Getting started with crafting

So, other than waiting for events to gather drakens and/or get sets the only other way i find to become more powerful than i already am is through crafting. I have read a few threads on how to do it, thoe i never found out how to start doing it. Am i supposed to collect every single drop and keep it if it has yellow lines or what?

 

Crafting allows you to have a degree of control over the items you get. The two schools of thought are to focus on one item at a time (better if you have limited gold/inventory space, but slower to get lots of good gear), or to work on 3-6 items at a time (takes up a ton of space and costs a lot of gold, but you get to use any good item that you get).

Basically, to start, get a green item with a gold (or at least really good if you are not picky) and craft it with other green items of the same type with stats you don't care about until you pass the gold line on to the blue item. From there, you want to get 2 blue items with one gold line each (which can drop rather commonly), and try to pass both of these lines onto an extraordinary item. This takes a while, because you need to revert a lot do to the probability being rather low of passing both gold lines on. Only ever put the good lines into the first and second slots on the work bench, or you will lose a gold line. Trust me, it is harder to find a good gold line than it is to farm the gold and items needed to craft and revert. These well crafted extrodinary items can be a huge step up over what you are using right now, and most well crafted exos are better than random legendaries, so don't underestimate the importance of this step.

From there, you get two good exo items (2x gold lines each) and try to pass 3 of the four on to a legendary. That is when you finally get an amazing item. Eventually, waaaaaaayyyyy down the road, you want to try to combine two of those item to make a legendary with 4 gold lines, but that isn't likely going to be your goal for 3-6 months, at least.

My last point is related to order of importance to work on. If you are not sure what kind of item you should work on first, the answer is almost always a weapon as you get the necessary ingredients. No single item has such a significant impact on your character's over all strength than the weapon. After that (or in parallel with this since weapons take a longer time than most other gear due to rarity of their drops), I would recommend working on a torso (%damage if you are looking for a DPS build, or armor if you are doing a tank build), a weapon decoration (either full crit or crit damage, unless you are a Steam Mech, then you want pure damage), and third, I'd work on rings/amulets/belts with crit/crit damage if you are going for DPS or helmet/shoulders/gloves/boots with HP or armor (HP more than armor) if you are going for offense. Also you already pointed out (indirectly) that unique items make a difference. Take a look at the wiki's list of unique gear for your class and determine the direction you want to head so that you don't waste time crafting something you are planning to replace with a unique in a matter of weeks to months. For inspiration, check out your class's "Show What You Have" thread, located in the Character Class sub-forum.

 

Also, does farming in fatal affect the chances of getting a golden line?

---MERGED---

Also, should i craft the same items? ex. i want to craft a blue ring, should i only use 4 green rings?

 

In theory, yes, since the drops have a higher minimum stat value thus reducing the spread ad improving the odds. Also there is an increased chance of just getting gold stat lines. However, keep in mind everything is subject to the Random as well so there are no guarantees.

All of the very good gold lines I have on my gear and in my crafting stash came mostly from painful with some from normal maps. The two exceptions I have come across are gold % crit hit on helms and % crit dmg on belts which I have only found in fatal. That could just be my luck though.

Absolutely. Random crafting of different items should only be done with junk greens for the daily general challenges. The outcome from random could be any of the ingredient items. It is completely random. For example putting 3 rings and 1 amulet in a random craft does not give a 75% of getting a ring. Plus, the stats on the crafted item will be random and not transferred from any of the ingredient items and the number of slots will be random too.

Luck be with ye,
Mikey,
Tegan

 

Also, where should i farm for greens? Solo or with a team?

 

As with any farming the answer is how efficiently you can do it. The objective is to get as much stuff in as little time as possible in the hopes that some of it will be good.

So basically it depends on the strength/experience of your character when soloing vs. the same in group.

Luck be with ye,
Mikey,
Tegan

 

Consider a map with monsters that guarantee or almost guarantee to drop green/blue. Such as:
- Minibosses in Varholm day/night, the mine inside Varholm. And Bloodmoon map.
- Blacknight Battle Ground(Dragan mini event).
- Skyfall arena(Stellar gold event).
- Dune of Desolation map 1
- Dragon minibosses in Thunder Crest (need to solo, I notice sometimes it doesn't drop when in group)
- Gorga
- Special monsters in Materi Storm event.
- Winter solstice map 1.
As with any random in the game.. Item with gold line drop when you least expect it. I suggest avoid specifically to farm, just do something else.. as long as you kill monsters you always have a chance to get golden line item.. The faster and the more you kill monsters the more chance for you to get gold line item.

