Now I'm hearing rumors that the sandstone will be a dropped reagent in THE SCIENCE CENTER! Of all places!! This would be totally awful - for one, the quest for Grandmaster Artisan comes late enough in Celestia as it is, and having to wait that many more areas in order to HOPE for a drop of a reagent you need so many of is just ridiculous.
Seriously, Eudora or whoever - why don't you guys set up a focus group of players who have an interest in Crafting? I'm sure you know who has a wizard that has struggled through to achieve Grandmaster Artisan. We could tell you exactly what we'd like to see happen with Crafting, and maybe even give you some GOOD ideas for how to make it challenging but still fun.
Whoever you've got in charge needs a new position. Maybe they'd be better at accounting or something.
I'm closing in on grandmaster artisan but i have to say the countless hours spend gathering reagent like black lotus, sandstone and pearl have been the least fun i've had in wizard ever...Ok to be honest it haven't been any fun at all.
I did it as fast as i could with optimized gathering routes, instanced reagent farming and constant realm switching but it still took a lot of time mindless running around the same route over and over and over and over and over and over and overx a billion.
I don't know if who ever created the crafting part of this game have ever done it themself. There is a serious lack of reagent spawns and the amount you get and the reagent you need are never on bazar unless you camp it all day and have imba reaction times to click through the pages and click buy in under a second before someone else has.
There is nothing other than treasure cards and one ring and one anthema thats worth crafting. And those are only better for pvp. And as far as i know not many players waste expensive treasure cards on pve.
So unless you want spend an insane amount of time gathering reagent that are in short supply all over to get that little extra edge in pvp or just have some pretty stuff for your house crafting is absolutely worthless.
I would have to agree with everyone on here griping about reagent hunting, especially stone blocks. The crafted items are good, some of the best in the game finally, but the effort that goes into making them is too much. They still have level requirements which acts to limit how powerful they really are, so I don't see why the developers make them so difficult to get.
I really thought that having a transmute-only reagent was an interesting concept. However, in reaching Grandmaster Artisan, I had only 354 stone blocks among the six wizards on my account. This means I had to find another 646 stone blocks to craft the amulet. Okay, it's possible, I did it - but IT WAS NOT FUN. The lack of reagents is the number one complaint among wizards who attempt crafting.
Don't get me wrong - I like crafting. All of my wizards craft. I have several Master Artisans and have crafted the Watchtower Hall and many housing items from Grizzleheim. But there are many things I would change about crafting as well. The gear needs to be BETTER than the stuff that is dropped. Gear and Housing Items need to be WORTH MORE when sold at the Bazaar. We need to be able to choose colors of the hats, robes, and shoes that we craft.
But the sandstone/sunstone issue will definitely break the proverbial camel's back of crafting.
Ok, At the next update, or according to the test realm information, Sandstone and Sunstone will be drops in the last Dungeons!
Now, as far as the Gear, I personally think the Hat and Robe are better than the 58 gear, but no shields But excellent Critical and Accuracy stats :-D Although no pips for life, death, and balance
The Boots, though, are good if critical block is necessary for school specific, but not much else, so 58 gear is better in this area. :?
Wands are a waste of time Why on earth would they make dropped wands better than crafted ones is beyond me I think they should change the crafted wands to 40 critical hit points and same damage, that would definitely make them worth making! :-P
Everything else I am fine with, just a few changes.
Make the boots critical block to all with pips :-D and Increase the wands! :-)
This is increasingly aggravating and the lack of response from Kingworld is adding to the frustration. I do not want my kid obsessed with finding these blocks and I don't what that much time invested in a game. crafting is a money making sink hole for the company and not much of a return for the player. Add more reagents abbreviate the amount needed or lower the price of "rares." Better yet DO ALL THREE! Celestia Grandmaster has only made things many times worse.
Sincerely considering ending my subscription. Greed is not wholesome.
I do think they should make more spawn sites. They should also make it to where we can harvest sandstone.
