How do we make gold useful?

[Kasreyn]

Regarding DeeBye's idea, how about this:

Your initial gamble determines whether it's Normal, Exceptional, or Elite. The chance of Exceptional or Elite is based on character level (at least in part), with higher level characters slightly more likely to gamble higher quality base items.

Then either of these two systems:

After your first payment, it shows what base item type it wound up as, and whether it's magical, rare, or unique. No abilities are displayed though! - you have to pay again to buy.

OR,

After the first payment, it shows base item type and whether it's magical, rare, or unique. Then you can pay a large sum to buy the entire item, OR a smaller fee to reveal ONE ability at a time. You can keep revealing single abilities until you decide to buy the entire item, or you can reveal all abilities and the item is yours. However, the cost for revealing all the abilities, totalled, will be higher than the cost to buy it outright, so there's an incentive to take a risk and buy it without checking the abilities. And, of course, if at any time you don't have enough to buy the full item, you get a "sorry, but thanks for the gold!" message, and lose EVERYthing you have spent thus far.

This will make gambling very gold-intensive (to use up all that spare gold), and it might give you a bit more control over what you get. I.e., if you gamble on an item and reveal abilities one at a time, and the first two abilities on the rare suck, you can jump ship before you waste the full amount.

Comments?

-Kasreyn