Crafting in New Vegas is seriously lacking : Fallout: New Vegas

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 8:09 am

Yup all these problems and more.

Luckily for you PC users you can just add recipes with mods, but us consules..........

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 2:23 pm

I find even crafting for ammo underwhelming, because primers are rare. I got that perk where I recover more hulls and cases I think, but I cannot make my own ammo because I don't recover primers. In the end I have to break down my ammo for primers, but what's the point in that?
I could break down other ammo, but I might as well sell them instead, and use the money to buy the ammo that I want.

It's handy when you're working with a rare ammo, like .44. I never found a dealer who carried much of that stuff, so I did a good bit of reloading my spent cases. (And then later, when I got the .44 SWC recipe, I broke down most of my normal .44 to make that.)

...what I wish you could do is break down the useless specialty ammos (like all the ones that multiply DT) so you could turn them into regular ammo.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 8:21 am

I find even crafting for ammo underwhelming, because primers are rare. I got that perk where I recover more hulls and cases I think, but I cannot make my own ammo because I don't recover primers. In the end I have to break down my ammo for primers, but what's the point in that?
I could break down other ammo, but I might as well sell them instead, and use the money to buy the ammo that I want.

Repair kits are really cool though. But other than that, not much use for crafting.

the best way i get more ammo on reloading benches, for at least 5.56 mm ammo is basically to take apart the 5mm and use the primers and lead for 5.56 ammo, the only thing you will left over is the casings. You can do the same thing with pistol ammo.

the only ammo i tend to use though is the .308 and 10mm, and ive never worried about ammo in the game so crafting ammo was only a side thing just for the hell of it.

what they need to do is make ammo much rarer like others have stated in other threads, this way they can expand on the ammo crafting and drive home a purpose for it.

i mean i would to constantly make match grade ammo for the .308, as i would use it constantly for This Machine as its not all that accurate at range.

hell they should expand on teh weapon mods as well, i mean since when can you not add a match grade barrel to a weapon? i would love to replace the barrel on some of these gun with a high grade accurate barrel.

i mean all the concepts in teh game seem great, but while the concepts are great, they are extremely limited and tend to border on pointless.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 2:01 am

question, has anyone even found the purpose of tanned gecko skins?

Tanned gecko skins just sell for more money. I'm waiting on a mod with 3 gecko skin armors, if I don't see them soon I might have to make them myself!

Gecko skin would be identical to leather but would be silver and have maybe 15 rad resist. Require 4 tanned gecko hide, 2 wonder glue, and a leather belt.

Fire gecko hide would look like reinforced leather but be bluish, obviously would have fire resist and maybe a few more DR. Requires 4 tanned fire gecko, 3 wonder glue, 2 leather belt, and 5 scrap metal.

I haven't decided what golden gecko would look like, but it would require a lot of skins, some other expensive stuff, require high survival, and give bonuses to charisma and speech.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 3:42 pm

It's handy when you're working with a rare ammo, like .44. I never found a dealer who carried much of that stuff, so I did a good bit of reloading my spent cases. (And then later, when I got the .44 SWC recipe, I broke down most of my normal .44 to make that.)

...what I wish you could do is break down the useless specialty ammos (like all the ones that multiply DT) so you could turn them into regular ammo.

Where did you find a SWC recipe for .44 magnum at?

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 11:23 am

Crafting needs to be much more rewarding and should give more benefits to players investing into it. Also it suffers a little due to the interface which over complicates it.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 9:23 am

I've seen 'box of primers' or somesuch. But i couldn't break THAT down into separate primers. Simply enough.. WTF?

You need to buy a box of primers, drop the box, and then pick the box up again.

(I assume whoever came up with that was the same person who made it so you need to add Caravan cards to a container and take them back out again before they get added to your deck.)

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 5:00 am

I hear you, Ultravis. I wish the game also gave you a portable recipe book that you can refer to without having to walk back and forth to the campfire, or for that matter, work bench or ammo press.

I swear I'm not dumb, but how can I memorize all these recipes?

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 1:53 am

Yeah.

Crafting is really lame, the ONLY thing I find I can readily make is Cactus Water.

There needs to be more ingredients / materials in game.

This.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 12:01 pm

Also it suffers a little due to the interface which over complicates it.

That interface really needs some work. Once you have the right skill level It should be easier to know what you can craft with each item. A recipe list outside of the crafting menus would be nice as well

You don't have to hold my hand but make it more intuitive and less of a chore.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 5:43 am

Many of the recipes seem poorly designed - why 7 'Nettles to tan a Golden Gecko hide? When I've found maybe 30 'nettles total?? SO I can tan 4 hides over the ENTIRE GAME???!?!?!

