Follower Crafting System Update

Contents

Followers to Forge: Crafting System Updates

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• Background

  • Forward and Back Again

  • What is Crafting?

  Building The Forge

  • How does it fit?

  • What did we do?

  • Refine

• Why sacrifice?

• Why are there different rarity restrictions on different Refinements?

• A Moment for Ascension

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Introducing: The Forge System

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• Craft

• Reforge

• Refine

  • Refine Rarity

  • Refine Element

  • Refine Attribute

• Refine Quality

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Appendix

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• Crafting Costs

• Reforge Costs

• Refine Costs

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As our veterans would remember, we introduced the Follower Crafting system way back in October 2022 in Update 1.4. The game has obviously gone through some pretty major changes since then, and with the introduction of the Gear rework, the Follower Crafting system was no longer fit for purpose as it was.

The changes needed for our Crafters was, in fact, so large, that they needed more time than we had available in the 3.1 update, and then a little bit more time again.

These changes will be released with 3.1.5 (target release of early June).

What about the 3.1 Patch Notes? Don’t worry! You’ll be getting those very soon. We just wanted to get these out to you ASAP since it’s a big change. Just be aware that the screens are still WIP. They may change prior to release.

Now, the following is some additional context on the design of the system. If you’d like to skip ahead to the changes, you can jump to “Introducing: The Forge System.”

Forward and Back Again

In designing this new system, in addition to having it work nicely with the Gear system, we needed to make sure it was future-proofed against other planned changes in upcoming updates, even if they aren’t around the corner. As such, the changes we’ve made to the crafters have the infrastructure built-in to support new systems and updates planned in the road ahead.

This is why we’ll be referring to the Gear Crafting System as the “Forge System”.

What is Crafting

To be able to effectively adapt to the new Gear system, we basically needed to pull all of our crafting mechanics apart and start rebuilding it from the ground up. However, even with a complete rebuild, it was important to us that we made sure anything that could be done in the current system could still be done in the Forge System.

So, we pulled it apart and there were three very clear areas of functionality: • Making stuff • Rerolling stuff • Making deliberate, non-random improvements to stuff

The emphasis on (and within) these areas also shifts as players move from early, to mid-game, to late-game.

The UI and UX of the current system were a little clunky. We had to put in new options for each type of Craft that needed to be done, and we had to tie those to a Level, and we couldn’t change their position in that list.

The unlocking of various components of the system was also uneven and had gotten “uneven-er” as we added functionality. Here is how the Follower ability unlocks currently look:

There were also some odd points of friction such as having limited control over the Rarity of a crafted item that we wanted to smooth out.

How does it fit?

The philosophy we approached the system design with was that naturally over the course of play, the expected amount of control increases, so the ‘why’ of collecting Gear changes over time. Early in the