SoA and Watcher's Keep: just venting

FredN

.....I am in the late stages of Chapter 2 of SoA ... my crew are all around levels 12-15 ... and decided to make a raid into Watcher's Keep. Picked up Foebane on the first level, and decided to go down a bit further. I ended up on the first room of the Maze level, spoks to Yakman who dropped the Bard Gloves, and decided to head back out.
.....Now, I happened to be playing a Bard, but nothing I did told me what these gloves were for. So, I googled it, and they looked pretty nice. I accumulated the required resources, and took them to Cromwell. Much to my irritation, he told me that I had nothing he could work on. He didn't even come up with some excuse like "this is beyond my skill". It was as if they didn't exist as far as he was concerned. Apparently, only Cespenar in the Pocket Plane can upgrade these.
.....Obviously, incidental characters can only do what the designers have programmed them to do. But this made me wonder if their intention was to have the players venture into Watcher's Keep only when they reach ToB. But if that is the case, why let Watcher's Keep be accessed at all during SoA? Now I have to tote these gloves around all the way until ToB, unable to use them in the meanwhile. And I could really use them; how frustrating!

DinoDin

It's not really about intention. Watcher's Keep didn't exist when SoA was released. And they didn't write new dialogue for SoA NPC's concerning Watcher's when ToB was released.

FredN

I understand that, but it still seems like a bit of an oversight. It would have been easy enough to program Cromwell to be able to work on everything that Cespenar would be able to do. I just now got the Poison head for the Flail of Ages, and guess what? Cromwell can't see that either. Why do I have the ability to get such things in SoA if I can't use them until ToB? Just expand Cromwell's abilities to include all items.

Trouveur

Tweaks Anthology have a component exactly for that.
ToB was released in a rush and they didn't update SoA part.

jastey

It's not "simple" to add more receipts to Cromwell's dialogue.

Plus, had they done this, people would be disappointed Cespenar doesn't advance the items any more.

FredN

I can understand the practical considerations. If it isn't desirable to have Cromwell work on items from Watcher's Keep, that's fine. But having him not even acknowledge their existence is jarring. Just add a line to his dialogue saying he isn't qualified to work on that.