Arlen

There you stand, in a room full of pickups. Coins you picked up off the ground, red heart pickups. And there’s a bag here that can hold eight items. When you fill that bag to the brim with one more pickup, the machine kicks into action and spits out a result. That result might make … Read more

So now you’re standing in front of the Blender. Those damn Star Jellies are what you want. What about gear upgrades? Sure, maybe, but when you look down at your inventory, what you see isn’t prep so much as panic. There is some Pineapples over here. Oh yeah, a few Royal Jellies over there. The … Read more

In Eco, you look at a stack of logs and say “I want to make a wall out of those, but I’m going to need three different kinds of processed materials.” You’ve got wood…now you’ve got to see if you have calories, labor, etc. Are they raw timber? Do you have boards? Time for some … Read more

This tool is good for planning crafts in Pathfinder Second Edition. In Pathfinder, there’s a cost of both downtime days and gold when crafting something. There’s also time cost vs. Materials. You want to find the balance between the time your skills take to reduce costs and the cost of materials. It’s about improving resource … Read more

Path of Exile’s cluster jewels are the result of arm wrestling with a fickle deity. Your cursor lingers over craft bench as you contemplate the empty canvas before you. An eight passive node awaits your touch; a cluster of nodes waiting for you to make them sing. Is this notable combo a diamond in the … Read more

The game of crafting in Path of Exile are more about managing variance then it is about gambling. There’s the mod and then there’s a base item. But there is thousands of others. The calculator give us an expected number of attempts and a weighted hit chance. This take away the emotion of blindly spamming … Read more

Then there’s the issue of dragging a caravan full of timber and ore back into town, only to discover that your station isn’t high enough level to make those specific recipes. You stare as your junk sits in your bag, gaining useless value as you debate processing it now or waiting until the next milestone. … Read more

Every time you decide to automate something big in Minecraft, you start panicking before you even check your inventory. You find a recipe for eighty solar panels, you think “Yeah, I’ve got that,” and then remember they need circuits, which need plates, which means digging deeper into the ground for raw materials. That’s what always … Read more

When a new gear update hits and your Oreha fusion materials is running low, that’s when a certain type of panic sets in. These materials are used to sharpen but grinding them is tedious and usualy inefficient. That’s why proper stronghold planning eliminate such anxiety. Instead of mindlessly queuing crafts until you run out of … Read more

Crafting in Diablo 2 feel like a cross between inventory management and high-stakes gambling. If only I can use these perfect amethysts and rare Ral runes to get that +2 skill bonus on my gear, right? Or maybe I’ll end up with yet another piece of mediocre gear. When it go right, there’s a thrill … Read more

Path of Exile’s harvest system is gardening meets gambling. You plant some seeds, let them grow, then pray that the game blesses you with something good instead of more copies of what you already have. This is the selling point, making high-stakes crafting feel like a slower, more deliberate process, not one where you’re furiously … Read more

If there’s one type of anxiety unique to World of Warcraft, it is opening up a high level craft order. You’ve been out there grinding for hours to farm your reagents. Your concentration pool is fully topped off. Now what? Do you risk going for the highest possible rank or play it safe with a … Read more