Radiant Ring / Gem Fragment Disparity

[ZeldaCastle]

So I decided to pick up a gem crafter for my profession and I noticed it's almost impossible to keep up with compared to other professions.

 

For example, my second profession is a weaponsmith. All I have to do is get an order of ore from the prospectors, then use those 10 ore to craft a weapon. Nice! I can use those weapons to upgrade my weapon and it's all really seamless.

 

Then I have the jewelcrafting. I get the 10 stone from the gathering profession... Then I need some refinery stuff from the Pot Makers. Okay, that's fine. Then I need jewel fragments, which I can SOMETIMES get from random RNG drop bags. Or I can salvage only very specific gem drops from specific dungeons? I've been dungeon grinding pretty hard since hitting 14-15 or so, and I still can't make a SINGLE gem bag. My jewel skill is at 5/64 for rank 1. My other 3 professions are all rank 2.

 

Why is Radiant Rings so much harder to level up or keep self sufficient? I don't mind needing items from other professions, it's mainly how difficult/rare fragments and gems are at lower levels. It feels so clunky and unreasonable compare to the simple 2-step of my weaponsmith example.

[Temjiu]

and you know what the icing on the cake is for this one? Just realized that I can TRANSMUTE. it costs less fragments then crafting does...and it gives a random COLOR. Crafting gives us a random stat, but they're all diamond...so your really only going to be using one per weapon. Transmute does all colors. Yes...it has a chance to fail. but after transmuting for a few minutes, i had spent a total of 10s60c, and had a blue square, and a red pentagon. Total fragments invested? 8. it doesn't spend fragments when it fails, only coin. 

 

Just did another set of the same (one pentagon, one blue quality square) with no failures. 10s10c, 8 fragments, and I have two different colors of gems. Lets compare that with the cost of crafting the same amount of gems in the "craft":

 

Total cost and craft time for ONE Blue quality Square Gem: 9 silver, 44 copper / 18hrs

This is based on current LOWEST market prices for the Cinderlands silicate ONLY...the rest I calculated based on a person that is doing all the crafting themselves.

 

The green pentagon isn't comparable as you can literally transmute a pentagon gem with square fragments, whereas crafting one takes PENTAGON FRAGMENTS, that at best are 5 silver higher then square fragments. 

 

Yet for the total cost of 16 square fragments and 20 silver and 70 copper i got 2 blue quality square diamonds that were DIFFERENT COLORS, and two green pentagon gems that were, again DIFFERENT COLORS. and it took me a total of 5 minutes, including the time I spent staring incredulously at the screen trying to figure out why it was so easy to make gems that I needed when I just spent the last few days gathering, collecting, and crafting 3 diamonds, one of which will be useful, the others I'm hoping to get something from the market for since salvaging them only gets one fragment.

 

Oh...and to make it even better, the "secret recipes" for this craft don't work. I'm rank 2 at the moment, should be able to use cinderlands recipes, but I used one...and nothing. It even told me there were new orders available...but nothing extra showing up in my craft window.

 

So the craft is broken...and essentially useless. Honestly, at this point I'm just going to craft and sell refiners and BUY the gems I need. NCsoft, seriously, if your going to put crafting in the game, at least balance it well, and make it worth using. Your cheapening a good game by doing this.

 

EDIT: in defense of the craft, there are a few things it can do that you really can't get anywhere else. One, it can craft keys. woo...im sure this will come into play at higher levels for SURE, but lower levels waste of time (except perhaps money maker).

 

Two, It does give you diamonds. So while you can't stack diamonds in your weapon, it does allow you more stat options then whats on the base gem colors. 

 

From what I'm seeing overall, if they actually fixed the recipes, the craft does have SOME things that benefit at higher levels. I just wish that they gave people a reason to actually craft outside of "when you max it out it has 2 things you can't get anywhere else!" id' just like a few more perks. Example: Radiant Ring crafters get one more fragment per Salvage attempt. or perhaps a lower chance to fail on transmute.

 

That's something that all the crafts could benefit from btw. example: one extra crystal per mining attempt for the mining guild (go figure huh...). stuff like that.