Every recipe seems to have at least 1 item in critically short supply : Duct Tape for Weapon Repair kit, Brace for Super Stim, Detergent for Rocket, etc.

The interface just plain svcks: hard to use, and it drops back to game after every use, and if you "inspect" one recipe for ingrediants, you have to drop back out of the menu cause you can't see any other recipe

When I first saw that Crafting had been added, I was glad to see it, but know, just disappointment with the poor implemntation.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 11:38 am

Crafting feels tacked on and unpolished to me. It feels like somebody's mod.

I like the rest of the game pretty well but I mostly ignore crafting. I'd rather feed well-hidden blueprints into a vending machine and let it spit out custom items than find (*) a campfire and fiddle with ingredients and a menu.

The ammo workbench and reloading ammo isn't any better.

* I like how your dude can make a ton of stuff out of plants but can't figure out how to make his own campfire without a premade ring of rocks.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 12:03 am

Crafting feels tacked on and unpolished to me. It feels like somebody's unfinished mod.

Fix'd

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 4:19 pm

Crafting beyond hand loading ammo is a joke in this game and even with that the UI is so clunky it's ridiculous.

This, emphatically. Lackluster system to begin with, using an interface that makes me want to go outside and punt kittens.

Long lists of overblown, semi-useless "filler" recipes punctuated by a few good, useful ones with practical requirements. Basic steaks useful, 5-item gourmet dishes- not so much. Handloads, wonderful- most of the other crapola besides the breakdowns to make handloads from, not so much. Tanning Gecko hides...oh, let me slit my wrists!

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 2:03 pm

I wholeheartedly agree.
First playthrough I picked up all the old components I was used to picking up.
Fission batteries, paint guns, sensor modules, conductors, pilot lights you name it.
Then I learned there are basically no craftable weapons and I started picking up the things needed for weapon repair kits.
Most of the campfire recipes require way too much skill investment and material.
The only thing IMO worth crafting on the workbench is weapon repair kits.
The reloading bench is a decent way to recycle ammo but it's ridiculous that you can't make AP and HP rounds for every ammo type.
That's the only reason I took the Hand Loader perk.
Then I found out it was just for a few unique ammo types that don't even apply to all of the most abundant popular ammo types.
Waste of a perk...........
Crafting is definitely broken.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 5:14 am

Crafting in this game is awful for the simple reason of specific mats being too rare and not found on merchants to purchase!

I have so much stuff accumulated in my storage in my house. Probably close to 10,000 lbs of just stuff I accumulated. So I go through my inventory to see what I can create I go to create a stimpack I have 30 empty hypodermic 2 xander root and 1 broc flower, ok so I can create 1 stimpack.

How about a super stimpack turns out I have 15 stimpacks, 57 nuka-cola and 0 mutfruit I have yet to even see 1 mutfruit in the game!!!

Even trying to create bottlecap mines, I have 4 cherry bombs after playing for 80 hours and I need 5 to create 1 mine! That is pathetic! I have found some cherry bombs in places that would be considered stealing if I took them and that’s about it.

I can’t really use my stimpacks to create slasher because there better used to heal myself.

I can’t make any good poisons because I found a total of 8 horsenettle and 1 poison takes 5 horsenettle

Why would I waste my radaway on creating mass purified water when it’s better used to remove radiation from myself?

I can’t create hydra because I have yet to accumulate any cave fungus.

Homemade flamer fuel, weapon repair kits, some steaks from meat of random animals, and overcharged MF cells/Energy Cells are just about the only things I crafted with all these mats. I am really disappointed here.

The requirement of large amounts of white horsenettle makes crafting with survival a pain in the ass along with other rare mats for crafting other things. You’re better off just selling the junk with a high barter skill, buying stimpacks from your local doctor and having a high medicine to get the most out of using them. This is not an MMORPG here where I have to go out and farm for mats and no one is going to be willing to take the time to do that. Also, why can’t I use a stove to do the cooking in my house?

In fallout 3 I had my house full of all kinds of crafted stuff; 60 bottle cap mines, 30 nuka-cola grenades, 6 schishkebab’s (using 5 to repair). 5 railway rifles. 4 deathclaw gauntlets. The point is I spent a lot of time crafting in FO3 with the few options that were available to me and hardly any time crafting in new Vegas because you made it too complicated. Even the reloading bench svcks and is completely useless because it’s just easier to use my barter to buy ammo I need from merchants.

