I'm interested in dwarves because they are centered around items. Crafting, money, finding drops easier. In FFXI I built my character around this aspect and loved him for it. I'm looking to be centered around the economy of this game. Of course I'll enjoy a bit of fighting but nothing to loose myself in. I'm hoping becoming a maestro/ collector class will allow myself to not only make a reputation as a crafter of exeptional skill but also be there to help others find items or make armor. I can understand this will take time, but it's something to work for.
In *theory* this is what Dwarves are all about.
In reality, some extremely bad design decisions have handicapped this to an extreme level.
Here some details regarding the two possible dwarf specializations and then we can explore why they are broken.
1)Spoiling.
This is an 'active' skill first learned at L5 by all dwarves. After L20 only the Scavenger class continues to learn higher levels of this skill. Spoil works like this:
Run up to a mob and activate the 'Spoil' skill. A short animation plays ending with a small firework looking display and your dwarf will automatically attack the mob afterwards. If the 'attack' succeeds you will recieve a systems message stating that the 'Spoil condition had been enabled.' If the spoil fails nothing else happens, although you will still automatically begin to attack. If you fail to 'land' the spoil you can try again after the skill refreshes without any penalty other than the extra MP used in the attempt and the time it takes to use the skill again.
Once a mob has been 'spoiled' you must then kill it. After a spoiled mob dies there is a chance that you may obtain extra items from the mob by using the 'Sweeper' skill on the mobs body before it disappears. Just like regular drops, items that can be spoiled have their own chance of success. The game checks each possible spoil in the table for each mob that has been successfully spoiled (1-3 items specific to each mob and only base materials like varnish/thread/stem will ever have a quantity above 1.) and IF any one of those checks is a success the spoiled mob corpse will glow a dark blue. (A little hard to see on some mobs) If there is no 'blue glow' you get nothing from the mob, although the sweeper skill will still work on it. (It does not work on any unspoiled corpse.)
Most dwarves will sweep a corpse regardless, as a 'swept' mob will instantly disappear afterwards instead of laying there for a period of time. This 'recycles' the mobs to respawn faster, and sweep costs so little MP that making sweep a habit (in case you Zen out or just don't see the glow) is just good to do.
The skill spoil receives updates every few skill levels that allow you to spoil higher level mobs. If you do not update your spoil skill it will 'land' at lower rates the higher the level of the mob. Thus a Dwarven Warsmith (crafter) can still use his old low level spoil on mobs, but it may only land once every 300 attempts. A Bounty Hunter with an appropriate level of spoil will succeed on almost every attempt. There is only one level of sweep, so even a L80 Crafter can sweep mobs with the same chance of success as a Spoiler. BUT! Sweeping is level dependent just like drops. (Or more correctly, the sweeps from a successful spoil.) If the mob that was spoiled was of too low a level compared to the character who spoiled it, (Not killed it.) then the chance of the corpse turning blue and sweeping an item is greatly reduced just like drops.
Thus to spoil a mob with a reasonable chance of success at getting an extra item you need a Dwarven spoiler of an appropriate level for the mobs that you wish to spoil. (Both Dwarf character level and level of the spoil skill.) OR You need to party one. NC added 'spoil sharing' to party options some time ago. What this does is add any spoils to the loot distribution rules for a party. Thus any party with an active spoiler can receive spoils without actually having the skill. For the spoiler however, their 'benefit' from having the spoil skill will always drop to 1/x, where x is the number of people in the party. (Mobs can only be spoiled and swept once for each kill.)
2)Crafting
There are actually two skills related to dwarven crafters that are important. Crystallize and Craft. Crystallize is a 'skill' that gives you the ability to 'reduce' any Graded item to it's base value in crystals. (Crystallize is usually referred as 'Crush'ing. As it involves destroying the item to convert it to crystals.) (D, C and B grade skills are learned only upon reaching grade levels, but A and S grade Crystallize is learned before actual grade mastery is.) Since crystals are needed to craft almost all graded items and for some classes skills (Cubic/summons) and crystals are not sold or dropped (Excepting 'blown' Enchant attempts) this is a fairly important skill.
The actual craft skill is the other half of the dwarf abilities. To craft you need a few things.
A) You need to 'register' a recipe in your 'book'. This determines what you are able to craft. To register a recipe you must have learned the crafting skill up to the minimum level of any given recipe. Crafting skill levels come more frequently than Crystallize skill levels, but there are only 9 in total. (versus 5 Crystallize skill levels.) Removing a recipe from your book destroys it, and space in the book is limited although it is expandable to a point. For all consumable items only one recipe is needed. For all equipment above C grade one additional recipe is needed for each craft, being consumed in the creation process. All recipes of C grade and below have a 100% chance of success. For B grade, there are 60%, 70% and 100% recipes. For A grade and up only 60% and 70% recipes exist. (Jewelry is the only item with 70% recipes, all armor and weapons are 60%) The % of a recipe not only determines the success rate, but also affects the quantity/quality of base materials consumed in the attempt. If a craft fails all items used in the attempt are lost with no compensation.
