Top 10 List - New Issues

[Niellya]

Tables, percentages, code . . . bleh.

Bah humbug, I say!

Just go to the test server, spawn yourself a couple thousand spiderlings, cast a PBAE spell and find out how many of what drops the real way.

[Kemie Dreamshadow]

It's partly semantics. What they consider the drop rate, the code for the something to drop, probably didn't change. What did change was the variety of items that could be droppped expanded. The overall droprate of items on spiderlings is the same, yet because of the increased in possible drops, the specific drop rate of silks grew smaller to accomodate all the other items.

The spiderling silks rate dropped, not because of a coding change, but because of an increase of items available to drop.

I think Moraganth has it right. Those of us who forage, for instance, have long known that the chance for you to forage a specific item is directly related to the number of items in a zone's forage drop table. If you are looking for vegetables, you'll get far more in a zone with say, four forages possible, than in one with ten possible.

The decrease in available spiderling silk drops in the zones mentioned occurred following the introduction of quest items into the same drop table. More items in the drop table = same chance to get a drop, but also = less chance to get the specific drop. It's simple math. You could go back and look at the work those fine folks did here recently on the spiderling silk drop rate and compare the total items dropped per mob vs. specific items dropped per mob and see it very clearly.

Kemie Dreamshadow, Lanys T'Vyl

[KyrosKrane]

Getting back to the original topic...

Cultural armor review
Obviously this will take tons of time, and I'm not convinced it's still relevant save from a sales perspective. The current crop of cultural armors has become far, far less useful and interesting with OoW, and I've seen this directly reflected in bazaar prices and selling rates.

If this were something Maddoc and Absor were to dedicate some time to reviewing, I would personally like to see it go in a few directions.
1) Review existing cultural armors with an eye towards making them skillup paths, rather than generally usable items.
2) Consider adding a new tier of cultural armor, aimed at level 30-50 toons, with power and stats somewhere between the old blue diamond cultural and the new magnetic (and corrollary for chain, leather, and silk) armors.
3) Fill in the gaps for races that don't have cultural tradeskilling, bearing the previous points in mind.

Mid-to-high tailoring bridge recipes
Again, a good topic. Tailoring remains one of the two hardest skills to master -- probably THE hardest if you don't have a cultural path for smithing. Smithing got a huge boost from Enchanted Velium Bits. Perhaps some similar bridge recipe(s) for tailoring would be good.

Excessively low drop rates for PoP temper components
Given the quality of OoW tradeskill armors and drops, PoP armors have essentially become obsolete, or standby items until you can get the "good" stuff from OoW. The balancing of plate vs. chain was a superb step that will help revive the PoP plate market. The follow-up to this is a significant increase in drop rates, not just for temper components, but for all the items for PoP tradeskills. If PoP tradeskill items are to remain reasonably competitive in the OoW era (and yes, I know some folks will argue that they don't have to stay competitive), they must be much cheaper than they currently are, and this can only happen if supply increases. This means that drop rates must increase, and by a huge margin. A single raid on a mini-boss named in the elemental planes should yield enough supplies for at least one PoP tradeskill item -- note that this implies multiple attempts, given current fail rates. An elemental god raid should see enough drops for 2-3 finished items. Accordingly, I'd vote this onto the top ten list, and I would urge Maddoc to prioritize this before it becomes irrelevant due to the passage of time.

Balancing the Grand Robe / Grand Tunic / Phylactery quest for melees
I'd vote for this for the top ten simply because it's a relative quicky; it can be fixed pretty easily by making the Token of Service tradable. This doesn't affect the difficulty of the quest or the quality of the reward; it simply gives incentive for melee classes to do the quest.

Improvements to the tradeskill UI
Given my VERY limited understanding of how the UI works, most of these requests look simple from a technical perspective. They're also not necessarily as valuable as some of the other items would be. I think this should stay as a backup item.

Ghoul of Takish-Iz broken, very frustrating!
This ties in to the earlier item about balancing the Grand Robe quest. Given the experiences related to me by friends who have done the quest, I'd agree that the devs need to make sure this is working as intended. If they say this is the intended drop rate, that's fine; but I personally suspect it's lower than it should be. As it stands, the Ghoul is forcing people to use some less-than-reputable tools to find and kill him, simply because they see no other practical alternative. I'm positive this is not the intended aim of this step.

