U75 Preview 2: Chill of Ravenloft Loot

[droid327]

You listed the numbers! Hooray and congrats!

"Dont just say what you dont like, tell us what you want"

Ok

I'd kinda like to see the Sun/Moon augments drop roll separate from the Named Items, kinda like how you can roll both a named item and a Morninglord/Macabre weapon in RL, or Ferrocrystal in Fey. You can still have a rare item elevator for both rolls, but I dont like that they're competing with each other and diluting drops.

Alternatively, bump the overall chest drop chance +10% on all difficulties for this pack, to help offset some of that dilution.

 

[dozensnakes]

Treasure Tables:

• When opening a Quest End Chest:
  • You have a 100% chance of getting Lamordia-specific crafting ingredients
    • These are used to make Lamordia's weapons and Lamordia-specific Augments that go into the weapons and named/rare loot. See below.
    • You get 1d4+1/2/3 (on Normal/Hard/Elite) ingredients.
      • The ingredient you get is Bleak Conductors, Bleak Insulators, Bleak Alternators, or Bleak Resistors, randomly determined when the chest is rolled.
      • (This ingredient distribution is identical to Isle of Dread).
  • Additionally, You have a 10/16/33% chance (on Normal/Hard Elite) to get something from the Named Item Table.
    • Once you have reached the Named Item Table, you have a chance to get one of the following:
      • Standard Named Item A
      • Standard Named Item B
      • Standard Named Item C
      • Standard Named Item D
      • Sun/Moon Augment 1 (Sun/Moon Augments have a lower chance of appearing than the Named Items above.)
      • Sun/Moon Augment 2
      • Sun/Moon Augment 3
      • Small chance to upgrade to the Rare Item Table. (The odds of reaching this table are higher than in past content).
        • Standard Named Items listed above are unique to that dungeon, like most end chest items in the game.
        • Sun/Moon Augments listed above are a mix of brand-new Sun/Moon Augments (see below) and ones introduced previously (giving access beyond the packs they were introduced in).
        • Once you have reached the Rare Item Table, you have a chance to get one of the following:
          • Rare Named Item A
          • Rare Sun/Moon Augment 1 (In a few dungeons, this may be Rare Named Item B)
          • Rare Sun/Moon Augment 2

Making progress, now what are the sun/moon chances, and the rare item chance?
Also what is the distribution for ingredients? I got the impression dread's ingredients varied by area(the wilderness dropping more of some items then the quest)

 

[Sylvanush]

Hey everyone! Thank you for the feedback so far. Hitting a few quick points:

People correctly assumed we made one for every spell school, but you're right, there's not a lot of point in having this one.

I'm going to remove the Divination ones, and likely replace them with:
- Solar Gem of Elemental Absorption: Slotted Effect: +[3/10]% Artifact Bonus to Fire, Cold, Electric, and Acid Absorption.
- Solar Gem of Critical Confirmation: Slotted Effect: +[2/4] Artifact Bonus to Critical Confirmation and Damage.


Good list of ideas for crafting, will look at it. We do need enough to not exist in the system to make the base item static effects meaningful, but we'll take a look.

Alignment-based critical damage (including on past items) should be fixed in this Preview - If you see places where it still isn't, let me know and I'll fix them.

RE: Legendary Heartshard: Yes, though I'm considering either bumping that % down or elevating this item to be an Artifact. Thoughts on which?

Will consider the changes to the Amulet.

There's quite a few instances in this loot where static effects are Insightful or Quality because the Enhancement equivalent exists in the crafting system - We can do a review to see if there's spots where it makes sense to swap to Enhancement in the static effects though.

Shields are meant to have slots like other named items. There's some weirdness with the shields in general in this build, some of the changes we made to them don't seem to be in the build.

Warlocks certainly have a fair few gearing necessities, but we've been making adjustments to Eldritch Blast in the last couple of updates, and have plans for the future as well. Like anything else, these are just new options.


Will definitely consider item based bonuses to Blast Dice.


There are definitely fewer named Rare Items than there were in Myth Drannor. It's one of the pieces of feedback we've taken from the past few updates and worked in for this one.

Please let us know which ones and we'll get them fixed! Most items have fewer than normal due to the Lamordia Augment Slots, but if there are any that aren't following the scheme listed in the OP, let us know which ones specifically.


The "Treasure based on class" only applies to quest end rewards lists. Admittedly, it's a system I'd love to either revamp or eliminate someday - The lists are old, and classes are diverse enough in how they function these days where it isn't necessarily MORE likely to offer you things your specific build uses.


I'll take a look, thanks.


