U75 Preview 2: Chill of Ravenloft Loot

[Lagin]

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.

Please eliminate that feature.

 

[Lichcrak]

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.

So your only better than MD in "some cases" MD was bad enough to make people quit the game. It needs to be far better.

Like 1 Rare per quest not 3, (2 augs, 1 item is still 3, yes I get the item is better to get but if someone wants an aug thats even worse, 1 Rare per quest seriously)

Also the overall standard table is crazy bloated, any adjustments to that??

 

[Ying]

Well that’s clearly not true.

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

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

Many +skill items aren't worth wearing 100% of the time. There are notable exceptions like those that boost spellpower, Intimidate for tanks, etc. But swim? 99% of the quests it's wallpaper. Over 40 jump has no effect, and Diamond of Jump is much higher bonus and has way more options to fit into gear.

 

[Sillyturtle]

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.

Make sure that not all the shields are Steel so that druids don't have to go through 2 expansions in a row that they're not able to Equip a new shield.

 

[GrizzlyOso]

Well that’s clearly not true.

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

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

I’d buy the expansion for a +50 swim augment alone. Not if it’s rare though, which I’m sure it will be.

Not sure what the design fascination is with this rare garbage when even the augments and items on the same table is already awful.

We have a full roadmap of good design here outlined many , many times . I don’t understand the drive to make this game terrible . Are you being held hostage steelstar? Blink twice.

 

[Striga]

Cut the number of named items by half. Someone mentioned way too many cloaks and helmets, start there. If you already have spent the effort and designed the unique visuals, convert some of them into cosmetic items. Or maybe Lamordia random loot could drop with unique visuals.

 

[Nickodeamous]

Haven't been to Lamannia, but it seems like stats are getting a bump? Does that mean +1? I assume it does. I feel like it is what it is. For regearing a highly optimized end game gearset, I feel like I'll wait until the lev cap increase next year. I just dont think +1 here or there is worth the hassle of gear tetris (at least to me).

That being said, if the quests are deemed to be fun and worth it, I'll buy (still haven't yet). I still think sets should be an option. If you do anything with sun and moon, please at least add a slot to rings going forward. Dino crafting and sets included rings and weapons. Just my 2 cents.

Nic

 

[Tyriax]

Checking the math today, but I believe we'll be bumping the individual spell school Sun/Moon augments to be higher than the all-spell-school one.

Skills we're taking a look at as well, I think the numbers could stand to be higher than they are, but in several cases these are brand-new stacking bonuses that don't already exist elsewhere, and we do not want to go especially high with them for balance purposes.

Loads of great feedback in your two replies, but this one seems important. "Taking a look at skills" is great and all, but sun/moon slots are highly contested on gear, in items that are often ridiculously difficult to get copies of, so unless the goal here is to have us all farming 8 sets of items for hot swapping different skills to make use of this absolute glut of skill solar/lunar augs then I really do not see the point of them.

The suggestion of making them "Alluring skills" and also be higher at least makes them somewhat reasonable as a swap item, but even then only on a character with a crazy hybrid skill starved build is really going to want this and that only rarely.

I worry more about the bloat of useless augments festering in my fourth or fifth dimensional augment bag some day, why? What purpose to pump us full of augments we dont want, never asked for and cant effectively use on items nobody is excited to cram skill augs into when they can put in Doublestrike or Melee power or Spell power that doesnt exist in set bonuses anymore so you HAVE to get it from sun /moon? With current plan stated as "not changing sun/moon" augments location/number it means you always only have a set number you can wear and mostly thats going to be the most chased after bonuses we used to tetris from sets, not +any number to two specific skills.

Love that you are at least looking into lowering augment rates vs named item rates, do not love that the math has been expressed on here several times as 150+ openings of a chest, 49 weeks of ransacking to obtain a single copy of a rare item. Thats insane. Most of us have been playing this game for over a decade and in some cases from the very beginning, we do not need a possibly full gearset of items to chase that will take us the next 3 years to get something with mythic 3 on it, meanwhile three more expansions have released and all that time spent farming this one piece is now wasted anyhow as some new item has +1 better of stat A or B and is marginally easier to farm for.

A singular rare chase item like Cursed blade of Jack jibbers that maybe takes years to acquire due to its crazy benefits and quality of life improvements is one thing. But just gear that will have its slot contested next year? Meanwhile Ive now got 120+ skills augs rotting in my bag that serve no purpose?

How about we repurpose all of the old nonsense items in our ingredients bags and augment bags to be able to crunch them like reaper items to be able to add mythic or make rare items from those drops? Crunch 50 solar/lunar augs to get dust to make one specific rare aug.

Reduce the bloat first and foremost, we dont need this many augments at all, increase the value of the rare table by making these items actually worth chasing or just make it reasonable to obtain.

