One Shots: Getting into the rhythm of crafting

Lord of the Rings Online has the only MMORPG crafting system my friends and I have ever truly liked.

It's the only system we've seen where you can routinely make better game gear for yourself than you would find in loot drops, far cheaper than you would find for sale at the player Auction Houses.

In short, your crafting skill actually means something to your gameplay, directly.

If you have your main character and a couple of fun-to-play secondaries, you can ensure that all your crafting raw-materials needs are met, even if you're a hardcore solo player.

Thanks to Turbine for putting together a crafting system which is actually fun and genuinely rewarding.

Lord of the Rings Online has a terrible crafting system, not only is it a purile "set the number and walk away" based system with no skill it peters out in usefullness after about level 50.

With the game's new direction of gear gating the ONLY armour left to own in the game when you hit level 60 is the Radiance gear. Generic cookie cutter armour, one set per class that has specs so overpowered that armour crafting was killed.

As for weapons, the Legendary system has completely obliterated the market in crafted weapons. Who would want a 140dps weapon when you can get a 150dps weapon with buffs for free?

Jewelery? The same. The drops in the hard mode instances are so wanted, so good, and so prolific (due to the sheer number of times htey are farmed/ground for radiance coins) that there is pretty much no call for any crafted jewelery (apart from 2 items)

Crafting after level 50? Waste of effort, waste of time.
Turbine doesn't like crafters.

I disagree. I am not a raider so I have no interest in radiance gear. I don't want to run HM instances over and over again to get the armor set. I wear lvl 58 crit armor and jewellry. LI weapons did hurt weaponsmiths but there is still a market for off hand weapons. The new Lothlorien weapon recipes are VERY nice for off hand weapons. Appearantly there many people that share my viewpoint because I sell alot of armor, jewellry, and weapons. I even sell a nice amount of potions despite the mirror quests that give potions every day. Radiance armor is for the raiding crowd. There are FAR more casuals that will never own a single piece of rad armor. Crafting is alive and healthy in LOTRO. It could be better but everything could be better. Nothing is perfect in life.

I like the crafting in Runes of Magic, but it's way too simplified at the moment. They really need to add some bulk to it. I'm not saying it should be too fat(but as a crafter that wouldn't hurt me at all), but it's skinnier than a stick figure right now.

That being said. It's really cool crafting in conjunction with using the aggregator which lets you take, say a sword's stats and transfer them on to another sword that you think looks cooler.

You get the stats you want, and the look you want. No more level capped players with all the exact same gear looking like an army of clones:)

yep, grea gating in LOTRO is going to stay, no matter what. Radiance gear is still the best armor in the game, and not even the new set in B8 is better than it. That makes crafted armors pretty much useless for endgame...unless you're a lucky tailor and end up crafting a Lothlorien Stalker's Hooded Cloak, which could sell for 25g since the crit item isn't even in game (for now)

Crafting still has its place. You cannot dual wield two Legendary weapons, for example, so we need a second weapon there.

And how does one get to the raid-level of gear? By using crafted items. I musy have missed the patch where everybody was given boss-dropped jewelery and amour.