Foraging Filter
I know nothing of foraging, so I will not comment on this.

[Sylphan]

Thanks for responding Absor, even if it was just to keep my wild speculations from becoming rumor.

There are certainly a lot of 'issues' that are just players with bad memories, or players who have bad luck with the RNG for a while. I've done that myself. But there are also a few things the players in general are sure about from long experience -- drops in LDON did change, spiderling silk drops did change, new expansions have high drop rates at the beginning, and such. There was a list of tradeskill-drops-not-dropping recently addressed on our top ten list, and my personal list includes Luclin items like Dingy Vest and Groaning Robe. And from days of yore... we remember the drops in SolB before the test server wipe, we remember how the Grey Fur Cape used to keep disappearing, we remember when Sewer Catfish stopped dropping (or rather, fishing), and of course we remember when Alchemy wasn't working even though it had been checked. I have to believe there's always the possibility of something else unexpectedly affecting drops, no matter how simple the tables are.

[KyrosKrane]

Oh, I almost forgot. We may as well centralize our wish list ideas, so here's a list of requests and whatnot from my Fan Faire thread. Most of these are likely to end up as backup items, but we may as well get them all in the same thread, rather than tossed around all over. I've removed the items reported as fixed or that have had new commentary.


OUTSTANDING ISSUES FROM LAST FAN FAIRE

Excessively low drop rates for PoP temper components
Update: Putrescent Blood from the Plane of Torment only drops from the Baraguj Szuul "Stomach" event, and only rarely even then. Is it possible to make this blood drop from other mobs in the zone, preferably outside Saryrn's tower? Additionally, there is one report that the event is bugged -- you continue to get attacked even after you are ported inside the stomach. Since you cannot retaliate or defend yourself, you die inside the stomach.

Bag tokens showing bag stats
Update: On a related note, people have been asking whether the tokens can include a note that you should hand them to Caerlyna in the bazaar to get the bag?
Update 2: Could we add a label to Caerlyna, something like "Bag Check Service", so people can find her more easily?
Update 3: "Bag Lady" seems to be a much more popular label. Another proposal is to give her a new mob model: "stooped-postured NPC in tattered garments, with lots and lots of bags at her feet and in a cart next to her."

Nitram Anizok's plight
Update: Alternative to moving Nitram, consider putting in some sort of teleport to and from Nitram. Have the port only work for one person per 6 hours game time (about 15 minutes real time). That’s enough to give tradeskillers easy access to Nitram without breaking any quests or interfering with Nitram’s role in the Xanamech quest/raid.
Update #2: Another proposed alternative is to create a new vendor in Abysmal Sea, with the same inventory as Nitram Anizok in PoI. To make it interesting you could increase his Greed modifier to make the items slighty more expensive than buying from Nitram. If players want the items cheaper, they have to brave PoI to buy from Nitram. The storyline would be that Tramin Anizok (Nitram's cousin) has recently set up an import/export business in Abysmal Sea, importing parts from his cousin in the Planes. He sells all of the parts needed for the Anizok family recipes, although at a markup due to the dangers of exporting the raw materials.


NEW ITEMS:

Omens tradeskill materials are too rare.
The rare parts for Omens augments, (Slugworms, Discordant Scoriae, and Trean Flies), plus the gemstone augments themselves, seem to drop very rarely indeed. Given the risk of failure at multiple steps during the aug tradeskill processIs this intended?

Similarly, many of the other tradeskill items such as bloods and hides seem disproportionately rare.

Tool Belt
Allow certain commonly-used items, such as chisels, files, dairy spoons, etc., to go on a "tool belt" -- you don't need the item to be physically in your inventory or bank. When you find a recipe in your UI that requires one of these tools, the UI checks if the item is either in your inventory OR on your toolbelt. The idea is that only items that are normally returned on both success and failure would go on the tool belt. This is analogous to how soul-bound keys work.

Make tradeskill container windows lockable.
It’s too easy to move them around by mistake. On a related note, could we make ALL bags lockable?

