I'm dead right now after an ill-thought out plan to kill Iturous. He took my head off and I felt it a good opportunity to brainstorm.

I noticed the other day that someone needed an anvil to repair some items of theirs. The only anvil around was in the Blacksmith. The Blacksmith is a hidden door, that isn't hidden. You don't sense it, you just have to know where it is. That seemed a little impractical to me. Likewise, the weaponsmith and armorsmith did not have anvils in their shops. How, exactly, do they craft their wares then? I think this should be fixed. Anvils shouldn't be so hard to come by.

On to another topic. Monster Summoning. The spell itself works fine, no problems there. Except I can't cast it everywhere. That is OK, I understand the concept. But it works in far too few areas for me to understand why the room was flagged that way. Furthermore, they don't follow me anywhere I want them to. I can only summon them in Turien for starters, and they can only follow me so far as I can go east, west, north, and south, until I reach another city or room. Upon entrance, they no longer follow me, and I can no longer summon them. This happens at Draconia, the knighthood, the priestess's area, and simply traveling. Being a mage, or bard (who relies heavily on monsums) especially at lower levels, this hampers the ability to explore and level. I can understand why you might put this room restriction on a big boss room, but how frequently I run into this problem seems unjustified for the most part. Now, if the room has only enough space for one person in it at a time, that makes sense too. But at least give the ability to summon them again once through said room. Unless you don't want summoners in your zone at all for spite. I'll find a way around it still.

Going along with repairing items, what about item creation? As of now I believe the only ability to create an item is by using minor or major creation. Poisons can be crafted, which was a great addition, so why isn't alchemy an outright skill? Why can't a warrior craft a sword or armor for himself? Why can't a mage create potions and scrolls and enchant a weapon with a spell, rather than just a +damage and +attack buff? This game needs an economy. And that economy needs to be run by people rather than NPCs. Mobs need to start dropping item crafting blueprints and the required materials to build those items. These items then need to vary in difficulty of craftmanship and how many materials they need to be built, and then the crafter should be given the choice of what level range their created items could work for. This relieves builders in a sense as well, so that they don't have to grind out items and equipment that people want in the game along with their zones (which eat up enough time and energy) and it gives the crafters the freedom of tailoring to the ever changing demand from the players in a more immediate atmosphere. I know I would personally prefer to build the first uber swordcrafting hammer of ...hammering...rather than just chunk out another sword of rulership.

I think I'm alive now..

OMG i agree on the craftable item part...maybe like a scroll to use to collect items and craft them. NPCs drop too little of useful items...the donation room is the best place to find stuff...i totally agree with making the economy rely on people rather than NPC.

Also, there is a blacksmith in Turien? cool...i didnt knwo this and i needed some stuff repaired...hehe...ok, just wanted my 2 cents on this...really good ideas

Several words,
You guys would've hated the era of Araya and Ferth no longer residing in Turien.
There wasn't an anvil left behind either. Three nearby commons in the game people in need of an anvil had to get to.
Rocksport blacksmith, The Deep Gnomes armory, and the crabbypatty dwarves blacksmith.
Rocksport and the gnomes offered anvils, while crub was just a repair stop for those in need of a condition statement.

Eventually they added that hidden door. And it's a good thing they keep it closed. Who in their right mind would want
to work by the shop of some smellt orc fiddling around a hot blackmsith's shop. They probably made him close the doors since his fowl odoer would sweep half of the buisness lane.

They even made portable anvils avaliable, but I didn't come across one till the triple digits of my career.

So basically buckle down, enjoy the fact there is an anvil less than a cityblock away most days, and that you're not stuck riding a ship to visit Turien's competitor Rocksport. As for the difficulty of newer individuals needing some assistance, just ask whomever is around. Eventually someone has to know something.

The whole learning to use your tools correctly and having the skill in repairing was a fiasco for myself.
It's not something that you just pick up instantly. Takes time to figure out all the quirks.
Finding an anvil, is just one of those quirks.

