Thoughts on 'The Centraforge Experience'

General
26

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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27

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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28

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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29

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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30

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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31

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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32

Cannot

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33

That explains a lot! Let me fix that.

34

What about the player who can’t afford to waste the mats, doesn’t know what to get?

Looking at the long list of items in the Knowledge section I felt overwhelmed with all of the, what do I need, which ones will work best, what happens is I mess up? There are only so many slots to hold the mats, which ones do I use and are their specific ones with tools, for weapons, for what?

I was given a link to the article and it has helped some, but there have been many questions that I still felt unsure of the answers. I’ve read of where some players didn’t know about the deconstruct and lost a lot of mats because either the tool came out really bad.

Make a hammer with bouncy feet and try to mine with that and it also have auto harvest which is a waste to me in a hammer, you will already be picking up what you bust up, why do you need a auto harvest on a hammer for? That is two slots wasted on something that is of no help and more hinderance and many players don’t know about using deconstruction.

I looked at the article on how to make health bombs, but even though I was using the mat suggested I was still getting everything But the health one. Finally gave in and did a search here an immediately found where someone stated what they did and bingo, I had two nice health bombs that I forged. Then lost what they used in what order and now have to hunt it up.

There are enough players who are confused to state that it does need some reworking, something that will help those who can’t afford to waste the mats or can’t afford to buy them and yet feel pushed to do so.

Had my hammer in, had the all affect and did one more spin of the wheel and when I looked after it had finished forging saw that on the last spin I didn’t catch that it had taken the all affect and dropped it to cross affect.

Learned to double check now before I set it, but a new player who has very few mats and doesn’t understand could be upset enough to feel that forging isn’t worth it, and I have read post like that. Put yourself in their shoes and stop walking in yours and maybe you can better understand, I may not agree with all of the complaints but I can see where they are coming from.

I don’t like gambling and in many ways forging is gambling.

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35

Had that happen today. Put in a shovel, put in the effect, longevity and special mats. Then boon 3, get a nice boon (don’t remember what). Boon 2, get auto harvest, boon remover, it removed it, but then is added back again. boon remover again, it then adds it as a possible boon, boon remover again. It is added again.
Deconstruct it.
Try again, first two boons are good, then third one, auto harvest, remove it. get glow light, don’t want that do remove it. auto harvest, remove it, auto harvest, remove it, glow, don’t want that remove it, auto harvest, deconstruct it.
Third try, first one is auto harvest, remove it, auto harvest, remove it, get low blow, get something else, get auto harvest, remove it. Same ole same ole, had to deconstruct it. Finally, after FOUR attempts I get a shovel that is cross, had durability and longevity, not what I wanted but was sick and tired of the stupid battle with the F&King auto harvest.*

I want auto harvest on a fist or slingbow, not on anything else. I don’t need it on a hammer when I am mining and will be picking up everything already.

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36

Here is the post from LyndaFromHR. Since I did the work to dig through and find it, I’ll save others that work:

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37

Well aren’t you a sweetheart.

Credit goes to vansteen for the OG method.

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38

Thanks peregrine.

After I found this one I just took the suggestion as basically reinforcement of the fact that very few players stray far from the tutorials others have posted

I’ve been out having a blast with some of these today though

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I really thought I could start up some conversation on the ins and outs of forging, how people feel about balance, progression, etc… Where people are with it, and what it took to get there.

My bad. I’m still getting links to basic tutorials and offers of help in following clearly documented steps.

:man_shrugging:

I guess this result is answer enough to all of the above.

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39

Sorry, let me answer your original question better.

I asked similar questions in the PS discord and got linked to Vansteens primer. It’s a proven method. If the question is “why is this so painful?” I can only conclude that it is because it was designed that way.

The centraforge issues are myriad:
*The UI is unintuitive.
*There are too many goops and gunks that do more or less the same thing.
*There are a handful of essential materials you absolutely must use and everything else is suboptimal.
*The entire process is very time-consuming
*Overall, it isn’t fun: it’s work.

Additionally, there isn’t a market for stuff that is less than near-perfect; so you cannot sell a quantity of goods that have significant defects or quirks.

The entire experience needs to be improved as a part of an improved new player experience.
The centraforge should be a cornerstone item introduced at level 1 to “power up” your stuff and be with you all the way.
The UI needs to be completely redone and the RNG eliminated. If you use expensive materials in excess, you should get what you pay for.
The entire forging process should be streamlined and simplified. Adjust resource costs accordingly and remove unneeded or duplicate goops as necessary.
Armor and/or clothing should be introduced to give new players survivability and something else to forge.
The entire skill tree needs to be reworked. Move survivability and resistances onto armor. Add new epics, auras and other unique abilities.

In short, from 1 to 50 the entire game needs a retool and the centraforge is a serious part of the barriers to entry for the game.

Oh, and since I haven’t said it enough: we need a weekly “state of the game” Q&A session from the developers as quality communication is essential for a healthy community.

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40

Hey, thanks for taking the time to type that up.

I’m still exploring the forge a bit. I think that some things could be rebalanced to form a better feeling of progression.

Agreed 100% about the skill tree too, which could help to adjust this balance without just making low end tools into 99% success rate and/or ‘nerfing’ gem forging.

The in game guidance that exists needs addressing too. The forging objectives start to appear at some point during advancement as a crafter, but the attributes (I hate that these are even called skills) required to max the forge and the single forging epic don’t really mesh well with a general crafting build.

