This is why I love Harvest crafting...

One of my favorite things to do in this game has always been to find a "diamond in the rough" bow in someone's bargain bin, and give it some TLC to bring out its hidden potential.

I live for that!

I love the idea of finding "junk" that people overlook, undervalue, and disregard, and making it into something really nice. Since I'm not generally a "rich" player, this strategy has always not only worked, but has been the only way I've ever been able to score a decent weapon in new leagues. I am absolutely no good at crafting, but great at currency-wasting. I've tried essences, fossils, synthesizing, beast crafting, and regular old alt-regal-ing. It's a tremendously frustrating waste of time and currency for me.

...Then Harvest league happened.

It always seems a shameful waste when you find an item with 1-2 great mods, but not enough on it's own, even with a crafted mod on it (let alone three) to warrant using an exalt on it. Those are vendor fodder usually, but not in this league. I have 3-4 stash tabs full of items like that, where they just need some help to really be special, and that really helps when you're leveling, and can't afford all those exalts, annuls, and other currency just to potentially brick equipment that you may even be using already. Now you can at least try and make it something nice, that you will find tremendously useful in the game.


Here's my first useful craft:


It doesn't look like much, but it really helped me at the time, and was fun to craft. it was also good practice for when I got access to higher level seeds, items, and crafts. Here's my leveling up bow, and it's definitely one of the nicer ones I've ever had for that level.


Crafting quivers was also really helpful to me, and fun.


But all of it pales in comparison to my current bow.

I bought it when it looked like this:


It was listed for 2ex, but the seller wound up giving it to me for 1ex because he was really nice, and had already quit playing for the league. He even gave it 6 sockets, and tried to 6l it for me, but wound up 5-linking it, which was awesome.

I crafted an attack speed, and off I went.

Later on I had trouble because I couldn't safely remove the junk mods without jeopardizing the tacati's %phys mod and almost gave up, when I got a "reforge suffixes and keep the prefixes" craft, and decided to use it on my bow.

Not only did I get rid of the junk mods, I got tier 2 crit chance!

Next I bought a lucky augment crit from a friend which gave me tier 1 max rolled crit multi, then I gave my bow crusader influence (purely for aesthetic appeal) and 6-linked it with a harvest craft.

Now it looks like this:


It looks totally amazing with the combination of the crusader influence + a storm cloud skin, like they were made for each other!

I know most people will look at that weapon and say it's worth very little because it has hybrid damage (not to mention because it's a highborn bow), but to me that is by far the most amazing bow I've ever owned, in 8 years of playing this game. When you play elemental crit bow users who convert phys damage to elemental and then amplify elemental damage, they shine with a bow like this. Its use may be limited, but as long as you work within its parameters, you can go pretty far with it.

My split arrow elemental critster gets 350k-475k DPS, which is way more than I've ever managed before with a bow, on any character.

He also has nearly 100% crit chance, even without a Harbinger bow. With this bow he gets an extra chance to crit per second.

...But now I have to find an augment speed craft, or a remove speed/add speed one (or preferably more than one). I figure if anybody screws my bow up let it be me, and then I can use my limited currency to try and fix it, rather than using my limited currency to screw up my bow, and having nothing to fix it with.

I'm currently collecting vivid thornweaver seeds for an entire plot of them, and I'm up to 14!

...Wish me luck! :p

Just a quick update...

After running 5-6 full crops of thornweaver seeds, boosted with blossoms, I now have 2 augment speed crafts, 2 add/remove speed crafts, about 12 randomize speed crafts, and most importantly ONE remove speed craft.

I don't think that's enough though, I want to have at least 6-10 chances at tier 1 attack speed.

...Problem is that I'm quickly discovering that ilevel 69 vivid thornweaver seeds are becoming more and more scarce.

When I see people selling them as if they were any other tier 1 seed (2 for 1c) I always tell them that they are worth more than that, rather than trying to exploit their ignorance, but someone has always beat me to the punch before I can even get my warning message typed. They usually thank me, but tell me that they sadly just sold them already.

If I were more unscrupulous I could harvest a lot more thornweaver seeds, but I need karma for my speed craft. lol!

I wish I could find more people willing to sell their lower ilevel seeds in the 1-5c range. I have paid 10-15c for ilevel 76+ ones, and I don't even have to have them. I just can't find any lower ilevel ones!

I'm feeling a little bit more relaxed about crafting this bow because I've managed to secure some good crafts, good blossoms, there's still a month left in the league, and the harvest mechanic may one day come to standard in some form or another. My only concerns now are having horribly bad luck, and/or running out of seeds to buy. Either one would kill my chances.

...But you can bet that I will continue busting my ass to try and get tier 1 attack speed on this bow while I still can!

I don't want to sell this bow, nobody cares about my stupid highborn bow LOL! It's not going to break anybody's economy. So pleeeeease, RNGsus, give me a miracle!!

LIKE A BOSS...


(@_@) On my 2nd try, even!!

I can't freaking believe it... I almost cried. This is my dream bow... I absolutely cannot believe it's mine, I (partly) made it, and that it belongs to me!

I sincerely hope that this league gives you 1/10th of the joy that I am feeling right now... I literally will never forget this.

I hope you find a mirror this league!!!!!!

THANK YOU VERY MUCH to GGG, to every single person who sold me vivid thornweaver seeds at a price I could afford, to everyone who helped me along the way, and even people who cheered me on!

...I DID IT!!!!

this league has made previous league mirror gear look like vendor food.

not that im complaining. but next league is gonna feel BAD.

That's why I just played around a bit. It was pretty clear from the early Chris remarks that it wouldn't stay.

I did find all the early comments amusing...the ones about what a $#!? league it was.

Changing non-green to green socket was cool too. Saved a bunch of chromes to off-color my Hands of High Templar.

I agree, I've been able to craft some really sweet gear this league because of the harvest crafts. Never before would I have been able to have this high level of gear because I never acquire a billion exalts. (the most I've ever had was 55ex).
These items I crafted all myself from scoured bases with the exception of the belt.... I bought the double influence base.

No doubt this was a much easier league for crafting.
I think GGG and Chris will use this info to improve loot drops (which I suspected right from the start when he said that it most likely wont go core)

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DoubleU wrote:

No doubt this was a much easier league for crafting.
I think GGG and Chris will use this info to improve loot drops (which I suspected right from the start when he said that it most likely wont go core)

The latest update from them say that it's not going core (right away). They need to find a way to implement it because the standard 10% spawn in a map won't cut it, and I agree.

What I DON'T want them to do, is leave in targetable crafts but then charge us the exalt fee. Right now they're basically free, but if I had to make the gear that I have now using actual exalts, I couldn't have done it because I'm one of those players that just never gets that much currency per league.

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Gulch wrote:

...What I DON'T want them to do, is leave in targetable crafts but then charge us the exalt fee. Right now they're basically free, but if I had to make the gear that I have now using actual exalts, I couldn't have done it because I'm one of those players that just never gets that much currency per league.

100% agreed. I spent at least 6-7 exalts on vivid thornweaver seeds and blossoms, just trying to get the crafts that would give me chances to craft tier 1 attack speed on my bow. While I (very luckily) didn't wind up having to use all of my seeds, crafts, or blossom charges to get it, I have seen people spend over 100 exalts just trying to get tier 1 attack speed on a bow. To me, that's freaking expensive enough already! I mean please... If they charge exalts on top of that, then that would leave me out of most of the fun.

Oh and thanks for the responses, everybody! AMAZING gear you have there... (@_@)