I think the concept of the crafting system is great. The execution needs some work. I’m fine with not having perfect items, I’ve replaced my current gear on a level 95 character hundreds of times and slowly made it better and better. I still have room for improvement, especially with exalted items now in the game. But there’s a lot of ways the crafting system could be revised.
My main issue right now is that there is absolutely no reason not to use glyph of the guardian unless fracture chance is low enough to use glyph of stability. When you use glyph of the guardian on 99.9% of crafts, why even have it in the game except to limit how often you can craft? The risk is too high without it and it doesn’t take long to get more, so it’s not even limiting your crafting. Glyphs are practically a non-system right now because of this.
Runes also don’t need to add instability I would say. Refinement running the risk of a fracture is fine but it doesn’t need to also increase the chances of fracturing. Removal already runs the risk of getting rid of the affixes you want to keep, no need to add instability on top of that. Cleansing, I have no idea why it doesn’t just put instability to 0 instead of 5-15 but whatever.
Damaging fractures also don’t make much sense with how they pretty much always make an item with low or removed affixes by the time you can actually have a damaging fracture occur. Have you ever kept or even used a damaged item? It’d be more interesting if it just removed 1-2 mods entirely, you could luck out and have it remove the ones you didn’t need anyway, rather than affecting all affixes and always making a wet noodle out of your item.
I think a lot of current issues people have with crafting could be solved by revamping glyphs into a real system. First off, remove glyph of the guardian and just make its effect the default. Then, have glyphs be a tradeoff, not purely beneficial, but much more useful. That way you won’t always want to use one unless for a specific situation, there shouldn’t be a glyph that is just the default you always use.
I’ll list out some ideas, alongside the current glyphs, and an explanation for each. I realise none of these interact with runes, I think needing that to be the case limits what glyphs can do, you’d never use a rune without guardian anyway. There’s one at the end specifically for runes.
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Glyph of the Guardian - Removed, effects made default. Because it’s all you’d ever use anyway.
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Glyph of Stability - Upgrades fracture chances to pre-guardian level, same as now. Instability reduction 40-60% instead of 0-60%. You run enough risks crafting that a glyph potentially doing nothing is kind of insulting. This would be your choice when you want to take the chance of minor fractures while crafting but benefit from it later.
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Glyph of Grounding - Removes minor fracture chance entirely, increases instability added by 40-60%. Means you can easily and safely add mods on an item to create something usable, it’s only past 25 instability you risk a fracture. This would be the way to have a guaranteed way to craft something, you just pay for it later.
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Glyph of Finality - Guarantees the craft is successful, minor fractures the item. Another way to have a guaranteed craft, working even at high instability, but you can only do it once on an item and then the item is done. Could be a rare drop.
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Glyph of Exception - Adds a chance of adding 2 levels of the affix shard equal to the total fracture chance, upgrades minor fracture chance into damaging. A counter to the finality glyph. You’d want to use this to potentially create a T6 but it greatly increases the risk you take; T7 can remain drop-only. Wouldn’t be of much use early on due to its benefit only kicking in at higher instability.
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Glyph of Runeforging - Removes minor fracture chance when using runes but causes runes to add 2 instability. Under the assumption of previous suggestion of making runes not add instability, you still risk a lot using a rune; this mitigates that risk temporarily while still having runes interact with instability.
Also, one more idea for a potential rune that kinda breaks the rules but I think would be a good way to give players something to do with their fractured items. Call it “rune of revival”, it’d un-fracture an item but set the item to ‘unstable’, upgrading all future minor/damaging fracture chances on the item to be destructive. So if you get a fracture and have no use for the item in that state you can risk it all for another chance to make it good, instead of just vendoring the item or having it rot in your stash. Assuming the above glyphs existed, ‘unstable’ would disable using the finality glyph.
Oh and I’d love for some way to reroll the implicit stats on an item, that could be a rune too. Not sure why it isn’t already actually, seems too obvious to not intentionally be missing.
This all of course doesn’t add complete and totally safe high tier crafting like some here are asking for. I’m not really sure something like that would work too well for the game but there is space for a system like it. A way to very slowly improve an item without taking a gamble. Perhaps not in a way that interacts with the affix shard system, but rather gated by progress? Like the monolith blessings.
Maybe give the choice, instead of a monolith blessing, of a rune that upgrades a random affix by one tier with no fracture chance and only lvl100 monoliths give ones that can upgrade to t5. It’d be the safe and pretty slow way to get yourself all-t5 items, it’d just mean playing a lot of the endgame. Can see why something like that shouldn’t exist, but a lot of people here show why something like it should exist too.
I’m just not sure paying a lot of affix shards for a guaranteed craft is the way to go, as that means the drop rates of the affix shards themselves are then the only thing stopping you from getting a perfect item, which is just as RNG. Who in their right mind would risk fracturing something when you could do it guaranteed? Even if it cost hundreds of shards, it’d be in your head “I’ll just hold out until I have that many shards instead”, meaning you won’t even try gambling to make an upgrade as that costs the same shards you’re hoarding. Instead of the current system of infrequent but usually satisfying upgrades you’d be using the same gear for potentially 100s of hours farming and shattering to someday improve your gear just a tiny bit. In theory it’s better for the player, but it doesn’t make for as much fun.
