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Author Topic: Dat fat, fat loot  (Read 8843 times)

Keyser

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Re: Dat fat, fat loot
« Reply #50 on: May 08, 2018, 11:50:03 PM »
This was a little more negative than I meant in my first post after I read it again so I tried to cool it off a bit. Let me just say that I genuinely dislike the loot in terms of mechanics offered by them. I got fully equipped for my character by level 7 with player crafted gear and a couple spell slot items and I've not seen anything better from level 7 to 13 and I dungeon run many many hours a day every day. The penalties offered in exchange for the most miniature bonuses makes 99% of everything I see look cancerous. My inventory is running out of space for all of the 'situational items' I'll never likely use. I appreciate all the effort that has been put into improving the loot but I've still not seen any real reason to bother with treasure aside for selling to vendors. Too many negative effects for too few bonuses makes basically everything I've ever seen worse than player crafted so I feel like... why bother? I quest for fun and xp, but certainly not for the loot. Perhaps in the end game content but even then I would go enchanting over more situational items or more penalties. So far the best loot drop I've personally found that could be considered 'good' had -4 reflex penalty on it. Another situational item to clutter my bags. I wish to stay positive but I also do not wish to blow smoke up your butt. I'll give you my honest opinion and in my current experience so far on the server, my honest opinion is the loot is just not good as a whole.
« Last Edit: May 09, 2018, 01:04:21 AM by Keyser »

Iridni Ren

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Re: Dat fat, fat loot
« Reply #51 on: May 09, 2018, 12:15:02 AM »
I saw a couple of things tonight I've never seen before, so that was at least novel. But I will still likely sell it all. Had I been a different class, I might keep one or two items.

Also picked up two very useful scrolls for another class, so I'll likely give those away.

Understanding that balance is so difficult and that power creep and item inflation must always be carefully controlled, I won't be as negative as Keyser, but I do think this is a big reason players are reluctant to closure a PC. Experienced players know the drill about how to re-level and get gold should we start a new PC. Gear, however, depends on factors outside our control

I wouldn't know the first thing about getting Iridni's items re-equipped, other than crafted gear.

She has always depended on the kindness of strangers :) (Not strangers, actually, but other allied PCs have given her all her nicest, non-crafted items.)

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Iridni Ren

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Re: Dat fat, fat loot
« Reply #52 on: May 09, 2018, 01:54:54 AM »
Reading Keyser's now edited post, I'll mention that the spell slot items I find the most useful, with typically no downsides but clearly mundane classes don't benefit from those.

Another idea: Replace some of the pure junk items with one shots and items with charges. Players can still sell those, but if even if retained, they won't contribute to power creep. They can be strong without having to have severe maluses, and if dropped more frequently, players would burn them more readily.

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ViktorYouFool

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Re: Dat fat, fat loot
« Reply #53 on: May 09, 2018, 06:01:51 AM »
I have to agree with Keyser a bit. Some of the new items I've seen have been neat but I've yet to pick up anything that I would actually use over the gear I already have. J'qarr got all of his gear by level 5. Since then, I've acquired a couple situational pieces, but that's the extent of it. Given that this server requires me to have the sum total of my possessions on my person at all times, the amount of situational gear i can actually carry is extremely limited. I can't imagine how much worse this would be if I actually needed armor or weapons. J'qarr is already nigh-permanently encumbered just from crafting supplies and a couple robes.

My experiences on other characters have been much the same. Once I have my platinum sword, my silver sword, and a set of crafted armor, helm, boots. That's it. I'm done. I might keep an eye out for rings or necklaces, a fancy cloak maybe. But for about 10k, you have your complete kit and won't need or find much else until you're enchanting or ready to drop six or seven figures on one of those few items that really are that good, but so rare that most characters will never actually have them.



Exordium

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Re: Dat fat, fat loot
« Reply #54 on: May 09, 2018, 06:28:20 AM »
I got fully equipped for my character by level 7 with player crafted gear and a couple spell slot items and I've not seen anything better from level 7 to 13 and I dungeon run many many hours a day every day.
(Enchanted) Crafted gear will always represent the end of the line. If we introduced items for level 10s that were flat-out better than crafted items, then level 10s would no longer need crafted gear which would dramatically lower the incentive to get into crafting.

