To harvest crafting materials, Guild Wars 2 uses a system functionally identical to LotRO, but it feels different. In both cases, you need to have a crafting item equipped to harvest, say a mining pick. In both cases, there are three; in GW2, you can wield all 3 at once to start, while you must manually switch in LotRO until you can build a multi-tool later in the game (advantage GW2 for less switching between tools). In both cases, they have different tiers of tools for the different tiers of crafting, although in LotRO the tiers matter for crafting rather than harvesting (advantage LotRO for less switching between tools).
The difference is that you buy explicit charges in GW2, while you have an item that needs repair in LotRO. Both are goldsinks, and in both cases you need to spend X gold every Y harvests to maintain your tools. GW2 gets the advantage for making it explicit how many charges you have left, rather than wondering how many more swings 4 durability will get you in LotRO. Maybe this just comes from having played LotRO for years, but it feels wrong to have “charges of pickaxe” rather than owning a pickaxe. From GW1, I accept that salvaging kits wear out, but it feels wrong when my sickle disappears. I will probably get used to it.
I have yet to run the numbers on whether you lose something in selling partially used pickaxes. In LotRO, you would naturally repair your crafting tools while in town, but you cannot just throw in another 200 charges of pickaxe in GW2.
Request to developers: can we have a visible indicator that a trade tool is low and/or out? Maybe it exists but is too subtle for me to notice. It stinks to move between nodes and discover that your sickle silently shattered on that last carrot.
: Zubon
By coincidence, I had my first pickaxe run out on the second of three possible pulls from a copper node just about a minute before I tabbed out and read this. Far from finding it annoying I actually chortled with amusement.
I really like little things like that, unexpected hiccups and interruptions that require me to break my pattern and go do something about it. However, I detest having to “repair” anything in any MMO, which I always take as an insult to me personally by developers who can’t think of a more elegant way of removing the gold that they chose to put into the game in the first place.
Just goes to show what a tough job it must be, designing these systems for a mass audience of such pernickety, fussy, stubborn and plain bloody-minded individuals.
Crafting is one thing that I never tried in beta, and it might be the only thing to get to me to play a game I actually bought.
The farthest I got was to the Norn big city, and there I was overwhelmed with the amount of information being thrown at me.
I was hoping to get into crafting from level one, as in EQ2. Is this possible in GW2, or do I have to wait to get to the city?
You can start gathering immediately. There will be a merchant just after you exit the tutorial. You need a crafting trainer to start crafting, but the city is also immediately available after the tutorial.
There isn’t anything visible in the main UI, but the Hero panel does show how many are left.
“In LotRO, you would naturally repair your crafting tools while in town, but you cannot just throw in another 200 charges of pickaxe in GW2.”
Just buy another two picks. I always run around with two spare picks and axes and one spare sicle. This amount does always last until I see a merchant again.
“In both cases, they have different tiers of tools for the different tiers of crafting, although in LotRO the tiers matter for crafting rather than harvesting (advantage LotRO for less switching between tools).”
I don’t switch tools in GW2. I just use the higher-tier-tools on lower nodes. Sure, it is wasting a bit of money, but that’s worth not having to carry and switch a dozen of different tools, at least to me.
The former could be a good plan, depending on how carrying capacity works out. I rarely run out of space, but others in my guild seem to. The latter is also true, but I imagine within a range; silver will become cheap, so I won’t care about which of the first few tiers I use once I’m further in, but it definitely seems like a waste not to switch to cheaper tools when taking a level 80 to play with level 5 friends.
Just remember that you can craft boxes/bags with up to 20 units, and remember that you have the remote depositing for collectibles (which make up 60-75% of my drops until now). Bring along 2 or 3 salvage kits, so you can turn all the salvage items you get into crafting stuff, that you can then deposit again. All in all, I can complete about a third of a map requirement, as well as all events I come across during this, without having to see the next merchant. And during that time, I’m bound to run across at least 5 merchants I can use, and even more if I just want to sell stuff (at karma merchants like the heart vendors for example).
From the current perspective of mine, I’ll be fine with the inventory space even with just 16-slot bags, even while carrying around a spare armor and a bunch of weapons and tools. If there was no remote depositing, it’d be different, but thank god we have that feature.
Concerning the choosing of tools, of course it will be a waste to use a orichalcum pick on a copper node. But I’m positive that we will get enough cash on these levels to keep buying tools what it currently is after the first hour of playing – a rarely noticable cash sink.