Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Interview

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Written by BuckGB on July 8th, 2006

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Q: Crafted items vs. loot items. Will items that are player crafted more sought after than loot items? Or, is there a balance between the two?

A: Having made Anarchy-Online, we saw how it was really hard to make crafted items and loot items balance. One would inevitably be the strongest / best and slight the other. Even though this might vary, it left more people dissatisfied than anything else.

We decided for Conan to find a real, deep, niche where we could used crafted items and only crafted items. For us this we made the crafted items the dynamic items. So not the best items, nor the strongest, but the ones which would adapt. The method we employed to achieve this was to use a (gem-socketing) system. Here players can make a really good weapon, for instance, and then as they meat an opponent very vulnerable to fire damage, for instance, insert 4 gems of fire-damage increase. Then later they could make it a holy weapon etc with other gems.

In addition to this, some items can only be made through crafting. Examples of this are siege engines, certain types of food and potions. All in all we have carved a niche, or rather a market for crafted items.

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