Idea for LDoN merchants--what do you guys think?

[Kronepsis]

I had an odd idea walking home one day, that just got reformatted and fleshed out a bit more. Some posts in between here and the post where I say I will redo this post might not make sense now.

Let's say that each of the LDoN camps got three items introduced to them. A special temper of some sort at, say, ~500 points a pop, Beginner's Guilde to Armormaking at ~500 points a pop and Detailed Armor Assembly Instructions ~5000 points a pop, all NO DROP. These are arbitrary numbers, feel free to move them around; the Armor Assembly Instructions should be really expensive however.

Now have a special NO DROP item drop in the LDoN Hards that level 65 characters have access to. Let's call it LDoN Essence for simplicity. Now, this drop can be used in multiple recipes like the Ethereal metal and silk are used to form the items needed to make the final product. There are TWO sets of recipes.

Here is the first set. All these items are trivial at, say, 102 Smithing/Tailoring, and can fail, and all result in No Drop sheets/rings/etc.

Sheet form: Hard LDoN drop, Smithing Hammer, Solidified Essence, and an Ethereal Sheet of Metal
Ring form: Hard LDoN drop, File, Soldified Essence, and an Ethereal Metal Ring
Swatch form: Hard LDoN drop, Embroidery Needle, Solidified Essence, and an Ethereal Silk Swatch
Leather form: Hard LDoN drop, Embroidery Needle, Solidified Essence, and a Cured Ethereal Energy.

The second set is the exact same thing...except that you throw in the Beginner's Guide to Armormaking to turn the resulting combine into a no-fail one with a trivial of 0 that does eat the Guide as well.

Then do more or less the same thing with the final combine but use the more expensive Assembly intructions--have the combine without the instructions trivial at 268 and make it possible to fail, but with the instructions only be trivial at 15 and made no-fail. And it eats the instructions. This will end up in an EP near-equivalent armor.

The point of doing it this way is so that people who whine about failure rates can have a no fail, but more expensive, way of doing it. People who don't care can take a chance and risk the failure rate.

When I'm talking about EP armor BTW, I'm talking about stuff that are between the quality of Hard LDoN drops and the Elemental armor molds.

[Abazagaroth]

I have no clue what you are proposing this makes. But 25000 AP? That's laughable. There are probably less that 40 people with that many lifetime points on my server, and all this is for, what? A piece of elemental armor? Requiring a drop from a spot in elementals meaning you already have elemental access?

[Kronepsis]

25000's an arbitrary number. Feel free to move it as far down as you want within reasonable limits, but it would be strange to make it too easy.

But yeah, the idea was to be able to get the equivalent of EP-level armor. It was something I wanted to get down on writing fast before I forgot it though, which is why it is incomplete. Sorry about not stating that.

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with making it a common trash drop in the EPs considering that I have been able to vendor mine far rarer things. Or are you saying that no one gets XP in the EPs anymore on your server? Why should equipment on level with EP drops not have a part that comes from much easier places than EP?

[Moraganth]

I don't think there's much need to give elemental flagged people more reward.. and lets face it, as soon as anyone realizes something has value, it will not be vendor fodder. The biggest probelm in eq right now is that they've created 2 games.. one sub elemental flagged, and one above.

If the drop needed was placed as common in hard ldons (maybe even no drop if they felt the needed to limit is more than by point value), then it would be more appopriate. If no drop, you'd then have to adjust where your no-fails were though, or where it came into the recipe.

[Kronepsis]

That's true. If it was placed in the 65 Hard LDoNs as drops, there wouldn't be any need for EP drops. Then the Solidified Essence of whatever could instead simply double as a curing agent/temper instead. So you would get:

Sheet form: Hard LDoN drop, Smithing Hammer, Solidified Essence, and an Ethereal Sheet of Metal
Ring form: Hard LDoN drop, File, Soldified Essence, and an Ethereal Metal Ring
Swatch form: Hard LDoN drop, Embroidery Needle, Solidified Essence, and an Ethereal Silk Swatch
Leather form: Hard LDoN drop, Embroidery Needle, Solidified Essence, Cured Ethereal Energy.

But since it would be much easier to get (compared to EP drops), these would have to be failable and of a moderate trivial level, as well as being more rare than the "drops off of every mob all the time" level of rarity to compensate.

In the end, if you had to go through all that for visible pieces of armor that are in between Ornate and Elemental patterns (stat-wise), with no focus effects but with an LDoNish number of aug slots for those (i.e. 3 slots, say a type 2, type 3, and type 7), would that be worth it then?

[splunge]

Elemental quality armor is already very easy to get. Check out the new Veeshams Peak quests.
I 2-boxed 3 of the quests, and am working on a 4th now.
Check my mask, necklace and cloak in my magelo.
The faction and heold VP key was very eaasy, just took time. The SF dragon for the othr half of the key of course took a raid, but its triggerable, and probably happening every day on your server.

Yes, it would be super if there was a better tier of LDON armor... i dont think what you suggest is a good way tho.

[Itek]

Um... wow...

AP + "fail-able" (not sure that's a word, or even a wordish) = Hideous Flaming Disaster

I'll forgive this one. You really want to make tradeskills -huge- this sort of thing would do it. But other than the very tiny kernel of an idea here is ... I've seen plans involving wood chippers, body parts, lemon juice and bags of salt that sounded more pleasant.

[Kronepsis]

Itek: Sorry, couldn't think of a better way to phrase it. Maybe it was fallible that was in my brain.

And the end result is a no-fail if you bother to save up points for the detailed instructions. The hard part would be making the sheets/rings/whatever.

[Elyssanda]

. But 25000 AP? That's laughable. There are probably less that 40 people with that many lifetime points on my server

I bet there are more.. Honest.. I know I have more than half that, but I really only do normal adv.. so 51 points max. I know on my server many many people do the hards, and the guilds who are Time (not mine) were only doing hards, now true your server may not have 4 or 5 or more Time guilds with another 4, 5 or more that are elemental (again, not mine), but I really bet there are lots of people doing the Hard LDONS.. since you don't need to be elemental/time for them. I know alot of people in my guild (500+toons) who do Hard Ldons...
Personally I prefer the normals since #1 I do mainly pick up groups, and #2 being the lull/pull/mezz/twist/fight bard that I am, I like to know I can safely handle whatever I pull.

[Dyllwin]

It's great to be thinking of alternatives for folks to get good, elemental-level gear if they can't seem to swing an elemental flag, but I don't think this is the right way to do it. Even if it only cost 1492 AP it's still too many to lose if you fail the combine.

Keep in mind the people that would be needing this would be those who don't have access, and therefore are less likely to be equipped to handle the Hard encounters to begin with. That means acquiring the points would take them twice as long as someone who regularly does Hards. There would possibly be some who would take advantage of this, but I'm confident the number would be extremely low, too low to ask Sony to assign resources to this over the thousands of other things they could be doing.

Now if there was something you earn that would boost the lower planar armors (Nightmare and Storms) to elemental level and were a no fail combine then that may be worth the trouble, and give better value to the practically worthless armor sets. But I'm not sure that that's the answer either. Hard to come up with a good answer that doesn't diminish the importance of flagging.

[Kronepsis]

I guess I should re-edit the main thread to reflect changes in thought. That'll be done later today then.

[thrashette]

to make it work...

The mold should drop off asassinate mobs.

The temper component should be given to you when an Escort mob reaches the zone.