A lot of people would like to see crafting in some future expansion, update, sequel, whatever.
The question is, HOW do you imagine this working?
Ok...Ok...Ok!!!!
If you do do crafting can we get a bomb. The orc running under the castle.
I want to sacrifice something.
Edit:
Just use a crafting window. Use the items like webs and pelts that are just sold at the store anyway and make use of them in a crafting window. You'd have to make it a little random somehow on what comes out. And like someone said... Use a mana slider or # imput to decide how much your willing to give it. You may crap out. Kinda like minecraft does theirs. Its fun that way.
You have to own the item first. Dont make it to complicated. These are not toys for your soldiers to screw around with!
Cant get more simple than that. Its never going to be a huge game breaker. I personally could do without it. I just want to find things out in the woods, myself.
I was thinking about crafting some more, the system I had come up with, the integration with designed units, and what would have to happen to make crafting worth it rather than just something to min/max your champion.
In my proposed system the foundation for crafting were the elemental shards. The more you had, the more items you could make and the kind of shards you controlled determined what kind of enchantments you could forge into an item. That would still be there, but I would add in a few other changes to give a complete overhaul.
Blow up the whole magic tree. Take every tech related to magic items and change them. Instead there are techs that allow you to make general kinds of weapons, varying in strength. The categories could be (names changed in-game for flavor), lesser accessories, greater accessories, lesser magic weapons, greater magic weapons, lesser magic armor, and greater magic armor. What determines whether you can choose to make a magic longsword or just a dagger depends on your research in the Warfare tree.
When you unlock a tier of weapon/armor in that tree, it opens up that base item choice in the item creation window. There could be a few weapons/armors/charms sprinkled already sprinkled in there to give the AI items to use, but the concept of magic items is similar to the way units are created. When you craft a magic item, you aren't really making an item. You are making a prototype that you can then decide to use on your trained units or equip on your champions. The stronger items take more crystal and production cost or gold cost for champions.
Under the current system you could create a Boreal Blade for your units or buy one for champion just by researching the Arcane Weapons tech. In this proposed system you would have to research both War Colleges (from Warfare) and the Greater Magic Weapon tech (from Magic). You would also have to capture a few water shards or have the equivalent water power through buildings like a Hedigah Bathhouse.
I know the game could be perfectly fine and playable without any crafting system at all, and I would also rather there not be one if it meant sacrificing other features or screwing up balance, but I do see it as an option if done well.
Something I didn't see mentioned, but I think is essential - I really feel like if you are going to be crafting, you should have to have a sovereign in a city do the crafting, and the quality of the item should be directly related to spell mastery...
... then I might be actually tempted to take a spell mastery trait.
Also, research in the Magic tech tree should provide additional abilities. Make these two inexorably tied so that you cn't either a) race ahead in the tech tree and make a ridiculous weapon or race a Sov/Hero up really fast to make an uber weapon (although this is more preferable since if a hero is Lvl 20 he/she is going to mop the floor against pretty much everything anyway - uber-weapon or not.)
Multiplayer!!! but if you wanted to do crafting:
The enchantments available to you should be based on what magics you have (Earth 2, Fire 4, etc)
Have a whole set of basic enchanting/crafting you can do with just ordinary base items and all the different magic levels.
Have a set of special items that you can craft if you find a uncommon/rare ingredient through your travels/quests.
Have a suitable cost for doing the enchanting (immobilise champ in a city? mana drain per turn to craft? gold cost, because you know all your enchanted items will be gold plated!!! )
but MULTIPLAYER
Hmmm. You know i hadn't really thought about crafting in FE, as it already has a lot of user-designed elements in typical gameplay. You could add it as an extension of unit design. Instead of designing your units from prefabbed equipment, you design their equipment as well. Your options would be limited by the resources you have available, as well as techs you have unlocked.
So for instance, instead of having the lightning hammer unlocked at enchanting in the magic tree, the tech would allow general elemental enchanting spells based on the spell traits you posess for use in item design. As an example you could recreate the lightning hammer in the new system by having hammers unlocked in warfare, enchanting in magic, and posessing the Air 2 spell trait. You would use the hammer as a base (which costs metal) then add the Lightning enchant modifier from the crafting UI (which would cost some mana). In addition, you could also make many variations such as the Cold Hammer or even Earth Hammer (more blunt damage). So you've got every elemental variation of weapon available now, but what else can you make? Perhaps enchanting armor pieces with Air magic give +initiative and enchanting them with water gives +dodge. All of the different enchants would cost mana and/or crystal and different material types would be able to hold differing amounts of magic. Perhaps metal would only hold two enchantments on it while an item made of pure crystal could hold three. I'm not sure if this would be too much of a drag on unit production, but you could require a hero with the required spelltrait stationed in the city that is producing units with items with that enchantment. Might as well extend unit design to allow current castable unit enchantments into unit designs, as a convenience thing.
In addition to your everyday enchanted weapons and armor (which cost common resources of metal/crystal/mana) there should be item types that require special resources only dropped by monsters and/or quests. These would be limited in quantity and would be used in the same fashion that the more common ones are. An Ashwake dragon might drop some dragon's bone, which could be a new material to craft a limited amount of dragonbone weapons. A fire elemental may drop some Fire Essence that allows you to add a special fire enchantment to any designed weapon. Maybe the spiderwebs you get all the time could be used to make highly enchantable silk robes.
I think this would be the most natural way to fit crafting into FE because it extends an existing unit design and resources system. The benefit here is it opens up item crafting to designed units AS WELL as heroes. Another benefit is being able to tie it into map resources like shards, and maybe even new very rare map resources, Perhaps finding a rare flux stone could allow you to make limited steel weaponry? You would have to change the way heroes get equipment from the shop though. It's kinda silly currently how you can unlock magical equipment and still buy it for gold for heroes when your empire has no crystal whatsoever. It would be necessary since being able to pay gold for designed items with rare monster dropped components would be lame and exploitative. Make hero purchases at home require all the resources the item does for units, but with the only the production cost converted into gold.
I didnt read the whole post so i may repeat something that someone else said above so here it goes:
I like the idea of using the items found on the map or by defeating a monster. Add more items, like dragon eggs or mushrooms on a special tile. Combo this with some researched abilities or building. Crafting should be specific to a item and not to a class of items. The buff to the item should be enough to make it worthy of doing, so +1 or +2 doesn't cut it. I also agree with the fact that what ever can be buffed should have some way to be counter with something to balance the game, like a magic resist item.
I'm currently enjoying the Gem Skill system in Path of Exile, in part because it reminds me of how great it worked in Final Fantasy VII. So really, you're not spending all your time collecting, breaking down, and rebuilding crappy items all the time that get overshadowed by the next tier of crappy item that requires more grind to make less crappy.
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