I quit playing for over 6 months after Myth Drannor release because getting a basic item blank for the two or three upgrades I wanted was mind numbingly brutal. I love grinding quests for item upgrades, chasing that perfect m3/reaper item, I did not love working that hard to get a SINGLE copy of the item, didnt even bother considering the grind for a mythic version, I simply did not have the stomach for it.

Love the idea of a new crafting set, do not love current implementation copy/paste soulless version we have been previewed. It should absolutely NOT be Isle of dread v2, it should have its own flavor, its own unique options and most importantly if it is going to exist at all it should be capable of surpassing in any way the dino gear Im currently wearing without a 2 year investment.

 

[Rull]

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.

Death Hosts (heroic) has, to my knowledge, two superrares:
-Outfit of the Warblade
-Solar Gem of Strikethrough (Heroic)

Next random quest I check; Ogma's song: also 2. I'm not trying to cherry-pick here, just clicking the wiki at random.

More rare than that sounds absolutely horrible. They were already near-impossible to get.
Even when doing MD on reaper and elite each life, I'm nowhere near the point that I could go target-farm the missing items. I'm still in the process of accumulating the majority and probably will be for the next couple of years.

Note that with named item A,B,C,D and augment 1,2,3 in a chest, I already consider *those* items rare.
With the old baseline of 4 or 5 items in a chest, you were looking at 6% or 8% chance to get an item. Increasing this to 7 items, decreased the dropchance to 4.5% already, or 21 runs (10 past lifes in my case) to get it. That's already pretty rare in my book.

The whole superrare table, for which you give no data as to how rare exactly, sounds fun for a exceptional item like jibbers but why an augment of 5% strikethrough would need to be ultrarare is beyond me.

 

[Abramax]

Need 2 Chests at the end of the quests.
1 Chest for named items and 1 Chest for Lunar/Solar augments.
Keep big optionals like that.
Make small optionals able to drop augments.

 

[Nickodeamous]

Need 2 Chests at the end of the quests.
1 Chest for named items and 1 Chest for Lunar/Solar augments.
Keep big optionals like that.
Make small optionals able to drop augments.

With named items in past expansions, if you got one, it had a set bonus on it. (You just needed 3 pieces to complete (or whatever combo)

I would say have chests get 2 named items on separate rolls.

Roll 1 is for named loot (with a chance for rare named loot.

Roll 2 is for augments only (with a chance for a rare augment)

If we think about it, we are being kinda punished to have to make the same "sets" by getting 2x the "named/augments".

There should be a chance for 2 items (1 named and 1 augment per chest).

 

[Ying]

Haven't been to Lamannia, but it seems like stats are getting a bump? Does that mean +1? I assume it does.

No stat bumps, not even in artifacts. Still 15/7/3.

 

[nenetteblackmoor]

I'd like to point out something from a different perspective.

Back in the old days of DDO, there were items that had value because their appearance didn’t match their actual category—like a shortsword that looked like a bastard sword.
But now that the cosmetic system has been revamped and players can wear whatever look they want, those kinds of mismatched items have lost their value.

More recently, designers seem to avoid giving heavy armor a properly metallic or "heavy" look.
Instead, we keep getting heavy armors that look more like cloth robes.

Please—when designing heavy armor, make it look like heavy armor.
If someone prefers a cloth look, they can just use a cosmetic set with that appearance.

I really hope the visual design reflects each armor category more clearly and consistently.

 

[sssssnake]

Hey devs.
You have a great opportunity here to make interesting rune arms.
I'd love to see defensive effects on rune arms, especially since you made machrotechnic a tank oriented epic destiny.
Right now it's a tree waiting for a build to utilize it since all of the rune arms we have are damage.
I'd love to see something creative on the rune arms instead of more of the same.
Vecna gave us a huge amount of practically useless rune arms that are all the same, we don't need any more.

 

[Kessaran]

First thoughts on these preview items:

1. All of the Helmets/Cloaks that give insightful/quality absorption are just wasted items. With how the current resist/absorption system works, they are incredibly minor defensive stats without stacking enhancement/insight/quality & the proposed artifact bonus (which would still cap at 60% for 3 gear slots and a set bonus slot). All those pieces of gear also offer a choice between insightful PRR for helmets or insightful MRR for cloaks. Just make it insightful sheltering for both, and increase it to +19 to match previous insightful sheltering items like Lindel's Mighty Belt. Having the stats be "choices" between the two stats seems counterintuitive and doesn't really offer much in the grand scheme of gear tetris. If you changed the elemental stats to something like insightful spell dc's/quality spell dc's & melee options like insightful deadly/accuracy they would see a lot more value for players. Another issue i have is that because they don't come with the miserable/woeful slots due to being taken by essentially useless stats it REALLY limits the viability of those items.

