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To start off, i find the combat system fantastic, with emphasis on having a threat system, promoting more difficult team play at higher difficulty settings. Coming from an MMO background, and mostly experienced as a tank, i love that Grounded has implemented this mechanic! Is there a possibity of a Perk/Talent/Mastery system? It would really add a great amount of depth, replay-ability and additional customization to the game... Has anyone else wanted, or thought of something similar? -NNZ

Please for all that is holy in the world, stop the game from moving stuff all over my inventory. While you're there could you add wheel scroll support for the hot bar, this shouldn't even need saying in a modern game. The other issue is that crafting rope one at a time is stupidly slow and takes away from the games excitement, a multiplier or something needs adding. Should also add tooltip support for things like armor/mutation perks instead of having to dig about for the information. Another idea, make it so you can look around you with ALT while running/swimming.

Hi, I'm running the new update through Xbox game pass . The console locks up when constructing Base components . e.g Walls or Floors . happens in Creative and Game mode The system will eventually kick me out returning to the Xbox home screen other crafting items work fine

When viewing a structure that you are missing components for, but you do have the components to make, it would be helpful if there was a (hold) button prompt to craft the missing components instead of having to go into a menu to do so. Please see below screenshot for example. https://imgur.com/Z9gUqKj

It would be super helpful if you could flag an item/tool/ETC to alert you when you have gathered all the parts to craft it. That way you wouldn't have to repeatedly check your inventory to see if you've got enough of something to craft it. I imagine you could either have all the needed parts on screen, or a less intrusive system where it just pops up when all the parts have been gathered. Loving the game! Keep up the awesome work! Thank you!

Who else is sick of sleeping on the ground under a leaf? How about a rut sack in one of the future updates. So when after sleep, instead of loosing about 50% each bar, it decreses to 30%. Restore 15% HP just for not being on the ground. It could me made with the following: 8 flowers, 7 woven fiber, 5 gnat fuzz 2 clover Flowers for the body, with woven fiber keeping it together. Then the gnat fuzz and clover to make up the pillow.

Hello guys, These past few weeks I worked on a Crafting Guide for Grounded. It is a work in progress as information is limited, but I think it can help all of us as new players. Other things I am working on and may be of interest: Game Review (will be ready after 25 hours of gameplay) Grounded Gallery (will be adding new things as Obsidian publish) And if you want to take a look at the future projects, here is the link. Have fun #tinies!

Hi! Would anybody be interested in trying out some of the Deafire recepies for food in real life and post the "real" recipe (maybe with a photo)? Since I have to cook every day and sometimes really struggle to come up with new ideas (that are not too fancy) I thought Deadfire's stuff like "Mariner's Porridge", "Crusted Swordfish" etc. might be fun to try. I don't want to be too finicky. For example it will be really hard to get real Swordfish and other stuff you don't want to buy - like Wale Meat and so on. And of course kith meat is off the table (pun intended). I think the first thing I'd want to try are Glazed Chops... What do you think?

I often can't craft altough I have the sufficient ingredients. Wanted to post a picture here but I cant... 'cus I have to put a.. URL? Hope this is a known issue. thank!

Due to Fampyrs and their gaze, I was crafting Captain's Banquet when I noticed that upon crafting 5x Captain's Banquets they didn't appear in my inventory. Luckily I had enough materials for three more which did appear in my inventory. Seeing this I reloaded a save and crafted 5x Captain's Banquets again with the same result (not appearing). In an attempt to bypass this apparent bug I reloaded the save and crafted 1x Captain's Banquet, which did appear. Crafting the remaining four resulted in normal behaviour. Has anyone else experienced a similar crafting bug?

Giant air quotes there. New bug introduced into 1.1.0.0034 beta release. Game doesn't prevent you from going all the way to 100 when crafting something, even if you don't have the resources to do so. It even gives you a message that you've successfully crafted them, however, the game doesn't actually add the items to your inventory nor use any resources. So it's not game breaking, just a minor annoyance.

