MMORPG.com Fallen Earth Correspondent Dave Yerxa writes this look at the early crafting game in Icarus Studios' post-apocalyptic MMO.

Fallen Earth is an exceptional example of how a player-driven economy can make a game great. All armor, weapons, mounts, vehicles, food and much more can be crafted by the players. Sure, you can get some gear from enemy NPCs and quests, but the best gear is made by the players.

Far too often in MMORPGs, we find ourselves stuck in a gear-grind. We bust our butts to get to the end-game, and for what? The end-game is often dependent on the player's addiction to obtaining more attractive armor. This should not be the case for an online video game. An online video game should be about community, working together, and achieving goals as a team.

Read An Early Look at Crafting.

You should be able to find scrap plastic in S1 once you get to the Pass Chris area and above (northern S1).

FE did taking crafting, conceptually, in the right direction when compared to the other games released lately and those in production. They actually put it in the front seat with the other major systems, as opposed to putting it as a side hobby or something that won't prevent a character from "being heroic / iconic".

I have to admit this does sound interesting. Most games the crafting is just not profitable or even useful at higher levels as it is the drops from dungeons, instances and bosses where you get the better gear.

Atlantica has a nice and useful crafting system as well, It is the crafting that makes your gear , food and needs better not drops. Sounds like FE has took it in that direction as well.

Please keep us informed as to how it goes..

they are at this moment adding loads of platic in todays patch check out the patch notes on the forum m8

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

You should be able to find scrap plastic in S1 once you get to the Pass Chris area and above (northern S1).

FE did taking crafting, conceptually, in the right direction when compared to the other games released lately and those in production. They actually put it in the front seat with the other major systems, as opposed to putting it as a side hobby or something that won't prevent a character from "being heroic / iconic".

Scrap plastic should be a lot easier to find following the latest patch e.g mobs drop.

In any case FE crafting is great fun. Not as complex as in EQ2 or Vanguard for instance but very rewarding.

I was rather surprised when I found myself enjoying the crafting in Fallen Earth.  I'm not generally the crafter type; my preferences can generally be summarized by saying "he likes to blow shit up".  Despite that, I find that I get a kick out of scavenging for materials in this post-apocalyptic setting and using them to create my own gear.

I would have to say that the reasons I'm enjoying it are twofold:

First, you don't have to waste time standing there and doing nothing else while crafting; you start your crafting job and then go do something else, whether it's gathering more salvage for further crafting, beating something into a bloody pulp with a golf club, or zeroing in on a mob's head from 70 meters with a sniper scope and using it for target practice.  You can also queue up multiple items to be crafted in succession, so you don't need to constantly keep going back to your recipe screen every five seconds if you need to build a bunch of little items.

The second reason I'm enjoying crafting is that you gain experience points for it.  No, not just crafting experience, though your crafting skills do increase as you use them.  Rather, you gain XP that applies directly towards your normal advancement point and level progression.  This is another reason that crafting doesn't feel like wasting time like it does in most other MMOs (with the notable exception of EVE, as the article mentioned).

And yes, I had problems finding scrap plastic myself at first...until I got to the massive debris fields south of Pass Chris and started salvaging.  Now I have more plastic than I know what to do with.  And, of course, as another poster said, plastic will be dropping much more frequently after today's patch.

I absolutely love crafting in FE. The only character I currently have is a crafter.

Just a couple of tips:

1. Right click over items and salvage instead of selling. Salvaging takes 60 seconds and randomly returns some of the crafting components.
2. Many components are substitutes for other components. There is at least 1 for plastic, but can't remember its component substitute. The example I do remember is creeper hide counts as ragged leather.
3. BARTER VAULTS = WIN. By the time I got to Embry Crossroads, I had filled my personal bags, my horse inventory and my Sector Vault with crafting components. I noticed in Embry Crossroads that there was something called a Barter Vault. These are additional bank vaults! The detriment of using them is that they are only available in a limited number of major cities. So if you are 20 minutes away from a major city, you will be trekking to get some items. Organize accordingly. There are also VIP bank vaults which are even more limited (there's one in Embry Crossroads).

yes, crafting is a big up in this game

unfortunately economy is still far from being player driven. this because there are too many crafter than what is needed. besides crafting in FE is so good that many actually want to try it.

also there are a few issues about material levels and item levels. for example, a level 135 shotgun needs materials that can be scavenged with 150+ skill and is found in places far far away where mob pwn entire 45lvl groups, making them senselessly valuable. same goes for plastic: needed for some early recipes but that can be found adeguately only from s2

summarizing, the basis is damn good, but needs a good lot of polishing.

