I can't take credit for this one as I read about this on the d3 forums - but here's an idea I'd like to discuss.

Letting the blacksmith "re-roll" any item (including legendary) by using a high # of brimstones and/or gold.

It would be a great way of taking some inventory out of the game while at the same time giving the blacksmith a new purpose.

I would love to see something like this happen - possibly with the chance that an item would break - and that chance increases each time the item is "re-rolled" to prevent somebody from finding a legendary and then constantly re-rolling it until it got a good stat.

Thoughts?

Posted by DHAdmin at 11/06/2012 01:48 PM

I would love to see gambling return myself, and the addition of a gem sink would be nice too. I think it would be interesting if you could use gems in crafting...

For example:
Flawless Square Emerald: Guarantees 25-30 Dexterity on a crafted item.
Radiant Star Emerald: Guarantees 190-200 Dexterity on a item.

Perhaps maybe introducing more types gems and combinations (Ruby + Amethyst = Life Regen) to make crafting a bit less random, but while also serving the purpose of a item sink.

Of course I don't make games, so my ideas are not great.

These are good ideas. I think these suggestions were made way back in beta (I'll try to find the posts), but I would like to second these ideas!

Posted by DHAdmin at 11/06/2012 01:48 PM

Of course I don't make games, so my ideas are not great.

I make games, I think that idea is good... Well it's expensive but I think the black smith not having a way to "upgrade" your current items makes him pretty useless in general.

One of my thoughts on his costs or materials was that he should take an item as a "base" and craft off it, so white and grey items have a use instead of being total trash.

If you wanted a rare sword, you would need to start with one for him to modify. Certain number of brimstones guarantees the number of affixes that roll on it and other materials gives a higher probability of the affixes rolling higher numbers.

Then the added gems being used to allow you to roll certain affixes seems alright.

So an example would be: White Sword + 6 Brimstones (6 Affixes) + 1200 Essences (1200 points to distribute between affixes) + Emerald (Guarantee Dex as an affix roll) + Amethyst (Guarantee Vit as an affix roll) .... etc.

The result could roll you out something that has a chance to be something you want, then you can take the item to the jeweller and brimstone + gold for a socket as the 7th affix. Something along those lines...

The idea is it is still pretty random but the more you pay the more control you have over it... In the end it is still a gamble.

Sounds like an expansion pack to me!

With 1.0.5 I think the blacksmith is even more useless than he was in previous patches. Back in 1.0.4 I would craft some gloves and boots because I figure hey why not. It's another chance at a 62 pair of gloves or boots and seeing as I rarely would find those I was willing to give up the 80K gold or whatever. But now that they're a bit easier to find and legendaries drop a lot more, I just don't see a reason to use it. Plus I don't know exactly how it works now. Do items you craft roll ilvl 63 stats? or it is ilvl 62 still? Because if it's ilvl 62 that just makes crafting a whole lot worse too.

In line with Shihiko's thinking, I too always felt that a "normal" item should be one of the ingredients required in order to craft an equivalent magic item. Wasn't that a requirement back in D2 when crafting things w/ a Horadric Cube? (Honestly don't remember, too long ago...)

But yes, unless you're lucky & have gotten some good plans from drops, the Blacksmith is relatively useless. (If you're rich enough to buy plans off of the AH, then you're probably rich enough to be buying guaranteed good items off of the AH too, as opposed to gambling for random items w/ the in-game Blacksmith).

I always felt that there should be some way to use the Blacksmith to improve upon your current weapons/armor, as opposed to paying him money to give you back some new, random gear that may be (but probably isn't) better than what you're currently equipped with...

Like @ecocd I think there may be plans for an X-pack including this idea.
And this might have you pick up non magic items course at the moment there is no need for them not even for a lvl 1 char.

Another idea; each guaranteed affix increased craft cost. So you could theoretically get all 6 affixes you want, but at an exponential increase it'd likely be cost ineffective.

At the same time, maybe institute a slider for each affix. The higher you tweak the minimum value, the more expensive, etc. So you could theoretically craft an absolutely perfect item, but it would be incredibly expensive and probably not worth it. But if you had the money...

For example, let's start with a Rare Sword (4 random affixes). I choose to now unlock affix 5, which costs gold. Then I unlock affix 6, which costs even more gold. All affixes at this point are random.

Now, each affix is has a series of gem slots; single gems are str,vit,dex,etc. Combinations of gems could be pickup radius, extra healing. Excellent affixes (all resist, etc) might take up to 3-4 gems to get it as a guaranteed roll.

Now you have sliders on each affix. Leaving them as wide apart as possible would result in, say, 1-300 dex, and wouldn't increase gold cost. If you start tweaking it to, say, 100-300, it'd start costing more. 200-300, even more.

This way, everyone has full knowledge of what's going on regarding crafting, everyone is able to take the risks that they're most comfortable with, and it's not massively imbalanced, as the super high-end items are going to be theoretically possible, but fiscally impractical.

Side note: Maybe toss stuff like fiery brimstones / essences / tears into the mix too, to encourage salvaging and act as an item/gem sink as well as a gold sink.

