User:Minionman/Upgrades, Changed instance loot, Crafting profession changes

These changes are some ideas to add some flexibility to loot, and provide something for crafting professions to do to level up besides crafting items that will barely be used.

Al Upgrades would level up professions based on whether the final upgraded product is at a similar level to item levels that the profession would produce. (A tailor upgrading a robe from level 15 to 30, for example, would get a profession level up if the profession level was around 150 or so.) they would only be performable by blacksmiths with (equivalent character level of item)*5-10 skill in their profession. (I do not know how character levels and item levels are equivalent ot each other, so will use character levels to in general describe when an item will be used.)

Armor pieces
Crafting professions would produce these items that would than be used in upgrades, possibly in other armor pieces as well. these would be similar to the bolts of cloth produced by tailors.

Plating: Used in plate upgrades, produced by blacksmiths. Made from metal Chain: Used to produce mail upgrades. Made from leather and metal Leather sheet: Produced by leatherworkers, used for leather armor. Made from leather. Enchanted wood: Used for staffs, bows, wands, etc. produced by enchanters. 5-10 of these would be made from wood and 1-2 pieces of enchanting dust. Wire: Produced by engineers, used for engineer upgrades. Made from metal.

Level Upgrades
These two mechanics would be introduced to allow people to continue to use lower level armor, weapons, or other equipment at a higher level by increasing their stats to approximately what equivalent loot at a higher level would be, at the cost of some materials and likely money. the upgrades would increase armor (for armor pieces), damage, (for weapons), and would multiply stat bonuses, +spell damage bonuses, etc. in items based on the itemlevel differences. Upgraded items would be slightly worse than equivalent new loot, but would still be competetive. Additional magic bonus slots would be added in at particular levels to help keep up the items, these would add extra material costs.

Costs for upgrades would depend on the type of item, and the types of magical bonuses being increased. Upgrade costs would likely be 1 metal bar or so per 2 level of upgrade or so, plus extra material costs. (The type of material would depend on level so, for instance, a mail items at a low level would use copper, than bronze at character level 15 or so, iron at 30 or so, Mithril at 40 or so, etc.). Magical bonus upgrades would use additional materials, depending on the type of bonus. More expensive required items would to be needed as often.


 * Plate items: Would use plating.
 * Mail items: Would use a mail.
 * Leather items: Would use leather sheets.
 * Cloth items: Would use bolts of cloth.
 * Engineering related items: Wires, oil, etc. would likely be used.
 * Melee weapons: Metals, Sharpening stones, Weightstones.
 * Ranged weapons: Wood for bows, metal for guns
 * Jewelry/trinkets/off hands: these would just need whichever materials are used to upgrade their magical attributes.
 * Wands, Staffs: Would use magical wood.
 * Extra Magical attributes: At whichever level these are added (if they are), some extra of whichever basic resource the item uses would be added to the cost.


 * Armor bonuses: Would start off using metals, would later use earth elemental items (motes, water globules, etc.) as well for gaps of 10-15 levels or so.
 * Stat bonuses: would start using enchantment dusts, (Maybe 1-1.5 level appropriate dusts per level), with some extra items getting added in at higher levels.
 * Strength: Fire elemental items every 10-15 levels or so.
 * Agility: Water elemental items every 10-15 levels or so.
 * Stamina: Earth elemental items
 * Intellect: Air elemental items
 * Spirit: Pearls
 * +Healing: Would use healing potions most likely for every few levels of upgrade
 * +Spell damage: Would use wizard oils
 * +(particular types of spell damage): Would use wizard oils, but around 1/4-1/3 as much as equivalent general spell damage.
 * Mana/5 sec.: Would use mana potions
 * Resistances: would start off just using enchanting supplies, at later levels dragon scales, murloc/naga scales, etc. would be added for particular resistances.
 * Other magical bonuses: would use enchanting supplies.