 

I couldn't hellp but notice that most of those maps are from events and the rest are lower lvl. Anything on lvl 50 and without an event?

---MERGED---

Also something i just though, could you get yellow lines from thing you purchace from the pvp merchant?

EDIT: Yes you can, interesting...

 

Yes, gold lines can come through pvp purchases. I used the pvp merchant to help me get the pieces i needed to craft my 3x iwd%/1 +crit axe. However, I used the pvp merchant with the primary goal being to get junk pieces for the 3rd and 4th crafting spots and a secondary goal of gold lines as otherwise you can clog up your inventory.so that means you really do want to have your initial spot 1 and spot 2 recoverable pieces before you start buying at the merchant.

 

I do not consider Varholm at day & mine inside it as event map.. You can get in there as long as have enough fragment.

Do not get the wrong idea about lower level map. You can get soooo many green items in short period of time from Thunder Crest. Or Gorga for blue items.
If you are looking for a ring or amulet with relative value.. it's does not have to be lvl 50.
The relative value doesn't not scale with level.
Let's say you have 1 or 2 lvl 50 items that you aim for full relative value.. you can combine it with lower lvl item.. the cost is cheaper than crafting 4 pcs lvl 50 items.

If that events come around and you would like to get gold line items.. that would be the good time to get it.

 

Wait, so you are saying, i get a lvl 40 green ring with golden critical hit, if i use scrap lvl 50, it will come out as a 50, or what? i don't get it

 

Definitely not! Your craft would be: (40+50+50+50)/4=47,5=lvl 48 item.
He's talking about % lines like critical damage and %HP lines on jewelry/left side items (amulets, rings, belts and weapon adornments). But he is specifically referring to full critical damage items.

Well... you can't actually "farm" gold line items (higher lvl difficulties and event maps seem to be a way better source for gold lines tho'), you play normally as you always do and pick up/check every item for gold lines. If you find enough lines to make the item that you want, then you'll start farming for junk items (items with 3-4 gem slots if you want to have a craft with more gem slots).

 

For example, I have an amulet with 3x % Crit damage lines. So, when LVL 55 comes around, I'll use this item in the crafting of a 4x % Crit damage amulet. Once I have that amulet, there will be nothing to upgrade, and that amulet will be "perfect" for all time until they release new stats on amulets that would be better than crit damage, or if the meta of the game shifts in such a way that crit damage is no longer relevant.

 

OK, I have a complete Newbie question, what are gold lines and how do you see them? On green items I only see a couple of boosts, but none have colors.

 

Gold lines are enchantment (and for Level 50+ players in the Sands of Malice expansion area, base stat) lines which are "close to the max" values for that particular enchantment(/base stat) for that type of item (amulets, belts, rings, weapons, ammo, armor, etc. each have their own maximums). How "close" is "close," we don't know; BP/DSO has never given us the definition.

When you have one of those "close to max" lines, it will actually be displayed in gold in the tool tip for the item.

They are rare, especially if you're playing in Normal maps. As you increase the difficulty of a map to Painful, Excruciating, Fatal, and now Infernal (for true end-players), the chance of finding an item with a gold line increases. By how much, we don't know; that's another statistic BP/DSO has not shared with us.

 

We came to the conclusion that they're gold when they're equal or higher to 90% of the max possible value, but that's still a guess since, as you said, we don't have the exact info from BP...

 

In another thread (#260) I mentioned I had two items that were otherwise identical (same type, same level, same tier, etc.), each with gold lines for the same enchantment, but the values of the gold lines were about 12% apart from each other. Depending on the max for that particular stat/item you presumed, my lower valued item was about 13.5% or 16% of max.

I inquired about that mythical "within 10% of max" assumption; Baragain replied and indicated he was the author of that original theory, but admitted it was just conjecture and that gold these days means "somewhere in the vacinity of max" (that's not an actual quote, but a paraphrase of what Baragain said).

 

I wonder if gold line now means within 10% of the max of a no-tier item. Since tier I-IV goes above that no-tier max (I believe 120 or 125% at times), it might now be a wider spread.

 

A reasonable theory, but disproven by the fact that the two items in my example were identical no-tier green items, so the gold line status on each would have been computed against the same no-tier max.