So far, the best place i found to harvest stone blocks is the Grand Chasm Past instance. There are two spawn spots and most of the time you don't need to repair the bridges to get to them. Earlier today, I spent a half hour entering this instance, grabbing the stone, exiting, and then reentering. After that half hour, I ended up with 44 stone blocks. That game me more time to spend on other quests.
What's particulary ridiculous is that Sand Stone is within the HARVEST category of reagents. Meaning that it was originally intended to be harvestable, but some bright person figured out that it would be more "fun" (read: annoying) for players to have to find the stone blocks to transmute instead.
I don't like having these rare stones as boss drops, considering the quantity needed for some items, but it's better than the current system.
Stone blocks went from being the "meh, bazaar junk" item to, literally overnight, becoming an even hotter commodity than Black Pearls. And that is saying something.. Especially because SO many recipes, including transmutes, requires massive amounts of stone blocks as it is (it's easier for me to find the DIAMONDS I need for Watchtower Hall than it is to find the stone blocks!). All of those recipes are hard to make now, and all areas that happen to have even small amounts of stone block spawns are overrun with crafters.
Please let us have harvestable sandstone. Pretty please, with cherries and chocolate sauce on top?
Used to be I could go farm for black lotus or red mandrake, and if I found someone else, I would just go farm something else and be fine. Or strike up a conversation. Met some great in game friends this way.
But this is different.
I like that KI is trying to accommodate us with making the requisite changes to faciliate our needs. I must laud their efforts in that regard. It is refreshing to see that we can have new things to do in the game, thereby, reducing monotony. I've had my account for about a year and a half now so you can imagine if I had to be doing the same thing over and over everyday with no change.
I like some of the updates but some I'm not so sure about. I do not wish to be difficult but I just have a few observations. Firstly, while I would like to have a comfortable gameplay, as far as questing, etc is concerned, i do not wish it to be EASY. I just want it to be realistic and manageable.
For instance, level 58 gears, I do not wish to be able to buy them at the bazaar. I think we all should earn them. However ,if I should get a level 58 life robe then I sohuld be able to sell it at a reasonalbe price or trade it with a life wizard if I have one. So, I appreciate you removing the NO TRADE, NO AUCTION from these items and I would like it to remain that way but it should be that once they are sold (i.e. lvl 50 & 58 gears) then they disappear from the bazaar.
Crafting: thank you for putting the celestia spells back at the archivist etc. it should make the grandmaster quest a bit easier. But I still have a problem with the current system that you have in place. First of all, please remember that when you craft a particular gear, you only wear it for, a maximum of five levels, then you get something better. Therefore, should it be that when we craft the requisite gears for a particular level, that it should have good stats to carry us from say level 40 to 50 (just and example). Remember that gathering the reagents to craft any item is pretty tedious so we should see some real rewards.
A typical example is the celestian wands, The crafted wands give 20 hit rating plus one pip for level 55 and the reagents are not easy to find. Now, why would I waste time hunting reagents to craft this wand when I can simply do that quest in stormriven hall and i get a better wand that does 120 damage, gives 20 hit rating and a pip? So, you see, there are no real rewards for crafting wands.
The level 58 gear need work, please. the critical rating is just too low. i mean 20 hit rating? why? the hat , robe and boots should acumulate to a total of at least 45% hit rating and the same for block. This is level 58, we are suppose to be legends, so what gives? ok i know there will be other worlds, so lets have a compromise. let the level 58 gear remain as is but lower the hit and block ratio of the bosses please. They block you 100% of the time especially Astreus, there is no point putting on critical gear for him because he will block you 100% of the time, and remember we just get criticals on rare occasions so it should mean something that we critical.
The prices of crafted items need to be higher. When I spend days running around mooshu, dragonspyre and other woorlds to get black lotus to transmute black pearl and red mandrake to make blood moss or ore to make diamonds, then the item should be worth the effort, if i decide to sell it. Anywhere from 6000-25000 gold is reasonable to me; considering the time and money I have invested in this item. A blood moss is what? 1500 gold each and black pearl is about 1865. Usually you need at least 6-8 of each so already the gear is worth 25480 gold. not to mention I had to buy the crafting table and other reagents plus my time invested in this crafting and gatheirng of stuff. so when i sell it for 1500 0r 3000 gold, it's definitely not worth it unless i get back my reagents.
