Hi everyone, I'd like to chime in on this as well — but first, a quick disclaimer: I'm still a fairly new player (about 20 hours in), so everything I'm saying is based on those early impressions. I haven't fully understood how Monsters & Memories works yet, and I honestly can't tell how crafting plays out at higher levels, for example with the Blacksmith. If some of this is already in the game, please feel free to correct me!
The way I see it, items, loot, crafting, and the economy are all deeply intertwined — and for me, the issue Puma described comes from two sides at once: demand and supply.
The demand problem: As far as I've seen, there's no level gate on items. So if any character can equip any sword, a copper sword simply has no chance against a freely tradeable iron sword. Nobody willingly buys the lower tier when the higher one is always an option. As worn equipment, such an item is effectively dead — and that's exactly what I've seen in most MMOs: crafting in the lower and mid ranges becomes pointless, because you can neither sell nor use what you make there. The profession becomes obsolete, and for newer players arriving later, the whole item progression just falls away.
The supply problem: And something else seems to make this worse, as far as I've been able to tell: there's no decay. Weapons and armor never break — every item that has ever been crafted or dropped stays in circulation forever. The market has no drain: supply keeps growing while demand for anything that isn't best-in-slot keeps shrinking. So the price gap Puma described — high-end gear going for tens of thousands of platinum while mid-tier sells for almost nothing — isn't just caused by demand moving upward; it's inevitably amplified by the ever-growing stockpile at the bottom.
When both of those combine — no demand from below, no drain from above — a lower tier item can only become worthless. So I humbly think lower tiers would need a second reason to exist beyond being worn, one that also consumes them. Using the copper sword as an example:
As a stepping stone for upgrades: If the smith needs a copper sword (or something derived from it) to craft an iron sword, the copper sword has a guaranteed buyer — not the level 1 warrior, but the higher-level crafter. And once used, it leaves the world, which also eases the supply problem. My reference point here is BitCraft, where each tier requires the previous one, so even a young smith can sell their wares at a good price because they're needed further up the chain. And to be clear, I don't think you'd need to literally forge a whole copper sword into an iron one — that might feel a bit odd, immersion-wise. A gentler take: you could extract something special from the copper sword, a unique material or essence, that is required to craft the next tier. To me, that keeps the idea intact while feeling much more natural. And honestly, what's already hinted at with corroded weapons and scrap in Blacksmithing seems to point in exactly this direction.
As a source of scrap and consumables: So the value doesn't die out once everyone has their iron sword, there'd need to be ongoing consumption. Salvaging old items would need to be economically worthwhile, and materials like copper could flow into things endgame players keep buying — upgrade and maintenance materials, temporary buffs, something along the lines of the sharpening stones that already exist. An item that gets consumed never becomes permanently worthless.
And to keep the whole system alive: loot as the specialist option (unique effects you can't get from crafting), crafted items as the customizable, solid baseline. Only if crafting survives as a profession is there anyone at all who needs copper swords as material.
To put it in one sentence: items need to be able to leave the world again — otherwise only their prices will. If lower tiers get consumed — as precursors, as scrap, as consumables — demand would come from the top instead of the bottom, and the item pyramid would stay relevant across all levels.
Again, just my thoughts after 20 hours — I'd genuinely love to hear how this looks from a veteran's perspective, and whether some of it may already work this way at higher levels. 🙂