Loot you find will either represent a mildly weaker version of what the craft system can build, or a sidegrade that is only situationally useful, or something with noticeable penalties. With the items I tailored, I picked from all three choices. There are lots of items added with only minor penalties or no penalty.

This said, with GMW, steel longsword for example is basically the same as a normal, non-steel longsword. So it follows that even a +1 acid damage longsword is actually better than steel longsword if you can count on buffs.
The penalties offered in exchange for the most miniature bonuses makes 99% of everything I see look cancerous.
I've recently said this really many times to various people, but please try to be mindful of your tone. No one wants to take criticism when it's delivered with descriptions such as "cancerous".

So far the best loot drop I've personally found that could be considered 'good' had -4 reflex penalty on it. Another situational item to clutter my bags. I wish to stay positive but I also do not wish to blow smoke up your butt. I'll give you my honest opinion and in my current experience so far on the server, my honest opinion is the loot is just not good as a whole.
-4 reflex is rarely very big a risk though.

I have to agree with Keyser a bit. Some of the new items I've seen have been neat but I've yet to pick up anything that I would actually use over the gear I already have. J'qarr got all of his gear by level 5. Since then, I've acquired a couple situational pieces, but that's the extent of it. Given that this server requires me to have the sum total of my possessions on my person at all times, the amount of situational gear i can actually carry is extremely limited. I can't imagine how much worse this would be if I actually needed armor or weapons. J'qarr is already nigh-permanently encumbered just from crafting supplies and a couple robes.
There should be weapons you can acquire that are better than steel-silver weapons, but they are very rare, since we don't want to replace steel-silver weapons.

For armors, there's not many options if you don't need MS or Hide, but I'm adding a few. Again, they'll not be better than enchanted armors, and when they are better than standard steel armors, they will be exceedingly rare.



I'll write a little more about my thoughts relating balancing loot and crafting, appliable to both Viktor's and Keyser's criticism.

For loot, there's four distinctly different ways to acquire it; Find it yourself, buy it from a NPC merchant, buy it from a PC merchant, or get it from a friend.

What I'd like to be the two most common scenarios are the 1st and the 3th. Now the dilemma is this: If loot is too common, then PC merchants are not incentivized to keep a shop because everyone will either find the loot themselves or buy it from NPC merchants. On the other hand, if loot is too rare, then people who don't dungeon a lot or don't ninja will not find interesting loot.

The unfortunate reality of this dilemma is that majority of players kind of have to end up buying the majority of their items from PC (or NPC) merchants. The only way to both try to maintain a PC economy as well as try to make loot rewarding is for loot to be very rare. When we look at our playerbase, there are players who only do dungeon like, every few weeks. And then there are players who, every day, ninja 10+ times. We're looking at some players having hundreds of times higher total chance at finding rare items than other players. A single player who frequently ninjas can supply for several players who dungeon infrequently. So the latter group wont be finding much from dungeons for themselves to use. Instead, they'll buy it.

When we consider crafting and loot; If there is something very rare but very useful, it will almost always eventually end up available to relatively low level characters. It doesn't matter if it's part of the 1% loot. We don't have item degragation, so the total looted item amount can only increase after time. Very few pieces of gear have managed to escape this faith. As a result, crafted gear must be better than almost all items you can find from loot (though GMW and Magic Vestment make some lootable items better than their crafted alternatives). If not, then when that looted stuff starts pouring down, you make crafted items obsolete. We want to encourage crafting and PC merchandising. Making loot too strong would be counter-productive to that.

It would be really cool if we could make balanced decision between various sort of items. But NWN, actually DnD itself, is not really complex enough to allow this. We work on very limited set of variables we can tweak. For a longsword for example, the possible damage bonus we can give is +1, +2, +1d4. The possible attack bonus is +1, +2, +3. AB decrease can't really be used for balance since it's overriden by GMW. Since by now veteran players know what immunities are common, what are not, and what stats are often needed and what are not, it's usually pretty straightforward to put items to order of power. It is very difficult to make real alternative items that are all equally strong without one being clearly better than others.

Due to the above, we now arrive to this conclusion; Looted items must either be very circumstantial (such as +4 AB vs Shapechangers), or feature a significant penalty (such as -2 constitution), or they must be in some way weaker than a crafted alternative (such as +1d6 elemental damage on rarest possible bastard sword, while enchanted bastard sword is +1d6 divine which is not resisted by basically any monster).