I have found a lot of mutfruits so far.
i have also found a lot of cherry bombs in random places.
for the mass water, it's best used for hardcoe mode where you need lots of water and don't want to take the rad hit. also it could be used in many different roleplay ideas.
i've found cave fungus at the Fort on random legion soldiers.
also a bunch of the other things could easily be used for roleplay ideas, and poisons would be useful to me personally as im a sneak build character. even though i don't have the time to look for ingredients :/
also i love reloading benches. i'm able to make ammo for many weapons using the ammo i never use and can make ammo for my hunting revolver, because i have yet to find a merchant who sells the ammo for it who sells the normal ammo variant. most merchants sell hollow point rounds for it, which i can buy and "recycle" into the normal rounds.
crafting and reloading benches are very useful to me. and it's always fun to get some free ammo once in awhile, right?

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 10:12 am

Crafting was a good idea gone horribly wrong. Most of the crafted items are not worth the time and effort to craft them.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 7:35 am

Most items are useless, but one nice meal is Gecko Kabobs. Something like 20 seconds of healing. 200 FOD and H20 at the same time. I didnt notice some of the long heal over time stats that some of the more high level foods have.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 1:01 am

I have found a lot of mutfruits so far.
i have also found a lot of cherry bombs in random places.
for the mass water, it's best used for hardcoe mode where you need lots of water and don't want to take the rad hit. also it could be used in many different roleplay ideas.
i've found cave fungus at the Fort on random legion soldiers.
also a bunch of the other things could easily be used for roleplay ideas, and poisons would be useful to me personally as im a sneak build character. even though i don't have the time to look for ingredients :/
also i love reloading benches. i'm able to make ammo for many weapons using the ammo i never use and can make ammo for my hunting revolver, because i have yet to find a merchant who sells the ammo for it who sells the normal ammo variant. most merchants sell hollow point rounds for it, which i can buy and "recycle" into the normal rounds.
crafting and reloading benches are very useful to me. and it's always fun to get some free ammo once in awhile, right?

Uh, you can't breakdown .40-75 HP ammo or any special ammo for that matter, only the base version of that ammo.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 2:30 am

Crafting in New vegas is nearly impossible and pointless i mean you will be doing more looking around for one little item you never heard of then anything else. it needs to be simplified and the materials drasticly reduced.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 3:40 pm

I do agree with the general sentiment of this thread.

After a full playthrough of NV, I used the campfire a grand total of one time... in the tutorial mission.

I used the workbench to occasionally make a repair kit.

It was a kick in the crotch when I took the Hand Loader perk assuming I would be able to make HP or AP ammo (or even incendiaries!)... nope, just got a couple of handload recipes. It was a second kick to the crotch when the .44 SWC load is broken (You need to take Hand Loader and get the recipe from a guy who makes a high Survival check. Well, we just established that Survival kinda svcks so I never got it that high.)

I was assuming that the reloading bench would be a great source to make lots of new ammo by looting casings off of bodies or containers and then assembling them with purchased primers or powder. Well the Gun Runners did sell powder jars and boxes of primers, occasionally. Never seemed to be sufficient, though.

Turns out that the bench isn't for making any new ammo. It's for breaking down ammo you already bought and then reassembling it into slightly better handloads. Except since the component requirements for the handloads use more powder than the base ammo, you end up with less ammo than you started with.

(By the way, it's bugged the same way that the Caravan cards are bugged; you have to remove them from your inventory and then put them back in for the jars to "break down" so you can use the components. That is, if you have a powder jar or primer box, drop it on the ground, then pick it back up. You'll get a Primers Added message.)

All in all for someone who anticipated spending most of their time at the reloading bench, it was a pretty significant disappointment. Maybe I just expected more.

For all the things NV did right, crafting's one of the things it dropped the ball on.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 2:30 am

Completely agree, have been playing for over a hundred hours, not enough materials to craft half the crap in the game. The required amount of materials for this game's crafting system is rediculous.

» Sat Mar 05, 2011 11:58 pm

As much as I love almost all of the changes in NV I have to agree that crafting is a bit cryptic and the requirements for most things aren't worth the return on the time/skill/perk investment. They also need to place crafting locations closer to locations where players are likely to be storing their junk.

Also, any actual bugs people are finding should probably be posted in one of the troubleshooting forums so the people working on patches can see them and get them entered into their issue tracking system. It's the only way the bugs will be patched.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 3:24 am

I expect more from DLC, but the only problem I have with it now aside from a lack of recipes is that ammo requires unique to type casings and hulls. It makes creating hard-to-find ammo rather impossible since you will almost certainly never have any casings if you can never find the bullets.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 4:26 pm

I expect more from DLC, but the only problem I have with it now aside from a lack of recipes is that ammo requires unique to type casings and hulls. It makes creating hard-to-find ammo rather impossible since you will almost certainly never have any casings if you can never find the bullets.

I agree. All of the common crafting components should be purchasable somewhere.