Crafting and gambling questions from a new player

[stanze79]

Hi there!

I'm quite new with Belzebub and till now I can say: it's just amazing! It combines the improvements of D2 with the unmatched atmosphere of D1! Thanks a lot for that great job!

I actually have one little problem. I can't beat the first seal boss on Diablo's dungeon level! My gear is quite weak, mostly quest items. Now I want to try crafting for the first time (it took my a while to get that gems and oils don't drop from monsters ). I have a view questions about crafting.

1. What are the determining factors of crafting results? Charakter level? Difficulty? Item level, if existing? (and if: where can i recognize the item level? ) Or is the result pure luck?

2. I luckily found two recipes for my barbarian. Can classes use crafted items from recipes that belong to other classes? E.g. may my barbarian use an armor crafted with warrior's recipe?

3. Gems and oils: Do rare or unique items give better gems and oils than magic ones?

And two more questions about gambling:

4. What influences the result of gambling? (similary to question 1 about crafting)

5. Do gambling prices rise with charakter level?

Thanks a lot in advance for your time!

stanze79

[Elle]

1. Apparently what determiens the results is the level of the recipe; you probably have the ones that require levels 15-20 and I didnt find them worthwile. The barbarian recipes in particular are not very interesting because they give very small damage bonuses and also strength, which is simply not very useful, it might be the least useful stat outside of prerequisites.

2. When you craft a class item, any class can use them.

3. Rare or unique items dont give much more of the better crafting materials than magic items do. However, higher level items (their affixes but dont know about the base item levels), will give better crafting materials, such as better oils and better gems. Try gambling a few rags and caps from Gheed and see if good affixes give you goot materials.

4. I've found that higher level influences better gambling. But after a certain point, you must move onto the next difficulty before better items start to come up. Same with other shops.

5. They dont, and I am kinda glad for it. They are already expensive when you begin the game, for example a dagger is 2200gp when enemies drop 4gp-5gp per kill, and not even each of them does. If they slowly got even more expensive, a simple dagger would forever be out of the reach. However, afte a while you start seeing upgraded items which are really more expensive... such as upgraded Sash becomes Demonhide Sash, and a Dagger becomes Boning Knife...

[Nomic]

3. Gems and oils: Do rare or unique items give better gems and oils than magic ones?

The oil you get is determined by the item rarity.
Blue (Magic) = Azure Oil
Yellow (Rare) = Crimson Oil
Gold (Unique) = Golden Oil
I have not been able to determine where Silver Oil comes from other then the fact I end up with a few in the massive pile of stuff in my anvil after lots of salvaging. I think they are a rarely given instead of golden oil sometimes when you salvage uniques but I'm not 100% sure on this.

The quality of the gem you get is determined by the item level, higher level items will give higher grade of gems. Up to now I have not been able to find any kind of scheme as to what TYPE of gem you get when salvaging, it seems to be random no matter what affixes or type of weapon/armor you salvage which type of gem you will get.

[andronnik]

You get Silver Oil when salvaging already crafted items. I'm not sure, but i think silver oil is also dropped by some very-very unique items.

[stanze79]

Ella, Nomic, andronnik: Thanks a lot for your time and for your great help!
You answered all my questions and I have a much better insight in crafting and gambling than before. Thank you very much!

So, refering to my question No. 1, do I get it right that crafting results only depend on the level of the recipe? So I can reach the same results with my clvl 27 barbarian on Normal as with a clvl 50 barbarian on Hell, if I just know the recipe? Are better recipes (with higher level) coming along the game? (perhaps even for the same gear?)

(... ) and also strength, which is simply not very useful, it might be the least useful stat outside of prerequisites.

Damn! Till now I put most points into strength, because of damage boost and the benefit for the charakter skills. Is strength really that useless? Is that the possible reason for my problems killing the first seal boss?
Is Dex for barbarian even useful if I fight with axes? (I guess Dex raises my block chance). Do you think I should restart?

Please apologize my Noob questions

[Jofuss]

I've found crafting to ultimately be not helpful.


I did just however get the recipe "Upgrade magic weapon" though which leads me to hold out hope!

Crafting to me looks mostly like a twinking option.

It used to be kind of useful before I reported a couple bugs in it that could be exploited to make really high AC items with really high durability... but even then I still didnt actually use it. I have used 1 single crafted item and it was a staff with pretty good spell power. This was only because at that point in my game, nothing comparable dropped or could be shopped.

Gambling is all fun and good, but to be honest, I'd rather farm treasure runs or something than take my chances with that crap. I'm also the kind of person that would drive 20 minutes out of my way to avoid 5 minutes of bumper to bumper traffic though.

I have NEVER gotten a silver oil from anything other than a crafted item.
Other than that I must agree with Nomic's statement that magic = azure, yellow = crimson and gold = golden.

