Yes, you can craft lower Ql plans to save materials, but the majority of customers will give you that 'funny' look when you even dare mention it.
Being able to add 3 more pieces of regular armour shell/clip, stuffing and lining also means it will have an impact on craft maths and statistics; adding more pieces of armour shell will drop the overall pre-craft stat boost of said part, by each extra piece added their effect will drop consistantly, and because you use more materials the overall average stats drop as well, albeit slightly.
Having room for a 'special material' slot however doesn't sound to bad, much like the Outpost weapon plans I take?
Rather than them increasing the actual stats of the set, give them some special abilities, something not that overpowering. Giving a set of HA a +4 dodge modifier would be like being able to give an axe a -50 adv. dodge mod on top of the max value.
But something more in line with what the Outpost materials provide, such as:
- a 5-10% overall magic protection bonus
- a 20% chance of negating the effect of a critical hit on you
- a 10% chance of an action without malus
None of those seem to overpowering, yet give some nice benefits to the owner.
Extra HP bonus, .. that's what Armillo tools are for. But both Armillo and Rubarn are pretty useless to be used on HA due to the sheer amount of materials needed (the same goes for jewels really, with the exception that armillo boosted jewels can be skimmed on in stats), unless you can accept you'll never be able to make shiny sets that compare to boosted weapons and amplifiers. Improving the boost % of these tools for multi-part gear might not be a bad idea.
Actually, something to add:
With jewelers and armorers having been largely overlooked in the whole OP-reward thing imo, I wouldn't mind at all there being some extras and shinies for those. But they don't necessarily need to be only attainable at the end levels, unless we would be talking solely on a new skin.
We know there's going to be a new craftable armor set available once someone gets access to all the quarter plans of the NPC bosses, but it will be a very few who'll get access to it. For the jewelers, there's nada.