Myth Drannor had 3-4 in its Rare Tables depending on the dungeon. In some cases, it was 3 Rare Named Items and 0 Rare Sun/Moon Augments.

We've adjusted that in Lamordia by:
- Raising the rate of reaching the Rare Table
- Locking the number of Rare Items to 3
- Locking the breakdown of that table to 1-2 Rare Items, with the other 1-2 being Rare Sun/Moon Augments.

--------------

One further note: Standard Named Items are more likely to appear in end chests than Standard Sun/Moon Augments, but we're discussing adjusting that further toward the Named Items.

Keep the feedback coming! We'd love to hear more about static effects on specific named items, which ones you'd like and what's not on any that you'd like to see.

In the meantime, I'm going to get started on adjustments for next preview.

Thanks for explaining the loot mechanics. That helps many people to understand how loot mechanics will be on this adventure pack. Good overall on the effects of the items to bring to the legendary arsenal.

Great system to craft, like the Dino system. User-friendly and very convenient for gear customization. A grand variety of effects to add to the gear.

Great addition to the augmentation of critical confirmation and elemental absorption. If it is possible to add alignment absorption, it will be helpful, as there are not many items with alignment absorption currently.

Not sure, but you guys have any plans on keeping quivers as a slot for loot? Many expansions with no quivers for bow users. Dual crossbow users and throwers benefit from 2 items that provide different effects. For bow users, the quivers used give a little bit of the missing benefits from other range characters, and it's been a while since new quivers have been added to the game. If you can explain more on this subject, it will be appreciated.

It will be nice if we can see a Tenser's Combat Infusion on some items or augments, doing the same effect as Cannith Combat Infusion.

Maybe a new draconic Gem that increases resistance from 30 to 45 on each element. Or poison absorption augments items just a few atm.

Quality and insightful false life items. Add Insightful vitality to items.

More items with feats like the items that have Elusive Target or wind through the trees but instead with new feats like mobile spellcasting, watchful eye, or enchanted elemental dice.

Any item that gives a clickie like Titan's Grip, but for another stat, not strength or a bonus to spellpower, with a duration of 1 minute.

More weapons that do light or force damage, or augments for the weapons.

Thanks for the hard work.

 

[droid327]

But that is averaged over many pulls. On average, 50% of your farming attempts will drop one after 104 pulls. And 10% will wait, on average, 345 pulls.

An actual outlier at the 99% level (if we have 40,000 players that’s 400 people - not insignificant) that number gets up to 689 pulls.

Agreed. Rare loot shouldn't be that rare. We go from 12 pulls on average for a named item (4 items on table * 33% on Elite) to over 100. There is a happy medium somewhere in between that you overshot.

And we need a backstop system (aka a 'pity system') if we're going to have rare loot as an ongoing feature

It doesnt have to be especially pitiable - maybe calibrated at 2x the average, once the average itself is more reasonable - but it needs to cut the tail off that distribution at some point.

As always, Sands is the gold standard for this. Being able to trade in pack crafting resources for a named item would be the equivalent here, and it only requires setting the right price to represent an appropriate amount of quest completions.

 

[Lominal]

RE: Legendary Heartshard: Yes, though I'm considering either bumping that % down or elevating this item to be an Artifact. Thoughts on which?

My vote is artifact, its a lot more interesting from design and gearing choice.

making it 15% would just be an existing item with massive upside (crownblade cloak with no threat gen+ mega customizable stats). making it a 20% artifact means that dps have to think about using it over another artifacts as well as opening up 20% op for non-tower shield using tanks (such as monk)

 

[moffus]

Concider adding specific insightful spellpower to the crafting table aswell, probably for the miserable slots.

 

[GramercyRiff]

It's good to take the step of skewing the roll more to the named item, but why not just make it easier to acquire both augments and items? Make loot acquisition simpler, more fun, and easier. It's best for the game. There is more than one good player suggestion regarding how to handle making it easier to acquire gear than it is now. I encourage you to pick one suggested by a player and implement it.

The resistance to acquiring gear is in the optional rng of card curses and mythic/reaper. By default though, standard gear should be acquired easily relative to the optional ways. I mean I think all non-raid gear should be available from an npc, but if we have to farm for it, it needs to be much simpler to farm than it currently is. The worst part is, farming MD and later loot is not fun. A game needs to be fun. I want to buy Chill. I want to have fun playing Chill.

Bottom line is if I'm spending money on a game, I need to be having fun. It's as simple as that. Current loot farming isn't fun.

