Runes of Magic: Visit my Crafting Workshop

A tip from another player encouraged me to enter the Taborea Living contest in order to receive a free house upgrade.  The upgrade gave participants a much larger house with two-stories.  I’ve been decorating my house ever since.  My goal was to have a fully functional crafting workshop.  This is beneficial because up to a certain level, you can craft in all professions.  Here's a small photo album of my progress.

I absolutely adored crafting and player housing in Everquest II (EQ2).  The fact that you could conduct commerce out of your house was wonderful RP fun.  Using display cases, you could allow players to come into your house to purchase items which saved them the transaction fees charged on the Auction House.  The only thing missing from my setup in EQ2 was the ability to craft in my house.  Crafting stations were available in EQ2 but there was no way I’d ever earn the status needed to purchase them.  Since I last played EQ2, they release Guild Halls, which has elevated player housing to creating mini player cities.

Along comes Runes of Magic (ROM) with similar crafting, housing and the ability to craft in your house.  Biggest difference is that the stations are purchasable via micro transactions which means you can have them day-one.  Another difference which I hope is changed is that your auctions are all timed like World of Warcraft.  Timed-sales make it harder to return a profit on small margin items.  If they don’t sell the first time, you’ve lost your small margin by re-listing or vendoring.  I’ve always felt that EQ2's Auction House and selling mechanics were superior to any other game I've played.  Everyone else please mimic those and move on. *Smile*

Regardless of that one downside which is common in other MMOs, the micro transactions were going to allow me to realize a long standing desire to have a crafting workshop in my character’s house.  The stations range from 70 to 80 diamonds each.  Purchasing diamonds in the smallest block available puts the stations at $2.8 to $3.2 USD each.  The per station cost would be cheaper buying diamonds in larger chunks but I'm uncomfortable with making a larger purchase for RMT.  I purchased one of each station, five in total.  By crafting in my house, which equates to spending time in my house, I also receive the benefit of boosted XP and Training Point gain from my other furniture selections.

Like EQ2, you can allow other players to visit your home.  They can use your stations but can’t access any storage items.  Don’t bother wasting the House Energy points to change your house’s name.  Unless the RP-value of having a cool name show up when people enter your house is worth the 700 energy points to you.  I wasted the 700 energy not realizing that the first time.  Players have to provide the house number, not the name, to enter your home.  The house number is located on the house features dialog box that displays when you enter your home.

If you’re playing or just trying out ROM feel free to drop by Surian’s Workshop.  Stoke up the fireplaces (dbl-click) and take a load off or get some crafting done, all in the same space.  If you’d be so kind as to send me in-game mail that you visited it would be appreciated.

Surian’s Crafting Workshop
Character Name for game mail: Surianah
Server: Artemis
House #: 014303
Password: (blank)

Comments

[Khan]

Now that is just friggin' cool. It's neat that you can create your own social space in that game.

[Saylah]

Yeppers it's way cool. It's the sort of horizontal game-play that provides entertainment when you don't feel like leveling or the leveling is done. I'd hoped it would get implemented in WOW but as we know, player housing ain't coming until...whatever.

Another cool advantage is that this allows me to easily access crafting stations from anywhere just by hearthing home. Only full-fledged communities have the NPC run stations. With crafting accessible from you own house or a friend's, anywhere there is a House Maid that ports to homes, you can port into a house to craft without burning your hearth cool down. :-)

[Sente]

From a housing perspective the blacksmithing, alchemy and woodworking skills are "better" than the other crafting skills, since the crafting stations for those also should work for processing the raw resources.

And the extra bonus given is becoming quite useful. When I compared this before it seems that a crafting bonus of 50 from an item equals an additional 0.50% increase for each crafted item. With the smaller and smaller gain for a crafted item with higher levels, this may become quite significant. I have to check that the gain remains constant though...

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

I hadn't bothered with the math on the gains yet. Just being able to do this in my character's house was such a delight for me that the rest didn't even matter. I would have done it in EQ2 if I'd been able to and there are no boosts associated with the items.

