MATERIAL QUALITY TIERS
The same material in graded qualities — copper through starmetal, one-star to five-star hides, pure versus impure ore — where tier flows through crafting into output power.
- SOLO-DEV COST LOW
- TIMING REAL-TIME / TURN
- COMMON IN SURVIVAL · RPG · MMO · ACTION-RPG
Monster Hunter's material rarities structure its entire hunt-craft loop, survival games ladder tool tiers (stone, iron, steel) as their progression spine, Kingdom Come and simulationist RPGs price ingredient freshness and purity, and gathering professions in MMOs sort every node's yield by grade. Designers tier materials because it makes the world's geography and challenges into a progression map: better materials live in more dangerous places, so the crafting system automatically directs players outward and upward, and every zone's resources stay relevant as trade goods or bulk inputs even after the player outgrows them. Tiers also let one recipe serve the whole game — the sword recipe learned at hour one still matters at hour eighty with better inputs. Key decisions: how many tiers before inflation numbs them (each tier should feel like an era, not an increment), whether tiers are location-gated, skill-gated, or randomly rolled on gather, and whether low-tier materials retain late-game uses (bulk construction, alloys, catalysts) or become vendor noise. Pitfall: the obsolete-inventory treadmill — when each new tier fully invalidates the last, players learn that gathering is temporary busywork and stockpiles are future trash; alloying, refinement chains (ten copper makes one bronze), and quality-agnostic sinks keep the material world from strictly deprecating behind the player.
SEEN IN
- MONSTER HUNTER: WORLD
- VALHEIM
- NEW WORLD