I'm not going to go out on a limb and confirm pencils, but when you look at the starter profession kits on the Kickstarter listing and there's stuff like papermaker (papermarker?!?), you know crafting in CoE will be a wee bit better than most other MMOs currently out there (where "wee bit better" is my way of making a huge understatement!)

Only SWG remains at the top for me, in terms of crafting.

The evolving technology world is a main reason I chose to back this game. Papermaker is another great example of the possibility for complexity. Consider the research that spans the gulf from hammering out papyrus and drying it in the sun to bleaching poplar pulp before it's oven dried to uniform sheets and sealed with an almost invisible layer of clay.

@Flashman Out of all the ones on the list, candle maker really caught me off guard. I mean, its the only light source that would exist with this starting tech, but I just never expected it.

I know... but if we need those things in the game world, someone has to make them. It's very exciting, eh?

Hmm, that's interesting. At a wild guess, I'd imagine we could be using quill pens or something like that. All you have to do is catch a bird with big feathers and make some fluid that flows well and dries dark and you're set.

Pencils are a fairly recent development in our world, they're made by machines rather than people. It's not a complicated procedure but it's just not worth the time it would take a human to make one.

The example of a pencil for manufacturing complexity is a good one, but the lesson applies equally to many things. How do you make the ink that fills a quill pen, or the reed pen that it replaced? Do you know many dark, flowable substances? How about dark, flowable substances that dry tack-free and don't fade in a years time? Do any of them work on leather as well as on paper? What if you want a color other than black?

While graphite wasn't mined until medieval times, the pencil is not modern. The idea dates to at least the Roman era (there's a reason pencils have a "lead"). Still, the essay I linked is a great example of how something as "uncomplicated" as a modern pencil actually requires a great deal of knowledge and access to various materials. It's not that it's not worth the time- it's more that no one person can do it all. That's the message I've heard for skills in this game, and I hope it comes to fruition.

I actually have a background in materials research and an interest in the history of materials (I've taught a short class on the topic). Would anyone be interested in some longer posts on how something like India ink came about, or running down the ancient and modern uses of something like limestone?

Love that kind of stuff, Huntsmaster. It would be a very interesting post to read. I think it would especially be of benefit to any one interested in the crafting aspects of this game, as it would give an idea to the possible complexity that we're looking at when it comes to making things. It's hard to tell exactly how far we'll have to go "from scratch", but it definitely sounds like more so than less so.

A crafting system that grows in complexity with server age is almost a guarantee. It would make sense- as time goes on, "humanity" learns to do more things with what they have available.

As far as making a pencil as we all know of them, it's hard to say whether it would be something that's discovered how to make early on, or could simply be taught by a master(not sure which). But like Huntsmaster said, the pencil isn't a modern day technology, it could be something as simple as a stick of graphite, or lead, wrapped in string, unwind the string as you use it.

I'd guess the smaller items will just be. Nobody will need to make a pencil but really we will have no way of knowing for now. Maybe worth tuning in for a Q&A and asking.

It's not really about a pencil; that's just a handy example of complexity. The question is more "Can one person can craft a complete thing by themselves, or will even small things require teamwork?"