Well, this is unfortunately only a very basic newby-ish view of the crafting system.

To show that not everything is gold, I'd like to repost something I wrote in FEs Suggestions Board, but before that, I'd like to make a small note about Goldsellers. Right now there aren't any (haven't seen any at least till now) but theoretically it's possible, as there are spots where you just need to gather material, and do not need to fight. In addition there are spots where you get highly valuable items, the current Books for the Embry (and other) Archives. Some of these books can be sold for 10 blues up to 60 blues at the moment. The spots where these items spawn are fix. So basically if you just place each of your 4 chars (should be lvl 5-15 to survive there, but teleport hacking (like in WoW) would be another option)  at one of these spots you can let the money flow right into your mouth. Of course the price will fall if this is done in large scale. This does not change that currently there ARE options for goldfarming. Well, did I mention that I don't like these books messing up the inventory anyways? ^^

Well, now to my repost:

http://forums.fallenearth.com/fallenearth/showthread.php?t=23827

Crafting Issues and Solutions:
There are three basic issues currently in game with crafting which need to be fixed and basically it's not very hard to do that. Aside from that there is also much more potential in the system. I will come to that in the end of this section. Now to the first problem:

1. Best Items from Vendors (for reputation)
A lot of people are already complaining about this as it basically makes crafting and the investment for capping Intelligence useless. The resolution in quite simple: Don't let vendors sell any finished products with the same quality/item level as someone can craft. The faction limitation could be checked when equipping (and and some time when wearing) the item, not when buying it.

2. Not decaying items. Most games have one or both systems for a reason: The first possibility is to work with “bound” items mainly which can't be traded once used. The second possibility is to let items decay after some time.
The problem with not decaying items may not be obvious but is easily explained: Imagine you have 1000 players who are reaching max level in some weeks. Now imagine how many different lower level weapons they used, and that they did not sell or salvage them but put them into the auction house. The second “generation” does not need to craft them anymore as there is simply no need. At some point there is just a superabundance of weapons and armor and all material and chips are used for in the future will be items which are consumed like ammo. There will be no need anymore for a great weaponsmith when the time comes that it's cheaper to throw your UZI at your enemies head instead of shooting with it. You can already see the decrease of prices in the auctionhouse. While such a price development is normal for a release, there will basically be no end for this in FE currently.

Now you will maybe say “But I don't want to lose my great sniper-rifle I grinded faction for the last week”. Well, this should not be a problem, if you still have the faction, just buy a new one, or let someone craft a new one. As long as you do neither get any materials nor any chips, there should not be any problem with it. And then again what status has a weapon which is basically worth less than it's ammo?
In this game there are no Raid Bosses you need to kill fifty times until you finally have the luck/ DKP to get your sword of ogre decapitation. If you want to get an item in FE you can directly work for getting it...or ten of them – it will keep your weaponsmith happy.

Decaying and consumed items are actually mandatory for a healthy economy. (Both EVE and SB are working with “items” which can be destroyed)
It is not really necessary for a item to just survive a week, going from 100 to zero and break after that. Instead it could be repaired and lose 1 point of max durability for each 50 points the weapon gets repaired for, and as soon as the weapon dropped below 5 max durability it won't be usable anymore and needs to be salvaged and reconstructed.