B)Key Items. These are the item specific blades, shafts, stones or whatever that are needed to make an item. For the most part the higher level of the item being crafted the more you need, although the quantities are fairly low. (~8 for top D to ~13 for A grade.)
C)Base materials. These are items such as Animal Skin, Iron ore, Varnish or higher levels of base items such as Crafted Leather or Mold glue. Some 'intermediate' materials can be made by 'crafting' lower level materials together, while others cannot. The higher level the item being crafted the more base materials needed. For the lowest level materials used for the highest level of crafts you will need thousands. (Assuming you do not buy/aquire the intermediate level materials instead.)
Crafting base materials into higher level materials can be time and MP consuming, but crafting all final items is a one-click deal. Also, all dwarves can setup a 'craft shop' which allows any person to 'buy' a single craft 'click' from the dwarf for a price set by the dwarf. In case of a craft shop all the dwarf needs is a recipe registered, the person using the shop just needs the materials for the craft itself. (Including any recipes that will be consumed by the attempt.)
Whew! Got all that? Good. Here's where things break down.
1)Spoil tables.
A huge majority of key materials and recipes do NOT spoil. They are drop only. And of the ones that do spoil, their chance of being swept is ridiculously low. So low that you are almost guaranteed to outlevel the mob and the resulting gear you can craft from it before you get enough to make ONE. Also, most crafting key items only spoil from mobs well above the levels at which you would want the gear for. Also, many recipes, key materials or full items are usually much easier to get by raid boss drops or quests than they are from spoils, although some of these will require a party or more to accomplish. Also of those items that do spoil, they usually only spoil from 1-2 mobs at most. Only jewelry parts or shield parts seem to spoil with any frequency at all levels. So if you want a spoilable weapon recipe often only 1-2 mobs will have it, but there may be ~30 mobs that spoil jewelry parts. (not counting the mobs that drop those!)
In addition, 'base material' spoils are quite low. Not only in quantity compared to crafting amounts, but also in terms of mobs which actually spoil them at a reasonable rate! There are NO mobs that spoil animal bone (or Coarse Bone Powder) above level 54 AT ALL. Despite needing thousands of this component for all crafts above the level.
Enter the Manor. This is a way of aquiring base materials in mass quantities, which is open to all characters. (not just spoilers) It is in fact the only 'real' way to aquire enough items to craft just about anything. It is however both level restricted and quantity restricted. (Seeds levels/rewards as well as buyback limits per castle.) It also can be completely non-functioning if castle owning clans don't want to run their manor...
Thus the despite the class designed to aquire crafting items spoilers barely have any potential spoils worth the price they pay in choosing a class with almost no combat ability skills. (or skills in general.) And of the spoils that could be worth it, you'll probably need a group to kill the mobs that has it...which of course means 'sharing' those potential spoils with the group your in.
So what about crafters then? Well, crafters get beat with the same stick as the spoilers...just the other end of it. After all, if there are no materials/recipes coming in, you can't craft anything. Also, both are affected by NPC shops, the Giran Luxury shop and the Blacksmith of Mammon.
NPC Shops, because it's usually MUCH easier to buy a complete item from a store (even at max tax rates) than it is to try and aquire all the items needed to craft it. The same goes for the Luxury shop. For Mammon, it's just far easier to upgrade a weapon with Ancient Adena you bought from the Luxury shop than it is to gather/buy the materials you need to craft one. Combined these can take a non-dwarf up to B grade easily enough without crafting/spoiling or interacting with a dwarf at all. For B/A/S grades there are a *few* items that are easier to get via spoil, although most will need to be crafted regardless . (Outside the small % of full mob drops or possible raid boss drops.)
Add all this together, and it means spoilers need to be within specific level ranges to be of a specific spoil to make much money at all with their skill and they need to either do it solo, or hope the loot distribution is in their favor. For crafters, this means that their is a minimum level (~52/B grade) before they can learn the crafts people 'need'. At which point they will be competing with every other dwarf in town who has that recipe in their craft book and a craft shop up. They could just make 'shots' most of the time to compensate, but often the profit margin on those is minimal compared to the time needed to craft enough for one person to use if they spam them constantly.
In short, play a dwarf as an alt before your even think of playing one as a main. It can save you a lot of grief if you find the pain of leveling one too much.