Greetings All,
Here is an idea that worked VERY well in AC, and I am hoping that it helps bridge the gap between the adventurers and crafters. How about Loot Based Crafting?
In AC there were common Staples. You had things like potions, healing Hearty Pizza's, etc... Then you had special loot based crafted items. For instance Kill enough mattikars, and you eventually find a skin, that could be crafted into a great bit of armour, the association was almost guaranteed. You knew when you found that skin, you were about set for a new coat, all that was left was finding a crafter for it. I could see that working here. It SEEMS to be what we are working towards with the Kwellen hides.
The other thing that keeps EVERYONE opening EVERY corpse is their great loot system. We don't do droppable usable loot, so that's a moot point, but at least the part above would be workable here. I think we are close to TRYING for something like this with the blighted gear. It generates random sometimes cool stuff... but it's so disassociated in terms of the steps involved that the adventurer oh ho hum, another Core when they find a blighted item.
What everyone wants is the viscerally satisfying find.
Where they'd go COOL! A weapon crystal! I wonder what it's STATS ARE. (Randomness within a range is key).
Or COOL! Imbuement crystal! (You can use it to 'imbue' an psuedorandom effect on an item). Maybe Attack Imbues would give a +X to +XX and convert to elemental attack. A Resist Imbue would give a +x to +xx resist to an element. Something like that. There would be a good market for things like that and it make all of our gear unique.
-HratLi