3. Crafting Skills
I see a big problem in the fact that everyone can learn everything as long as he maxed Intelligence. This might not have had any influence in Beta or till now, but will have in the future. As soon as everyone has either his main being crafter or a twink doing that, there is absolutely no need anymore for actual trading, as everyone can simply craft the stuff he needs himself. This will also destroy something which could be a big part of this game.
The argument I heard several times was "but not everyone wants to craft, so there wont be so many crafters". This might be right. But as longer the game goes, the more crafters you will see. Yes, people might not like crafting but as soon they are in the endgame any maybe bored - lots of them will do it anyways. Do not underestimate players behavior in the endgame!
And it could be fixed quite easily:
Implement a total number of points which can be spent in crafting skills as soon as the level limit is increased. So you decide for each skill if it shall rise or drop, and as soon as all points of your “pool” are spent for crafting skills, every additional rise will cause another skill you checked for it to drop. While not taking anything away from anyone you would still have specialists in the future who then again lack in other skills but are the only ones being able to craft a specific item.

This is far better than some artificial limitation as faction crafters and similar as the only diversity of crafters within the game.

Way to improve crafting:
Probably all players who played SWG once will agree to me when I say that in this game crafting was a game on it's own due to it's high complexity and diversity. As it might also be much too complicated for beginners, we don't need to have a exact copy of it in FE to just add some more diversity and fun to crafting. We already have different materials, which are also counted as some other material, we have item components like Auto Actions or Gun Fittings and a massive collection of recipes.
So what could easily add a lot of diversity here, would be the possibility to use alternative materials for modified attributes. I will give you an example:
Imagine you are crafting a club. You take a look into the crafting window and realize that there is a option to change the standard material of wood. You click on it, and take a look at other materials and find steel, which increases the weight of the weapon, the attack speed but which is also increasing the damage a bit.
You could also use snake hide to craft your leather armor instead of normal leather or you could be the cool guy who uses silver for his bullets against werewolfs...which do not exist. But maybe they also have some negative effect on mutations?
This addition would increase the depth by far without making it actually too complicated.

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So all in all, I'd say, FE has a great base to build on and a lot of potential in terms of crafting. But to be awesome there is still plenty of stuff to do.

I haven't enjoyed crafting this much since SWG.  To up the ante, they could add a change of outcome based on adding quality of resources, and maybe throw in some experiment points that could tip the scales up or down. 

Probably the lack of item decay leading to total item loss is a negative, especially long term. 

I do like the ability that a crafter can max all crafting on a single toon.  To me this is a big positive.  It would probably take a lot of work but it would be something fun and time consuming to work toward.

All in all though I am enjoying this game immensely so far.  Best thing since precu SWG, atleast for me. 

what about the game other then crafting.  It looks good.  Is it worth playing?  Is it better then the rest.

I do like the ability that a crafter can max all crafting on a single toon. To me this is a big positive. It would probably take a lot of work but it would be something fun and time consuming to work toward.

That may be true in a short time frame. But as soon as players get bored more and more "maxed everything because I can" characters will appear. Take a look at WoWs achievements. Players will do everything as soon as they get bored. If not even earlier - as soon as people get bored the system is screwed.

what about the game other then crafting. It looks good. Is it worth playing? Is it better then the rest.

It really depends on what you like and dislike. Actually the most positive argument for FE I can give currently is their massive amount of quests and a good reason to do lots of them (additional skill points). Leveling is fun, and you don't need to grind if you don't want to. All other aspects pretty much depend on your taste.

I am currently playing the game with an attitude like "Even if endgame sucks and I quite there, it was fun leveling up and the playtime is really worth my few Euros".

Not like Darkfall, where the cheapness of the game blinds you in the very first moment.

Not like AoC, which was basically Vaporware, focusing on advertisement and box sales instead of content. (grinding since midlevel mandatory, endgame basically not implemented)

And also not like AION where you start grinding after very few days cause you run out of quests after 20. (never played aion though and with the change of XP for quests it may be less hurting).

I think it's definitively worth the money and if it's just for showing appreciation towards good work of an Indy Company and motivating them to improve further.

i'm loving it so far, although i play on a laptop and the lag kills me a lot more then anything else does. The crafting system I agree is nice and making lots of stuff is enjoyable, i do like to make a lot of everything i'm more of an explorer type overall though so making what i need like food (grilled chicken) and drugs as a medic to help me out and heal is a plus. I'm just lucky that my medic and crafting both require high intelligence to make good stuff and use higher level items.   I find now that i'm level 7 though I'm starting to have a hard time on some creatures so it may be time for me to start thinking more towards better gear.

