Making/Money: Hurry Up and Wait

It took a few weeks, but I finally made it to level 20 in Age of Conan. It was an intense time getting through quest after quest, killing random mobs, and starting to mark my map with waypoints in anticipation. Though the levels did seem to go quickly, they just could not be fast enough for me as I was trying to get to... resource gathering.

Yes, resource gathering is that important. It's the first look you get at the crafting system and a great opportunity to start hoarding money for later use (like for purchasing the lowest level horse in AoC, which costs a seeming fortune at 75 silver). That's especially true of games that put level minimums on skills as is seen in both AoC and World of Warcraft.

But AoC takes a new tack in the way that they approach leveling crafts. Keep reading as I take a look at what the pros and cons of this new system are for the crafting system and the economy overall.

Reaching level 20 in Age of Conan is a fairly momentous event. It's about the time you leave Tortage (though it's really up to you exactly when you take that final quest) and head into your race's zone. It's when you move to the next tab of combos and therefore start seeing more powerful attacks. And it's when you can first go to Poitain, Purple Lotus Swamp, or Lachish Plains to see the gathering profession trainers and take their initial quests - clearly the most important advance of all.

There are six gathering professions and you can take all of them. What a novelty! (Hush, you Runescape players that get to take absolutely every skill) That means you may build up stockpiles of resources, only some of which you will use when you finally decide upon your crafting profession. The others will linger either in your bank account or in your resources inventory tab. And that means you have fodder for going to the Trader (AoC's answer to the auction house) and selling what you don't use to other players.

All gathering professions level on a quest-based system. You first have to gather twenty of the resource in question and return them to the trainer. It's not so bad as these are common, particularly in the zone where you meet the trainers. What's even better now is that, with one of the recent patches, you can see all the resource nodes on your map and mini-map. No more need to set your own waypoints to come back to spots where you found an ash Tree or a cotton Shrub. On the other hand, that means everyone else can see where all the nodes are too and you end up having mass convergences of characters on a single copper node as everyone vies to gather the goods. And there is still no indication on the map of whether there are sufficient resources available (i.e. it has been long enough that they have regenerated) within that node for you to gather them.

Anyway, once you have gotten your first twenty common resource items and forfeited them to the trainer in the name of quest completion, they offer to teach you how to get a rare spawn from the same type of node. For example, you can get clear quartz from a sandstone node (well, in theory you can - it hasn't dropped for me yet ... perhaps it is programmed to only drop once a character is a certain level? Conspiracy theory, anyone?). So you then must run off, back to the spawn points you just hit (though hopefully allowing for enough time for the resources to respawn) and try to get one of the rare drop. Thank goodness you only need one because it can take a good long time to get it.

Now you've got your rare resource. You grudgingly hand it over to the trainer. They are pleased with your ability to find them a cottonwisp and offer to teach you the next level of gathering. You take the bait and... PSYCH! They were mercilessly teasing you. No more gathering skills for you until level 50! And, while we're at it, no crafting skill until level 40.

"WHAT?!?! Nooooo! But I just spent all that time in Tortage building up to level 20 to get these skills. What am I supposed to do with twenty levels between me and my next dose of professional fulfillment?" you want to yell back at the cruel trainer - but that's not one of the text options.

So what do you do between level 20 (though by now you're probably at least level 22 due to the random mobs and jealous prospectors that pop up out of seemingly nowhere when running around in the zones and gathering) and level 40? The same thing we do in every game - try to take over the world... one tiny coin at a time!

Plotting and planning from twenty to forty can actually be rather lucrative, paving your way in gold to your crafting profession of choice. The trick here is to determine in advance which craft you intend to take. If, for instance, you want to become an Architect, it may be worth your while to hold on to your sandstone and metals but sell the cotton you gather. For Alchemy, you may be able to sell nearly all of your resources as the items you need for crafting drop from mobs.

This does two things for the economy: it supplies higher-level players with the resources they need to craft items and it provides a means for the redistribution of wealth from higher-level to lower-level players. That means players might actually be able to afford a mount by level 40 despite the pittance paid for quest completions. It also makes the crafting of items less time-intensive since materials can easily be found for sale. Sounds ideal, right? Well, of course it does on paper.

In practice, it seems that there are never enough resources to go around. Partly, it's because higher-level players still want to gather them for fun and profit. And many of them have mounts, making it faster for them to do so and therefore beat out lower level players to the nodes. It's also partly because Tier 1resources are still needed in the construction of some guild city items and not everyone wants to spend their hard-earned gold on buying them.

No system will ever be perfect. There will always be "unfairness" in the distribution of coinage within a game. But AoC has taken some remarkable steps to at least make crafting work within the larger economy by having all resources available to all players.

What have your impressions been of the AoC gathering and crafting systems? Have you also been stuck trying to level to get to the next craft quests (or destiny quests, for that matter)? Have you made a tidy sum selling crafting supplies at the Trader? Let us know.