Update Discussion: April 6, 2023

[srand]

The update notes are here: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?3130-Update-Notes-April-6-2023

Discussion is in this thread! But please remember to report any bugs through the in-game reporting system so we can track them.

[Tandiril]

- Max enchant change: looking good, just need some recipes now for all the slots to actually use them. Hopefully soon(tm) :D
- New mods for beginners: I get the idea, however some of those look crazy powerful, especially the +x fire/ice/etc damage ones, and people are already starting to put those onto high-end gear. Imo monotype damage builds don't need another buff, and I don't think that was the plan for those mods either^^ Might need a new notion of "low rarity only mods", same as "high rarity only mods", therefore disabling the possibility to put them yellow gear via augmentation.
- Misc
Posting this discord inquiry here as well so it doesn't get lost in the general chat
Now I am confused:
"The mod "Reconstruct causes the target to take X less damage from attacks for 30 seconds" now correctly states 10 seconds." I was one of the people reporting this, but I never thought this was a straight up nerf :/ These are the patch notes when it was changed:
"Reconstruct restores +30 Health and causes the target to take 24 less damage from attacks for 10 seconds" -> "Reconstruct causes the target to take 18 less damage from attacks for 30 seconds"
https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?3072-Update-Notes-October-10-2022&highlight=Reconstruct
Was this always intended as nerf? The original change text implies that the extra healing was removed and the mitigation was toned down in favor of easier usability by extending the duration. A statement would be much appreciated :)

[Coglin]

Alright, we get a few extra craft points for crafted armor, great. So what can we do with that on the hat, gloves, boots, necklace, ring, main-hand, and offhand slot items we craft now?

[Enphuego]

The new damage type mods are powerful and anybody that wants to min/max is going to want at least one but more likely two on their main hand and offhand. Therein lies the problem generally. The only way to get 2 generic abilities on a piece of gear is to use a single skill item and reroll the generic mods. This causes two issues - if your main hand or offhand can't be crafted, then it's going to take an eternity to get a single skill yellow item of the correct type to drop. As an example as a bard you can't craft a lute and I really enjoy the white mod from a Conch of the Thirtieth Land. I really have no idea how many runs I'd need to do to acquire those two items - Just for a guess lets say 1% chance of the correct item dropping per boss, 10% chance of it being single skill, 50% chance of being the desired skill, 20% chance of it being yellow. So 100 x 10 x 2 x 5 = 10,000 boss kills. Let's say I do FF and Boss Gauntlet twice a week - that's 26 bosses in a full run for 52 bosses per week. So that's 192 weeks of clearing on average or 3.6 years. I'm sure my numbers are off (it doesn't include random drops) but you can see the way the odds multiply out - needing to be single skill brings it from 1000 boss kills to 10,000. Players are going to be hunting down single skill yellow items because it's worth the mods but that just seems overkill. I predict a healthy market for any single skill MH/OH items that can't be crafted like lutes and shields.

Even once you have the item... good luck rerolling generic mods. MH previously had 18 potential generic mods, 21 for OH. Now with 12 damage type mods, thats 30 and 33 different mods. For mainhand (if I managed to do probability correctly) the average rolls to get the first mod (2/29 chance) are 13.5 and the average rolls for the second mod are 28. I'll subtract one roll since it starts would a mod that could be correct, so that's 12.5 + 27 = 39.5 rolls. You get 10 rolls to start (with one repair) and then 5 more rolls per week. On average it would take 6 weeks to reroll your generic mods. Modding a junk aug doesn't do much good... it brings it down to 13 rolls for the first and 27 rolls for the second, which is 38 rolls if you subtract the two initial rolls.

The general intent of recent changes seems to be making looted gear more desired and closer to on par with crafted gear. I enjoy that intent, looted gear has some interesting white mods and I wouldn't mind rinse and repeat dungeon runs to get my hands on my ideal set over time. Certainly that's the only way to get a bard lute right now and it didn't bother me when single skill items weren't best in slot. However the above makes it a really long path to get to your ideal looted item for MH/OH which somewhat undoes that intent of nerfing crafted items. Sure I'd prefer to use a Conch of the Thirtieth Land (and would endure 6 weeks or more of rerolls) but the ability to be single skill with ease tilts the scales towards crafting a horn. It just seems less fun to me.

My suggestion is that you create some sort of path to either make it easier to get single skill looted items, easier to get the right type of item (no bows/swords dropping for bards?), some method of getting two augments on a single item, or some way of upgrading the rarity of an existing single skill item. Just something to turn that 10,000 boss kills into a lesser but still difficult amount of runs. The 6 weeks of rerolling on the dual generic is painful and not fun but at least possible for people with motivation. I'm not sure if that was the point or if it was just a side effect of the new mods.

[Mikhaila]

Having recipes to make all the items would solve the problem. With crafted being equal to dropped now, there really need to be recipes for all the different weapons and shields. Items like the rabbit familiar controller would be nice as well.

[Enphuego]

I'd like to walk my previous statement above back a little. I really underestimated the amount of farming these dungeons are going through along with the ability and willingness of the community to crowdsource gear. Case in point, somebody just mailed me the single skill bard lute I was looking for as a gift. Apparently one of my guild mates has several of them. True it's incredibly difficult to get one on your own in a reasonable time period but it's likely that people will be saving and selling the items that are hard to get. With only one skill required on the item it's fairly easy to trade.

It still is going to take forever to reroll but that may just be the price of being OP.