Sandstone/sunstone: I have a feeling that these bosses will just be dropping reagents and snacks lol. This is not cool, make the reagents drops as well as harvestable. or at least sand stone (harvestable) with suntone as the rare drop.
So in summary. Level 58 gears need better design (they look like bathrobes and the hats look like buckets) please give us something that looks a little more wizardy. Those people in Dragonspyre have on some nice clothes. Gallium Palladim for example and that guy in the chasm of the past. For the ladies, the crystal guide looks nice and that woman who guards the knowledge crystals.
SO, better stats for level 58 and better design. Crafted gear should cost more and give better stats than items available for sale anywhere in gaME. reagents are sometimes too much and you have them back to back (sandstone/sunstone, black lotus/black pearl, etc). Um what else? oh the criticals, please make some adjustments that is more reasonable to all. lower the mobs hit/bolck ratio or increase ours please. Thats all for now.
Actually my take on this is ANY expletive quest that requires 1,000 of anything to be foraged is as stupid as possible.
This is why I had stopped playing other games like EQ, because the idiot programmers insisted on creating HUGE time sinks.
I can't understand why un-great gear that can't really be directly bought/sold between players, no affect on any so called in game 'economy'.
It makes absolutely no sense. I thought that the stupid bookshelf was bad with all the darn black pearls and blood moss, it took a week to make two, but my god this is rediculous. After collecting for stone blocks the entire time I've played, I only had 250 blocks. That's from doing almost every quest in almost every zone possible, and I've only got a paltry 250 blocks.
REDICULOUS.
It's not fun running from spawn spot to spawn spot to spawn spot hours on end attempting to get enough crud to finish a quest that results in a reward which has a value less that of dropped gear.
Reduce the item rquirements for this quest, at it is it requires stupidly too much time.
Actually my take on this is ANY expletive quest that requires 1,000 of anything to be foraged is as stupid as possible.
This is why I had stopped playing other games like EQ, because the idiot programmers insisted on creating HUGE time sinks.
I can't understand why un-great gear that can't really be directly bought/sold between players, no affect on any so called in game 'economy'.
It makes absolutely no sense. I thought that the stupid bookshelf was bad with all the darn black pearls and blood moss, it took a week to make two, but my god this is rediculous. After collecting for stone blocks the entire time I've played, I only had 250 blocks. That's from doing almost every quest in almost every zone possible, and I've only got a paltry 250 blocks.
REDICULOUS.
It's not fun running from spawn spot to spawn spot to spawn spot hours on end attempting to get enough crud to finish a quest that results in a reward which has a value less that of dropped gear.
Reduce the item rquirements for this quest, at it is it requires stupidly too much time.
Dimento, MMOs require 'Timesinks' because of the fact that the programmers need time to create new content and what not. KingsIsle, by making Sandstone and Sunstone drop from Fishbots (Science Center), Pylon Bosses (Stormriven), and the bosses of Solarium and Trial of Spheres has 'eliminated' the 'mega' Timesink. now since Sandstone is a very common drop from Fishbots, you can easily 'farm' them for the prerequisite number of sandstone and sunstone or just the 100 sandstone to transmute into 6 sunstone and 10 sandstone for your necklace.
Right now, the only 'major' time sink in it is the Pearl hunting. I know on one of the blogs about Wizard101 I saw a Grotto map. Since it's not listed as an Official Fansite, I cannot say the name of that blog, sadly.
Anyways, Good luck in your trials. There are 6 Spawn points in the Grotto for Pearls.
Sandstones and Sunstones are dropped from Aqua-Bots in the Science Center. They are also in the Wooden Chests in the Science Center. I just happened to be helping out a friend there and I got the rest of the Sunstones I needed to make the Virtuous Deck.
But excellent Critical and Accuracy stats :-D Although no pips for life, death, and balance 
Why on earth would they make dropped wands better than crafted ones is beyond me 
I think they should change the crafted wands to 40 critical hit points and same damage, that would definitely make them worth making! :-P