2. Make more items with miserable/woeful slots. I only see trinkets/0 base stat items that even have those augments. I'd much rather see items that have base stat +15 and open up the insightful slot for the miserable augment slot, and double down on it and make melancholic/dolorous statted gear with both miserable/woeful slots unlocked.

3. I see 1 item in the current loot list that gives insightful constitution and it's a necklace with insightful armor piercing. There should probably be insightful constitution on the other gear like helms/cloaks that give every insight bonus but con.

4. Heartshard HP bonus is too high, 20% is generous but also comes with 3 slots. Make it +10% to match Titan's Blood and keep the 3 other slots. Would also say change the Melancholic slot to a woeful slot.

5. Legendary Mining Sights, Legendary Viktra's Experiment, Legendary The Baron's Bandolier do not have any stats on them and only give 2 augment slots.

6. Legendary Buckle of Secrets has 0 stats and only 3 augment slots. Doesn't match any of the other gear that has 4 total stat possibilities.

I'd love to test out a possible gear setup with these new gear options but i'm hesitant to dive further into the system to test things out when the gear looks so lackluster on release. A few of the gearing options are enticing but the vast majority of these look questionable at best. Hoping to see some good changes for the next preview!

 

[Epicsoul]

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

Artifact. I like the idea of tanks having another options outside the shield, but it should certainly come with a cost for other builds. It being craftable is problematic because there’s still no reason reason for most builds to not use it.

I like adding incite to ranged and spell damage as well to discourage use by ranged and casters. Melee? I think allowing its use is fine.

 

[Ratman]

So, this is explicit confirmation that the rare table is here to stay as a long-term addition to the game.

Want a rare item? 33% named item table x 6% rare table chance according to data miners x 33% for the one item you want.

Players don’t understand what these numbers mean.

33% sure, not so bad. 1 in 3.

6% is just a little more than 1 in 17.

Then 3 named items means 33% again, pretty much.

To get a single rare item you need is then one in 3x~17x3 = 150 pulls. Just for a single rare item that you need.

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.

So if you need multiple rare items or even just want to ever see them, you need thousands and thousands of pulls.

104 pulls means 15 weeks of ransacks just for even odds of getting a single targeted item. That 10% (which isn’t even an outlier! It’s only 1/10!) is 49 weeks of ransacks. Now we’re talking about 10% of people who want a particular rare item will need to ransack a single chest every week for a year to get it to drop.

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.

Just for ONE targeted rare item.

This isn’t a game anymore. Something has gone terribly wrong with @SteelStar and their design priorities.

100% not good for anyone and certainly not a good incentive. Do appreciate the transparency though, so a step in the right direction. Make them tradeable if it has to be this way. I have personally done 1600 (with greater treasure hunter, sovereign discoveries 100% of the time) pulls in myth Goranthanil (plus all my party, using multiple alts). And STILL do not have the artblade cloak. I simply don’t have the kind of time to do that over and over. If this is HARDER??? I’m out. No more shard spend for me. Can’t justify it. I spend shards and pots and sovereigns I absolutely EXPECT that I get something in a reasonable timeframe. This should really change.

 

[_fully_carroted_]

Many +skill items aren't worth wearing 100% of the time. There are notable exceptions like those that boost spellpower, Intimidate for tanks, etc. But swim? 99% of the quests it's wallpaper. Over 40 jump has no effect, and Diamond of Jump is much higher bonus and has way more options to fit into gear.

Sure, +10 jump isn’t exactly +10 exceptional spell focus, but for a non-Str character it’s nice to have.

All of the skills I mentioned are useful enough, for enough people, often enough, that they are categorically not useless. Maybe not permanently attached to your main gear set, but swap items exist. The social and spellcraft ones would be worn full-time if you’re a non-sonic caster or if you need diplo/bluff/intim.

Swim is one of those skills that’s 99% fun and 1% useful, sure. But if you can’t cast jump and you’re not a strength build, + jump is handy. Same deal with + tumble.

 

[Dendrix Deathblade]

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.

"Treasure based on class" I have never once in 50 lives as a warlock and taking probably thousands of end rewards from quests been offered light armour in the quest end reward list. Light armour is wearable by all warlocks irrespective of enhancement points and feats.

 

[Dom]

Sure, +10 jump isn’t exactly +10 exceptional spell focus, but for a non-Str character it’s nice to have.

All of the skills I mentioned are useful enough, for enough people, often enough, that they are categorically not useless. Maybe not permanently attached to your main gear set, but swap items exist. The social and spellcraft ones would be worn full-time if you’re a non-sonic caster or if you need diplo/bluff/intim.

Swim is one of those skills that’s 99% fun and 1% useful, sure. But if you can’t cast jump and you’re not a strength build, + jump is handy. Same deal with + tumble.

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