Do you ever feel like you really wanted to craft more equipment but you just did not have the gems to do it? Those Blue Diamonds and Beljuril and King's Tears really are in short supply. And while you could use the console to give yourself more, you just don't feel right about it. You want the game to give it to you instead. So here is what you should do. Purchase a magic pouch. Place all of your crafting gems in the magic pouch. Give the pouch of gems to Shandra just before you have her open the way to Ammon Jerro's Haven. When you check Ammon Jerro's gear in Act !!! you will find a surprise. Of course, I go one step further and resurrect Shandra and restore her to my team. Not the zombie Shandra that the Dungeon Master (rs gr_dm) will give you, but the original Shandra Jerro that disappeared at the Haven. And the pouch of gems I gave her. Okay, this may be going a bit too far, but I REEAALLY like Shandra Jerro. [Create a savegame called Shandra in addition to your regular savegame (F12) just before she disappears. After Act III begins and you are able to save again, save your game and create another savegame called Shandra 2. Exit the game. Copy the shandra.ros file from the Shandra savegame folder and overwrite shandra.ros in the Shandra 2 savegame folder. Do not mess your regular savegame folder, you need it as an emergency backup. Now reload the game and load up the Shandra 2 savegame. Use the dungeon master from the console (rs gr_dm) to add Shandra back to your team.] ***Very Important*** - save your game one more time to a Brand New savegame that you have not used before. (I have had occasions where I have tried to save to a prior savegame just to have the game crash and automatically delete that savegame folder.) After that quicksave seems to work fine, but you have the new savegame just in case. Helllooo Shandra! And if I am preaching to the choir here, somebody please tell me. Oh, one last thing ... Hello (knock, knock) ... is any body there? I am posting but nobody is responding. Is this phone line dead? Or is the message of insufficient interest? I know I am about ten years out of date (again) but I really like this stuff. Hey Moderator, what do you think?

One of the aspects of NWN2 that I really enjoy is the crafting. I have installed "The Complete Craftsman" mod and spend a fair amount of time modifying my (and my team-mates) possessions. I would have liked to have used a special class to enhance this aspect of the game. I was wondering if one of those hobbyist developers out their could make a file that I could stick in my override folder to create an Artisan class (assuming that it would be fairly simple for them to do). These are the parameters I thought looked about right: Artisan 4HP, 6SP, Low BAB, High Will Saves REQ Brd, Clr, Drd, Fav, Sor, Sps, Wiz, DEX: 13+, INT: 12+, Lore 8 L1 Exotic Weapons L1 Scribe Scroll L1 Artisan Spellcasting (selected spell progression continues as normal) L2 Craft Magic Arms & Armor L3 Craft Wondrous Items L4 Craft Wand L4 Skill Affinity: Spellcraft +2 L5 Brew Potion L5 Skill Affinity: Craft All (Alchemy Armor Traps Weapons) +2 Class Skills - Use Magic Device, Open Lock, Set Trap, Appraise, Craft Alchemy, Craft Armor, Craft Trap, Craft Weapon, Disable Device, Lore, Spellcraft Perform is a Cross-class skill.

So far I've encountered Pŵgra and Lurkers, yet only awakened wood. Where is the root?