@Kordanor. i would guess you have  limited experience of playing FE as you are making some very inaccurate assumptions in your posts.

First of all, by the time you leave Sector 1, more and more of your equipment is likely to be "Attuned to you" on being equipped. It cannot be sold on and unless you can craft that level of item yourself, it can't even be salvaged. Your only option is to sell it to a vendor for a nominal price.

Secondly, although its true that eveyone can craft to some extent, it's only possible to supply yourself at higher levels if you put a large number of AP's into the attributes that help crafting. Any character that does that, reduces their effectiveness in combat especially PvP. Even then, although it might be possible in theory for a high level crafting character to make every item in the game, I believe this would be a very rare event as the ability to craft items is based not only on possession of the relevant recipe but also on the availabilty of the resources to make it. The resources needed to make high level items are not available from vendors and requirea lot of time to source.

Yea, I agree. This article takes a complete "newby" point of view, because well, it was written by a newb.  ;)

The next topic is going to be the combat system. And I'll keep a closer eye on patch notes!

Thank you all for the comments! Constructive criticism is a must!

fallen earth crafting system:

very good foundation and very organic and immersive resource nodes   kudos

no player input or customization  all bikes the same color all recipies re pre-canned

some recipies dont make sense  like the 3 different flavores of medium rifle ammo, normal effecient economic the only difference is the number produced  its not uncommon to be carrying 2 stacks for each calaber used  normal  is looted,, and economic/effecient are from advanced ammo crafting ( thats alot of un-needed stacks of the same ammo)

armor is stupidly STAT BASED and no costume clothing option or clothing toggles  so about 1/3 of the "cool" clothing out of the running by level 6     by level 20 everyone mostly wears the armor of their level  so many clones

STILL no ability to shift things in the que  (the #1 requested thing in beta) so if you poped in a bike that takes 24 hours  and you need a 5 minute part or some ammo  your screwed.

im not gonna post my list of all this games missing elements needless to say  only players that are new (and dont know better) or players with very low standards will be playing FE.

oh and a virus makes a sucky and boringly normal environment  save for a few bugs and zombies  (oh ya,, shotguns suck vs zombies they even use crapy rifle slug physics  LAME.)

 same goes for plastic: needed for some early recipes but that can be found adeguately only from s2

summarizing, the basis is damn good, but needs a good lot of polishing.

plastic was never a problem,,  up in the far NE corner   just north of a tow n up there  was a whole hilltop covered in plastic and some medical resource,, i must have gathered 300-400 there if not more   thats the nice thing about the resources  there not evenly sprinkled over the entire zone like other games resource nuggets,, some times its a mine  or rock outcroping or junkyard  or even a crashed space ship :)

Originally posted by brenth

fallen earth crafting system:

very good foundation and very organic and immersive resource nodes   kudos

no player input or customization  all bikes the same color all recipies re pre-canned

some recipies dont make sense  like the 3 different flavores of medium rifle ammo, normal effecient economic the only difference is the number produced  its not uncommon to be carrying 2 stacks for each calaber used  normal  is looted,, and economic/effecient are from advanced ammo crafting ( thats alot of un-needed stacks of the same ammo)

armor is stupidly STAT BASED and no costume clothing option or clothing toggles  so about 1/3 of the "cool" clothing out of the running by level 6     by level 20 everyone mostly wears the armor of their level  so many clones

STILL no ability to shift things in the que  (the #1 requested thing in beta) so if you poped in a bike that takes 24 hours  and you need a 5 minute part or some ammo  your screwed.

 

im not gonna post my list of all this games missing elements needless to say  only players that are new (and dont know better) or players with very low standards will be playing FE.

oh and a virus makes a sucky and boringly normal environment  save for a few bugs and zombies  (oh ya,, shotguns suck vs zombies they even use crapy rifle slug physics  LAME.)

