Crafting in RPGs

One common feature in roleplaying games is the addition of a crafting system. This allows players to make useful items such as healing potions, weapons, and item enhancements. I personally do not like the way the system is usually implemented-where you must buy materials from vendors combined with materials you find questing and then piece them together. For example, here is a typical crafted item in Dragon Age:

To create a paragon frost rune, which adds frost damage to a weapon, a player needs to make 32 novice frost runes and upgrade each of them to the highest level as well as purchase 63 blank runestones and 56 etching agents from a vendor in the game. That's a hell of a lot to keep track of. And that's for just one rune-many weapons and pieces of armor can have several runes placed on them. The crafting portion of Dragon Age takes the player from enjoying a videogame to playing Microsoft Excel. Dragon Age 2 made a welcome change to this tired formula. Instead of relying exclusively on items purchased from vendors, the game's resources for crafting exist in the actual world. There are several different varieties of resources for each of the types of items you can craft in the game.

Here the common herb elfroot, useful for healing potions, is discovered.

I enjoy this method because it encourages full exploration of the world since crafting resources are found all over the place. Some are only located after defeating optional bosses, providing a benefit to undertaking difficult battles. These features make crafting a natural part of the game, instead of a task where the player has to open up a bunch of menus and do math to figure out what they can create. Additionally, the actual crafting screen in Dragon Age II is simple and elegant.

In the lower left it shows which resources you have located and the right side mentions what is required to create the individual item along with the information on what the item does. All you do is pay the gold cost required to make the item and it appears in your inventory, ready for use. Recipes for items are also integrated into exploration. Some are available from vendors, others from certain quests, and finally some are located in chests or other treasure areas. Throughout the game I always searched every area thoroughly to ensure that I didn't miss any precious recipes or crafting items.

Especially in the remains of this fellow after I slew him. Never know where some deathroot might be hiding!

 All that being said, there are some improvements that I feel could be made to the system. Some of the items like elfroot and deathroot are under-utilized because you only need three to four of them to make every item in the game, but there are a total of nine to find in the game. There also are not that many recipes. Perhaps adding some recipes that required more of the common items in the game would fix both problems.