2.0 Crafting is Broken (featuring MATH!)

[Doctor Idgaf]

I decided to take a deeper look into the numbers behind crafting since 2.0 dropped to see if there is a way to make money doing it. Turns out not only can you not make money crafting, it's prohibitively expensive.

This is so much worse than I thought it was going to be; I figured there was a way to make some money by crafting but it would take being a bit clever, turns out it's just not possible.

The closest you can come to buying crafting components now is to buy junk from a junk vendor and break it down.

One thing to clear up real quick too, the perk Lucky Day does NOT affect the amount of components you get for scrapping items, it affects how many components you loot from containers. Now, I'm not sure if this is true or not, but it supposedly increases the amount of components found by LOOTING by 25% (I am skeptical because, frankly, I've been so let down by the changes to the game it would not surprise me if this perk doesn't actually do anything).

For the purposes of this discussion we're talking about how much it costs to buy junk to make common components, then use those components to make either weapons or higher tier components to make higher tier weapons.

Difficulty does not affect these numbers.

Okay, so 1 junk item equals 1 common component.

Each junk item costs 210e.

(A character with 50 street cred gets a discount to vendor prices so it's to 179e for them, but we're moving forward with the 210e price for comparison.)

Formula so far is: 1 common part costs 210e

Each weapon costs 30 parts of its corresponding tier parts (30 common for a tier 1 (white) weapon, 30 legendary for a tier 5 (orange) weapon)

To craft each part takes 5 of the previous tier for 1 of the next tier up. So 5 common parts for 1 uncommon part, 5 uncommon parts for 1 rare part, 5 rare parts for each epic part, 5 epic parts for each legendary part.

But you can't do too much with 1 part, so here is what it takes to get 30 by tier, since that's how many parts you need to craft a weapon:

150 common to make 30 uncommon parts
150 uncommon parts to make 30 rare parts
150 rare parts to make 30 epic parts
150 epic parts to make 30 legendary parts

Still with me? Good. Here is where it gets bananas.

Here is how many common parts it takes to make 30 of each tier above 2:

Rare (blue, tier 3): 750
Epic (purple, tier 4): 3,750
Legendary (orange, tier 5): 18,750

So if you are starting with nothing and want to make a legendary weapon you would need 18,750 pieces of junk, broken down into common parts then crafted into higher tier parts until you only have 30 legendary parts left, which you would use to make your weapon.

Here is what it costs to make each tier of weapon using this formula:

Common: 6,300e
Uncommon: 31,500e
Rare: 157,500e
Epic: 787,500e
Legendary: 3,937,500e

Now, this cost is obviously offset by finding components as loot or by scrapping gear you don't need, but even so crafting items is prohibitively expensive now. The whole point of crafting is an alternative to finding weapons or buying them. At this point I cannot think of a single reason to craft weapons in 2.0 since you are better off saving your components to upgrade your cyberware or to upgrade iconic weapons.

I can kind of understand toning crafting down so you can't make unlimited money from it, but this change is kind of insane; it would honestly make more sense to get rid of crafting altogether at this point since there isn't an incentive to do it anymore. (Except maybe for role-playing purposes but even that's a stretch)

Also keep in mind I haven't gone into the number of components it takes to upgrade cyberware or iconic weapons; the numbers I found doing this were bad enough. This whole project started off as a guide to profit from crafting but quickly changed when I saw there is literally no way to do so without modding the game in some kind of way.

I hate to keep harping on 2.0 changes but man, it's like every time I think I've found something that might be an improvement it turns out to be yet another let down.

[DarkFire]

Interesting analysis. I'd imagine the intention is for players to be encouraged to break down items that are picked up in order to gain crafting materials as opposed to buying them. The question then is whether to sell picked up items or to break them down for crafting parts.

[adobo]

Why are you upgrading common parts all the way to legendary? You can literally buy hats for like 1k each and disassemble them for higher tier mats. Also the vending machine pistol is 100 a pop and can be scraped for common mats.

[forester]

just wait for legendary stuff to start dropping. you will fly in legendary components. it seems you are just low level and hence they dont drop for you. after some level like 20-30% of drops from enemies is legendary stuff.

before 2.0 crafting was broken in the game, you could buy components directly from vendors, craft 10 legendary sniper rifles and sell them for like 80-100k credits. then again buy components, repeat, infinite credits and everything.

the patch removed that, now materials is stuff you can get from items (of the same quality level) and can use it for crafting or upgrades. cyberware for full upgrades requires a lot of legendary (lvl5 materials, 250 for last upgrade) so it makes sense to accumulate them. sell anything below legendary, disasemble legendaries, and you will be covered for all crafting and upgrade needs IMO.

completed the game DLC on very hard with my lvl50 character and had no problem with getting literally thousands of legendary (lvl5) components to craft everything and upgrade everything.

[funkynutz]

Originally posted by majikero:

Why are you upgrading common parts all the way to legendary? You can literally buy hats for like 1k each and disassemble them for higher tier mats. Also the vending machine pistol is 100 a pop and can be scraped for common mats.

Why buy anything? I'm constantly having to breakdown or sell stuff after every big fight, because there's so much stuff you can pick up free. I've made about 500 T2 parts just because I had so many T1 parts, that I was never going to use even 10% of them anyway.

I go out with the clothes on my back, 3 weapons, and a handful of food/drink/meds. Wandering around with a backpack full of assault rifles, shotguns, SMGs, swords, machetes, clubs and dildos... Plus tons of clothes that I'll never wear? Nah... Scrap it all.

[V]

...i feel like i didnt need math to know the crafting was broken lol ..but hey have an award

[adobo]

Originally posted by funkynutz:

Why buy anything?

