[EDIT: Please put focus on the MAIN purpose of this thread, which is alternate material use, not healing or bot crafting. If there is another thread on alternate mat use as well, let me know.]

So if you're like me, you've noticed an abundance of crap mats stockpiling in your inventory, and you've been wondering, "what to do?"

Or... if you're... like me, you just... don't care. In EITHER case you might find an interesting solution to the problem here. I was thinking about the fact that in build-your-player rpg or mmo's, a healer class is always a welcome add to the depth of strategy in the game, but obviously in SK, it would be hax. If players were to suddenly be able to heal not from fixed health drops or ce rev costs, it would become so OP in such a short time, and OOO would lose revenue from resing. So I thought, maybe you could expend energy to do it, but given the fact that you already DO that reviving, there's nothing there to really add. Ultimately, OOO wants you to use some type of resource in order to heal in any given scenario, which makes sense. But we DO have another resource besides ce or cr, and that's mats.

Given the fact that you can't possibly use all the mats you'll find on crafting, you need a secondary application for them. So what about using various combinations of mats to create different things, like what healer gremlins do, from temporary healing pads, to uber shields, to knockback shockwaves, or maybe other things too! You could craft various types of helper bots, turrets, maybe craft specialty vials, that combo stat effects, by combining vials with mats etc.

In a way, this might play into OOO's revenue strategy, since mats would be consumed rapidly, and their prices in the auction house would go up. People would need more cr and, thus be more tempted to buy from OOO. Keep in mind, all ce ultimately comes from OOO.

A good way to incorporate this into the game would possibly be in a new arsenal type. I remember seeing the low-star wrench wand and thinking, "man, if only that could do what it actually does for gremlins..." Enter the Engineer equipment type. The star level of the equipment would determine what star of materials you could use. (And obviously as you got up to 5*, you could do some uber awesome stuff. Say use reaper ribs and spark of life to summon an army of zombies on your side. Thankfully, this won't be OP, since you would be extremely limited in how often you could do something like this.) I don't know how, beyond star, different Engineer equipment could vary. Obviously one sword is shadow, and another is elemental, so what are the unique qualities of individual Engineer equipment? That's up for debate here. Maybe it could have shadow, elemental, or pierce type of engineering equipment which effects what type of helper crafts, healing effects, vial combos, maybe stat boosts, you could do. There's a lot of possibilities here. Also, if this were incorporated into weapon slots, it could even further help balance out the new offensive and defensive capabilities by limiting the number of other weapons you could use.

Once again, this would all play into OOO's revenue, since people would have a ton of new equipment to buy (I always love new SK stuff!) and again would add loads of cool stuff to Clockworks strategy (and hey! Maybe even PvP!)

I think it would be an extremely fun addendum to the game, and get rid of a lot of those mats just lying around.