This one is potentially quite interesting
You have two directions gold travels in: gold in and gold out
Gold in: well, you could reduce drops, sell value and the effect of gold find. Increasing them is probably a bad idea. In LoD gold find specialists are getting over 100K on their best drops which seems plenty big enough
Gold out: more expensive stuff to spend your money on, higher upkeep costs: Pete's idea about faster durability decrease, expensive merc resurrection. Is it technically possible for a cube recipe to use gold?
I doubt 1.10 will change much in this regard
I do think that mods could do interesting things with gold. In fact, I'll plug Foxbat's Seven Lances, gold really is quite rewarding to collect there and the game is better as a result
He did this by changing gambling so that it resembles pre-LoD gambling. You have a decent chance of gambling uniques and set items if you're patient and rich. He also nerfed some of the more commonly sold junk items. It is a little less easy to become rich by selling off throwing daggers and white sceptres. Lastly he altered the balance of items so that a really good rare will probably surpass a unique, making gambling more fun. 7L has a number of enthusiastic shoppers too. Lastly there tends to be a correlation between item quality and difficulty so that you often see elite stuff in hell and exceptional stuff in nightmare although lower grade stuff still appears
More generally, other changes that would make gold a more central part of the play experience might include
- really good blues. If blues were the best items then anyone could acquire them given enough patience. This is perhaps excessive, one wouldn't want to ruin magic find in favour of gold find, the game is best if both are worthwhile. Still in the current game there are a few quite specific things that are worth shopping and everything else is junk. Now the code exists to prevent useless low level affixes spawning at higher levels. It would be so nice if the maxlvl or whatever it's called were used more often
- class-specific items more available in the shops, full range of skills available in the later game. For example, that +3 oak sage, +3 fury, +3 werewolf hat you have set your heart on might be available but it would need patient shopping to do so. There are a few technical issues around this one
- really expensive merc resurrection. I would love to see mercs costing a million gold to resurrect. People couldn't care less if they lose them these days. I think merc positioning is a key part of playing the game well and it's a shame to see people just not bother
It would be possible to mod the game so that money was a perpetual worry. In fact certain builds in 1.08 approached this as items were incredibly expensive to repair - mainly the ones with charges
Now if everything was really really expensive I guess you would get something like the Ironman experience
Of course there are significant balance issues - sorcs, summoners might go for long periods without ever seeing a repair bill so you might want to alter the way durability works so that casting degrades items too
You have two directions gold travels in: gold in and gold out
Gold in: well, you could reduce drops, sell value and the effect of gold find. Increasing them is probably a bad idea. In LoD gold find specialists are getting over 100K on their best drops which seems plenty big enough
Gold out: more expensive stuff to spend your money on, higher upkeep costs: Pete's idea about faster durability decrease, expensive merc resurrection. Is it technically possible for a cube recipe to use gold?
I doubt 1.10 will change much in this regard
I do think that mods could do interesting things with gold. In fact, I'll plug Foxbat's Seven Lances, gold really is quite rewarding to collect there and the game is better as a result
He did this by changing gambling so that it resembles pre-LoD gambling. You have a decent chance of gambling uniques and set items if you're patient and rich. He also nerfed some of the more commonly sold junk items. It is a little less easy to become rich by selling off throwing daggers and white sceptres. Lastly he altered the balance of items so that a really good rare will probably surpass a unique, making gambling more fun. 7L has a number of enthusiastic shoppers too. Lastly there tends to be a correlation between item quality and difficulty so that you often see elite stuff in hell and exceptional stuff in nightmare although lower grade stuff still appears
More generally, other changes that would make gold a more central part of the play experience might include
- really good blues. If blues were the best items then anyone could acquire them given enough patience. This is perhaps excessive, one wouldn't want to ruin magic find in favour of gold find, the game is best if both are worthwhile. Still in the current game there are a few quite specific things that are worth shopping and everything else is junk. Now the code exists to prevent useless low level affixes spawning at higher levels. It would be so nice if the maxlvl or whatever it's called were used more often
- class-specific items more available in the shops, full range of skills available in the later game. For example, that +3 oak sage, +3 fury, +3 werewolf hat you have set your heart on might be available but it would need patient shopping to do so. There are a few technical issues around this one
- really expensive merc resurrection. I would love to see mercs costing a million gold to resurrect. People couldn't care less if they lose them these days. I think merc positioning is a key part of playing the game well and it's a shame to see people just not bother
It would be possible to mod the game so that money was a perpetual worry. In fact certain builds in 1.08 approached this as items were incredibly expensive to repair - mainly the ones with charges
Now if everything was really really expensive I guess you would get something like the Ironman experience
Of course there are significant balance issues - sorcs, summoners might go for long periods without ever seeing a repair bill so you might want to alter the way durability works so that casting degrades items too