Improve the jewellers/fusings gambling - Orb of Remembrance

The crafting process is extremely frustrating, trying to get the right sockets on items and then link at least some of them.
First you battle the RNG to get enough jewellers orbs, and even some hundreds of fusing orbs (I have never managed past 40); but then they have no guarantee of working, even a little bit. You can easily end up with no orbs and still insufficient sockets or links, and no matter how often you try the odds become no better.

I'm not suggesting a change to these, I suspect it would be too complex. Instead add a new crafting orb, the Orb of Remembrance.

This could maybe drop with the same frequency as Scouring, and the same price at the vendor, since it could be viewed as the opposite of a Scouring orb; or maybe be more common (frequency/price of Jewellers or Fusing) since the usage will be higher.

The fresh orb has one purpose - when right-clicked, it 'snapshots' the next selected item as-is; sockets, colours, mods, everything. This creates a "fixed" remembrance orb.

Once the snapshot is fixed, the fixed orb can be stored in inventory or stash. The purpose of a fixed orb is that you can right-click it, then click again on the original item and revert the item to its original snapshot.

This won't work on any other item, even if it was/is identical to the original, so there's no way to use this to clone or dupe. What it does allow you to do is craft something without the fear of making it permanently worse!

So you can take that 4L/6S, snapshot it, and then try and fuse it to get a 5L or better, and although the crafting might not work at least you can go back to the 4L if it all fails. Or you can get a 4L item with wonderful affixes, and try using Jewellers to get a 5/6S on it, and then fusings, knowing that you can similarly revert.

Crafting remains random: but it removes some of the downside without removing the possible upside. You might lose all the currency you had to craft with, and be no better off - but you can at least retain the original item and hope to try again.

If this does still seem too powerful, limit any given toon or account to a single orb, so there can only be one snapshot stored for the given character or player, from all the items they might want to craft.

tl;dr Suggestion for an orb so we can risk crafting a good item, to try and make it better without making it irrevocably worse.

I like this idea, the more that I think about it. This really would help to kill the pain of a bad role but not destroy RNG.

I would allow for multiple orbs per character to be active, but only one per equipment piece (so you can Fix that sword and shield but not have two orbs holding sword changes). The worst you can have is having a player, say, 'snapshot' a weapon with Cold damage, change it to Fire to fight cold resist monsters, then 'Fix' it back to cold. However, given that you can't just switch from one to another (once you switch back to the original, the new setting is gone for good) I see it as a quirk we can keep.

So yes, +1 this.

+1, in favor of this proposal. Simple and easy.

For a more comprehensive--albeit, not simple--overhaul of the crafting system, check out my thread, here:

The Schematic

Cheers,

--C

+1 This is a very good idea!

Courageous I read your thread and honestly, I prefer this idea to yours. It really is a much more complex system that basically turns everything into "get X item for Y currency". If Crafting becomes too reliable of a method to get items then it effectively kills loot finding, which is the core of games like PoE. Crafting should be similar to getting an additional chance at loot find (i.e. you got 50 chances by killing 50 monsters + 5 more chances by using the orbs you found).

The idea of being able to 'lock' a good set of stats on an item via this idea is similar to finding a drop that's good but not The Best. In said loot drop, you get to keep the 'good' item and can still hunt around for The Best item. The Rememberance Orb mimics that since you get to keep the 'good' roll if you fail to roll The Best.

sidenote: making the 'schematics' fully RNG would work, but then is only useful for Trade((since you could've just does the same thing to the item in question directly) and I'm not sure Trade really needs that.

I think crafting with jew and fusing is pretty ok and not need to be change and this "new orb" is unnecessary.
Crafting is gambling, and its always have been. So if you not like to be frustrated, dont risk play save just buy the item ...
In my experience you get 5L with arround 50-150 fusing, in new rate, arround 2 exa, so for me this is absolutley normal. For 6L its hard, but its mean to be hard. Its arround 800-2500 fusing. And usually cost 20-25 exa.
Of course sometime you cant get 6l even with 3000 fusing, or get it with 3 fusing, as it happen with me. Same with 5l. You can get it with 1 fusing.
And for 6 socked, its arround 150-400 jew, but you can buy 300 jew with exalted, so again is normal.
This new orb maybe not lower the price of some other orb, but will do that to the socket or linked item in my opinion.
Тhough great idea.

great idea +1

Glad people (mostly) approve! I do think the game needs something like this.

A couple of afterthoughts:

- there's no reason a fixed orb need display *what* it has snapshotted... it's up to the player to keep track of that, especially if it's being worn by a toon.

- It does assume that items in the game have a unique ID which can be assigned to the orb. It's very possible this isn't the case. In this case you'd need a new attribute stored against an item, <remembrance_id> or something, and that would be assigned the ID generated by using the orb (and which is also stored against the fixed orb). This is to prevent cloning via the orb.
Still shouldn't be too complex to code - the point is, no existing orb or gameplay mechanic needs to be changed.

@Brakeit;

"

This new orb maybe not lower the price of some other orb, but will do that to the socket or linked item in my opinion.

Maybe, in the very long run, but not necessarily, and this need not be a problem. It won't make it any easier to get a 5L or 6L - it just gives an incentive to keep trying, since at least you won't end up without your starting 4L (say).

Suppose you've got a 6S/4L chest. You snapshot it. Then start spending your 1000 fusings :) Midway through you get a 5L. Currently, you'd probably stop there, unless you already have a 5L and really really want the 6L. Now, you could break another Remembrance orb, take a new snapshot, and keep going with the fusings...

So you might get more 4L/5L around if people roll back to these, but this is better for us poorer players anyway. And it means we can risk a gamble with our very best kit, since we're not going to end up losing it.
After a long time you might end up with more 6L because more people are risking more crafting, and then trading this new gear, but really - so what? If gear prices become less stratospheric that's good, IMO.

Bracket:

This idea does nothing to change the chance of getting a better roll. If it took you 5000 fusings to get a 6l then it'll still take you 5000 fusings to get a 6l. RNG will remain RNG.


What changes is that if, during that time, you get a 4l then you don't have to risk living with a 1l if RNG tears you apart. Instead, if, after all your work, your 4l went down to a 1l, you can 'Fix' it back to the original setup. You still lose all of the orbs you spent and still as close to the 6l as you always were, but you at least won't have to sit with a worthless item in the meanwhile.


It does't change the price of orbs except you'll see more people willing to risk crafting their 'ok' gear even with RNG being as trollish as it is now.

"

Varana wrote:

- there's no reason a fixed orb need display *what* it has snapshotted... it's up to the player to keep track of that, especially if it's being worn by a toon.

Why? For this to work the system already has to keep track of what was snapshotted. All you'd have to do is have the orb display what it has stored. Meanwhile, there's no real value in hiding it from a player. Lastly, while it's easy to remember that you had 2 red, 1 green, 1 blue slots, it's not so easy to remember the affixes and values of a rare that you Chaosed into a new rare. Having the orb display the 'snapshot' means you can compare values.