An accusation that gets leveled at MMOs a lot is that they're too violent. Most people who play videogames have sort of a laissez' faire attitude towards roughing up virtual baddies, and rightly so. It's all make-believe, after all. The problem is that this 'bonking out the baddies' gameplay is the bread and butter of the online gaming trope. All you do, in a lot of these games, is endlessly kill critters, bad guys, monsters, and demons for hours on end. Not only can it get repetitive, it's all a bit ... unseemly?
That's why I love the crafting in EverQuest II (EQ2) from SOE. It's an integrated system that gets you out of the killing fields and challenges you without putting you in a morally questionable situation. Read on for a quickie crafting system explanation and notes on why building things up can be a ton of fun.
Just like adventuring classes (your mages, your warriors), crafters in EverQuest II are broken down into a couple of different 'types'. When you begin your crafting career at low levels, you'll be an 'Artisan', which is a sort of undifferentiated crafting class. You can make a bunch of basic items at this point, and the quests given out on the new player Isle will guide you through gathering your first resources and making your first items. If you're already off the new player isle, there will be a crafting guild near where you started the game that can help you get going.
Crafting items will require you to go out into the adventuring fields to gather resources. There's no need to purchase any sort of 'gathering implements', and every character can gather every resource if the related skill is high enough. It's a use-based system, so going fishing makes you better at fishing itself. The types of resources you'll gather depends on the level of the zone you're in, and lower-level adventuring zones only yield lower-level crafting resources. If your crafting level is near your adventuring level, you shouldn't have to worry too much about monsters where you're crafting.
The act of actually crafting isn't as simple as hitting a button, as it is in some other games. EverQuest II features a fun little mini-game, with its own special buttons and UI, that attempts to ensure you get the best item out of the process. The better you do in creating an item, the more experience you get!
As you complete your first simple crafts via quests in the crafting areas, you'll find that you're gaining tradeskill experience. Your tradeskilling experience is completely separate from the experience you get when you kill monsters; as a result, you can be a much higher-level crafter than adventurer if you want.
As you gain experience, your trainers will encourage you to specialize, until at level 20 you make your final tradeskill class choice. This lets you start focusing in on a particular type of item, like housing furniture, weapons, armor, or even the special items that let players have advanced versions of their combat spells.
Crafting, then, is a fantastic system in EQ2. You can help out other players with everything from 'just for fun' items, all the way up to raid-critical spell enhancements. There's a dedicated developer for crafting on the team, a woman by the name of Emily 'Domino' Taylor, and her ministrations have lead to things like instanced crafting missions, whole crafting-based quest lines, and fantastic rewards for enthusiastic crafters.Crafting is one of the biggest 'wins' in EverQuest II, and it's a big reason why you should try out that game.
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