I actually have the highest boosting items for each crafting profession in the house but not displayed. The benefits are still given even when you don't see the furniture. The better items are huge, some ugly and required awkward placement. Since the visual as aesthetic is equally important to me, I was happy to learn that I could keep things hidden. This also means that players with the small rooms can have nice bonuses without cluttering their spaces.

[Mikejl]

I need to check out RoM. More and more it's looking like a great game for me (casual PvE, who wants house and crafting).
Is the PvE game good.. not raids, but the quests and exploring?
Great post.
Thanks
Mike

[Sente]

Oh you can hide the items? I was not aware of that, but that sounds excellent. I can make my room look a bit less weird then :)

[Saylah]

@Sente - Yes, you can. Leave them in the furniture list but click "Undisplay". The items is hidden but you still see the boost listed in the stats/house features window.

@Mike - That question depends on the player. The story and quests aren't inspired by any stretch. There's no compelling back story like you have in WOW, WAR, EQ2, LOTRO, etc. Personally, I'm not into quest text and have followed very few quest stories. I have my few favorites but mostly I just kill stuff to level. :-)

Until AOC, I was calling myself "free style" leveler. I do quests here and there but most kill mobs that are in areas I like to frequent or that drop items I need for other purposes. AOC levels 1 to 20 was the first game that made questing convenient and more compelling for me. WAR made additional improvements that kept me questing there as well.

In ROM what keeps me questing is the sheer convenience - not as in easy to complete the quests but they didn't make them insanely obtuse while have me running back and forth to do menial dumb crap, like talk to this person who sends you to that person and back to the first person etc.

If good PVE to you means a compelling storyline, then no. If good PVE means that the mechanics vary as much as possible, the scenery is attractive, areas are populated, objectives are clear, things are group and solo friendly then YES, there is good PVE. :-)

[Sente]

For the storyline I do agree with Saylah. There is an "epic" questline (i.e. it has Epic in its category/name) which starts after a few levels and continues for quite a while - I have not seen the end of it yet.

But if you ask me what the "epic" storyline is about, then I couldnot tell you - although I think there are some factional conflicts and some books and/or artifacts involved.

But it really gets lost in the noise of general quest stories providing some motivation why you need to kill 20 ents of this kind (after you already kill 20 of another kind and 10 of a 3rd kind and they are actually all of the same kind, so you need to kill some more of them just in case), or 10 goblins of that kind etc.

[Saylah]

The way Sente and I are describing things it sounds like a grind. Somehow though, for me at least, it doesn't feel like a grind at all. LOTRO quests even for all the lore felt like a grind. EQ2 felt like a grind. I think it's partly because they respect distance and don't have you going long distances to kill or find things. There are quest hubs but they feel less quest-hub than other games so things just flow together - one zone into the next.

I attribute the difference to why the human zones in WOW didn't feel like a grind even though you were often slaying the same mobs for different quests or the same mobs but different sub groups within those mobs. Things were closely tied to a community - where you lived, harvested and crafted. It all happens in the same general area so you're doing lots of things on the way to and from questing.

I'm level 25/25 and it feels like it happened in a blink. I feel as though I've spent less than half my time leveling (questing or random killing). Some sessions I log off after a few hours and haven't leveled at all. I was doing so many side things that I forgot about it and lost track of time. I also feel like a slacker on those days for not working on going ding.

Before I worry too much I remember it's free to play and I don't have to get my "money's worth" and that I was clearly enjoying myself doing whatever else had me distracted. :-)

[Sente]

LOTRO definitely felt more like a grind.

Playing RoM is much more "let's log in, play around a bit and see what pops up". Travelling is not much of an issue, there are a number of quests that need teaming up to deal with a boss, but I never feel that I have to do any of those - there has alwasy been other things to do as well. And teams are formed all the time to deal with various bosses etc.

I think why RoM might work better here than some other games is because they do not really try to be that epic extraordinary setting, just provide a fantasy-inspired virtual playground pretty much.

Games that try to be more gets heavier dips when they cannot fill most of their game with that "epic" content. Only Guild Wars have been able to keep a somewhat consistent high level.