Thoughts on 'The Centraforge Experience'

That is currently in the game as you complete the objectives. It walks you through making the mats and doing a simple forge.

I fail to see what more you want as documentation in the game in order to start forging.

I never needed the test server and could figure it out myself. Just experiment, it is not that hard really.

maybe i need to delete my char then cuz i never got that :confused:

it is actually a series of objectives that walks you through the whole forge process.

Edit. oh silver!

The bigger the advesertiy or greater the risk the larger the reward is on the other side when you over come it or succed.

Instead of pandering to you and making it easy I actually prefer the challenge and want to rise to the occasion. That’s what makes it valuable, rare, satisfying.

I’m sure there are things that could be improved upon the system but in all honesty this just sound like a big whine, and i get it. It’s super frustrating for you, it totally is. You didn’t get what you wanted, when you wanted it or how you wanted it.

Maybe it’s not for you? Just as you like to whack blocks, some people love the numbers, love the stratergy and love the risk vs reward. Plus they have actually given you a solution, you just don’t like it. Go whack blocks like you said. Sell them. Buy Regen bombs garenteed every time, let others deal with the forging… Problem solved.

Also im not attacking you, just calling it like I see it.
It’s a great conversation around something important to you, thanks for that and thanks for sharing.

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My forger:

I have 6 “developed” alts from level 37 to level 11X. Most of them do not have this objective available, despite having pushed one or more crafting trees through some level 4 and/or 5 feats.

There are a lot of decision trees in Boundless. With the combination of in-game and out of game knowledge available someone who hasn’t enjoyed general/random crafting but wants to approach the forge is actually unlikely to have access to this.

With regards to this series of objectives, once you have triggered it, it does lead to a step by step tutorial of a basic forge. My level 104 crafter has it.

It appears (according this thread) that lightness is a single trait gum for tools.

Now I have honestly never attempted to forge busy bee onto a wood hammer, or any other trait for that matter. But unless there is a special case for this tutorial item hidden in the forge balancing it’s definitely possible to acquire these items in these numbers, follow these steps precisely, and be unable to actually complete the objective.

In my opinion that’s pretty harsh. Though that would be a fair introduction to the realities of forging.

In any case this isn’t something that just appears for every player. It’s not there for a newish player who hasn’t already completed some unspecified crafting activities before hand. And it has a moderate chance of becoming more than a little frustrating trying to follow what looks like a simple series of steps.

Hey, fair enough. It’s not for everybody. I just didn’t do it for a long time. I followed the exact advice you’re giving here.

I’ve made a bit of noise about forging this week. It may be hard for you to see but this reaction, appearing in some form or other in pretty much every thread where someone expresses a difficulty or tries to clarify a problem. If you like a slot machine or get a big rush from a lucky roll of the dice, that’s fine.

I did ask for people not to come in to a prior thread SPECIFICALLY regarding the frustrations associated with this and turn it into yet another situation where people who express their frustrations, or even attempt to post what they feel are legitimate concerns get shut down (and put down) by a series of reactions like this.

If people are discouraged from expressing their thoughts, the devs get no feedback. And you’re clearly aware that the language and tone you have chosen to roll with here are likely to be offensive. I accept your disclaimer but many people don’t want to deal with this sort of approach. Understandably.

When I encountered the problem with Boon Removal Solvent 2 several people told me things like “no it’s supposed to roll another boon”, “you’re just having bad luck” or similar comments. If someone hadn’t already reported this bug (several times) or i wasn’t coming to the forum for this information, anybody would be left to assume that they were just failing in some way to understand the system.

When the system is unclear, or worse, intentionally confusing, it’s hard to know at any point where “RNG luck” ends and “not working correctly” begins.

With regards to level indicators, several people told me, both in game and in the forum, that the single level boons don’t have a level indicator because “there is only one level”. Now again, despite someone basically telling me personally to “man up” a bit - it was quickly shown that this bit of “wisdom” was in fact not true at all.

I have encountered others, with no need to list them all here - that’s enough to demonstrate the point.

So I’m willing to take a bit of this, and in a general topic like this accept that it’s ‘not personal’. I’m doing it for multiple reasons. Not the least of which is that I’ve found parts of this to be incredibly frustrating and specific feedback on what parts of the system are frustrating users has value. Getting some catharsis on the side is just a perk.

Thanks for the follow up and an opportunity to clarify the goal here a bit. I feel this is important to many people and encouraging others to share their thoughts and opinions on the matter can only help the game.

I’ve already created a thread just expressing my frustration with the learning curve and the process and encouraging others to do the same. And I’ve acted to keep that thread on topic. However there needs to be a basis for ongoing discussion. A boatload of people showing up, calling beginners, or even frustrated long term player, whiners (or whatever) and attempting to shut down any actual conversation is not good for anyone.

I haven’t met anyone that has gone on to ragequit the game over issues with mining, or hunting. It happens over the forge. I think maybe that those who jump on top of this sort of challenge and enjoy it may be unaware of how many players just DON’T. EVER. FORGE. And that is because those players are actively discouraged from speaking out.

In this case there is a legitimate matter of opinion. However it’s opinion that retains or drives off players and IMO the process of discussion has more value than the opinion of either ‘side’. We’re all trying to enjoy the game together here.

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Sad to see how hopeless forging seems for you. It is not trouble-free nor is it very straightforward with guaranteed results always. Personally, though, i find the fact that we have an element of the game that not everyone masters very interesting. It creates a market for its products. Actually, id like us to have more elements like this in the game… Magic maybe? Sharing my own experience might help? Maybe.

