With the help of three of our four new builders (Gemini is busy building Tarkas! <3) I’ve put a lot of time and effort into revamping crafts over the last few weeks.  I do hope that carpenters, tailors, dyers, alchemists, jewelcrafters, cobblers, chandlers, and potters enjoy their new crafts.

Yes, I’m aware the last three are still under serious construction, as you should be.  Feel free to submit ideas, or suggestions where you see fit, though constructive criticism is much appreciated over tells or osays in the vein of ‘this sucks, I can’t make any money!’

But really as I say that I realize that this post is a complaint, too.  It’s a complaint I’ve made before, many many times over.

It is NOT IC for a character to take on all of the crafts in the game, or even a significant chunk of them.  Truthfully, if you’ve more than three crafts and three gathering skills (six total), I do hope you can ICly explain the hows and whys of your character having learned them and no, people, one does not just ‘learn to make excellent tools at a forge on their own’ when they were raised to be a tailor.  I’m sorry.  It doesn’t work.

So many of our pbase has gone ooc with this.  You’re pissy with a player who’s character refuses to buy from you, so you’ve decided to just make what they sell, so you can refuse to buy from them too.  Or you just ‘don’t like to depend on others.’  That’s NOT okay.  It doesn’t work that way in RL, it doesn’t work that way in DI.

I asked nicely before.  I’m asking again and this time I’m not being so nice.

Stop.  Now.  Please.

Find a player with the craft, if all you really need farming for is to get butter, and stop making baskets on the side just to ’see how it works’ and then throw it in your shop to sell.  It’s blatant.

If you just need copper shavings to make copperas water, then find a smith to shave an ingot down for you.  Don’t take up mining and smithing as well to do it for yourself.

Every craft is calculated to make a profit, even if you buy some of your components from other players.  Every craft is deliberately designed to require other crafts.  It’s made that way to give everyone something to do, and a way to make money.   That doesn’ mean you, by yourself, need to know how to skin, weave cloth, make dyes, dye cloth, sew clothes, fashion leather, and cobble shoes to make a perfect outfit.  Buy the skins from someone else.  Spend a little on dyed cloth! (I dropped prices, too!).  Visit a cobbler.

Please.  A little common sense, or you’ll soon find nobody buying from anybody, and *gasps* nobody making any real money.

Always brings with it a hell of responsibilities I forget about til it’s approaching.

Well, I may be a bit more absent for the next two weeks.  If you really need me though, please feel free to email.

1. This week ends the kids’ reign of terror at school and so I have finals to grade and dunk tanks to be soaked in.  Whee!
2. Then, next week is all about packing up, putting things in storage, cleaning the classrooms and the school and getting grades settled.
3.  And last but not least, I have to resit the dumb teaching exams on June 6th.  Arizona has really botched things for their teachers… *sighs*

So between playing, studying, and finding summer fun things for my soon-to-be first grader, it’s going to be a busy couple of weeks.

Among other things.

Farmers will notice a few new assemblies leading up to cheese making.  Tada!

Let’s see.  What else has happened the last few days?  I know I said I’d try blogging regularly, but really… it’s not happening, is it?

• Cooking’s had a few more updates.
• Brewers ought to find they can make the finished products now.  Bottles, cups, tankards, etc filled to the brim with the delightful results of their work.  Yay.
• A few items have been added to carpentry as well.

Today was Mother’s Day.

My 5th one.  It still amazes me.  It really does.  When the kiddo is sleeping and being angelic, anyway.  Right now, she’s anything but.  I swear, I’ve spent the last 90 minutes trying to get a hyper monkey with bright purple hair to stop dancing around and babbling about all the My Little Ponies she looks like now, for long enough to fall asleep.

Finally successful.

I should probably add that, yes I’m crazy, but this time the purple hair is for good reason.  It’s Crazy Hair day in kindergarden tomorrow.

Oh and by the way, if you’re looking for something amusing to glance over, try:

http://bannable-offenses.blogspot.com/

It has to be one of the funnier blogs I’ve ever read and I don’t even play… in fact I’ve never played FFXI.  Still, if you get the idea of MMOs you may find it good for a laugh or two.

Well, as good as.  I just need to gather a little information on the tools for armour crafting and weapon smithing, and then the wiki page on crafts will be entirely complete.

That’s a load off my mind.  Hope it’s somewhat helpful!

http://www.dark-isles.net/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Harvesting is also up and ready to go.

As the title says, a huge thanks to Harley, Esper, and Darvhul who’ve taken time from their RP to write up guides for the crafting section for me.  We, the staff, appreciate it greatly and even on occassion offer small rewards of RPP for the help of dedicated players.  Really. It saves a ton of time!

