I'm not the first person to suggest item crafting so I won't claim credit for it. In this thread, I would like to make a suggestion of how it could be implemented while keeping some checks in place to keep the game balance. Why item crafting? There are two main long-term motivations in Card Hunter: One is to play others in multiplayer for ranking, the other is to keep grinding for a complete item set. Currently, there are about 1500 player items in the game, based on around 500 cards. After 2-3 months, most players will reach the point where they have most commons and uncommons, a good set of rares and a few epics and legendaries. Some will keep grinding, but most will drop off after playing the campaign 2-3 times. (I'm sure the devs had a good look at the item counts of players) This system proposes an alternative way of using loot to add new items to the collection, rather than paying the cutthroat prices at Randimar's (Richest man in Cardhuntria?) What the players see A new building is added, the crafting shop. At the crafting shop, there is a slot machine with 3 slots. Fill the slots with three items from your inventory. The items have to be of the same type. Level and rarity are up to you. Push the "craft" button. The machine will give you a new item of a level and rarity based on the items you provided. How it works internally The crafting algorithm takes the 9 cards of the three provided items and adds them to a pool. (Double all card numbers for weapon / divine weapon / staff) For each card in the pool, the algorithm adds a second random card of the same quality and rarity. The random cards also have to be legal for that item type. (So no Toughness on elf skill!) For example, if you feed it a Copper Amulet with 3x Maze (uncommon / paper), a card like Big Zap or Fire Spray is added to the pool. This pool of 18 cards is shaken and stirred, and then 3 cards are drawn from it. Congratulation, these cards are your new item! If the card combination you crafted already exists, you get the standard item with that card combination. If it's a completely new item, the item is given a random name in the form of "<name>'s <descriptor> <item type> of <descriptor>" and a random graphic. Crafted items follow the standard formulas for level and rarity. How these items can be used in the game - the orange token Completely new crafted items will require a compromise: Of course, players will want to use their shiny new item everywhere, but you don't want them to barge into multiplayer with decks of unchecked crafted items that could break game balance. Crafted items will have a special token - the orange token (in addition to the standard gold and blue based on their level). The number of orange tokens your PC has determines how many crafted items you can bring to MP or SP games. At the start, I'd keep the number of tokens rather low - maybe two. If the system works fine without breaking the game, you can always add more tokens later. Game balance The crafted items are balanced by the same mechanism that the 1500 items added by the devs are balanced: - Card quality - Card rarity - Restrictions by class / item type Still, players could be lucky and create items with new combinations that are unavailable in standard items, even legendaries. For example a robe with 3x Resistant Hide. To reduce the impact of such items, I suggest to limit the amount of crafted items you can equip, at least for multiplayer. Also, this is something to unlock after the player has completed the SP campaign and there is not much else to do in SP but grinding and quests. You could also be lucky and create the combination of a legendary you don't have already. This is balanced by the fact that legendaries consist only of rare cards, so at the very least, you'd have to feed it three rare items with a rare card each, and get a lucky result. If this is a concern, you can tweak the card pick algorithm in a way that the best rarity you can get out is limited by the best rarity you put in. FAQ * What if the crafted combination would have an item level above 18? - The crafting algorithm needs to check for that. If the resulting level is too high, it has to reroll the highest card and repeat until the level is 18 or lower. * Where does the <name> in the item name come from? - The algorithm picks one of the player's characters (of the right class) at random. So if you play a PC named Bob, you could get "Bob's Mighty Axe of Chopping" * But other's can't see what cool item I crafted? - In stage 2, a function to showcase these items in chat, player profile or similar would be implemented. * What happens to the cards that were not picked from the pool? - Those are destroyed. At 3 items for 1, crafting will still give you a better rate than selling and buying items, which has a rate of 1:5 (or worse)
I like the slot machine idea, but think that completely new items are more trouble than they're worth. In addition to the issues you raise[1], they would also be harder for the game to store, since you can't just use the item ID. Instead, if the cards chosen don't match an existing item (or the item matched has the "noloot" flag), you get nothing and lose the source items. Definitely makes it more of a gambling experience. [1] If you feed in 3x Imp-proof Robes, you have better than a 1/1000 chance of getting a robe with 3x Resistant Hide. And I don't think such a robe should be allowed to exist.
If you give me a way to make new items, I will treat it as a meta-game where the aim is to create game-breaking items. (However, I do want a way to trade in N:1 for items of similar rarity, so that all those junk rare/epic/legendary can be put to some use.)
Also, technically.... if there's an effectively infinite number of possible items, all the people who want a complete item collection will be sad.
