A new LDoN feature that seems like it could complement tradeskilling

[Suva]

this could be nice depending on how they actually implement it

[Boleslav]

Bole-odamus peers into the future…

I predict that there will be a limit to the number of augmentations a given piece of equipment can accept. Although it would be cool for Nicola to wield the first Awesome Club* of Uberness!

I also imagine that dropped, quested, and player made gear will be able to accept augmentations. Certain pieces might be excluded, but overall I would expect them to be the minority rather than the majority.

I also suspect that some of the mod items themselves could be player made, while others are dropped or even quested.

Boleslav Forgehammer (who sees almost all)
Paladin of Brell in his 65th Campaign
E'ci – Sacred Destiny

[Slippyblade]

Hey guys. I'm in the beta and can't say a whole lot about it, but I will say that LDoN totally changes a lot of EQ dynamics. Most of these items are not dropped, made OR quested. There are aspects of LDoN that none of you folks have guessed at yet and I promise are very cool. Someone earlier in the thread mentioned a TC for Everquest. This isn't to far from the truth.

[Reflan]

Not dropped, made, or quested? Hmm, are they flagged then?

Like some pocket dungeon flags everyone in the party for one charge of stat "X" to their equipment? Or lets you accumulate a few points to be spent on wearables and weapons, banking them up until you finally spend them, as if you were "leveling" your equipment the same way people "level" their characters?

Hmm, lots and lots of interesting possibilities.

I'm pretty optimistic!

I just hope some care was taken that all the new great things we might be able to do to fix up our stuff doesn't make tradeskilled items almost impossibly irrelevant. I've basically put them aside as useless at this point even though im 250 in a few, including smithing, a very hard one; it would be nice to bring them back again without my needing access to elemental planes or something like that.

[Slippyblade]

It's real hard to give specifics without violating the NDA and I really don't want to get booted from the beta. But on the website it mentions a new reward method for completion of jobs. Lets just say that it's tied into that. LDoN is doing a lot of stuff not possible in EQ. A lot of things that simply were not possible before or were only fantasized about are in this expansion.

The thing to remember is that this expansion is the first one totally NOT INFLUENCED by the defunct Verant. This is a wholly Sony thing here coming from the dev team that gave us things like spell set lists and shared bank slots.

[wombat]

Hmm it seems obvious that the augmentations are rewards from the wayfarers guild for services rendered.

I always thought there were database limits to endless permurtaions of gear? Thats why limiting it to trades made gear seems logical as well as helping the trades side of things.

Incidentally, Charms dont drop, you have to quest the parts and they are not only rare but in different underconned zones and you have to spend forever getting them all! Many of them are pretty useless too only giving effects if you are in a party of the same classes or unbuffed etc!

When I read up on the Fadrak Champions Charm (the only one of interest to me) after getting 2 drops for it I gave up when I discovered I would need a week in a tuff zone with a full group to get one of the last drops. You cant keep a full group in a sucky zone especially when its a BYOG zone! Except maybe one day a week for 7 weeks!

[Slippyblade]

It depends on the database. In Asheron's Call the database contained the pure forms of items. But once an item went into a player's inventory it became instanced and was linked with the player. You could attach notes to a sword for instance and then if you traded that sword, that instance would get linked to the new player. That other player would then have the item, but they would still see the notes that you had attached to it.

I think there may be a pretty serious restructuring of the data going on with LDoN.

[Morgrist]

It's been noted,actually. I was at the GameSpy LDoN chat the other day. (And scored a copy off the trivia contest,go me!)

They've torn the old item system out and are in fact still refining it.

I'm betting they're rebuilding it along the lines of the Star Wars one, which is immensely better and allows for far more customization of items. Sony's been pulling pieces of the old code out and replacing them for some time- LDoN marks a good chunk of this work-in-progress.

Very much looking forward to this one.

[Sylphan]

I've been thinking about how they extended the item system to allow this, now that they've said augmented items will be tradable. First thing would be to increase the 'item id' field from two bytes to four bytes (or more). This increases the amount of disk space used to store our characters somewhere, but in terms of programming it's simple enough if you continue to use the first two bytes to store the item number just like before.

The third and fourth bytes would be a code indicating what augmentation is on it. There could be a '+5 strength' item, a '+2 int' augmentation, and so forth. There could be just as many types of augmentation as there are items in all of EQ today.

