Excellent guide on this great item, I always wanted to see this, I like the idea of using it to fix a water leak or something.
A quick note about xp rewards, Basic edition did not award xp for magic items, they were assumed to just compliment character development to gain xp later, but the general idea behind D&D design was to try and de-abstract xp, rather than just award "points" make it part of the fantasy, hence the gp=xp formula, bigger obstacles to overcome get you more reward, so rather than rate the "usefulness" of magic items in terms of xp, consider that the xp is proportionate to the difficulty of obtaining the item, I'm not sure how a folding boat is harder to get as a mechanical crab, but perhaps that was the thinking behind it.
Excellent guide on this great item, I always wanted to see this, I like the idea of using it to fix a water leak or something.
A quick note about xp rewards, Basic edition did not award xp for magic items, they were assumed to just compliment character development to gain xp later, but the general idea behind D&D design was to try and de-abstract xp, rather than just award "points" make it part of the fantasy, hence the gp=xp formula, bigger obstacles to overcome get you more reward, so rather than rate the "usefulness" of magic items in terms of xp, consider that the xp is proportionate to the difficulty of obtaining the item, I'm not sure how a folding boat is harder to get as a mechanical crab, but perhaps that was the thinking behind it.
Oh wow that’s the best explanation I’ve heard about it. Thank you. Interesting that you gave a much better and detailed answer then Kask or Mentzer.