 

[Zvdegor]

Can we have short range and long range version of the Runearm(s) pls?
Or even better make it possible to augment or craft the short/long range use of a runearm

As a melee I'd like to use cone shaped or any AOE type shots and I guess casters or ranged builds would prefer the opposit.

 

[_fully_carroted_]

Even on my min-max builds, I throw in a couple extra points to Int at character creation to have additional skill points to invest into jump, tumble and search regardless of the build. Maxing jump (11 trained ranks or 23 depending on if its a main skill or not) will always bring you above 40 pretty early on, especially if you have a jump tome and STR tome on the character. Also, jump potions exist if you're that down-bad.

For skills like search, in heroics and epics I carry around a keylock ring swap. At level 26+ I bring a T1/T2 int skills LGS swap for +33 to int skills. For socials, bring a T1/T2 cha skills LGS swap.

If you're wearing skill-boosting items permanently (with the exception of spellcraft for casters, which can also just be augmented rather than trying to fit in a piece of gear that includes this bonus), you're wasting a slot that could be replaced with something more useful

Why are you stuck on physical skill augments? My point was that the comment about “only heal and perform have any value” is obviously wrong, and I stand by that comment. Spellcraft is clearly valuable for most casters, for example.

I agree sort of with part of your point, but I have two fundamental disagreements.

First: not every item needs to be high-value. That is good design for different games, but with a bajillion builds and items in DDO it’s not even a good goal. Sure they can’t all be as bad as Listen but there’s room for flavor stuff!

Second, opportunity cost is also real. If you spend 2 points on int instead of wis, you’re effectively trading +1 int modifier (and +1 to int skills) and an empty augment slot for +1 wisdom modifier (and therefore +1 will saves and wis skills). How do they rate against each other? It depends on your build, your goals, your gear, etc. And definitely changes based on past lives, difficulty level, and cap vs leveling gear. (You aren’t capping jump, search, etc on a first-life charisma Paladin very easily - and there are plenty of builds that permanently slot social skills)

(Also I’m not farming LGS skill swap gear. You do you, but it isn’t a reasonable alternative for anyone who doesn’t already have years of shroud runs behind them)

Look - obviously some skill augments are situational and some are permanent slots. But you’re getting caught up on a point that I never made: clearly a jump or swim augment isn’t as mechanically useful as a different augment, but if you only want the most useful augments to exist then I think you’re missing out.

Maybe I want a swim augment because maxing out swim is fun. Perhaps I want a jump augment instead of spending the points, so I can put the points into balance, or move them from int to wis.

 

[Dom]

Second, opportunity cost is also real. If you spend 2 points on int instead of wis, you’re effectively trading +1 int modifier (and +1 to int skills) and an empty augment slot for +1 wisdom modifier (and therefore +1 will saves and wis skills). How do they rate against each other? It depends on your build, your goals, your gear, etc. And definitely changes based on past lives, difficulty level, and cap vs leveling gear. (You aren’t capping jump, search, etc on a first-life charisma Paladin very easily - and if you don’t understand when you would want to permanently slot social skills, that’s a you problem)

For the most part, trading 2 points of one stat isn't going to make or break your build. For example, if I am a STR barbarian and I start with 16 STR instead of 18 because I put those 2 points into int for additional skills, 1 tactic DC and 1 damage is not gonna make or break the build.

(Also I’m not farming LGS skill swap gear. You do you, but it isn’t a reasonable alternative for anyone who doesn’t already have years of shroud runs behind them)

I specifically said Tier 1 and Tier 2 LGS items. Small and Medium mats are very easy to attain and doesn't require years of shroud runs at all. There are 4 chests that drop small mats and 4 that drop medium mats in shroud, plus you get these in the flagging quests as well. So it is definitely a reasonable alternative.

Maybe I want a swim augment because maxing out swim is fun. Perhaps I want a jump augment instead of spending the pints, so I can put the pints into balance, or move them from int to wis.

As you say, "you do you". My point isn't to stop you from doing flavour builds, it was simply to point out that there are alternative solutions to getting higher skills so that you don't need to burn gear and augment slots on these things that don't provide that much value to a build (flavour or not).

 

[Synalon]

One thing i'd love is insightful spell lore for specific elements on non-weapons. Currently it is found extremely rarely and only for one or two damage types.

 

[5 Other People]

Myth Drannor had 3-4 in its Rare Tables depending on the dungeon. In some cases, it was 3 Rare Named Items and 0 Rare Sun/Moon Augments.

We've adjusted that in Lamordia by:
- Raising the rate of reaching the Rare Table
- Locking the number of Rare Items to 3
- Locking the breakdown of that table to 1-2 Rare Items, with the other 1-2 being Rare Sun/Moon Augments.

