points you currently do.

Side effects I can see from that, getting lvl 4 aoe boon could become more difficult if you manage to hit a full boon point bar since a full bar would now level a boon a lot more than previously.

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I saw it, but when you said or and added on the part about BPC1 and 2 i thought they were 2 seperate ideas. It’s all good. It was also suggested by OP though so I just wanted to put that out there lol.

But that would also be an opportunity for them to change the rank 5 random hit to rank 2 and increase the others. (All around aoe would be the new rank 5)

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According to James back in July 2018, new players should be able to choose between progressing to metal tools or forging stone.
(Couldn’t get the quote to work but these are the words copied and pasted)

"The Forge isn’t a long way in. The Forge is designed to run perpendicular to material progression, ie.

1. Have Stone tools.
2. Pick between progressing to Metal or Forging Stone."

It would be nice if this was possible but after trying myself with a new character it was much easier just to make ordinary metal tools and not even bother looking at the forge until you were a high level character. As the forge stands in its current state the requirements and resources needed to make anything worthwhile, even just an enhanced low level tool far outweigh the time, effort and materials required.

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Lol, forging stone never even crossed my mind :thinking::face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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Just to get enough of the basic ingredients needed to start forging and still be using stone tools would be a absolute nightmare.

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That would explain why they have the one quest to forge a wooden tool… but that’s just such a waste of expensive materials. To be effective at forging you need a lot of points just to start doing things too, so it’s definitely not beginner friendly.

That being said, I do kind of love the forge and the challenge of making good items!

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I think of the centraforge like a CCG minigame. You build a deck, you start the game, and then based on deckbuilding and performance you get a reward. There’s a bit of progression inside the system itself - three tiers of each ingredient, and investments that boost your output quality. But this progression is completely separate from the game’s tool material progression. That’s the main takeaway I have from this thread.

The forge could probably be simplified if the UI ran even further with the CCG analogy. Let the machine store all my ingredients in an inventory screen that facilitates deckbuilding. Let me save decks to deck slots. This would feel a lot more like a F2P CCG like Clash Royale.

CCGs have random packs to acquire cards and only employ randomness in-game (through things like starting hands) to even the playing field between two humans. Since the forge is a solitaire game its randomness acts as the opponent. Players don’t really enjoy that aspect of it and probably never will.

If we had a time machine it might be better to make the randomness instead come from opening packs of forge materials. The packs would still be crafted from drops, and that would give players limited control over which ingredients they accumulate based on the type of pack they crafted. If players forfeit some control over how the ingredients enter the economy it both creates a marketplace for the more sought-after ingredients and moves the randomness out of the minigame itself. Gums could just give you the boon you wanted because the devs control the supply of the gum instead of the players.

If AoE is game breaking from the devs’ view they can adjust drop rates to compensate. As it is now, players put all their forge resources into mass producing nothing but AoE ingredients. And the only lever the devs have to control it is making the gums random. It would take a serious rework to address this.

Which brings me to my final point. As nice as a better integrated forge system would be, the system is a huge time sink of dev resources. Balancing a CCG inside an MMO would be at least one designer’s full time job. And we’re talking about a game system that neither appeals to new players nor generates revenue. The two things Boundless needs the most. So I think the centraforge we have is here to stay and additional investment at this time is unwise.

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It was something I instantly thought of when I first started. I wasn’t able to progress to metal worlds just yet, but still wanted to be able to have a 2x1 or 3x1 aoe tool to continue with. A 3x1 shovel at the time is what I had been hunting, for peaty soil to get my spark generating. This was before compacting of course.

People/vets continue to ignore the new player experience. The forging system or the recipes list needs to be redone to allow new characters a more defined progression instead of how it is currently where we just see this massive spike to high end.

We should be able to forge low end iron hammers axes and shovels that don’t use the same mats as high end forges do. The clear option in my mind is too just add another lower tier layer of recipes aimed strictly at those low forges. Gums booms and pastes that just simply wouldn’t be exploitable for high end tools or create restrictions on the mats so they can only be used for low tier forges while the high tier forges could be used universally.

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I agree with this. Maybe like “half/boon” compounds that only use the meat and bones as ingredients. Works well since lower end tools have higher flexibility anyways to compensate.

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