It's an indy game, right?  I would think to expect problems like this at first.  EVE Online seemed to be really limited at first, but that's part of the deal with an indy game, you hope they start small an improve steadily....although the crafting queue thing seems a bit upsetting to me.

well the game is interesting, if you like fallout you should take a look, for craft was metioned before here after sometime items start to be bound to the char when equiped, also some equips are need for you have skill in other areas or rather science for dyes and guns, ranged here is a little pain to use since you need a hell lot of ammo so ranged class is a must have balistic on some lvl to make ammo, and the fact everyone in the game can be crafter too is need because the way its the game, for soloers this game is nice, some quest are need to be in groups because of the dificult of some bosses or parts.

for combat I find it a little slow for my taste and you can wear almost all equips based on your skills and each lvl up you get a bonus on your primary atributes and the skills are based on then so even if you never put a single skill on then they will raise a little. and is possible you be a crafter and a fighter I was a fighter with rifle and pistols on max plus dodge and armor with perception, agility dex and int on max too but for that you will need do several quest who give you aps, and that means do others quest from starter towns.

the game is fun but like myself I find the combat slow, so you have to try to see if you will like the game or no

@reaperuk

Actually attuning items is not that bad, but it's still not a good solution for a game which puts so much focus on crafting.

Once crafted it's done and over. If endgame items are attuned or not is basically not that interesting because you would not trade them anyways if it's already the best you can get. So these items are pretty much excluded from the whole economy anyways. Attuned or not (after use) does not make much of a difference.

I agree, World of Warcraft for example has also a system with attunements. But in this game crafting is a non-factor and only used to get the 1-3 items/skills which define the tradeskill. And I doubt that FE wants or should go that way.

In EVE or Shadowbane however you have decaying items and therefore an never ending need of new products instead of a WoWish item spiral which outdates bound items by just adding better items and making the old ones worthless in one big flash.

"The Attributes which help crafting" are basically just Intelligence. While I agree that your character is not minmaxed for PvP anymore, this does not change much. Part of that reason is that Endgame is not really defined yet, as stated in the post I linked before. And even in the ideal way pvp could be implemented, which would probably be bigger fights with influence to the world, a gimped character does not have much of a bad impact as it would have in a WoW Arena. In addition you have space for crafting twinks, purely for crafting. Increasing the level is pretty easy and the hard part, to gather all APs is not needed at all if it should be a pure crafting character. Of course you need to put some effort into it, but you really have to imagine the point where people get bored and not the current situation.

Of course different approaches are possible. The whole question is about what FE wants to be. And this question goes not just for PvE or PvP but in the same way for Item-Spiral focused or Economy focused.

Icarus has lots of decisions to make yet.

I really think shadownbane was a poor example for decay items, first you can repair then, second you can make the same item later, shadownbane was never to be dificult to make equips you just need to get some mats for then and use the guild or alliance forge, and I don't think putting decay on items help to hold the economy, if the dude raise your crafting to the certain lvl to make the best equips he would simple make then again, but before he lose the equip he just scrap it to get all or some of the items he used to make then again, the hard part on FE is not make items, but have recipes to make the items and get material for it, to lvl your craft lvl you need to make a item close to your skill, some items are uselees for you but you make then just to lvl then you scrap then to get some mat back, and if you really want the best equips for your lvl you you can buy then from someone because even with max on craft your combat skills get a little higher or you don't have recipes to make then or even you don't have the mat for it.

I don't think on that part they are wrong, I find they are wrong or mistaken on the way the combat are taken and some mutation, but that is a talk for another topic ^^

I agree that SBs crafting system is not really good...well actually you can't craft at all there but let npcs craft. Was just an example of an ecomony where Items decay, are always requested and maintain their worth which again is faaar less than in WoW. You don't cry if you loose an item. You just get a new one without grinding or raiding for it for weeks. Which again makes also a full loot system more attractive. Not that I want a full loot system in FE. But a hybrid like in SB is a nice thing. FE would need some adjustments to make such a system work though (e.g. far more bank space). But same as you I am drifting to another topic now ;)