First off, just to make it clear: I love P:E. It's a fantastic game. It's the cRPG I've had the most fun with since the Golden Age, no question, and stands proudly among the games that inspired it. 10/10 GOTY and all that commotion. There are three mechanical systems in it however that I thought were weak enough to detract from the experience, and I hope Obsidian addresses these in the expansion and sequels: crafting, the stronghold, and stealth. Stealth needs a complete overhaul in my opinion. It is way overpowered. Being able to sneak with even 0 points in it means you always get the drop on your enemies. With detection circles rather than sight cones there's no real gameplay involved in it, beyond switching it on and off, and with the possibility of double-speed, there's no disincentive to exploring maps stealthed. I believe it would be a lot more fun if: It is individual, not party. Characters with 0 ranks in stealth cannot sneak. (Or, rather, they can try, but there's no advantage to it.) Higher ranks do not change the detection radius, but only the time at which detection trips. Detection is based on a cone + circle rather than a circle. Different types of enemies could have different size cones and circles; oozes for exmaple could have circles only. Rogues get a per-encounter special ability that lets them re-stealth in combat, to replace Shadowing Beyond. Casters get Invisibility spells with the same effect. My problem with the crafting mechanics is that it's too easy. It takes much of the interest out of itemization, and it feels wrong to be able to apply enchantments while dungeon-delving. I've just started Witcher 3, and it has a much more interesting crafting system, and it's more interesting because it's more restrictive. I believe the following changes would make crafting more enjoyable: Require a recipe and an NPC specialist to craft. These specialists could be stronghold hirelings also. Remove the "Fine/Exceptional/Superb" property from "enchantments." Instead, make it a base property of the item, and make it determine the number of enchantment slots the item has. However, also make it possible to craft fine/exceptional/superb items from scratch. Have different NPC specialists have different skill levels (maybe only one legendary swordsmith can craft Superb swords?) know different crafting recipes, and also let us discover recipes as we adventure. As to the stronghold... as it currently stands, it just feels tacked-on and superficial. Sending Kana on a Major Adventure to get 10% XP and a Medium Magic Item just feels dumb. A bit of writing would've gone a long way to fix that -- a descriptive title and a short paragraph. There aren't an unlimited number of these adventures available anyway as the Turn clock is based on quests which are a finite resource. The same applies to most everything else in it: the mechanics themselves are serviceable-enough, but there's just no flesh around those bones. Ideally, all those stronghold events -- the Major Adventures and visiting dignitaries -- need to be grounded in the main narrative. So: Flesh out stronghold events with better descriptions. No more Minor Adventures! Ground them in the narrative. Stage events relevant to the narrative in the stronghold maps. As it is, there really was no motivation to visit at all; even the Brighthollow bonuses were anaemic compared to inn bonuses. I realize that this -- more so than the others even -- is very much a resource issue. However, as it is, the game would IMO have been better off without the stronghold altogether.

Description: Under the "Food" menu in Crafting, right-clicking on an ingredient AFTER right-clicking on any other item will show the latter's item description and a missing graphic. Steps to Reproduce the Issue: 1. Open Stash, inventory, spell-list, etc. and right-click to show an item description (in my case, I right-clicked on a Tanglefoot Scroll). Close out of the item description window. 2. Open the Crafting menu and choose any food recipe. 3. Right-click on one of the ingredients for the recipe. 4. Notice the item description (for Tanglefoot Scroll) listed is for the item you chose previously and the graphic for the ingredient is missing (see screen shot in .zip). LINK TO DROPBOX .ZIP: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wlsmzl6c3x3mt37/BugReport.zip?dl=0

Descriptions do not appear for ingredients in the crafting section. Rather, text from the previous read book or other text outside of crafting is shown instead.

Hi All! Question regarding Enchanting. If I have a Fine pistol (2 anvil 'cost') and want to upgrade it to exceptional (3 anvils), is the anvil cost accumulative, or does it straight override the lower enchantment. I ask because I would like to upgrade Forgiveness, but if taking Kith Slayer prevents me from also taking Exceptional / Superb, then I've got to think about which I'm going to take. Cheers

So, the game sort of fizzled out for me, sometime during act 2. Oh, I am certain I'll pick it up again, but right now, I am on a break. There's a number of details in the game, that are disappointing. Most of them can be overlooked or ignored, e.g. the horrible load-times, the boring run-your-own-castle simulation and the fact that you can't buff up before a fight. But, there are two things that are really preventing me from enjoying the game the way I enjoyed and still enjoy BG and BG2. And that is crafting and companions. So why don't I like crafting and why not just ignore it? Well. That was my plan. Just ignore it. I've never liked crafting. The very idea of a warrior or a paladin or what have we, who is also a miner/herbalist/smelter/blacksmith/weapon-smith, have always irritated me no end, and struck me as silly and contrived. However, the way it's implemented in PoE makes it very hard to ignore. Do any of you remember the ~first~ magical weapon you found in BG? Mine was Silke's +1 quarterstaff. I spend an eternity - no pun intended - figuring out whether to have my own character use it, or give it to Jaheira. In PoE, you put some stuff on a sword, and there you go. So exciting. It makes the treasure you find boring and meaningless. Worse, it makes money equally pointless. Back to BG. Do any of you remember the treasure at the bottom of the Naskel Mines? The first really large treasure with several items and lots of money. Where I am now in PoE's Act 2, my character have got an absurd amount of money, enchanted weapons all around and nothing to spend the accumulated wealth on. Crafting! How I hate it! And on to companions. I mentioned Jaheira from BG. Bossy, irritating, meddling and utterly unforgettable. Her husband Khalid, the stuttering fighter. Viconia the evil drow. Imoen. Minsc. Dynaheir. Edwin. Xan the depressed mage. Xzar. Shar Teel. Well, Obsidian, I am sorry, but IMO you have created a dull, un-engaging and forgettable lot in comparison. PoE is not a bad game. Better than most of the travesties that goes under the name RPG today. But, it doesn't hold a candle to BG or BG2 either. And, IMO, crafting and boring companions must carry a lot of the blame.

