From a recent article on Darth Hater by Raiden entitled “Morality Gear”  and a conversation with my friend Zlatto from AskAJedi   I am perplexed by this question.

Just what does morality gear restrictions mean to the crafter in SWTOR?

In the article Raiden goes on to explain just what specifics the equipping of morality gear entails:

“Morality gear is restricted by character alignment and can only be equipped by characters with the correct alignment tier. If you find a blaster with a Light II restriction, you can only equip it if your character is Light II or higher. These restrictions can apply to armor, weapons, relics and may even include items that are not gear, such as consumables. Crafted, PvP, dungeon and raiding gear can all have morality restrictions as well.”

From their disection and interviews they were able to surmise this and now I find myself wondering just how will the crafter be able to make these different alignment pathed gear.  What will the mechanics be like in the creation process?  
There are differring ways to aquire this gear and from what I understand they all have the same type of morality restrictions, whether from crafting, PVE loot, PVP loot or what ever they are all going to be morality specific, either light side focused or dark side focused (possibly in the future gray or neutral focused as well).

Setting aside the other types of ways to acquire gear and focusing on the crafting faucet, I wonder just how the system will be managed during an items creation.  I have thought about it and I really only see 3 viable options, there may be a better way that I have not thought of but at the moment I cannot come up with them.

1. Each piece of morality aligned gear comes with its own recipe.  For example lets say I have a recipe for a “Gauntlet of Doom”  it comes with a dark side restriction of dark level 3 and when you make it from that recipe only a character that has the morality rank of dark level 3 can equip it and that is all that can be made from the recipe.  If I wanted to make a “Gauntlet of Purity” I would need a separate recipe.

This might mean to the crafter a few things right off the bat.  That gear would be highly specialized and that the possible amount of recipes and product he could create would increase dramatically.  Meaning at the very least that the amount of recipes and end product he has to keep track of and learn just went up two to three times what it might have been without this system.

It might also mean that when he tries to sell his product he might face a tougher market if only a certain morality pathed character is able to equip it.  This would mean that he might see fewer and more specialized sales in the long run if gear is not a “one size fits all classes that can use that type of item” type of set up.

2. A second option might be that the recipe for the item is universal at the start but when creating the item he has the ability to choose or attune a morality path for the item at that stage in creation, resulting in a piece of gear that he has chosen the path for and has specific stats according to his choice.  

For example, lets say in this situation the crafter has a recipe for “carbonite chest piece”.  When he is in the process of using that recipe before creation is done he can choose to make it a “Carbonite Chest of Justice” for the light side path or a “Carbonite Chest of Slavery” for the dark side path.

This would mean that there would be less recipes to deal with and that the specialization of gear’s morality would come in on a as needed basis to fufill orders or to make product for what might be selling better on the AH at the time.

3.  A third option is that a crafter might have a universal recipe that creates a standard item and that the player that recieves the item could choose it’s morality path at the time of equipping.  

Sort of like a “bind on equip” effect where its more like “morality choice on equip” giving the player acually using the item the choice.  This would be a situation where there would be less recipes and less end crafted product to manage for the crafter.  The example would be similar to the one for option 2 only the player would be in control of the choice.

Me personally, out of the three I have been able to think up I think I would prefer option two the best.  

I like the idea of having more recipies and end crafted product availiable to me as in option one because I am all about options when I game and craft, but I worry that it might just be too much to have to keep track of and that it become a nightmare to have to remember and manage.  

Option three sounds like it could work as well but as a crafter I want to have control over the product, I want to be in control up until the item is finished and leaves my hands.  I dont think I am comfortable with giving other people control of part of the destiny of my wears.

All I know at this point is that my interest is peaked to find out just how the choice of morality path comes in when crafting an item.  

What do you think?

Is there a better option I missed or am I way off base here with this thinking?

Thanks for reading!   🙂

(thanks to Zlatto for posing me with this question)

Tags: bioware, crafting, crew skills, dark side, light side, morality, speculation, star wars, star wars the old republic mmo, swtor