When you want stuff RIGHT NOW instead of hoping you get a drop eventually. Especially when higher tier stuff becomes available. Usually buy up a whole set of higher tier chrome instead of upgrading each of them. Weapons are mostly Dogtown stuff since I still plan to roam around most of NC and not looting weapons from there. And lastly is the clothes just because. You'll eventually end up with more money than you know what to do with so I usually end up spending it for whatever I feel like.

[dot]

"there isn't an incentive to do it anymore."

My incentive is I can use the drop weapons to get components to upgrade my existing gear.
At early, it easily serves you to have some of your gear above the tier that you can buy or loot. Later (around lv 30-40), all the cash you think you were drowning in the beginning now it evaporates with the cost of the hier tier implants (T5 arms? 84k+ eds) so you are gonna want to upgrade from scraps all you can.

2.0 craft is there to empower you and save you money from recycling drops and discarded and avoiding to buy or sell where you are gonna get ripped. And of course is there also to level up Engineering xD.

[Doctor Idgaf]

Originally posted by DarkFire:

Interesting analysis. I'd imagine the intention is for players to be encouraged to break down items that are picked up in order to gain crafting materials as opposed to buying them. The question then is whether to sell picked up items or to break them down for crafting parts.

Yeah, I'm thinking you and others are right, the only real way to get the mats you need is to rely on drops from loot. I just wanted to get clever again like before and make a ton of money lol

Originally posted by majikero:

Why are you upgrading common parts all the way to legendary? You can literally buy hats for like 1k each and disassemble them for higher tier mats. Also the vending machine pistol is 100 a pop and can be scraped for common mats.

Oh for sure, going from common to legendary would take forever and is a terrible waste of time, I use it to demonstrate that crafting is...not as much fun as it used to be lol

I think the problem with crafting overall is it's kind of like Alchemy in Skyrim; it's always going to be broken to some extent, the question is how broken do they want to let it be?

For me I like game systems to be fun and would prefer something that CAN be exploited, but it's ultimately up to the player whether they want to do that. The other way, limiting something to the point of it only being EXACTLY what the devs want it to be, just feels like the death of fun. Be like Larian, let us stack barrels and go nuts.

[adobo]

Originally posted by Doctor Idgaf:

Be like Larian, let us stack barrels and go nuts.

Pretty sure that one is 100% intended. You're not "breaking the game" or using an exploit if the devs expect people to do it.

[orcaa]

Originally posted by funkynutz:

Originally posted by majikero:

Why are you upgrading common parts all the way to legendary? You can literally buy hats for like 1k each and disassemble them for higher tier mats. Also the vending machine pistol is 100 a pop and can be scraped for common mats.

Why buy anything? I'm constantly having to breakdown or sell stuff after every big fight, because there's so much stuff you can pick up free. I've made about 500 T2 parts just because I had so many T1 parts, that I was never going to use even 10% of them anyway.

I go out with the clothes on my back, 3 weapons, and a handful of food/drink/meds. Wandering around with a backpack full of assault rifles, shotguns, SMGs, swords, machetes, clubs and dildos... Plus tons of clothes that I'll never wear? Nah... Scrap it all.

I agree. Just scrap the stuff you get after each fight.

[Flre]

some input from my side:
Since weapons don't have "scaling" now, it means that you have to craft less. I would honestly say that crafting is not needed at all, because you can buy guns from shopkeepers orget from dead npcs. The only reason what you actually need crafting material for is for the upgrades (iconics / cybernetics)

[funkynutz]

Originally posted by majikero:

Originally posted by funkynutz:

Why buy anything?

When you want stuff RIGHT NOW instead of hoping you get a drop eventually. Especially when higher tier stuff becomes available. Usually buy up a whole set of higher tier chrome instead of upgrading each of them. Weapons are mostly Dogtown stuff since I still plan to roam around most of NC and not looting weapons from there. And lastly is the clothes just because. You'll eventually end up with more money than you know what to do with so I usually end up spending it for whatever I feel like.

I should have probably phrased it a bit better. "Why buy anything to break down for crafting?" would probably have been better. I buy things that are better than what I already have... I don't bother buying things, just to break them, to upgrade some crappy bits though. I'll buy the highest tier stuff I can find, then upgrade that.

[forester]

Originally posted by Flre:

some input from my side:
Since weapons don't have "scaling" now, it means that you have to craft less. I would honestly say that crafting is not needed at all, because you can buy guns from shopkeepers orget from dead npcs. The only reason what you actually need crafting material for is for the upgrades (iconics / cybernetics)

some unique stuff can only be crafted. from quick memory some rare quick hacks are blueprint only and so is smasher rocket launcher. that smart shotgun carried me through whole DLC. :>

before 2.0 you could also craft blueprints with random affixes (like poison damage, explosive damage etc) and that allowed to farm for some guns that have great syndergy with some skills (like extra damage to poisoned enemies), but unfortunately they decided to remove that.

[Doctor Idgaf]

Originally posted by majikero:

Also the vending machine pistol is 100 a pop and can be scraped for common mats.

HAHAHA THIS WORKS!

So you get 5 common components for each gun, you need to break down 6 to get the 30 components needed to make 1 tier 1 knife, the knife sells for 700e.

So you can make 100e by turning 6 vending machine guns into components and then into a knife that you sell.

Now the REAL question is who is crazy enough to spend the time it takes to use that to make a lot of money in the game?

Someone else, the answer is someone else. I'd rather spend 8 hours doing the Northside/NID kill loop than even 20 minutes doing this, but this was fun to find out about.

[['w']]

I would upgrade only from white - green - to blue , else it would be a super waste.