Bazaar Search Filters
Could the "Select By Type" filter in the bazaar be updated to include new filters for Runes (for OoW spells) and tradeskill-tagged items? Also, could the existing search filter "combinable" be renamed to "stackable"? Combinable suggests that the item is usable in tradeskills, but the devs have confirmed that the filter actually searchs for stackable items.

Tradeskill UI Suggestions
1) Add a destroy button on the tradeskill UI.
2) In the UI, change the small number in the bottom-right corner of each item stack to represent the *total* number of that item in your inventory. Note that non-stackable items would need to get this number also.
3) Make tradeskill messages and text go into a separate log file -- this should be an option that each user can set.
4) Make tradeskill messages actually list what item you made or failed at -- such as:
- You can no longer advance your skill by making FOO.
- You have fashioned the items together to create FOO!
- You lacked the skills to fashion the items together into FOO.
- You have fashioned the items together to create an alternate product: FOO.
and so on.
5) Increase the number of favorite recipes that can be stored from 100 total to 100 per tradeskill.

Maker's Marks
Add a way for a tradeskiller to tag an item he or she makes with his or her name. This should either happen automatically whenever a new item is created, or by combining some sort of item (a literal maker's mark) with a finished product. This combine should be no-fail and consume the maker's mark.

Research Pages
Could the item names for the half-pages be modified to include a left or right tag? Something like "Part of Yaeth's Compendium pg. 22L" or "pg. 22R" would be fine. "Left Half of Yaeth's Compendium pg. 22" and "Right Half of ... " would also work.

Ghoul of Takish-Hiz spawn rate and drop rate for Spiritual Anchor.
The Ghoul is an insanely rare spawn, and almost impossible for a non-tracker to catch without using tools-that-shall-not-be-mentioned. In addition, even when he does spawn and is caught, his drop is way too rare. One person suggests that the Anchor drop rate should be no worse than 1 in 3 kills, and preferably better than that.

Bag Management
Would it be possible to dye existing bags, or make recipes for colored bags? This allows for better management of items in inventory and bank. Alternately, would it be possible to rename bags, kind of like chat windows?

Base Prototype
Can this recipe be made learnable? (Note: this may already be done; I'm not sure.)

Karana's Heartfruit Salad
Is this a real item? Are all the ingredients for it, including ingredients for the subcombines, in game? If so, could you provide us with any tips on where to look for the missing bits? (Note: this may already be done; I'm not sure.)

Add the missing cookie cutters and their matching cookie recipes: vah shir, shissar, grimling, and sonic wolf.
It would also be lovely to have new recipes for pottery/smithing to make them if not vendor bought.

Risk vs Reward of the Ice Cream Churn and Ice Cream Recipes
The churner itself has a very high trivial, for something that is really just for fun. And some of the Ice Cream recipes require no drop ingredients. Are the ice creams intended to be this hard?

Incomplete GoD tradeskills
Many GoD items tagged as tradeskill-usable have no recipes; the devs have confirmed that no recipes that use them are live. The tag should either be removed or recipes using those items should be added.

Research needs a tradeskill trophy.
Proposed stats:
Grandmaster Spellcrafter's Grimoire
LORE ITEM NO DROP
Slot: PRIMARY,SECONDARY,RANGE,AMMO
Skill Mod: Spell Research +5%
Effect: Spellcrafter's Grimoire (Cast Time 10.0)
STR: +10 CHA: +50 WIS: +10 INT: +10
WT: 0.1 Size: SMALL
Class: Enchanter Magician Necomancer Wizard
Race: ALL

Recipe: Artisan's seal + quill + parchment, to be combined in one of: Phantasmal Tome, Arch Magus Grimoire, Warlock's Book of Binding, Sorcerer's Lexicon

Spellcrafter's Grimoire
(universal container that any of the 4 INT classes can use for all spell research recipes)
Container: CLOSED.
LORE ITEM NO DROP
WT: 2.0 Weight Reduction: 0%
Capacity: 10 Size Capacity: LARGE

[splunge]

Um, why +10 WIS on an int-caster only item?

[Kcalehc]

Getting back to the original topic...

Cultural armor review
Obviously this will take tons of time, and I'm not convinced it's still relevant save from a sales perspective. The current crop of cultural armors has become far, far less useful and interesting with OoW, and I've seen this directly reflected in bazaar prices and selling rates.

