GreatWizard

Item breaking and repair should be here if it adds to the experience. This is an RPG with emphasis on story and tactics, so break mechanics need to tie in with one of those in a fun way. So either you add some random events which can break or damage some items (ie a ghost that makes all swords that strike it, rust) or you make it part of the tactics (with spells, abilities or items that damage equipped items). The important thing here is that those mechanics should be tied into the gameplay, and not a chore which doesn't depend on the gameplay and skill of the player.

To make crafting cool, I think you should really consider each item, and make it's creation story-book unique. It can involve the need for the blood of a dragon, or it has to be made at midnight, during a thunderstorm. Or a demon summoning ritual, in which you actually arrange the candles (a'la Ultima 7/8) and if done incorrectly it could have some interesting consequences (an escaped demon storyline). a virtual amount of time has to pass ( ie the character spent a day in the ruined temple), and seeing related descriptive text can certainly add to that experience. I, like some of the previous posters, feel ambivalent about crafting in RPGs. I really didn't like the endless junk management of TES games, and I didn't enjoy the neverwinter 2 version too. Having automatically known recipes isn't immersive or fun, and insta-crafting doesn't sound very PPG like at all. It something that fits an action mix/max game like Diablo. I think that the Witcher's alchemy is an example of crafting done right. It wasn't a must, it wasn't a chore, and the various items used were used based on "color" and quality coding, which made it both logical, and less of a bother, since you could mix and match based on what you have found. And as a bonus it had some investigative elements. As for the items themselves, I feel that the fun items are unique. They are rare, and they feature a cool story. When too many of those appear often in a game they loose the appeal. Generic player made items are not fun, unless they were really hard to create, and are the result of a long story line (something BG2 did for example, or one of the ideas above). It's really hard to imagine a TES recipe book kind of crafting being fun. And, speaking of TES gathering random stuff was a chore, especially since it involved a lot of inventory management. If you decide to do it this way, please make sure at least to have a separate inventory for them, with some built in sorting, and no weight limit on flowers. (grind them into powders, for realism's sake) -Great Wizard