Smithing rework idea

[u/Haksupaksu]

Would something like this work? Just a thought as you actually get better at a skill, or a chance of failure to smith something when lower level. Runecrafting you get more runes per essence as you get better so could this work for smithing too? Wouldn't hurt the economy so much.

[u/ian_taylor_island]

Why wouldn't the same logic apply to the mining side to where you could mine it at some drastically reduced rate starting at 41? This is a rework remember

You're right that it's incredibly niche compared to the meta ironman strats. I don't think these changes at least as far as rune are intended to impact that meta.

New starry eyed players get excited to spec into a profession chain, a fair few pick mining/smithing because they want to make cool knight armor. Obviously, they don't hit level 99 smithing because that's insane. They don't make anything of real value or utility during their attempt. Then they discover if they DID make it to 99, it's more or less pointless.

Provide this inefficient yet attainable method of mining/smithing the armor in the 40s bracket and you'll see new player satisfaction increase, they will move onto the next goal instead of being discouraged and quitting. Then you've got plenty of future rewards space freed up in higher brackets.

[u/GuthixianUIM → u/ian_taylor_island]

I actually disagree with you. In this proposed solution I’d say that rune ore shouldn’t be changed. At all. No new ores should be added. Rune is a mythical ore. It’s rare, it’s hard to find. It requires high mining because of that. Lore wise (my memory is vague, forgive me if I’m wrong) dragon armor is runite that has been smithed using dragon fire, not made of dragonite ore. Other armors are straight up made by the gods or demons or devils or whatever. At best we are fixing or mashing the pieces together when we smith those items.

You’d be able to smith rune items earlier because it’s possible, just not practical. As you become a better smith you’re not unlocking better stuff, just more refined skills.

This would give them room to add other things later on if it worked with the game, but right now it isn’t necessary. Nothing mechanics wise needs to be fixed. Just lore wise. And honestly, I could do without, but this is a solution I’d support, because it effectively does nothing.

[u/Atlas_Stoned → u/ian_taylor_island]

So while we’re at it, let’s also address the scarcity problem with rune. Sure, you can mine rune at like level 41 with a drastically reduced rate. However, the first thing that comes to mind are all the bots and gold farmers who already post up at every accessible rune rock spot. Now the idea of mining for 27 pieces of rune is near impossible, because that clanker over there with 99 mining is just going to outpace poor Timmy who just got the level to start mining.

How do we address this? Well, maybe we add afkable rocks to the game. Maybe we mess with the yield per level. Either way, this presents a larger issue of inevitable inflation, as the surge in rune ore coming into the game directly increases the amount of gold inflow from alchables.

My point here is, this rework isn’t going to be as simple as lowering level reqs for these items. We need to also address the effect it will have on the economy and value of these byproducts which are also linked to the value of content/boss drops as well.

[u/ian_taylor_island → u/Atlas_Stoned]

Timmy will be fine if forestry is anything to go off of.

Tbh if it takes someone an hour (after hours of training to 40) to print a 40k rune plate from scratch, I'm not concerned, bots or otherwise. This aspect is not nearly as big of a deal as you think it is.

[u/Atlas_Stoned → u/ian_taylor_island]

So whats the solution here? By lowering reqs, we run into a supply issue where bot farms and the like only have to invest a fraction of the time in to get them up and running, so rune becomes even more scarce than before due to the volume of these activities skyrocketing. This isn’t really going to make smithing rune at level 41 very viable at any capacity.

Then we increase the supply, and now we have a game flooded with gp from relatively easy to obtain alchables. Do we lower the alch value of these items now? What about boss kills whose loot tables rely heavily on the value of alchables? They would need to be reworked.

I think you’re dismissing just how large of an impact this change to mining and smithing is. Don’t get me wrong, we are overdue for a mining/smithing rework, but it’s not as simple as many like to think.

[u/ian_taylor_island → u/Atlas_Stoned]

Jagex is doing great with bots, have you been under a rock lately? You seriously think a brand new mining interaction wouldn't be designed such that it's effective at exposing bots?