Correct me, but I read this as we had a minimum of 3 rare objects in all MD chest with rares and we will have 3 rare objects in all Chill chest with rares.

This doesn't seem to address the primary issue of getting to the specific desired rare...that number may have changed slightly, but it's still to low for us to play gear tetris.

I assume there is a 6% chance of making it to the rare table, if true, I'd propose adjusting odds once you've landed on the the rare table to: 50% chance of getting the named item (3% per chest roll) and 25% chanced of getting either of the gems (1.5% per chest roll). This is good business for SSG b/c the augments, which can be sold on the auction house become the rarest & will make players happier b/c they have a much better shot at getting the desired Named loot.

So then, it's farm for the Named Item, then buy the rare gem...this is also good for folks who will farm gems for shards.

 

[_fully_carroted_]

Agreed. Rare loot shouldn't be that rare. We go from 12 pulls on average for a named item (4 items on table * 33% on Elite) to over 100. There is a happy medium somewhere in between that you overshot.

And we need a backstop system (aka a 'pity system') if we're going to have rare loot as an ongoing feature

It doesnt have to be especially pitiable - maybe calibrated at 2x the average, once the average itself is more reasonable - but it needs to cut the tail off that distribution at some point.

As always, Sands is the gold standard for this. Being able to trade in pack crafting resources for a named item would be the equivalent here, and it only requires setting the right price to represent an appropriate amount of quest completions.

Yes, this point can not be repeated too frequently: we now need 14 items plus… 20-40 assorted augments now? How many of those would be rare drops?

If you need to farm up 14 items and 2 augments each, with 33% drop rates, that is an average of 504 chest pulls if all of those items are on the same “33% chance for 4 items” system. If there are 13 quests then it’s in the range of 40 sagas - and these get much lower if we get to craft most of the gear we need! Maybe it’s as much as half, so 20 sagas for 100% gear coverage, more or less.

Once you add a few rares and go from 4 items to 7 in a chest, the numbers are worse than a bad day job. I’m not doing the math for the full set but 450 pulls is the average just for 3 target rare items with the numbers we have now.

This isn’t a game any more. So many people post here about the number of shard rerolls they burn on items from the last expansion, and often never got the item after burning hundreds of dollars on shards! THIS IS WHY THEY DO IT. They charge for VIP, they charge for expansions, they charge for DDO points and therefore shards, and then they charge you shards to improve the odds of getting items.

 

[Abramax]

- Rune Arm Unbridled Power : heroic is ML 18 with Forbidden Knowledge set, is it intended ?

- The necklace Heartshard is not in the rare loot items : as it has 3 Lamordia slots it should be

- Ludendorf Class Ring (doublestrike / tendon slice) ; make a ranged version of that ring please (with insightful doubleshot ?)

- Necklace : Baron Aubrecker's Family amulet : Only 1 static effect instead of 2

- Cloaks and Helms : they both have insightful ability bonuses : Make one insightful and the other quality

- Cloaks and Helms : I dont understand why there are so many helms and cloaks.
Helms have Insightful PRR and : elemental resistance OR insightful elemental absorption.
Cloaks have Insightful MRR and : quality elemental Absorption OR insightful elemental resistance.
Elemental resistances can be slotted with a yellow augment and if these items are designed to resist elemental damage, the ins PRR is not requiered here.
So we only need to keep 4 static effects : quality elemental Absorption, insightful elemental resistance, Insightful MRR and insightful elemental absorption.
So we have 50% less Cloaks and Helms

- Armor ; Clothing ; Gravekeeper s Brawler Garb ; missing miserable and Woeful slots

- Heroic Weapons : 1d2 Vampirism can be good : BUT I would like to see options to have standard 3d6 elemental damage instead for lvl 8 weapons

- RARE ITEMS ;
-Armors : Competence elemental resistance looks disapointing. Having only 3 Lamordia slots on a RARE item feels bad.
-Rare armors should be displacement 25% + 4 Lamordia Slots (heroic and legendary)

- Lunar/Solar Gems
-Artifact and Profane universal Spell DC and specific School spell DC should stack OR the specific school spell DC bonus should be higher
-We need a Profane bonus to imbue dice gem

-Lamordia Augments ;
- Weapon : Melancholic ; only 1d6 damage when the standard is 3d6 for lvl 8
- Weapon : Dolorus ; Bugged / Error / can t see description and effect
- Weapon : Miserable ; Bugged / Error / can t see description and effect
- Accessory : Woeful profane DC : it is +1 profance DC, it should be +2 profane DC ( we have an IOD helm with +2 profane DC and it is an abishai lvl 5 set effect)

- Legendary Lamordia Augments ;
- Accessory : Woeful profane DC : should be +3 (to scale with Lunar/Solar Gems)
- Accessory : Woeful sacred DC : should be +3 ( lvl 28 items have already +2 sacred DC)


CONCLUSION
Many standard items and rare items are not finished (I guess) as they dont have their static effects.
I think that we could have options with standard items to have 0 static effects and 3 Lamordia slots (loosing 2 static effects for +1 Lamordia slot)

Overall, I really appreciate the flexibility and the variety of options we get when it comes to items and build opportunities.

