Plans for Enchanting?
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I like the enchanting system, however I do not like how you learn it.
Assume I'm a newb, and have just created some light armor. Suddenly I have space for LOTS of enchanting. Assuming I have access to an Enchanting table I am presented with an overload of information. Once I figure it out, I have a choice.
1 - Spend the next few days doing nothing but gathering resources, to create as many enchantments as you can
2 - Get tired of that and go out for some serious exploration/fighting without all the enchantment slots on your armor filled.
The second option seems kinda stupid. "Let me go out and possibly get in dangerous situations with armor that could be better, if I just had more patience."
Its hard to ask a character to spend so much time enchanting when very new to the game. I hope there is some kind of progression planned... you have to spend knowledge or something to get more enchanting options... something. Something that would allow a character to improve his armor as much as he can now without spending so much time on it all at once.
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As a citizen of Meridian, I had access to a beautiful collection of reagents put together by my guildies. It was a happy couple of hours deciding what buffs I wanted on my new gear.
In a previous test, before there were cities and I was playing solo, it was definitely more challenging. In a future test, I suspect there will be folks who set themselves up as craftor/vendors and make gear available for a price.
What is it you actually wanted, @Woode? An instant (or easily obtained) set of strongly enchanted gear to go hunting in? I'm not sure that's either a realistic expectation or a desirable thing, tbh. If the expectation that excellent gear takes real work defeats you, you're gonna hate building a house.
That takes all day!! 
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@Woode said in Plans for Enchanting?:
(...)Its hard to ask a character to spend so much time enchanting when very new to the game(...)
It kind of is the price you pay for playing a multiplayer game solo. Interaction with others has to pay off to some degree, or nobody would do that, just like PvP requires reward for taking a risk. As @PeachMcD mentioned, people specializing on gathering and crafting want an incentive to sell their products and guilds/cities more than likely advertise with lending you a hand in the beginning in the hope that you later down the road return the favor.
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I haven't found the enchantments completely necessary yet let alone fully enchanting every piece of gear. I mostly play solo and now with the talent tree in, it's even easier to make your character more powerful.
As far as progress, the answer is yes and Prometheus covered it a little in the last Q&A, but likely not what you want to hear since it only gets harder. It's not supposed to be easy to get the best enchantments immediately (or the best gear). I mean, most MMOs work like that. You spend time to get more powerful. Until then you go around collecting plants and killing less powerful creatures to build up knowledge points you can then spend on abilities / talents. Then you can go after bigger "game" to get rarer enchantment items.
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Actually I did build a house, and did not have problem with that. I found trying to fill all the enchantment slots of light armor and a staff much harder. I realize that my first enchantments won't be the most powerful, but just figuring out the enchantment system and experimenting with it, while interesting, too much longer than building a house. What I think would be nice is that your initial cotton armor have fewer enchantment slots making the work a bit easier, and then the spider silk armor have the full slot number.
Also, I seem to have an excess of knowledge points, perhaps some should be used to more slowly unlock all the enchantment recipies?
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@Woode You are missing a third option and that is to enchant what you can with what you have or are willing to get given a specific time frame you allot yourself. Like, "Ok, I am going to see what I need to put poison resistance on everything because I want to fight goblins/spiders." then, "I'll give myself an hour of gathering and see if I can get what I need."
Some of the mobs, like deer and wolves have resources, so a combo of resource-gathering-hack-n-slashing is already taking place. By the time your enchanting anyways, you'll either have a house or a city to call home, and if that is the case you may have already wandered the land a bit, picking up things here and there.(besides the fact that every 'first' time you gather something you get KP) If you found more resources to protect you from electricity or something else, you don't need to fill up your enchants, you can just do one or two and then face the mob that uses that which you have resisted as their main attack.
Make sense?
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I personally LOVE the implementation of the Enchantment system.
Fractured has put a lot of the 'Magic' back into enchanting by making people use Trial and Error, Experimentation if you would, in order to come up with the best possible combinations. This incentivizes going out and making your 2nd or 3rd, or 20th suit of Cotton armor before you get a chance to come across Spider-silk, let's say. You put one set of enchantments on and examine your handiwork, then you play around with the system and come up with another configuration. In the very beginning, though, you start out cautiously, only trying to add 1 target enchantment onto 1 piece of gear, then going out and exploring to see if that enchantment is helpful, or negligible in your playstyle.
Sure, in this age, you can go out and find Enchantment guides on the Internet, there are some linked in the various forum topics out there, compiled by your fellow testers, and such will continue as long as the game exists, but there's a mystery and magic to enchanting as it is now, if you choose NOT to use these tables. (for beta-testing purposes, I start without the tables, in the previous test, and used the tables in this most recent test, to get a fully rounded experience in the limited timeframe we had to play, for both me, and my guildies)
I accumulated 10 Large Wooden Chests dedicated to nothing but reagents so my Guildies/Friends had plenty of resources to play around with the enchanting system, while being very cautious of rarer reagents we just couldn't acquire much of, trying our best to find alternate builds.
I wouldn't change a thing with the current system, except of course the aforementioned plans to add even more reagents to allow for the unlocking of tier 3 and 4 enchantments, and of course, the armor/weapons with more slots to handle these larger enchantment tiers.` I think ultimately a large part of the in-game economy is going to end up based around the more rare reagents out there.