And so, on that note I want to remind players that if you ever feel like doing any of the following things, feel free to email me at Tigerlily@dark-isles.com:

• Writing help-files for any topic where none currently exist.
• Helping to complete craft guides for the wiki.
• Suggesting new items for a particular craft list.  (If you do this, I would ask for a short/long/look description as well as the tools and materials you think would best be suited for making the item).

I think those are the three top needs/desires at the moment.

Questions?  Comments?  Email me or send up a petition when I’m active.

Complaints?  Dump ‘em on Marduk.  (Kidding… honest.)

http://www.dark-isles.net/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Crafts

It’s not finished.  It’s nowhere near to finished but after several hours of solid plugging away it’s looking decent enough that I can post it here for those of you looking into crafting as a whole.

Hope it helps.

Next big project:  Tidying up carpentry.

PS:  Jewelers, you’ll be finding a few new assemblies on your lists again.  Gatherers, you may find a few new items out and about.  Not everything will instantly have a use, but it will in time.

Crafting has had a major overhaul in the last few days.  Here’s what you might notice:

• Cooking has been updated significantly, with about fifteen new recipes and a more logical skill progression in what can be cooked… and there’s more to come.
• Farmers can now make butter!
• Alchemists are now able to make bleaches, salves, and bandages as well as soaps and perfumes.  (Don’t forget the secondary alchemy command: boil)
• More jewelry assemblies have been added.

Really.  Crafting is my thing.  I love it, and if I find a game without a good crafting system the sad news is, I can’t stick it out.

So I’m working to revamp DI’s craft lists until they’re absolutely fabulous.

Currently my plans (in the order they come to mind, and not by importance) are:

1. Add some basic silk, satin, velvet, and brocade items to the tailoring crafts.   (Though tailors, these will be simple and to be used more as a guideline for custom items – who really wants to buy off the rack if they have the money and legal right to wear items of this nature?)
2. Tidy up carpentry.  There’s a lot (As Esper keeps reminding me) that carpenters should be able to make that they can’t.  Thanks to restrings (<3 Carmine!) I’ll just be adding in the basic furniture.  You can describe it a bit more to taste.
3. Get pottery and chandlery into the game and add more to those crafting lists.  At the moment, the basics for pottery exist: pots, vials, bricks, a kiln, a potter’s wheel, etc.   The basics for chandlery are there as well:  candles (scented and plain), tallow and beeswax (get ‘em from an alchemist), lantern oil, lanterns, torches, etc.
4. Add  few more odds and ends to jewel crafting though, really, as far as crafts go this one is the best laid out at the moment.
5. Integrate all of the things that farmers can grow (beets, chard, chickpeas, etc) into cooking.
6. Organize farming, make more of the commonly needed produce available to be grown (potatoes, tomatoes, corn, barley, etc).
7. Potentially separating weaving from farming and adding basket-making to the skill.  (Those of you who have taken farming for the sole purpose of weaving cloth would be able to switch skills if this goes into effect, of course.)
8. Cobblery and millenry: This is my next big project and while you may find odds and ends going in already here and there in the crafts which will support it (leather working, dyeing, alchemy, etc) they will not be available for about three more weeks.  (See my latest rant if you’d like to know why.)

I’m very sure there’s more, but this is all that’s coming to mind now.  Questions, comments, ideas, etc?  Feel free to let me know what you think, and remember our goal here is to make a completely self-sustaining player economy.  Everything that exists in game will eventually be able to be made by players!

A list of future crafts:

1. pottery
2. chandlery
3. cobblery/millenry
4. glassmaking
5. butchering
6. Maybe more!

Oh right.  I’ve put a link over —-> somewhere to link you to the wiki where, in about a week I hope to have posted up-to-date information on all current crafts.  Tools required, commands used, etc. I hope that helps!

And the year from hell will blend into blissful summer – I hope.

Most of you know, I think, that when I’m not working away on things for the MUD, I’m teaching.  It’s a self-contained 6th grade class and as much as I love them, they’re driving me absolutely batty.  (So, if I seem a bit short with you on the MUD it’s not you, I promise.  It’s them!)

Fights, vandalism, the typical 12 year old kid nonsense blown out of control.  I wish I could end the school year on Friday, just because of this.  We can’t though, so… I’ll manage.

I do exaggerate.  I love these kids but WOW.  Any of you who know me outside of the MUD have heard my rants and raves, so this will likely be a bit redundant, but how does one teach a class where the principal has ruled that half of the kids have to sit on the floor  because they’re either breaking the furniture or trying to throw it at each other and nobody is allowed paper or pencils (pens, duh, not pencils!) due to… idiocy.

Sometimes I seriously think real estate is the way to go.