That said, moving forward, I truly hope we’ll start seeing more items with stacked effects — like having Accuracy + Insightful Accuracy + Quality Accuracy + Legendary Accuracy all combined on the same item.

Because honestly, gear Tetris is getting out of hand.

Same goes for ability score items, Assassinate gear, Deception, Deadly, Armor Piercing, Doubleshot… it’s just as painful for all of them.


And spellcasting gear? Why do I need four different items just to cover Spell Power, Spell Lore, Quality Spell Power, and Insightful Spell Power? That system really needs to evolve.

It’s already a challenge for “classic” builds — but for hybrid builds like mine, where I need both ranged and spellcasting gear, it becomes a nightmare.

I spend dozens of hours just trying to piece together something usable, and frankly, it’s not fun anymore.

Maybe it’s time to introduce thematic gear — items with grouped versions of the same effect (Standard + Quality + Insightful + Legendary), available across different equipment slots.

And maybe all legenday items lvl 30+ effects should be 'packed' and include all subtypes of that effect ( Standard + Insightful + Quality + Legendary).
So for exemple Legendary accuracy effect on an item lvl 30+ : Accuracy + ins accu + quality accu + legendary accu

That way, we could spend less time doing math and spreadsheets, and more time actually playing the game.

 

[_fully_carroted_]

For the most part, trading 2 points of one stat isn't going to make or break your build.

Yes, just like using a skill augment isn’t going to break your build.

They aren’t great - but they will get used.

 

[Rull]

I remember a quote from some time ago, I think it was Tolero who said that:

"When it comes to rare treasure, the ultimate goal is that we want obtaining a rare drop to feel meaningful and not rote -- that when someone gets one, it feels special"

How's that going? Do you feel this update is getting you closer to your ultimate goal?
Did you even do anything to make a player feel special when they get a superrare item? Something in the name? Added an item border so the player at least *knows* they got something rare?


My experience from myth drannor is that you open a chest, loot whatever item, stash it in your bank, feed duplicates to sentience gem, and at no point know which item or augment was rare and which was not.

Math dictates that by now, having done each quest about 30 times, I probably have 80% of the non-rare items and 10% of the rare items. Of the items I still miss, I have no clue which are rare and on which I have just been unlucky. If I pull such an item I will feel nothing different between the two, just another check. And worse, of the items I do have, I certainly can't tell which are rare and which aren't.

I could theoretically have been very lucky and pulled half of the rare items already and I would be none the wiser. How is that in any way achieving your goal of feeling meaningful?

 

[Vox]

Well that’s clearly not true.

Trapping skills, social skills, and spellcraft are also mechanically important.

Athletic skills are good too - jump/swim/tumble.

Players can already search and disable traps on any difficulty on an int dumped razorclaw, likewise hit social skill watermarks.

 

[5 Other People]

a note to the players:

wow, the feedback from devs is way more engaging than what I've seen in the recent past. this is good and encouraging, even if it doesn't get us where we want to be. my guess is sales of chill are well below MD and they are surgically approaching some compromise. Though, I suspect they've moved all they are willing or capable of at this point in time.

I'll take the punch to the gut for the team and sit out chill it it means we get to a desirable rate of rare acquisition at some point. for your part, try to scale back re-rolls?

 

[Melkizadek]

I might be missing something here, but on Lamannia I was comparing the level 34 weapon with my level 31 weapon from Isle of Dread and the IoD weapon base damage is actually stronger.

Calamitous Light Crossbow 5.8 (1d8+2) +15 = 63.00 base damage (no set bonus or sun or moon)
Attuned Bone Light Crossbow 5.2 (1d8+3) +15 = 64.20 base damage (AND it has a set bonus)

Will there be raid versions of the weapons to look forward to?

 

[pirotessa]

Yes, just like using a skill augment isn’t going to break your build.

They aren’t great - but they will get used.

When you're farming for a USEFUL augment/item and you keep pulling the skills ones, I'm sure this will not age well.