I've no comment on the repairs on monsum, as I don't currently play.

But as a former Avatar and Builder (and veteran of several dozens of similar games MUD to MMORPG) there is one big problem with the idea of crafting. That is, simply, the matter of size.

How many different types of items are there in the game? Let's start with a basic list (sorry if this is off, it's been a while!): Helm, chestpiece, sleeves, bracers, gloves, leggings, boots, cloak, shield, sword, hammer. That's not including things like rings, anklets, or the dozens of different types of weapons, just a very basic list. That's 11 item types. Now we have a starting point.

How do you make a helm? Well, you would need something that would tell you how to make a helm, some kind ecipe. This might be reusable (blueprint or pattern) or expendable (mold). Then you would need some metal plates. Basic metal plates could be bought at a vendor, while more epic ones perhaps from drops. Okay. Throw in some metal studs, some leather for padding, and you've got yourself a helm.

So for your basic, say, level 5 helm, you have four new items (plus 1 more--the helm itself). But a level 25 won't want to wear a level 5 helm, right? Of course not. So now you have to set tiers. Say, 5, 25, 65, 90, 101. Reasonable enough, right? Well, 5 different helms, each with 4 new items (adamantine plates instead of steel? exotic leather padding? Sapphire studs? etc) to craft it, that's 25 news items you have to build and put into the database. 275 new items for five tiers of each of the 11 item types. And that's a modest estimate. If I were designing the recipes, no item would require less than a recipe and 3 unique items. The nicer stuff would be more complicated and difficult. There would probably be intermediate steps. And I would probably include a tier for 110 as well.

Now, I'm not saying this is impossible. Far from it. But it's a massive undertaking, especially when you consider the added layers of complexity--DL2 has many more item types than the ones I listed; will all items be able to be crafted by a single 'crafting' skill, or will you have many professions, each with a separate niche?; who gets what skills?; how do you handle mob drops vs. vendor items?

But then consider the fact that implementing all this, there will gradually be a huge increase in the total number of items on the server at all as people find and hoard items until they have enough to complete a recipe. If you make the skill incremented rather than learned, there will also be mass hoarding of the lower level items as people try to skill up.

Once again, the task is far from impossible. But it is a huge undertaking in terms of building and coding (not to mention imagining ideas for items and recipes).

Just for info, there is somewhere around the forums, probably be easier to use my name to find it, about making things like this that prompted a nezmar reply. Something along the lines of what Eihei just explaining the manual imput needed to do such things.
It sounds nice what you're saying and all the make things up from a list of things then just magically typing your skill command and suddenly meow, theres an item.
Even for those of us dabbling in the poision mixing, we learn that our compound readings let us increase the chances of making a potentially lethal type of poision. But due the lack of mastering the skill your poisions sort of random out.
With that in mind you're probably saying that then a system does exist in which item creation of potions and armor, as well even scribing could be easily manipulated. I mean they've already done traps and poisions right?
Affraid those systems would be heavily designed to yield the random variety in which they compare to.

I'm sure at the moment if someone would really like the ability to create their own set of armor maybe even weapon the only thing people would need to do is attempt rp'ing the basics of finding your metals, the actual time and creation put into it in some blacksmith's shop, as well other bits and stories. If you continued that rp agenda and tied it in; I'm not posotive but eventually some GM might try to run that item into a RP for you.

Creation armor and stat points from just raw metals and expecting it to be a set system as you hone your skills is just too wide at the moment the make it something realistic. Armor itself is usually like you said through NPC's aquired through "loading" things for yourself. Finding and creating are yes entirely two different things, and yeah being able to make your own stuff sounds cool and would be.

I just don't think investing the time in such a thing is well high on my priorities list as a player to things we need to procure first.

Cool thoughts, do search for the post elsewhere if you're intersted in his response.