I'm not particularly worried about the blacksmith being useless. If you're playing self-found he's fantastically useful as he is. If you're using the AH, there's no need for a gold sink with Bllizz is taking 15% off every transaction. The blacksmith serves his purpose well, in my opinion. No one seems to complain about the vendors and jeweler being useless in the end game despite the fact that practically no one uses them.

I think the case can be made that the game needs an item sink of some kind.

I'm not sure that there should be a risk of breaking a weapon through BS rerolling. If a pure reroll system was implemented, the cost for rerolling would merely have to scale up with each attempt. The cost in time and gold would eventually become prohibitive to any player.

I've had an idea amount smithing, but it didn't get any traction and I'm not sure why.

Let's say that you have a choice with gear, in that instead of Salvaging it you can Refine it. Points obtained through Refining can be used for Augmentation.

Rules -

Refining gear grants points (for now let's call them Refinement Points, or RP) on the basis of its rolled value, item type (0.5 for blue, 1.0 for yellow, 1.5 for brown/green), and item level. A sample formula could be something like (rolled value * item type value * item level) / 63 [current maximum item value]. So a Refined ilvl30 yellow sword with +100 Strength would yield 48 Strength RP, and a Refined ilvl63 yellow sword with +100 Strength would yield 100 Strength RP.

RP is used on gear through Augmentation, which allows you to increase the value on the gear to the next point amount (+1 for primary stats, +1% for Block chance, +0.5% for Critical Hit Chance, &c.). The amount of RP required to obtain each increment scales exponentially as the affix value accumulates towards the maximum value possible on the gear. +1 to +100 Str would require 1000 Strength RP, while +1 to +250 Strength would require 50000 RP.

Augmentation cannot be used to make any affix value reach the maximum possible value on the gear piece.

Augmentation cannot add an affix to gear or remove any affix from gear.

Augmentation cannot alter the baseline minimum and maximum damage values for weapons and offhands (as well as block values for shields).

Augmentation cannot be performed on Legendary or Set items.

The overall intent is to ensure that items which have a desirable array of affixes cannot be merely created at a player's whim, nor can gear be altered to the point of literal perfection. It would give players a way to improve their gear without having to buy new gear and discard the old gear. It would help solidify price basements on gear, as well as ensure that more gear sales occur, as players would want to hunt for bargains of any kind in order to Refine the gear at the least cost for their own use.

Posted by Ammostiel at 11/07/2012 07:54 PM

I think the case can be made that the game needs an item sink of some kind.

I'm not sure that there should be a risk of breaking a weapon through BS rerolling. If a pure reroll system was implemented, the cost for rerolling would merely have to scale up with each attempt. The cost in time and gold would eventually become prohibitive to any player.

I've had an idea amount smithing, but it didn't get any traction and I'm not sure why.

Let's say that you have a choice with gear, in that instead of Salvaging it you can Refine it. Points obtained through Refining can be used for Augmentation.

Rules -

Refining gear grants points (for now let's call them Refinement Points, or RP) on the basis of its rolled value, item type (0.5 for blue, 1.0 for yellow, 1.5 for brown/green), and item level. A sample formula could be something like (rolled value * item type value * item level) / 63 [current maximum item value]. So a Refined ilvl30 yellow sword with +100 Strength would yield 48 Strength RP, and a Refined ilvl63 yellow sword with +100 Strength would yield 100 Strength RP.

RP is used on gear through Augmentation, which allows you to increase the value on the gear to the next point amount (+1 for primary stats, +1% for Block chance, +0.5% for Critical Hit Chance, &c.). The amount of RP required to obtain each increment scales exponentially as the affix value accumulates towards the maximum value possible on the gear. +1 to +100 Str would require 1000 Strength RP, while +1 to +250 Strength would require 50000 RP.

Augmentation cannot be used to make any affix value reach the maximum possible value on the gear piece.

Augmentation cannot add an affix to gear or remove any affix from gear.

Augmentation cannot alter the baseline minimum and maximum damage values for weapons and offhands (as well as block values for shields).

Augmentation cannot be performed on Legendary or Set items.

The overall intent is to ensure that items which have a desirable array of affixes cannot be merely created at a player's whim, nor can gear be altered to the point of literal perfection. It would give players a way to improve their gear without having to buy new gear and discard the old gear. It would help solidify price basements on gear, as well as ensure that more gear sales occur, as players would want to hunt for bargains of any kind in order to Refine the gear at the least cost for their own use.

+1 on that one...This may make rares more viable and stabalize the legendary market a bit.

Posted by ecocd at 11/06/2012 03:46 PM

Sounds like an expansion pack to me!

I think ecocd hit the nail on the head. They did this with the d2 expansion as well with the horadric cube and runes.
I don't know how I'd feel if they brought runes back, though. Mixed emotions. I think there may be a better system.

Lots of good ideas here ... only question now is how to get Blizz to do something about it. I have to think we all agree that the smith can do MUCH more than he currently does.

Be it in 1.6, 1.1 or any x-pac, there's a wealth of possibilities here for Blizz to take advantage of.