Have you tried crafting yet? What do you think about it and enchanting? I think crafting and enchanting shouldnt be done by your adventurers. Food and SOME potions and scrolls are fine since you have wizards, druids, chanters, priests and such but I think some recepies should maybe be tied to the survivalist and lore abilities (make a party-wide check to see what the highest ability score is). I honestly think towns should have an "Enchanter" merchant though. It could be the person selling you the potions and ingredients in the village for example.Sure you have wizards, druids, chanters, priests and such of your own but it would feel weird if a team of fighters, rogues, and rangers would be able to enchant. In games that have crafting and enchanting I always hoard materials first and then in-between quests or locations I sit down, have a good think and craft/enchant. It feels unecessary to be able to do it on the fly. To me it should be a ritual thing done during moments of pause since it tends to be a big deal, and giving a face to those moments via an NPC that facilitates the craft as a service would help flesh out the system and give it more personality and inmersion, imo. This is of course my issue on how the mechanic is implemented and presented, not about the mechanic itself and the metagame of it. Feel free to give your opinions on that.

This is a bit of musing on crafting, but I just thought of some interesting things lately. I've been playing a lot of Minecraft lately, with basically a magical-stuff mod, and you have to research to discover specific recipes, and you craft things with a combination of traditional crafting (assembling physical items according to a recipe) AND magical crafting (almost alchemy; you break things down into fundamental components, called "essentia," and you reassemble these essentia into altogether different materials/objects). Most of the time, it doesn't really have anything to do with physical crafting. For example, you can "invent" the magical-affinity metal, Thaumium, via research. Then, you can make from it anything you can make from any other metal (swords, tools, armor, etc.). So, 2 main things here: 1) Crafting like this could address a lot of the "why would you go from being a nub to being a master armorsmith?" concerns and such involved with "regular" crafting. You could, for example, invent something like Thaumium, then take that, as simply a raw material, to someone who actually is a master of shaping it and crafting actual equipment. And/or, you could get equipment made, then modify it using magical means. 2) Research could be a very nice change from the typical "here are the recipes for things, and you just learn them as you improve your skill" thing. You'd start with basics, and you could advance what you want to advance through research. Want to learn how to make all the best metal/material enhancements? Research metal and materials. Want to make all the best potions? Research the various animal parts and herbs and such. You could still find/acquire any number of recipes through other means (and I sure hope you do, regardless of whether or not anything even resembling research is in as one method of finding out some grouping of recipes). Another notable thing? This gives loot items in the world value, besides just typical loot sale value. Two values, in the case of the Minecraft mod. A) I can use up things to research, based on their various magical aspects (fire, metal/ore, earth/soil, animal/life, etc.), and B) I can break those things down into those essentia if I need to make other things from them. In fact, these things don't even have a sale value in Minecraft. There's not really anyone to sell to. You can barter some things, as far as I know (somewhat random offers), but you can't ever acquire money that you then use to spend universally on any other things. So, it's interesting. I loot all the stuff I need, and the rest? I couldn't care less about it. "I've already researched the crap out of that... don't need it anymore." Or "I've got plenty of stuff made out of fire essentia, so I don't need that." Etc. I'm not saying we copy Minecraft here, and just use the exact same system. But, it did get me thinking. It's not your super-typical, bland "I just make slightly better swords and armor as I go along, out of slightly better and better metals" crafting, and it brings a lot to the table that could, at the very least, be considered and utilized to varying extents. Thoughts?