If this were something Maddoc and Absor were to dedicate some time to reviewing, I would personally like to see it go in a few directions.
1) Review existing cultural armors with an eye towards making them skillup paths, rather than generally usable items.
2) Consider adding a new tier of cultural armor, aimed at level 30-50 toons, with power and stats somewhere between the old blue diamond cultural and the new magnetic (and corrollary for chain, leather, and silk) armors.
3) Fill in the gaps for races that don't have cultural tradeskilling, bearing the previous points in mind.

Instead of adding a whole new layer of armours, which I agree will take a lot of time developing; why not add a 'power item' for exisiting armours (ie in the same vein as Lightning Cores for magnetic/pyrilen flames for bazu). Even making this power item a tradeskill made item, which would be help to reduce its availability.
The power item upgrading the armour to the next level of stats, possibly adding a second augment slot in there too.

Another use of this would be to give power items to those cultures that don't have their own cultural armour and allow them to upgrade it, causing it to be restricted to their race. Giving them a sort of pseudo-cultural armour.

just a thought anyway

[Nolrog]

Ahhhh. So much to pick from. Head hurts just thinking about it.

We need 3 or 4 new ones for today's update. Which would you like to see added? Or do you want me to pick them?

If I had to pick, these would be the ones:

1. PoP Temper Drop Rates
2. Balancing the Grand Robe / Grand Tunic / Phylactery quest for melees
3. Ghoul of Takish-Itz
4. Cultural Armor Review

[mewkus]

Ohter Tradeskill UI mods I'd like to see

1 - show our actual skill level is (in addition to the modified skill)
2 - Whenever a tool is used (one that is returned on sucess or failure), it just stays in our inventory rather than being moved to the cursor. (this will be fixed by the toolbelt idea Kryos mentioned).

[Boleslav]

The toolbelt idea sounds like the slickest thing since stackable sheet metal!

Go go Toolbelt!

Boleslav

[Tekyra Tekkins]

Tool Belt
Allow certain commonly-used items, such as chisels, files, dairy spoons, etc., to go on a "tool belt" -- you don't need the item to be physically in your inventory or bank. When you find a recipe in your UI that requires one of these tools, the UI checks if the item is either in your inventory OR on your toolbelt. The idea is that only items that are normally returned on both success and failure would go on the tool belt. This is analogous to how soul-bound keys work.

I like this idea~

Heck it could even be a real belt where you add the stuff augment style for all I care. Swapping one item > having to grab misc. ones out of bank every time and finding out for the 3049343th time when you just clicked on your recipe that you forgot it/one in bank

[Celestya]

*cheers for the toolbelt idea*

Also, can we get the ice cream churn added to the list of containers that can be made into tokens if possible? I love ice cream, but hate the thought of loosing my 10-slot bag to carry a churn. Alternatively, make the churn 10 slots.
We tradeskillers never have enough room. *sighs*

[Liwsa]

Bank space.
With all the new tools for tradeskilling and all the new no-drop quest pieces bank space is always an issue for anyone that does the trades. How about making the 2nd bank in the bazaar a stand alone bank which would then double everyone's bank space. If you wanted, even go as far as making that special bank only no drop items can go into it. There is no reason to have 2 banks in the bazaar linked to all the other banks.

Also for merchants:
Since it seems the rotating stock seems "hard" to do why not have a random despawn timer on all merchants which would in essence clean out their inventory. The timer could be like 3-7days. Once every 3-7 days the vendor would despawn and then respawn in say 10 minutes or so, cleaned out of all player sold stuffies. The code to despawn is already in the game, the dark elf rogue guildmaster you need to pick for the rogue epic does it.

[gnormy]

UI Tradeskill Window:
make the "combine" button able to be dragged over to the hotbutton window. This would eliminate the hand-cramping of having to hold mouse for hours of combines. Its much easier to press a hotkey button (for me) then then to position cursor and click mouse button. This was impossible to do with the container "combine" buttons but I dont believe there would be any conflicts by making the Tradeskill UI button draggable so it could be put on hotbutton slot.

[burnttoastv]

Can this toolbelt idea work something like the keyring currently does?

And a portable forge, and after that, the portapotty!