It's frustrating when something, usually a material, doesn't appear to be dropping well -- Insect Wings and Dragon Scales come to mind as the currently very hard to get materials necessary for crafting certain items.
Why not add a dialog option to some NPCs -- particularly Vicious Captain Ruven as the concept seems to really fit -- of 'smuggled goods'? Once in a while, random would be better than on a set timetable, when talking with VC Ruven he has a new dialog option where he's offering to sell you goods that were gotten by 'methods it's best not to ask too many questions about'. So, he could offer the player a packet of 50 Insect Wings for 100,000 zulies. The player can then use them himself or herself as a crafter (if he or she has one), or sell them to other players. Alternatively, the buy could be 'blind' that is the player has no idea what is in the box until it's opened. It could be awesome -- 50 Dragon Scales for 100,000 zulies is a bargain right now, or it could be kinda lame, say, 50 Iron for the same price.
It should be something at least useful, like a crafting material, or travel scroll, or even food, not a useless junk material that can only be sold to an NPC for a tiny price. There should be no guarantee that the actual value of the box is what is paid for it, but there should be something in it.
There should be some limit on how many smuggled goods purchases a player can make so that players can't just camp out waiting to snap up the deal, or buy more than one box per 24 hour period, for example.
Maybe a smuggled goods run only happens once a week, and of course, VC Ruven isn't going to advertise it -- he doesn't want to get caught! Perhaps there is a need to complete a quest to prove one is -- discreet -- enough to be trusted with the ability to buy smuggled goods.
Finally, having more than one NPC able to carry the random smuggled goods would make it a bit harder to predict and potentially abuse. This should be one of those things that really is luck. Kiroth in Junon Polis, perhaps one of the new NPCs in Luxem Tower, Eliot (although this might not fit if Eliot actually is who it's hinted he is) in Luna -- unpredictable is the idea. Various NPCs on all the worlds could be part of the smuggled goods chain.
What could be useful with something like this is if there's some difficulty getting a certain drop, it might be easier to add it into something like this smuggled goods idea to to get it into the game than to redo one or more of the drop tables. The smuggled goods item(s) can be changed when needed to help add in whatever seems to be in short supply through other means. After all, wouldn't a real smuggler try to get his hands on whatever it is that people want so he can ask for top
Dealer Skill Suggestions
Waste Not, Want Not -- Perfect Disassembly -- the player can break an item down into the exact materials it took to craft it using this skill (no blades). It seems logical to be an Artisan skill as who would know better how to take something apart with the least amount of waste than someone who can put it together in the first place?
The Careful Touch -- Economical Crafting -- Uses 50% few materials (rounded up in the case of odd numbers) per craft.
Artist at Work -- Item Perfecting -- if adding levels to gear is upgrading (as the NPCs say), this could be refining -- a dealer can re-craft an item for a chance to increase the durability. Re-crafting would use the item itself (as in darkening, endowing, etc) and the same type and number of materials it took to craft the item in the first place. It should be subject to failure. Instead of using the base durability spread (for the sake of the discussion say it's 1 - 100) Item Perfecting would use 50 - 100 as the durability spread. Therefore, a successful Item Perfecting would result in the same item with a minimum durability of 50. It makes sense that Item Perfecting (which is like an in-game reroll for the craft in the first place) would most likely NOT preserve any additional stats, but might result in an additional stat -- again, just like how hardening works.