Update by Polina Hristova, Concept Artist/Nightmare Engineer and Brandon Adler, Producery Type Polina in her natural habitat. Hello, everyone. This week will feature an interview with Project Eternity concept artist Polina Hristova. While a Project Eternity concept artist has to be well-rounded in their skill set, Polina specializes in creature concepts. Enjoy. Q: Hello, Polina. What is your job on the Project Eternity team? A: I'm a general concept artist =). My primary purpose is to design what things look like (creatures, characters, environments, etc) and help get the conversations started. But I also try to do my best at making things look cool and try to solve any problems the modelers and animators might come by before they spend hours building it. Q: What are you working on this week? A: This week I wrapped finished up some critters: the drake and the spear spider. Q: What is your typical work day like on Project Eternity? A: I guess in comparison to most, my work day is pretty simple. I get to draw pretty pictures. The days differ based on the assignment and I do sometimes change my methods since creativity does flow differently day to day, but my general pipeline goes like this: I meet with Josh and the designers to get a description on what I'd be working on. Sometimes these descriptions can range from a simple word to an extremely detailed description on facial structure, hair length and color, outfit, tattoos, amount of skin pores... (okay I'm exaggerating the skin pore part)... and anywhere in between. I'll also talk with the animators if the creatures would share rigs or any other potential problems we can have (it's best to design with these problems in mind than having to change the design a lot later). After that (and depending on schedule) I'll do a number of variants fitting the description and summon a mini-character scrum (Josh, the designers, Rob, our modelers, and our animators). Together they'll discuss any problems or make any suggestions and pick a variant that I'll take to final. Q: What are you most looking forward to on Project Eternity? A: I am really looking forward to playing it. =) But for now I'm really just enjoying watching the game come to reality. I love watching peoples' creations come to life and I give many props to our modelers and animators for all their hard work. I love how they animated skuldr and his sneaky "I'm gunna getcha!" walk. Q: Which Project Eternity creature that you have concepted excites you the most? A: This questions a trick question. Creatures all excite me. I LOVE creatures, aliens (not relative) and things that go bump in the night. I guess if you had to make me pick right now I would have to say the drake =) but I have a weakness for dragons and it’s also the thing most current in my brain. I also really enjoyed designing the godlike heads. Q: What other games have you worked on? A: I'm actually pretty new to the industry. I graduated school in '09 and I didn’t get my first fulltime game job position until Obsidian ('11), but I've had the pleasure to intern and freelance on some amazing projects. I've worked on Naughty Dog's Uncharted 2, PlayStation Move Heroes, some other unannounced titles (some of which will sadly never see the light of day), and the Dungeon Siege 3 DLC: Treasures of the Sun. Drawing one of the endless tide of creatures. Q: What do you like to do when you aren't creating creatures that haunt my nightmares? A: I have a massive range of hobbies, from collecting costumes, traveling to national parks, watching movies, playing games, being weird and goofy, swimming, kendo, amateur photography and more. But when I'm not working, or spending time with my family or friends, I still prefer to spend my time drawing and scribbling... especially at the Zoo. Q: Do you have a favorite concept artist? A: I have a lot and I hope I don’t leave any of them out, but here are the guys currently on the top of my mind: Anthony Jones, Khange Le, Ian McCaig, Jordu Schell, Craig Mullins, Andrew Jones, Erik Tiemens, Robh Ruppel, PaperBlue.net, Carlo Arellano, Carlos Huante, Charlie Wen, and Aris Kolokontes. Q: And where do you draw your inspiration from? A: Nature. Nature will always have us concept artists beat. =) It does some weird ****. =D Q: What's your favorite game? A: I think to this day Zelda Ocarina of Time holds a special place in my heart. Sure the other Zeldas are still great (except maybe Skyward Sword... but that’s more of a controller issue) But Ocarina of time has the perfect mixture of exploration, puzzle solving, action and story, and it was one of the first games that made me go "oooooooooooooo... I wanna do that! This is so beautiful." (Graphics back then...) Q: Anything else you would like to share? A: I like to hide in dark corners... and make random creature noises. =) Crafting Feedback and Answers After getting a ton of feedback and responses to the last update on Crafting Josh has decided to make some changes to the proposed system. Check out this forum post which breaks down those changes and provides some additional clarification. Well, that's it for now. Head over to Obsidian's Project Eternity forums and let us know what you think about the latest update, Project Eternity or your cat JoJo. See you guys in a couple of weeks.