It's not easy to create items that meet all the criteria we have while also feel like they are worth while to use. If you think you can design such items, you are free to suggest your designs.
« Last Edit: May 09, 2018, 06:33:16 AM by Exordium »

Exordium

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Re: Dat fat, fat loot
« Reply #55 on: May 09, 2018, 06:58:00 AM »
..
I just learned from another person that you were referencing to sorcerer gear. Should have said so. ;)

Well, if there's a lack of sorcerer gear, I can add a few for the next round of items.

Keyser

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Re: Dat fat, fat loot
« Reply #56 on: May 09, 2018, 08:53:51 AM »
That was a thoughtful reply thank you. I know you wish to keep items lesser than steel items but by the time we reach mid to high levels steel items are well.. lackluster and boring. I know steel items become amazing at end game with a ratio of like 100000x better than that axe of 1 neg damage 25 vuln in multiple catagories. Is there no in between? I'm sure items could offer more than 1 point of elemental damage and still be less powerful than enchanted steel gear down the road without the need for rather stupid penalties. Just look at things like the winterlass. I'm not expecting everything to be on par with that but at least it offers useful bonuses and they still fall way flat compared to enchanted crafted gear. Finally I want to add, I think we have different definitions entirely of what is too great a penalty. As a dungeoneer who is exposed to traps and wizard magic for example a -4 reflex save is absolutely without question in my mind a terrible and I mean horrible trade off for any kind of stealth bonus or bonus what so ever. Especially when considering the bonuses offered are kinda poor in comparison to say... a mouse cloak which offers half the bonus without crippling my ability to not be murdered by any and all magic. An item could give me +5 Hide +5 MS +1 AC +5 random skill and -4 reflexes and the -4 to reflexes would still make that go directly to a vendor.

I'd like to add that if we can be 100% geared out in steel by level 5, what are we meant to do until level 14 other than hope and pray for some rare loot drop that is still only so minor or situational that you may as well just keep the steel. We desperately need another tier of weapons for the folks who reach that inbetween that arent 1% rare drops at dungeons we are way way too low level yet to reach. When I say another tier of weapons I dont mean 1 elemental damange. I mean 1d8. Steel offers about the same until enchanted then apparently skyrockets for example to +4 vs undead. Some kind of good in between is absolutely required or else and this is pretty much whats happening. You reach level 5, you get geared and you feel bored and stagnant all the way until level 14 then you enchant that gear you got at level 5 and thats it. You're done looting. So 1/3 the appeal to go to a dungeon is gone. The other 2/3 being, XP and RP. Most mid level content is spent at blind drive because you can go from uncapped to blind drive in 1 dungeon thats effortless to you. So that usually cuts out another 1/3rd of the reason to enter a dungeon unless its a suuuper good one. And if I wanna bank rp xp, I'll do it somewhere safe where I'm not slowly burning away my resources at the same time. Do you see what I mean, I hope? This is my honest observation.

What we currently have is good loot for levels 1-5. God-tier for levels 14+ and absolutely nothing short of 1% rare drops for everyone else. This is the current impression I get, though I could be wrong but I am fairly confident I've seen enough mid level content and enough 'rare drops' and I've yet to be impressed. Even the 'rare' sword we found in ghastria I have to say was... not so great. It was almost there but far far too situational compared to the extra weight of yet another sword in ones inventory. Please consider a mid-tier of loot that isnt situational or stupid rare and found in places designed for characters higher level than the loot itself.

*You could add level requirements on items to help balance that stuff?
« Last Edit: May 09, 2018, 09:18:09 AM by Keyser »

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Re: Dat fat, fat loot
« Reply #57 on: May 09, 2018, 09:06:53 AM »
An item could give me +5 Hide +5 MS +1 AC +5 random skill and -4 reflexes and the -4 to reflexes would still make that go directly to a vendor.

And the rest of us will get to enjoy a good item for cheap.

The server design in particular follows a philosophy in which you can't have powerful items unless you lose something for wearing them -  we can see this sometimes in other games where loot is important. Whether it is an abundance of experience points lost in enchanting, or situational maluses to affect you in scenarios you can predict with certainty or can't at all, the latter being rare and likely only in surprise PvP.