Most avid crafters I know are not necessarily into forging, and many of the forgers I’ve met don’t waste a lot of time with crafting, outside of maybe the specific tools and weapons they want to forge. And ingredients, ofc.

The fact that the RNG is brutally difficult even with the lowest level / most flexible items just adds to the current situation.

IMO there’s very little incentive to explore any ‘finer points’ of forging due to the combination of these conditions and, as you note, near zero market for anything less than t6 1-hitters and hunting gear.

I do think that with the RNG and combination of layered RNG effects in play, they could provide us with some decent information regarding the weights and balances being used during the forging process, without really “spoiling” the current experience.

Flexibility, for instance. As far as I can ‘comfortably’ infer it seems like all that this does is set the end result of the effectiveness. And I’m not able to tell off hand if that really does much more than determine how hard it is to get boon points onto the bar.

It’s definitely both intimidating, and opaque. As noted above, I really believe that the people who get these resources to the folks who are looking, and help them gain enough understanding to manage the workflow, are definitely a boon to the community.

However it’s probably going to take some significant change to the forging system before it ever moves to being more than “follow these steps, and decon the instant one goes wrong”. Now test is being kept primarily offline, there’s even less incentive for players to spend their time and coin playing with it in such a way that real understanding or feedback can develop.

Thanks again to those that have shared (or may still share) their thoughts on or experience with the centraforge.

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41

I would say that this forge isn’t near-perfect (4 aoe, 6 dura + random boon) but it sells. So there is a market, it’s just a bit niche :woman_shrugging:

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But I agree it’s still pretty much end-game only, I think it’d be interesting if lesser materials had their efficiency even higher than 200, if PBC 1 was viable with iron tools for example I think it’d be a good thing.

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42

I think my journey with forging is pretty typical from other things I’ve read:

It was the last thing I tried in the game, I didn’t even build a centerforge until I had all the other machines with 10 advanced coils (back when coils were pretty expensive). At first I just messed around to get the feel, mostly just adding damage and durability to my tools.

When the bomb mining nerfs came, I figured I needed to get better at forging so i could make AoE hammers. I found Merlin’s tutorials and was able to consistently forge “good enough” tools to do what I wanted to do. I regularly forged my own tools, weapons, and grapples.

Then the changes to the forge hit, and I lost all my confidence that I knew what I was doing. Things didn’t change that much, but I wasn’t getting the boons to quite the same level, plus now, they were riddled with quirks which ranged from mostly ignorable to making he tool actively feel bad. At the same time, I started to get more actively involved in other aspects of the game. I found my self dreading forging, even though I was still getting generally good results out of it.

When the Boundless Trade Network was created, I finally felt like I could wrap my mind around the economy enough to run a shop. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me and forging, as I was finally bringing in enough coin to buy forged tools and weapons rather then forging them myself.

Since then I have done some forging on the test server, with pretty good success, and have been considering forging again, but I’m not sure if it is worth the trouble for me personally.

I’m not sure what I’d like to see changed about forging, but I do like that it isn’t like other crafting. I don’t think a simple put x in get y out as I have seen suggested elsewhere is a positive direction for forging. I also think that the rng is important: the idea that unexpected things happen when forging that you have to adapt to is really good imo. I think maybe if the forging ingredients were cheaper, so forging wouldn’t feel like as much of an investment, or maybe expanding the deck again to give players more options when it comes to adapting to bad rng would be good. The fact that the current best answer to poor rng is deconstruct and start from scratch does not seem like a great place for forging to be sitting.

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43

There are a few issues with the forge:

Boons that don’t work aren’t excluded (fist aoe, spanner aoe)
The seeming huge amounts of rng

I think one thing though is that we kind of spoiled ourselves. Most people didn’t start by just throwing some things in the forge and coming out with a better, more efficient item. We usually go mining, or save money to buy a forged hammer from someone who has some forging experience. There is no ability to play around with the forge.

I think if there was a “test forge” that could be extremely useful for people learning the forge and trying different methods. Maybe forging needs it’s own tree. Once you forge X amount of times, you get one free boon reroll or something.

I think what could help is making lower end stuff like iron have an extremely high efficiency even with no coils, and then making “half boon” compounds that are cheap to produce so you can actually make low tier tools that are viable and not just a waste. That would allow people to learn and explore some basics of forging without losing too much.

I think the high end stuff should remain difficult because it is high end. It takes skill. (I know rng is there, but the forge does take a certain amount of intuition and proper planning too that really helps mitigate the rng. Sometimes, by an extreme amount).

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44

I suppose the following reflects well parts of the “centraforge experience” for me. Normally I have a bit of bad luck and do about 5-10 deconstructs per set of hammers (2-3, at most at the same time), but today it seems to be particularly against me…

Maybe they could add a counter of how many times a tool has been deconstructed, because I’ve deconstructed the same 3 hammers just over 30 times now! :smiley: :crazy_face: In the space of about 30 minutes, so I’ve spent about a minute on each forge attempt.

My issue with this isn’t just my luck though, I can accept I’m not getting the result I want quickly. It’s that now, I’m thinking “ugh, I’m going to have to go look for bitter beans if I want to forge again tomorrow”. :man_shrugging:

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45

I’m really curious what setup people have and what they’re aiming for.