Profession requirements for upgrades would be:
 * Blacksmiths: Needed for most mail or plate armors and melee weapons.
 * Leatherworkers: Needed for most leather armor and, without a bow oriented profession, bows
 * Tailors: Needed for most cloth armor.
 * Enchanters: Staffs, wands, off-hand non-weapon items, Relic
 * Engineers: Needed for guns, engineer produced items, and items from other categories that have some gizmo related appearance/function, such as gnomeregan loot.
 * Jewelcrafters: Necklaces, rings, most trinkets.

Service Centers
All upgrades described here would occur at service centers, enchanting may be placed at these as well. At service centers, players would leave the items, the upgrades/enchantments requested for them, and possibly leave some or all of the required materials. Characters with the required professions would come to the centers and find upgrades or enchants to do, each one taking 2 seconds or so. If some material for the upgrade were missing, the upgrader would put those materials "in storage", at the service center, until the upgrade was taken off the market.

Money for upgrades would work similarly to auction houses, with bids, deposit fees, auction house cuts, etc. However, instead of the seller setting a starting bid and buyout price, the person buying the upgrade would set a starting bid and buyout price, and upgraders would bid down the cost. If an upgrader supplied materials, these would be mailed back if another person bid down the cost further. 9Not very realistic, sure, but neede to keep the system from sucking up too many materials while still leaving some flexibility)

Skillups for upgrades would not be given right away, but would instead produce a "skillup token" that would be mailed to the winner of the upgrade bidding. The chance to receive a skillup token for an upgrade would depend on the skill level at the time, but tokens would be usable at any time, to allow players to gain in profession skills even if they proceeded to do other stuff after the upgrade.

Upgrades could also be performed in the outside world, the service center would simply be to provide a central place to carry them out at.

Cloth, leather, mail, plate upgrades
These upgrades would allow items of to be converted between these different types of armor. The items would have no changes to their item level and stats, but would gain armor based on the ratio of armor between armor levels of equivalent armor types at that level.

Items would only be able to be upgraded "up" from cloth to leather to mail to plate, not the reverse. upgrades would require leather to upgrade to leather, metal, with leather at higher levels, to go leather to mail, and metal to go to plate. Leatherworkers would be needed to go to leather armor, blacksmiths would be needed for mail at lower levels, leatherworkers could also be mail upgrades at higher levels, and blacksmiths would be needed ot go to plate.

Intermediate steps would not be needed to upgrade between multiple categories, and the required profession would be the one that could produce the final item (So, for example, a blacksmith could upgrade a cloth armor piece to plate in one step). Material costs would be additive (So, using the cloth to plate example, leather and metal would both be needed, the total cost being the cloth to leather, plus leather to mail, plus mail to plate costs).

Skillups and profession skill requirements would be the same as other upgrades. Because armor is the only thing that would change, no extra costs would be added for better or worse pieces of armor.

Instance Loot Changes
The current fixed loot setup of instances would be changed slightly to allow more control over the types of item stats gotten from instance runs. Instead of having every magical stat on the item worked out, the item would have 1-2 "attribute slots" to be filled by the player's choice of attribute.

Instance bosses would also give a new badge type of some sort to be turned in to NPCs in major cities for magical attributes to fill in, and possibly some money. The attributes would than be added to the item by someone of a crafting profession capable of upgrading the item's type, in a manner similar to other item upgrades on this page.

These "filled in" magical attributes would act like any ordinary magical attribute once added. they would not be replaceable, and would be upgraded of the item level is increased, just like attributes already on the item.

Badge types would change every 10 levels, and rewards would change every 10 levels as well. Lower level badges would be convertable to higher level ones in a 4 to 1 ratio (to discourage players from just saving up badges to use at higher levels)

Engineering Modules (a.k.a. engineering enchantments)
To give engineers a way to make extra money, they would be given "modules" to produce that would be added to items in the same way that enchantments, armor kits, shield spikes, etc. work. The modules would supply some unusual effect, such as a chance to cause nature damage to attackers, an flamethrowing ability, escape ability, or something similar. These abilities would be weakerand/or have longer cooldowns than equivalent trinket or jewelry abilities, but would still be useful enough to compete with enchantments or armor kits on items.