This intends to provide a streamlined mechanic to make magic items useable throughout the game within pre-decided boundaries (also, a money sink). The short version: Every magic weapon can be attuned to a character's soul (PC's or NPC's) for a fee, which unlocks the ability of the weapon to increase its usefulness over time, only for that specific PC/NPC. Increase of usefulness happens over time from use. Tiered, as to spread the cost and rewards of the attunement over the duration of the game. Costly, to make the item feel more special. Also, very important, increases usability of weaker items more than it does for stronger items. And longer version: Every magical weapon could be attuned to the soul of one person. A very specific process, it needs to be done by a master. It is costly. Attunement of higher quality items is more difficult and requires more gold. Attunement does not degrade over time. Further attunements are possible. How it works (Using DnD-like numbering): A very cool (likely unique, but not necessarily) Cool Sword +1 is attuned to the PC for a fee. The sword has the same damage as it did before the attunement: let's say 3 to 6. However, over time, with use, the sword's basic damage increases to 3.1 to 6.1 (only when being used by the PC). Then, after more use: 3.2 to 6.2. And so on until it goes through 3.9-6.9 to 4.0-7.0 basic damage. It turns into Cool Sword +1 +1 for the PC through the attunement. Let's say that the highest enchantment for the game is +6. Each individual weapon can be given specific maximum values for the total achievable attunement. The Cool Sword +1 could get attuned to up to 4.0-7.0, attuned again to max of 5.0-8.0 and so on for four attunements when the total is equal to Cool Sword +5. A NotSoCool Sword +1 might be allowed five attunements to become NotSoCool Sword +6. Another UniqueButQuiteAverage Dagger +4 could be attuned two times to a max of the equivalence of UniqueButQuiteAverage Dagger +5.5. If an items is found as UberCool DreiHander +5, then for a huge pile of gold it could be attuned so that it would take ages to get to +5.1. Maximum from the first attunement could be only +5.2. And another very expensive attunement could be possible for a maximum of +5.3. And no more. An item's utility could counterweight the maximum allowed attunement. This could be just one streamlined mechanic to make a unique item continually usable. Forging items like in BG2 could be another present system: anything forge-able cannot be attuned (recipes, this should probably be for the "best" items, done by a master blacksmith). Item upgrades by crafting (recipes, done by PC) is yet another. Also, the items do not sell for more after attunement - they are only more useful to the person they are attuned to and nobody else. They are exactly the same as in the beginning, with just one more effect "+x basic damage while used by ..." Also, they could be attuned to a second adventurer, losing their current attunement and starting from beginning with the new person. What do you think? How does this stack against or alongside the other upgrade systems?