The only excel i run is for my shop so we are together on this. No excel for forging. I jumped into the forging game very late relatively. Just like you, i went through many cycles of frustration but going to the test servers helped… A lot. I kind of developed my own logic and i accordingly set my expectations. Based on that, i worked around using my gear. I dont have rank 480 gear in hand all day but in no way is it bad gear… Next statement might seem silly but it worked… Keeping deconstructiom resin saved me from wasting my gear. I dont mind losing some gums or pastes but not the gear… Maybe do that too? RNG is a monster but if you deconstruct enough, it will go away haha.

I dont mind meeting you in game and showing you my method of forging my daily gear. It is simple, straightforward-ish, and cost-efficient. Worked well so far with me and i forge everything with it from bombs to slings to mining hammers. Easily gets you mid tier gear without quirks or defects which is all we need imho. Over forging is a pain i cant live with :joy:.

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If it’s not clear, I’ve been forging everything from copper to lucent items. There’s a picture of a bag of lucent bombs up there with 3 boons at level 5 and 6 that was done with no invigorating or protecting paste, and no vigour catalyst.

I can follow Vansten’s tutorial as well as anyone, but I don’t think in any way that makes me a “master of the forge”. I’ve done more “experimenting” than step by step following tutorials because I’m interested in exploring the system more than in any particular result.

If anything, the experience gives me MORE respect for a determined forger who shows consistent results.

Especially those who have the patience and the understanding to consistently forge items like the level 400 - 480 gear I do use in game every day. There’s an exponential seeming curve to get from mid-level to high level and I feel that’s completely appropriate.

I DO think the curve should start a little lower. And I think it’s worth discussing.

@RedY3 thanks for the offer, and everyone who has made similar offers of teaching or sharing. Besides the honestly helpful and supportive people (plenty of them here) there’s a sort of brigade that forms up every time someone complains or expresses their frustration and addresses them explicitly as having “failed at forging” and basically whining about it.

This shuts down any possible valuable discussion and hides an unspecified amount of feedback that could be used to improve the overall forging experience and encourage more players to stick with it.

Thanks again, I do appreciate the offer. I’ve had several such offers and as such I won’t be taking you up on it at this time, but that’s got nothing to do with you at all. Every person who has spoken up to offer help or advice, even when I was actually raging a bit, is adding real value to this community.

For some reason, i understood “lucent” as items with light. Plus, i admit i skimmed through the post haha. Nasty habit.

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No worries, there’s quite a lot there. I’ve engaged with the forge a couple of times, at different levels of Boundless experience, and this is an over detailed account of that.

I’m not actually sure if I’m going to keep a forge around or not. But deciding not to forge is also not the same as failing at forging. Though failing can definitely be part of that decision :laughing:

Personally, I’m playing with it and gathering enough information that I can feel like I’m making my decision based on my feelings about the system, not just abandoning it in frustration.

I’m serious I appreciate the offer. Beats the hell out of the people who probably also didn’t read the post and just take the opportunity to be derisive.

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Not seeing myself buying any forged gear for some 20-30k regularly pushed me to make my own. Give me your money (so i can add to my millions :joy:) so you can be motivated to further experiment with forging :joy:

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Prices change over time but as far as I can tell this is the number one challenge that pushes people to the forge.

The ones that truly love weighing the inputs and manipulating the system for its own sake are apparently a select few.

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I wish I could say the same. The forging system is actually a large part of what had pushed me away from the game for several months as I seem to be cursed with bad RNG as a whole across all video games I play.

It’s not that I don’t understand how it works, I just get tired of 50+ decon 3 uses before getting my tools to finally have AoE. If I miss out on durability, I don’t care, same with damage, as I can use it for low tier rock/dirt/wood collection, but I never seem to be able to roll AoE.

And it really would be nice to have an in-game knowledge base for what categories these buffs fall into, because I probably spent a good month before realizing what I was doing wrong, and there were no guides at the time, all because there was a lack of info on what categories each boon belongs to.

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Only time i have to decon a lot is when aiming for very specific boons that all require different gums. Else, a forging session takes like 5 to 10 mins or so. Ive always used a sheet that states which gum gives what boon. You probably know about it.

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I have streamed some forges with commentary and questions. I have gotten feedback from these that they are vastly more helpful than a “formula” because i talk through all my reasoning. Id be happy to do this and you could post the results.

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I’ve said this before but I don’t think it can be overstated, we can debate the merits and faults of the system all day long but there is no excuse for things like:

  1. Boon removal 2 not removing a boon half the time (contrary to it’s tooltip)
  2. Adding AoE to a spanner which doesn’t repair more than 1 coil

These are incorrect in their tooltip and were identified long ago. I’d rather have them fully removed than be wrong.

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Night star,

Look through my post history and find where I literally do the recipe for making a 320+ forge every time. It’s so reproducible that I run a shop making stuff. My wife and I use all 320-340 stuff and we sell 350-360 stuff.

I don’t debate, the centraforge is a miserable user experience. I’d rather have someone shove glass underneath my fingernails than forge. I literally only forge because we use the tools and sell the good stuff.

But I think your expectations are that it should be easy. It can be, but you need to use the right stuff. I use defect removal solvent and just decon anything that doesn’t get the boons I want. If on round 30 or 40ish I have a defect, I remove it and I’m pretty close to setting.

Like I said, check my post history and my recipe is there.

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I might be mistaken, but I don’t believe Nightstar has the expectation that the system should be easy. :thinking:

He’s received plenty of advice in general, including a video from myself, and doesn’t seem to be the core of what he is talking about here. He has also mentioned fairly clearly, though perhaps buried in his many words, that he’s forged stuff ranging in materials from Copper to Lucent with success.


Like you say, the user experience – that is what I infer from everything he’s posted, and my conversations with him, that his core topic is supposed to be on this thread.

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Cannot

That explains a lot! Let me fix that.