Additionally, there are items that go in the "in-between" zone you described, some even more powerful than enchanted crafted gear. You just have to find them.

The item described in this quote is quite literally fantastic when it comes to blows with other gear present in the module, for very explicit purposes. I would definitely keep one in a bag. Individuals having no use for those skill points won't, and whether they vendor trash it at that point is their prerogative, but it could fetch more than a nice price in player controlled markets.

Keyser

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Re: Dat fat, fat loot
« Reply #58 on: May 09, 2018, 09:12:03 AM »
Okay that philosophy is flawed on so many levels and is exactly why I play a cleric so I can 'fix' the loot myself with buffs. That idea that you have to sacrifice your left testicle in order to get 1 point of elemental damage, or a few odd skill point boost is just asinine to me, I'm sorry. I will never support that. I'll continue to happily play but I will in all honesty never support such a philosophy because in my mind as a player that just tells me "Just play a cleric." Nothing personal against anyone who enjoys that system, but its definitely not the kind of thing I will look on to keenly in my own opinion, which is of course just an opinion.
« Last Edit: May 09, 2018, 09:16:25 AM by Keyser »

Pav

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Re: Dat fat, fat loot
« Reply #59 on: May 09, 2018, 09:17:24 AM »
Whether or not you support it is irrelevant to the items being implemented, though within the boundaries of the server mechanics, the items being implemented are great. I personally do not support caster-bias, and sometimes the specific environments that lean that way. I have always been an advocate for improvements to mundanes, but as the item design philosophy is likely to not go away, changes to the classes themselves are what the Development team is working on.

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Re: Dat fat, fat loot
« Reply #60 on: May 09, 2018, 09:18:03 AM »
An item could give me +5 Hide +5 MS +1 AC +5 random skill and -4 reflexes and the -4 to reflexes would still make that go directly to a vendor.

And the rest of us will get to enjoy a good item for cheap.
[...]
The item described in this quote is quite literally fantastic when it comes to blows with other gear present in the module, for very explicit purposes.

Okay that philosophy is flawed on so many levels and is exactly why I play a cleric so I can 'fix' the loot myself with buffs. That idea that you have to sacrifice your left testicle in order to get 1 point of elemental damage, or a few odd skill point boost is just asinine to me, I'm sorry. I will never support that. I'll continue to happily play but I will in all honesty never support such a philosophy because in my mind as a player that just tells me "Just play a cleric."

I’m not sure that exaggeration is helping you, there. Yes, items tend to have drawbacks. It encourages players to think carefully about what different situations require as well as encouraging party play, as often the minor negatives to an item can be lessened by adventuring in a party I.e. with wards and buffs.

Keyser

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Re: Dat fat, fat loot
« Reply #61 on: May 09, 2018, 09:20:09 AM »
The item I described is actually significantly better than the real item. The real item is only hide/ms and -4 reflexes. Its great if you're in a hurry to get killed by the first person to throw a grease grenade at you.

I'mma step away from this thread now since I've pretty much said everything on my mind regarding the topic. Feel free to agree/disagree but this thread asked my opinion and there it is, candidly.
« Last Edit: May 09, 2018, 09:22:11 AM by Keyser »

Iridni Ren

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Re: Dat fat, fat loot
« Reply #62 on: May 09, 2018, 09:27:46 AM »
A shorter way of expressing "a philosophy in which you can't have powerful items unless you lose something for wearing them" is balance,  and while balance makes life complicated, it's also necessary for the game to remain a challenge.

Say you do play a cleric. You likewise have to pick and choose spells based on situation, the same as gear. And in some ways this is more complicated because gear can be swapped out more easily on the fly than can spells. (On the other hand, spells don't encumber a PC.)

If a powerful item has no minuses and is common, everyone will have it, resulting in power creep.

If it is rare, it will command those six and seven figures mentioned earlier.

Through more balanced items, PCs have to make choices and complexity results. Items can therefore be valuable to some PCs and not as valuable to others, so their value (price) doesn't skyrocket. I agree that there are many unwanted items that one has to wonder why a monster would bother to guard--much less place in a locked, trapped chest--but "+5 Hide +5 MS +1 AC +5 random skill and -4 reflexes" would be of interest to many PCs. (If the random skill was Search, Spot, Disable Traps, or Open Locks, it would be excellent gear for a trickery domain cleric or a rogue/cleric cross.)