Then it hit me... the augmentation code is a very flexible concept, even without adding complex algorithms like the charms have. It may only be used for +stats for now but it's an open-ended change, not a finite one. Items could be further expanded in the future in all sorts of ways, by going beyond four bytes.

Imagine a 4-slot container called an 'armor splitter', available for 210 pp at your nearest Wayfarer's Guild. You put your piece of armor in and a 'variable int augment' and another item. Hit combine and what you get out has all the same stats as the original, except it has the INT of the second item. In the database this would look like the first two bytes were the item number, the next two bytes were the augment code, and the fifth and sixth bytes were the item code of the extra item. It would require two reads of the database every time you used the item, not just one, but that's feasible. It would be nice if the 'armor splitter' combines were no-fail, but it's entirely possible they'd require tailoring or smithing skill. If they did require skill, only tradeskillers would be able to augment nodrop items.

Then I figure there could be an 'int add augment'. Instead of replacing the INT with what's on the second item, it adds the INT from the second item on to the first. Perhaps it would only allow lore items to be used as the second item. Or only tradable items. Any sorts of restrictions like that would be checked by the container at the time of combine. The key here is that if you wanted to add 10 INT to your sleeves, you'd have to sacrifice a 10 INT item to do it.

Then there could be 'int and a half augment', which adds half the INT from the second item on to the first. To add 10 INT to your sleeves you'd have to sacriface a 20 INT item. How about an 'appearance augment' -- it wouldn't change the name or stats of the first item, it would just make it the color and texture of the second item. There could be a 'stat max augment' -- takes the highest number for each stat from the two items. Or how about a 'replace saves add special augment' -- this augmentation code would use all the stats, weight, and appearance from the first item, but replace the resists with those from the second item code, and replace the FT/focus/clicky effect with what's on the third item. This last one would require three reads of the item database each time you used the item, not just two.

The possibilities for mixing and combining already-existing items or effects are endless. But that's just mix-and-match with the same old same old. There could be augments that do new and unprecedented things too.

I'm not in beta and don't know anyone who is. So I have no idea how close I'm guessing. But I'm convinced that this change to how items is stored is quite open-ended and not just an extra stat tacked on the end. What we see in LDoN will be just the beginning of item changes.

P.S. What if the Wayfarer's Brotherhood uses a DKP system? Do enough missions for them and you'd have enough DKP to 'buy' the item you want from their treasury. Twould be a perfect timesink.

[wombat]

Combining and existing item to get its chief stat as an augment is brilliant! This would help by removing items from the inflationary spiral we see now. If is also requires trades to use the container then so much the better.

If trades are cut out of this I foresee problems, people wont have to buy trades goods to get the stats, they will just have to augment a dropped item.

[caena]

Originally posted by wombat
Incidentally, Charms dont drop, you have to quest the parts

Charms DO drop. Just very very rarely. I got my Carved Fox Ear off a random luggald in Dulak's.

MOST charms are quested tho.

Caena Trimalchionis
57 enchanter
Divine Comedies on Karana

[wombat]

Wow never heard of dropped charms can you post the stats please? I have a friend who 2 boxes LoY and has done it for months (if he didnt 2 box he couldnt do it as LoY is BYOG) and never seen a dropped Charm!!

[Itzena]

Allakhazam's has some examples up, as well as screenshots of Miragul's Menagerie.

I think I might preorder LDoN now.

[dahna]

Miragul is an ice goblin? Another myth broke up /sigh.
Instead of giving us a wonderfull wizard in a robe they gave us an ugly blue thing, or perhaps he is a wizard with illusion ability...

Anyway I wonder if there is a way to remove the customisation on an item, if you made a mistake...
I didnt see if the customisation is a new tradeskill in the official website either.
Another funny thing I had in mind when reading the customisation system is the existence of items that you dont know the properties, or giving random properties, allowing you to receive some "curse" as long as you stay in the dungeon (negative stats, snare, etc...). Now it would be challenging

[andyhre]

Something tells me the Swiftblade of Zek I just bought is about to become slightly less uber if it can;t be upgraded and new LDoN stuff can.

On the other hand, if they add this to all sorts of old stuff, it could revive a lot of obsolete things and that seemed to be their original intent, so perhaps it's not so bad.