This post is brought to you by armchair dev forum poster #209158 Dear Project Eternity developers, This is my attempt to create a well-constructed argument against the inclusion of Item Durability for the sole purpose of giving people a reason to take Crafting as a skill and some notes on your skill design and a proposed solution. Some of the stuff I talk about is ‘best-guess’. I apologize if I have misinterpreted any information I got from your forum posts at various places, but here goes… Grouping Item Durability in with Crafting achieves the design goal of making Crafting a skill that multiple characters (but perhaps not all characters) will want to take; gives Crafting a combat related per-character sliding benefit to match the efficacy of the Stealth skill and is a money-sink for the player. It is even quasi-realistic. It is not a bad design decision, but it is not the best one. Firstly, if Crafting does not affect everything that characters use to make a repeatable standard attack in Project Eternity (i.e. implements for Wizards, if they are used to make a standard attack) then it is not going to have too much use for the Wizard class if they are playing as a ranged spell flinging wizard, but only melee wizards who wear armor and wade into combat wielding spell-enhanced weapons. The wizard was previously the go-to ‘Crafter’ class in previous editions of D&D, so if that is the case it changes that archetype (which may or may not be a good or a bad thing). The issue with tacking Item Durability into the Crafting skill is that Crafting no longer becomes the focus of the skill, the focus shifts to Item Durability because of its relevance to combat and economy. It does not matter which character in the party can craft items as long as someone can do it, but it does matter which characters take the Crafting skill because characters that are going to be getting hit often and attacking often are going to run the risk of having one of their primary weapons broken while adventuring and also draining the party’s gold if they do not take the skill. It may not matter who can craft, because the action of crafting need only be performed by one character in the party to benefit the party, but it does matter who has the Crafting Skill because it is an efficiency and resource drain on the party and thus it is going to be a no-brainer to take Crafting on the primary melee combatants of the party. This does fully depend on how mild the implementation is – how long it takes for weapons to degrade and how much it costs to repair them. If it is too mild it is an insignificant mechanic, probably not worth taking on more than one character and overall busywork, but if it is at least moderate it will have certain pidgeonholing effects on character builds. This may be balanced out by the fact that characters will only be able to have two high skills in the party, and there may be other skills in the skill list that need to be taken by these melee characters in order to cover all of the needs of the party, but it seems like it is going to be important for melee characters to at least dump a couple of points into the Crafting skill just to reduce the efficiency and economic tax on the party. This mechanic creates a Skill tax on these members of the party. Excluding the affect on Item Durability, Crafting in Project Eternity [essentially Crafting, Enchantment and Alchemy] is a one-person-per-party skill. The party member with the highest Crafting skill will always be doing the crafting as crafting is an action that interrupts adventuring, can only be conducted by one character at a time and has no reason for multiple characters to be undertaking it at once. If any other characters in the party take the Crafting skill, they are merely buying “Combat Equipment Maintenance” for its combat and economic benefits. These characters will likely never craft an item in the game. Why is it important that crafting [the action] be a skill that is taken by one character? I cannot think of one, unless the Crafting disciplines were split into groups rather than streamlined so that multiple characters had to take them or Crafting was a party skill [more on that later]. The design mandate of Skills in Project Eternity seem to be highly influenced by the combat efficacy of the Stealth skill because it allows every character to use Stealth get closer to an encounter before being noticed (e.g. one point of Stealth may allow a melee character to reach melee combat with an enemy, taking one projectile hit from a ranged combatant while avoiding the extra projectile hit he would have taken had he been noticed earlier). Based on the current available information it leads me to believe that every other skill is being designed with a similar benefit in mind, even if the benefits are somewhat abstract to the actual skill itself. “Combat Equipment Maintenance” is not abstract from Crafting, it makes sense, but it makes more sense that characters proficient or excellent with a weapon would also know how to maintain their weapons to make them last a longer period of time before repair. The ‘gamism’ of the design is inferior to the obvious simulation. An easy way (but maybe not the best way) to solve this problem and to keep the design intentions intact is to remove Crafting from the skill list completely and make it an abstract action that any character can perform (like Baldur’s Gate 2 and Knights of the Old Republic 2). The restrictions can be present within the item recipes themselves and still achieve the same effect without having Crafting as a character skill since it seems to be at odds with the design principles of the current skill system on its own. I do not believe there is anyone that would complain about that. For the sole sake of keeping the money-sink and strategical maintenance part in the game, you could keep the “Combat Equipment Maintenance” as a skill. But now without Crafting, it is solely a skill tax on equipment based characters. The comments Josh Sawyer made regarding the money-sink part of the skill led me to believe that this was partially intended to affect the party wealth of players that do not invest in the Stronghold, but it is clear that it affects everyone, not just them. You could also remove that from the skill list and make it an abstract system like Diablo 2, but Item Durability as its own entity would probably be more annoying to a larger portion of the fanbase than it is as part of a skill (conjecture, I couldn’t be certain) and