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Pav

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Re: Dat fat, fat loot
« Reply #63 on: May 09, 2018, 09:32:05 AM »
A shorter way of expressing "a philosophy in which you can't have powerful items unless you lose something for wearing them" is balance,  and while balance makes life complicated, it's also necessary for the game to remain a challenge.

That is not what balance in video games means. Balance can exist in environments where all weapons are +10 EB Vorpal 30 Elemental Damage of all types; it's just not this server's balance.

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Re: Dat fat, fat loot
« Reply #64 on: May 09, 2018, 09:35:01 AM »
The gear philosophy also adds to the sense of vulnerability players feel, which is fitting given the themes of the setting, but the new gear (And in fairness a lot of old gear that now has the chance to drop again) balances against that vulnerability with better bonuses, essentially giving the player and the PC a bit of hope about their chances of success. Hope in despair and all that. It might sound somewhat cheesy and it probably is, but it would be difficult to maintain that atmosphere if gear was designed differently.

I think that is ultimately the ‘balance’ that the dev team is aiming for, it I have the right of it.

Iridni Ren

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Re: Dat fat, fat loot
« Reply #65 on: May 09, 2018, 09:44:16 AM »
A shorter way of expressing "a philosophy in which you can't have powerful items unless you lose something for wearing them" is balance,  and while balance makes life complicated, it's also necessary for the game to remain a challenge.

That is not what balance in video games means. Balance can exist in environments where all weapons are +10 EB Vorpal 30 Elemental Damage of all types; it's just not this server's balance.

I was pointing out that the philosophy being called "flawed" was (literally) a philosophy of balancing pluses against minuses. So I'm not sure what you're criticizing or refuting.

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Re: Dat fat, fat loot
« Reply #66 on: May 09, 2018, 09:49:37 AM »
A shorter way of expressing "a philosophy in which you can't have powerful items unless you lose something for wearing them" is balance,  and while balance makes life complicated, it's also necessary for the game to remain a challenge.

That is not what balance in video games means. Balance can exist in environments where all weapons are +10 EB Vorpal 30 Elemental Damage of all types; it's just not this server's balance.

I was pointing out that the philosophy being called "flawed" was (literally) a philosophy of balancing pluses against minuses. So I'm not sure what you're criticizing or refuting.

I am criticizing your terminology. What I then refute is that minuses need not exist for balance to exist.

Simple corrections so that the message comes across more clearly. Back on topic!

Exordium

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Re: Dat fat, fat loot
« Reply #67 on: May 09, 2018, 10:58:21 AM »
I know you wish to keep items lesser than steel items but by the time we reach mid to high levels steel items are well.. lackluster and boring. I know steel items become amazing at end game with a ratio of like 100000x better than that axe of 1 neg damage 25 vuln in multiple catagories.
There should be quite many weapons that can now compete with steel weapons.

Quote
I know steel items become amazing at end game with a ratio of like 100000x better than that axe of 1 neg damage 25 vuln in multiple catagories.
There's also (very rare) weapons that could in specific circumstances deal more damage than enchanted weapons, if there were damage vulnerabilities for example.

I'm sure items could offer more than 1 point of elemental damage and still be less powerful than enchanted steel gear down the road without the need for rather stupid penalties.
There's several items that do that. 1d4 cold, 1d6 divine, +2 bludgeoining/+1d4 slashing, +1d4 electric, +2 neg/+2 fire..

As far as my game knowledge goes, none of those items have crippling negatives that made the weapon somehow unusable.

Just look at things like the winterlass. I'm not expecting everything to be on par with that but at least it offers useful bonuses and they still fall way flat compared to enchanted crafted gear.
With GMW, Winterlass is actually a little ahead enchanted longsword if enemy has no cold damage resistance. Which, granted, quite many enemies do have.

As a dungeoneer who is exposed to traps and wizard magic for example a -4 reflex save is absolutely without question in my mind a terrible
Well.. You have +2 GMW, Flame Weapon and steel rapier. +1d4 from steel overrides +2 GMW. You have 12 strength. On average (not counting sneak attacks or crits), you deal 9.5 damage on a hit. If, instead, you had a +1d4 elemental damage rapier with +2 GMW, you would deal an average of 11.5 damage per hit. That's 21% more damage.

