How do we make gold useful?

[CelticHound]

Erm hmm .. isn't this what these supposed 'tempered' item recipes are supposedly supposed to do in 1.10?  :D

Not even remotely.

From what I understand, those recipes add new attributes to an item. (Ala Sir General's Rune Mod.) They also increase the level req, so you can only use them a limited number of times.

I'm talking about a way to upgrade the existing stats on an item. With this I might be able to eventually upgrade my Tarnhelm to a perfect 50%, but not above that, and not add any other stats. If I'm willing to spend the gold I get an unlimited number of tries.

Think about how trade values work on the realms. A perfect 50% Tarn (or use War Travellers as an example) is worth some amount. Even a 49% isn't worth near as much. And much below that no one wants them.

With my recipe, all Tarns are potentially equal. Once you get one, all you need to do is invest the gold. (The gap narrows.)

If the tempering recipes work as I believe, then items with "perfect" stats command as much of a premium as ever. (The gap stays the same or widens.)

See what I mean?

-- CH

What I would also do is make an item called a "philosopher's stone". It never drops, but you can buy them from Alkor - for gobs of cash. It's the other required item, for the recipe, in addtion to the three potions. Maybe there would be different varieties of p.stones so you could guide which item stat would be affected. Maybe you'd have to cube them up from base p.stones.

[DeeBye]

1) Make gambled items list the exact type, ie have for examples "Diamond Bow" listed and very expensive, instead of "Short Battle Bow" which has a very low chance to evolve.

That doesn't sound like much of a "gamble" to me. It's akin to a Blackjack dealer telling me the next card is "pretty good", would I like it?

Why not make the gambling price a gamble, too?

What I mean is, say a Light Plate costs 10k to gamble (I have no idea what it really costs, I'm just throwing out numbers). If you gamble a Light Plate, and get one (be it Magical or Rare), you pay the 10k.

In the current system, that Light Plate also has a chance to be Mage Plate or an Archon Plate as well. Works for me.

Now say you got lucky with the gamble, and that Light Plate turned out to be a Mage Plate. It's better than a Light Plate, so it costs more. The ante goes up. Double, triple, or even 10x the original gambling price. Whatever it takes to balance it. Archon Plates go for even more, of course. The stakes were raised, and if you want to play you'd better have enough cash on-hand to meet the bet. Otherwise you have to fold.

The real kicker would be if you have enough cash to gamble a Light Plate (10k), but not enough to pay for the gambled Mage or Archon Plates, you don't get the Plate. You get jack-crap, and your original 10k "ante" is forfeit.

(Murphy will make sure it is the most amazing Rare Archon Plate your eyes have ever seen, though. Too bad it's re-shuffled into the deck)


-DeeBye

[ldw]

Hmm .. thats kinda like rerolling uniques (for some of which it would not matter... SOJ anyone? :lol: )
Bliz hinted at some point that there will even be a recipe for doing this (or at least converting uniques 1.08 -> 1.09 or something along those lines)

Sidenote: Interestingly, a few days I dug out an old pikeazon of mine from around 1.05 days.. and converted her to D2X just for fun. She wore undead crown & the then-unvariable 24% chance guards in 1.05. After conversion undead crown gained the +skeleton something stat and the chance guards got converted to 28% !! I had a backup from before so I decided to re-convert her again. Again got 28% chance guards... hrmm I wonder what those 'variable' unique stats depend on anyway.. some sort of seed value inherent to the item I suspect.

[Kevin]

That would just add an annoyance that wouldn't really add any value. The game already has enough annoying no value things in it.

I think just having the exceptional and elite items available to gamble at a substantially higher cost would be a better way to go if the goal is to increase the value of gold (i.e. creating or modifying an outflow that is desirable in this case).

I understand your thinking, and it would be much more of a gamble that way, but I really don't think it would add any fun to it. Gambling is one of the fun things in the game for me, though I wouldn't mind some tweaking of it.

[Ruvanal]

DeeBye:

In the current system, that Light Plate also has a chance to be Mage Plate or an Archon Plate as well. Works for me.

Now say you got lucky with the gamble, and that Light Plate turned out to be a Mage Plate. It's better than a Light Plate, so it costs more. The ante goes up. Double, triple, or even 10x the original gambling price. Whatever it takes to balance it. Archon Plates go for even more, of course. The stakes were raised, and if you want to play you'd better have enough cash on-hand to meet the bet. Otherwise you have to fold.

The current system uses a cost scaling based on the character level (except for rings and amulets). When a character gets to be of a high enough level to have a chance to gamble the exceptional or elite versions of the item, an additional cost factor is added in. This will cause jumps in the amount required to gamble the item as you gain the chance that the item will be better than the normal version. So in effect you are already paying the increased cost up front and do not really need a surprise of paying some money and then getting nothing for the item or suddenly and unexpectedly going very broke for what is probably a junky exceptional/elite item.

Just give a low chance (maybe like in version 1.06 or half that chance) that the item could be set or unique. Also look at opening it up to some of the other items that are not currently on the gamble list (charms, jewels, many of the class specific equipment and maybe runes).

Idw:

Again got 28% chance guards... hrmm I wonder what those 'variable' unique stats depend on anyway.. some sort of seed value inherent to the item I suspect.

Yes they do depend on a seed value when first generated. The conversion process is probably using the already stored seed to set up these items as a new regeneration when you convert the character.

[SevenMass]

Hmm .. thats kinda like rerolling uniques (for some of which it would not matter... SOJ anyone?  :lol: )
Bliz hinted at some point that there will even be  a recipe for doing this (or at least converting uniques 1.08 -> 1.09 or something along those lines)

Sidenote: Interestingly, a few days I dug out an old pikeazon of mine from around 1.05 days.. and converted her to D2X just for fun. She wore undead crown & the then-unvariable 24% chance guards in 1.05. After conversion undead crown gained the +skeleton something stat and the chance guards got converted to 28% !! I had a backup from before so I decided to re-convert her again. Again got 28% chance guards... hrmm I wonder what those 'variable' unique stats depend on anyway.. some sort of seed value inherent to the item I suspect.

Items are not recreated anymore, existing items stay the way they are, only newly droped items gain the new stats, that is also why a set item found pre LOD won't get its extra bonuses when you use them in LOD.
Its also why a 108 harly stay's the way he is, they just don't drop anymore from monsters.

[bardie]

like to create private games once-in -a - while , scatter my gold all across town , then strip my character down and run thru all those wonderful piles of gold whilst giggling like a mad man ..... is this a 'bad' thing ?

Um, Yes. I think thats pretty bad :)

[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

[Airegin]

Make keys drop very rarely. Make them very expensive (5 mill gold mebbe?). Make locked chests have a much MUCH higher percentage to drop rare/unique. Make the locked chests much more rare as well. Have chests drop only difficulty appropriate items. (Regular in normal, exceptional in NM, Elite in Hell).

Possibly make "Rune chests". They would always drop runes. Perhaps they consume 3 keys.

[Kevin]

since they don't need keys to open locked things.... (of course that would be easy to change too)