Occupation Logic

[jared96]

Figured I'd make a spot to openly discuss various techniques to approaching the occupation recipes. With no precraft window and the long cool down, experimentation opportunities are limited. The 1st 3 levels are doable enough with our little group's experience ranging from finding that all important 100% recipe in two tries to doing 12 and only gaining the 80's and 90's. With the generosity typical of the players in this game having posted recipes on their guild forums up to 70%, one can if they so choose, avoid the frustrating process of a string of 30% recipes.

However, Echelon 4 has presented some challenges. Before this level if you kept throwing new numbers at the slots, you were bound to get a > 30% recipe which could then be used as a basis for tweaking. At Echelon 4, those > 30% recipes are proving much more elusive. At echelon 6, I can't imagine how difficult it's going to be and we are only talking "Apprentice" levels here. What's come after Apprentice ? Journeyman, Expert, Master ?

So intent here was to create a place to discuss approaches, ideas, patch suggestions, etc.

As to the suggestions, my first one would be to think about the 20 hour timer. Not saying it's to big or too small, just oddball. I'd rather see a 24 hour timer or a 16 hour timer so that you could at least schedule a regular routine w/o setting the alarm for the middle of a sleep period if you wanted to take advantage of all your opportunities. Perhaps a 24 hour timer for the 1st 3 levels and once you have entered the echelon 4 climb, drop it to 16 as recognition of the player's accomplishments to date and the fact that at this point it gets very difficult.

Of all the echelon 4 peeps I have spoken with one has beaten 30% w/ a whopping 33% on the 10th try ....our little scrollmakers group has tried 11 recipes and hasn't broken 30% yet. Perhaps we are having a string of bad luck (after all we got real lucky on each 3) or perhaps the system will provide too little risk / reward for players to pursue. I have been surprised at the number of players who are not actively pursuing a profession stating that they see no real value to them. Maybe the real value won't appear till after the Apprentice Levels. Personally I am enjoying the new content and found the 1st three levels at least worth pursuing.

The obvious logic of throwing all new numbers at it after a 30% recipe (since it's obvious all or most of your choices are bad) does not appear to work at ech 4. Pretty much have used every number in each slot w/o success so far. Running out of time atm so will come back and start some discussion on various approaches to tackling the problem.