Im going to do some crafting and more in depth testing today. But so far from building the new stations and looking at cost/savings Ive seen some things I dont like. Sure, it could be just me, but Im sure others think this way as well.
Unless Im missing something I dont see the recipe for legendary weapon repair kits from the purge blacksmiths.
1/2 of all the new stations that are geared towards “efficency” are actually more expensive to craft the item. Adding a T4 thrall, or purge thrall saves you nothing. Sure we get the odd new recipe from purge thralls, and I am glad to finally be able to craft legendary armor repair kits, but until I do some testing to see the new stats, so far there is no need to find and hunt rare T4 thralls.
Bombs are cheaper to make in the old improved cauldron then in one of the new Giants Cauldron, but cheaper in the other (cant recall the name) . Adding a T4 thrall does ZERO to the cost/savings of items inside these benches. The same is said for the alchemy stations, adding T4 thalls does nothing to your cost/savings. So the question again, why use T4’s on these stations? (Kind of like when they added the witch doctors to the game which could craft white and black dye. There was a time when finding a purge alchemist was rare, and the reward was being among the few on a server that could dye things white and black. Useless now when they can all do it)
Things like shaped wood Ive noticed, there is zero savings using a T4 thrall. One of the new benches is a 5:1 ratio and the other is 10:1. No change with thrall.
Im going to hop in and test on some armor and weapons, which I think is where a person will see the difference in using a T4 for some added stats. Ill compare to using no thrall, and to old flawless weapons.
Do you see where Im going with my statement of “T4 thralls are useless now”? There was a time when the time spent finding T4’s could be offset by the savings in time and resources farmed after you start using them. Now? Heck, build the new station and dont even put a thrall on it. To me, this is a step in the direction of removing the need for thralls (higher end). Its almost like removing a key component of the game…it was always about finding better thralls to use to make your operation more efficient and streamlined.
Note, Ive seen actions like this before too, in another game that was bought out by a Chinese company. In that game there was two main components to the game that made that game extremely unique - farming resources of different quality (16 resources with 1000 different qualities) and equipment crafting (you could use high end components and low end to really min/max stats on a piece of gear to really fine tune your character the way you wanted to play. It was the perfect design). Once the Chinese company bought it, both the farming and crafting was removed and replaced with weapon drops from bosses and missions. Hint: look at the RNG of Siptah, and I see scary similarities. I hope Im wrong.
Edit: legendary weapon repair kits are in the tinkerers bench with a purge thrall.
Edit 2: Weapon crafting results: Flawless Warhammer with master kit - 59 damage, 41 armor pen . Best hammer after changes with same kit - 67 damage, 40 armor pen. Without using a thrall the best I can make with the master kit is - 55 damage, 38 armor pen. So from using a T4 blacksmith we gain 8 damage and lose 1 armor pen, without using a thrall we lose 4 damage and 3 armor pen. In the heat of a pvp fight, those values are so close together they would not be noticed.