Assuming you had no evasion, if before your chance to save a trap was 75%, it's now 55%. This means that when before your saves would have let you decrease trap damage to 62.5%, now you could lower it to "only" 72.5% of the original value.

There's a lot of assumptions to these numbers. What if you use a longsword? What if you have weapon specialization? What if you have Improved Evasion?

The fact that we have to - no, that we can - juggle with numbers like this is a good thing to have. In the end, -4 reflex isn't the end of the world. It's a risk for sure, but then, we're supposed to be taking risks.

Now if there's a specific weapon type for which you feel that there's a drastic lack of choice for, please make note of it and I can look to adding a few more weapons for the next round of item updates, even if I was going to focus mainly on armors and consumables.

When I say another tier of weapons I dont mean 1 elemental damange. I mean 1d8.
The only weapons that can have +1d8 damage bonus without massive penalties are the two-handed weapons. That's part of our balance.

There should be plenty of weapons with above 1 elemental now added.

What dungeons have you been running? I'm asking just so I can gauge if the above +1 damage weapons should drop in the dungeons you go through.

That idea that you have to sacrifice your left testicle in order to get 1 point of elemental damage
I'll quote some penalties on the +1 non-base damage type weapons I added (only including the weapons that have no other bonuses but +1 non-base damage):
10% cold vulnerability.
-1 search/listen/spot.
-1 antagonize.
No penalty.
-1 spot.
-1 influence.
5% electric vulnerability.
...
I don't think these are, to quote, "sacrificing your left testicle".

The gear philosophy also adds to the sense of vulnerability players feel, which is fitting given the themes of the setting, but the new gear (And in fairness a lot of old gear that now has the chance to drop again) balances against that vulnerability with better bonuses, essentially giving the player and the PC a bit of hope about their chances of success. Hope in despair and all that. It might sound somewhat cheesy and it probably is, but it would be difficult to maintain that atmosphere if gear was designed differently.

I think that is ultimately the ‘balance’ that the dev team is aiming for, it I have the right of it.
This is a very eloquent and good way to put it!
« Last Edit: May 09, 2018, 11:22:10 AM by Exordium »

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Re: Dat fat, fat loot
« Reply #68 on: July 22, 2018, 01:42:09 AM »
Now that I've had some time to sift through the new trinkets and treasures I'll share some of my thoughts.


1. New finds

I've been generally impressed with some of the recent additions. Regardless of how you feel about bonuses and penalties on equipment- I've found several that I've picked up for personal use and given/sold a bunch as well.  Some of the more uncommon damage types are getting a little showtime as well.

One of the common elements I've noticed and enjoy is the ability to hit harder in exchange for getting hit back just the same. Hopefully some risk takers will roll the dice with a few of these weapons.

Another thing I've noticed the the abundance of stealth gear and related itmes. (huge fan. ty dread and devs <3) If possible I'd like to see a few new takes on detection gear as well. I'll make a few recommendation in the item request thread but I def think we could afford to balance out the two skills sets.


2. Out with Old


I don't have a whole loot to say here. There was a lot of "junk" loot that saw very little player use and I think a good job was done all around on making room for some of the new additions.


3. Specific Problem Chests/Areas

As brought up here: http://www.nwnravenloft.com/forum/index.php?topic=48881.msg603002#msg603002

The Temple of Sobek is an odd one for me. Sometimes I seem to find nice things there, other times it feels as though the place had just recently been sacked when the spawn and OL DCs are maxed. You might say that's working as intended, I get the need to not always get good stuff, but sometimes it seems like the chest values are off. I'll find several tarnished wedding bands, some +1 thieves tool and some slashing sand in back chests. Not sure if these chests just have a huge degree of variance or what.

Perfidus. This pertains less to any of the chest but more to Malthor himself. I always find odd things on him- like apprentices staves or falkovnian talon cloaks. I'd really be in favor of removing on of hte back chest and beefing up the big baddie a bit more.

Tusmorke Skoven - South - Cave "The Curst Cave" I have consistently poor experiences here. I can never seem to find anything nice here- and that's over years of looting it.

Ghastrian Chapel - I actually don't have a problems with this one. I've found several nice things here. Sometimes on the spider. Sometimes in the chest.

I still need to comb through some of the rarer variable spawn caves but over all nice job! Thanks for updates.