it wasn’t present in the Infinity Engine games either – perhaps it makes sense in the context of the world, like Baldur’s Gate or Fallout New Vegas, only you could say. Changing Item Durability to an inverse “Sharpness” mechanic where you sharpen an item and it has more damage and degrades over time does not fix the issue, it retains exactly the same issues and has even more plausibility (which may not be an issue for you). Removing Crafting from the skill list and removing item durability/any sister mechanics from the game solves the problems with trying to make a skill out of a one-character-per-party action which was an abstract action in other games and feat(s) in some editions of D&D. It may not solve the money-sink issue for players that do not invest in the Stronghold, but I do not believe that was a good solution to that problem anyway if that was its intention. But in my opinion the problem is rooted deeper in the skill design, and it is likely similar issues will be present in a lot of other skills. Making skills something that every character wants to take is a hard job because most of them will likely be carbon copies of D&D skills that were only meant to be taken by one person in a party in a system where it was fine that both one-person skills and universal skills were allowed to exist and other skills that are useful for multiple characters do not have the same effect in a CRPG as they do in P&P. It seems that the way you guys are tackling this is giving skills like Herbalism or Mechanics a gamist combat effective bonus to match the efficacy that Stealth and Perception have, which is my problem specifically with the examples of skill design I have seen so far (Survival in F:NV, Crafting in P:E). The problem with this design is the exact same thing is going to happen with other skills as to what is going to happen with Crafting; people in their right mind are not going to take skills on characters for the ‘skill’ action, but for the combat related bonus. Mechanics seems like it is partially a one-person-per-party skill. Sure maybe you can open two locks at once if you have it on two people but the character with the highest mechanics skill will be doing most of the mechanics skill actions. So if you gave it a per-character sliding effect combat bonus (I’m not sure what that would be, but for the sake of argument let’s say it reduces the reload time of ranged weapons) anyone else who takes it will be taking it solely for that, with the exception of possibly being able to do a couple of Mechanics actions at once where the game world permitted. Using reload time as an example, now you’re most likely not going to take mechanics on any melee characters. Your rogue might take it because he gets a natural bonus and it is useful in conjunction with Stealth but a melee fighter will probably not take Mechanics because he might not use a ranged weapon very often, but you’d be a fool not to take it on the Ranger because the Ranger will be (most likely) using a ranged weapon 90% of the time. It falls into the same pit trap as Crafting where melee characters will be a fool not to take it. If there was a skill called Herbalism and it acted like Survival in New Vegas then the same issue would be present. The character with the highest skill points in Herbalism will do the herb gathering and identifying. No other characters will be necessary to perform this action, the only reason players would put points into it is based on the increase in duration consumable consumption. It worked for New Vegas because there was only one character. Survival was taken for Survival, not just for the bonus durations of consumables. I don’t believe adding abstract per-character combat bonuses this fixes one man skills. Sure it gives you a reason to give it to more than one character but it does not make the skill-action useful for every character, it adds a subset system whereby players are choosing options based on abstract combat bonuses. The skill action of Crafting, or Mechanics or “Herbalism” remains a one-person per party action most of the time. Taking points in Crafting on two characters does absolutely nothing to the action of Crafting Items. Isn’t crafting items the purpose of the skill? Wouldn’t it be better to reward taking Crafting on multiple characters by affecting the action of crafting itself, rather than some abstract bonus? If taking Crafting on multiple characters had a direct benefit to the crafting of items for the party, then maybe people would take Crafting on multiple characters if they wanted to make a Crafting-build party. The benefits of taking Stealth on every character are solely within the skill. Taking Stealth in multiple characters allows the party to better avoid combat or get closer to combat. You could take the group benefit of multiple characters with Stealth and apply that to other skills as well. Multiple characters with Crafting could help the crafting action of the party. Crafting already allows skills, talents and abilities from other party members to help facilitate the creation of items, so why couldn’t points in Crafting from multiple characters be beneficial for the party since the action of Crafting effectively stops adventuring anyway. In fact this mechanic was present in D&D 3E, on page 62 of the Player’s Handbook under “Combining skill attempts”. Obviously you wouldn’t use these exact mechanics, since checks aren’t rolled for skills anyway, but you could say that multiple characters with a skill in the party could assist the skill check of the character vs the static target. In relation to crafting you could add a per-character sliding benefit for every character with the skill to the character with the best crafting score’s number for determining certain things about what they can Craft. The same could probably go for other skills that have this problem. That way they don’t have to have some tacked on combat-abstraction that doesn’t feel quite right.

Okay,so I thought it would be nice to do a simple poll on crafting. The main point is to see which games out of my limited selection you would like to see influence the PE crafting system the most. Obsidian will obviously do their best to make the most compelling crafting system that'll add to gameplay and enjoyment. This will hopefully be able to give some sort of indication as to what games we'd like to influence the crafting system. Hopefully my selections as answers are reasonable and offer up a suitable array of options.