this is a good idea, just dont want to get too lost with transmuting and crafting. a lot of games have craftable items which turn out to be better than t1 gear. there needs to be restrictions as far as what gear can be tinkered, certain stats should only convert to other certain stats. people point to diablo 3... but Everquest 2 has been way ahead of them on that aspect. trial and error there are plenty of ways to go about making a piece of gear unique and useful for lower teirs and higher teirs. instead of forcing people to transmute, tinker, or whatever you want to call it, why not make appearance slots. just like in EQ2 where you can where that kick arse raid gear, but wear low level gear in an appearance slot to make your character look how you want to look without interferring with your current gear stats. on another note, the gear in this game looks particularly atrocious. if they could implement gear to look good from the start maybe we would want to wear certain things. i am just tired of my titan looking like a master cheif spinoff, where is the gear like from ancient lore in history, why cant i make my character look like a samurai or something, or sinbad.... the gear is just so boring to begin with. make certain quests for epic appearance slot gear only. make it so when you finished off your quest you can choose from an array of unique appearance only gear, and frim there implement dyes, shaders, etc just how Rift had for example. we need more thinking outside of the box. appearance gear for weapons, armor and sparrows. what if sparrows gave certain stats to your character passively by just having it equipped but you didnt like how it looked? then apply an appearance slot so you can rock that first low level sparrow if you wanted to without losing your passive stats. just my 2 cents from my experience with MMO RPGs like EQ1 ULTIMA, EQ2, Rift, and Aion.