Russian Roulette the new name for crafting

[Ysharros]

Originally Posted by Shinto

I'm not sure about the station skill, though. I decided to move it around a bit, and lowered my finishing station skill to about 130 while my others were over 200 (forgot exact numbers). The number of comps in finishing now does not seem any different from that of my refining, which is fairly balanced. Having the other two so high, however, has opened up valuable actions, even if it is at the cost of station progress. I think in the end, I will raise one skill and balance the other two.

Having seen Belthize's post over on VGCrafters which proposes having no more station skill than absolutely necessary, I've been trying a points rejig too. It's a little early to tell but like Shinto, I certainly didn't notice that I was suddenly being blatted with more complications - if anything, I was able to get rid of them sooner for having higher skills in the other 2 areas.

If I remember rightly Belthize's formula (and he was speculating, but he's one of the more informed crafters out there) was that Station skill should sit somewhere between (level x 24) x 0.25 to 0.33, with each person having to determine where in the 25-33% range they felt more comfortable.

[kreen]

I would agree here, varying station skill seems to have no impact on frequency of complications, maybe it should but it seems broken right now.

I ground out 2 levels yesterday and delibrately started taking points out station skills while putting them in tools and utils after reading some threads and my comp freq was similar from beginning to end of the WO grind - range of about 3-6 comps per craft.

What I did find though as I built up tools and utils is that I got new actions for sorting comps and my operations per clearance improved from typically 2 to typically 1.

Final analysis - you are going to get comps no matter what you do right now so its better to just accept that its a dice roll and build up you tools and utils skills to deal with them efectively if you need to.

[sorkvir]

The one thing I noticed is that 'most' of the complications use the 'tool' skill.

For example, most of the articifing ones relied on 'shaping tools' or the 'sculpting tools'. When I had this and the crafting station low, i seemed to have problems with the complications. Once I raised my station skill up as well as the tool skill, complications were a lot easier.

I would say (and I suck at math) that the complication frequency is set, but how 'easy' they are is based on: specialty skill level, complication focus (ie Sculpting tools, shaping tools, etc), and Station skill.

So far, the utility skill is really there to give a huge boost to quality since it is the only skill that 'stops' progress and allows you to boost quality.

Those are my early morning thoughts. I need to go get some coffee now.

[sorkvir]

A quick note about station skill. I found this post by Silius about station skill:
ah heck, I'll just post the whole quote

It is certainly based on skill and the AI can be defeated. The XP formula has been tested and works fine, for any given recipe you always have a large chunk of bonus XP that can be earned if you are efficient and complications can be reduced by increasing station skill and thinking about your playstyle. Complications become very predictable and should be relatively simple to plan for after a while but there will always be a wrench that can be thrown in there at times.

Many have figured out the ins and outs of manipulating the AI a few have posted strategies that work very well. there will always however be some form of luck involved in things like this and our RNG sometimes is evil beyond belief but in the end you are certainly equipped with the ability to counter whatever it may throw your way and after looking at the patterns of some things you will learn what and what not to do with particular recipes and their set ups.