I personally think gambling and crafting COULD be a wonderful and viable option in the game, but I feel they need tweaking in there current state.

I think gambling SHOULD scale with level, it is prohibitively expensive at early levels, and keeps it up as item quality increases. Then at higher levels you gamble an item for 2000 gold that ends up being worth 5000 half the time.

Question: How does gambling apply character level to item level? Can you gamble an item with a higher level requirement than your current level? I would think for gambling to be viable it should be something along these lines. Just a thought.

[andronnik]

If you think that crafted items are useless, then look how Mr. Styner beat diablo:
Sorcerer items: http://cafe.naver.com/diabloth/21564
Warrior items: http://cafe.naver.com/diabloth/21790

Still useless?

[Jofuss]

If you think that crafted items are useless, then look how Mr. Styner beat diablo:
Sorcerer items: http://cafe.naver.com/diabloth/21564
Warrior items: http://cafe.naver.com/diabloth/21790

Still useless?

I never said it was useless. I said its ultimately not helpful.

There are nice crafted items possible yes but usually outshined by uniques or rares that have dropped by the time you have the recipe and materials to craft a piece. Then taking into account the random factors in salvage and the sheer numbers in materials required, the only viable way to craft items is to backup your character, craft and restore if you don't like the results because you can literally lose hours of materials on a bad craft. Since I refuse to exploit a game mechanic like this, crafting to me is... not helpful.

[andronnik]

i agree that in early/mid game with your first character crafting is pretty useless. But in later game it becomes better, there are not many items which can beat your last-level crafted items, or maybe there are but their dropabbility is really low. And the requiements are not so high in late game (for eample for a lvl 50 recipe i need 6 perfect diamnods, 4perf. emeralds, 4 perf. sapfires, some golden oil, and crimson oil i think. So it's not much, campraning to what it gives. Even if u had bad luck, u can gain this stones back i a couple of goings to lost treasure.
But i guess changes could be done for early/mid game, so that you find usefull recipes earlier.

[BrightLord]

Crafting and gambling cannot be too good for one simple reason. It's too easy to exploit it.

[Jofuss]

Crafting and gambling cannot be too good for one simple reason. It's too easy to exploit it.

Exactly

And its a shame.

so that you find usefull recipes earlier

This is realistically something I would advocate for. This is part of why I find crafting to be not helpful. The recipes are usually just found TOO late to be helpful to the character crafting them. Thus why I call it a system for twink gear.

[Elle]

I think gambling SHOULD scale with level, it is prohibitively expensive at early levels, and keeps it up as item quality increases. Then at higher levels you gamble an item for 2000 gold that ends up being worth 5000 half the time.

This feature is partly drawn from D2, in which the gambled equipment did scale with your level. But the main reason for this was that every dagger was labeled "dagger" until you bought it, whereas it could really be a HIDDEN boning knife. It's different here because you can easily tell that a dagger is actually a boning knife, and the gamble price for it is higher too, like 22.000 - consider this to be your form of scaling, because by this time you wont WANT to use the weak dagger, so it's justified for it to be so cheap too.

Oh, you were looking to SELL daggers for a handful of profit? Poor you, you're cheating yourself out of fun!

By the time that daggers start giving enough good affixes to be sold for a profit, they stop being worth it as it's quicker and surer to kill a few monsters instead.

[Jofuss]

Oh, you were looking to SELL daggers for a handful of profit? Poor you, you're cheating yourself out of fun!

You clearly misunderstand me. If you followed my posts you would see I am one to advocate for the removal of things such as this. I have submitted bugs related to crafting that could create items with extremely high armor as well as extremely high durability. I also am the first person to publicly suggest stone curse to have also apply a damage reduction of 75%.

My point is that it SHOULDN'T work this way but it currently does.

This feature is partly drawn from D2, in which the gambled equipment did scale with your level. But the main reason for this was that every dagger was labeled "dagger" until you bought it, whereas it could really be a HIDDEN boning knife. It's different here because you can easily tell that a dagger is actually a boning knife, and the gamble price for it is higher too, like 22.000 - consider this to be your form of scaling, because by this time you wont WANT to use the weak dagger, so it's justified for it to be so cheap too.

There are plenty of times I would gladly take a lesser quality base item, especially on a caster.

The biggest reason for gambled equipment cost scaling in Diablo 2 was not the chance for exceptional and elite items as when the original gambling system was designed, this wasn't much of a factor in it. The biggest reason for the gambled equipment cost scaling was that at level 1 you simply could not gamble "Leather armor of the Whale." If the pool of affixes and suffixes was set regardless of player level, then there would be no need for cost scaling.

Since the list of affixes and suffixes IS in fact based on character level while gambling, the fact that prices are static based on item type is just flawed. This means that there is a direct correlation of the cost to gambled item level based on character level. This makes it a very bad deal to gamble at level 1 as compared to gambling the same quality item at level 50.