In the latest dev blog from Saga of Lucimia, Stormhaven Studios Creative Director Tim Anderson delves into the nuts and bolts of crafting, its place in MMORPGs, and how the team plans to approach its implementation in its upcoming sandbox title. Anderson bemoans the fact that in recent times crafting has been largely relegated to a side-activity that’s largely secondary to combat and adventuring. Saga of Lucimia hopes to undo that trend, however, by making crafting not only useful but in some cases absolutely crucial, not just for creating new equipment and items but also for adventuring, exploring, and dungeon-crawling.
Although the devs aren’t quite ready to unveil the specific mechanics of Saga of Lucimia’s crafting system, Anderson describes it as a cross between the crafting systems of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Star Wars Galaxies (may they rest in peace). Crafters will, of course, be relied upon to create new weapons, armor, and consumables, but the devs don’t want their roles to be quite so limited, and in fact, their goal is to make it so that adventuring parties will want to include a crafter or two in their group compositions: “There’s a reason we have 8-person parties in our game,” Anderson writes. “There are whole sections of dungeons and parts of the world . . . that will require you to have multiple types of crafting to explore beyond. In our mind, the ideal makeup is a main tank, a main healer, utility + crowd control, couple of DPS, and then a couple of crafters to round out the team.”
It’s an ambitious goal, and we’ll have to wait a bit to get more details on how exactly this will play out within the game, but if you want to get some insight into the team’s design philosophy when it comes to crafting, then Anderson’s post is definitely worth a read. You can find it for yourself over at the game’s official site.
