Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

Valefort wrote: Question for you, where do the good items come from ?

From the stores, from non-boss level chests.

I do not have a problem with the loot system. I haven't been here long but I have seen a pattern at least for me. Boss chests have no good stuff for me in them, but I know of places to get good stuff because I loot all over the server. I have found some good stuff.

Example Weapon I found:
+3 +2 vamp +1 neg

That's a nice weapon for a melee character here!
Also, I can buy this
+4 +3 str 1d6 fire dmg for 300k? Takes me a week to get that kind of coin? That's a nice weapon for a melee character here and a week is not bad at all for that!


When I look at the sad posts here I can tell it is caused by repetitive junk loot in boss chests so I don't have any good advice for that, I do not do scripting. Maybe make an NPC that gives players a Hug for every spoon they bring them.

HauteCarl wrote:300k? Takes me a week to get that kind of coin

But gold is hard to come by...

Thank you for posting HauteCarl as this is what Valefort, me and others have been saying for most of the thread. While some people don't spend much time looting others do. The server must be balanced to avoid someone having enough gold to essentially buy all of Avernus in a short period of time. The problem is that for those of us that can loot 100+ chests in a relatively short period of time will get some decent items in such a run and at a minimum will make 50K (likely more). If chests dropped even better loot? Well, you'd no longer be able to sell your +4 weapons/armor for ~5-15K at Mudds, it would become "vendor trash" because everyone has them. Hopefully that at least makes sense, even if not everyone agrees with it.

A week for a guy who is a self taught loot master that has discovered quirks within the gameworld that allow for a higher success rate when grinding chests. And a week doesn't exactly explain how long he's playing, does it? a week for him might be quadruple that for somebody else. Not sure that's entirely proving your point, unless your point is that it is, in fact, possible to grind out a lot of gold in a week.

But regardless, if grinders gonna grind is a mentality and playstyle we want to preserve and protect and reward, perhaps we could direct those energies into something that might be more in character? More interesting or impactful within the context of Baldur's Gate?

While it doesn't hurt me (save for pvp, I guess) that somebody who puts in the time to grind their brains out will have better stuff than me, does it really hurt them if grinding doesn't result in mechanical advantage, but rather some other kind of reward? Just brainstorming, but if we change the carrot to something that actually matters within the context of the realms, it might be more fun for everybody.

As I said previously, the only way to improve the chances of drops would be to somehow limit the number of chances you get. If epic items become commonplace they cease to be epic. The "trash" becomes +4 items with no 'extra's' instead of being +2 (even +3) items. So while I agree with your premise, I've yet to see any actual idea's of how to support the one play style without detracting from the other. This is a medium RP server that aims to support multiple play styles so putting a limit on looting would seem to be going against that model. Doesn't mean there is not a way to do what you are saying, but your post doesn't really give any specifics about how you think it can be accomplished.

Thing is the bosses do drop better stuff but you don't kill 50 of them per minute, it's just how the RIG works, you've got better odds but that's far from being certain. Anyone can take a look at the auction house forum threads and see that there are items not coming from stores there that are very good.

Dagger ( WIS +2, Massive Crits 5, Vampiric +3 "Sold"
AC(Armor) + 4, HP + 4
damage bonus piercing 1, EB +1, dexterity+3
Padded Armor (Bard Slot 5, Spell Resistance 30) - "Awaiting Offer"
Scythe ( Dmg Fire +1, Massive Crits 1d10, Alchemical Silver) - "Sold"
Dwarven Waraxe 1d6 fire damage, +3EB, 1d6 Massive criticals
belt str +2 fort+2 heal+4 SR 12 (min 16k)
Heavy shieldArmor+4 AC shield, wisom +3

Etc etc, I only glanced through the first three topics and all these items are likely coming straight from the RIG. No epic items, RIG not working ? Open your eyes.

In all my years on the server i never seen a boss drop any thing epic.
I did find some extreemly epix stuff but it was always in a pile of bones/chest in a mid level area.

And yes im sure bosses have a better chance to drop stuff though you wil also be there with a party so the chance to loot something is low.

But im sure the bosses have a better chance to drop cool stuff but there is also risk vs reward and atm you are simply better of grinding bones/chests till you have enough gold for a item or 2 in the hell shop.

Bosses potentially drop better stuff—I've shown in my example a few posts back that the also drop total worthless loot. So this is not a given.

A "farming" culture has been created and continues to be supported—just look at how Players are making pure loot-grinding toons to game the system!!!—which I argue isn't good for the Server.

Steve wrote:Bosses potentially drop better stuff—I've shown in my example a few posts back that the also drop total worthless loot. So this is not a given.

A "farming" culture has been created and continues to be supported—just look at how Players are making pure loot-grinding toons to game the system!!!—which I argue isn't good for the Server.

Thats simply cous you can make builds so strong that they can solo every thing...
If you trow the nerf bat at a few classes that wil stop.

Face wrote:

Steve wrote:Bosses potentially drop better stuff—I've shown in my example a few posts back that the also drop total worthless loot. So this is not a given.

A "farming" culture has been created and continues to be supported—just look at how Players are making pure loot-grinding toons to game the system!!!—which I argue isn't good for the Server.

Thats simply cous you can make builds so strong that they can solo every thing...
If you trow the nerf bat at a few classes that wil stop.

Which will be a lovely case of "Let's nerf the top! Surely they'll suffer" while they'll find other means to do the same things, while screwing over those who refuse to do the same, but rely on the same thing to be viable, rather than simply useless.

We already feel this kind of "Let's nerf the top" approach in the explanation for loot and income. Because people are already able to make 300k gold in a week, we cannot make it better without further boosting them - thus we won't.

Past week I actually made closer to 600k... Now that I think about it. I have also spent about 500k. I made some new characters, and those needed +3 equipment, more or less, etc.

Oh, I haven't actually gone boss hunting, as the bosses on the server can easily kill my characters, and the high end bosses just have too much HP anyhow for me to even bother about getting some UMD consumables. In a way these bosses are already more like MMO bosses than D&D bosses...

Egg Shen wrote:A week for a guy who is a self taught loot master that has discovered quirks within the gameworld that allow for a higher success rate when grinding chests. And a week doesn't exactly explain how long he's playing, does it? a week for him might be quadruple that for somebody else. Not sure that's entirely proving your point, unless your point is that it is, in fact, possible to grind out a lot of gold in a week.

But regardless, if grinders gonna grind is a mentality and playstyle we want to preserve and protect and reward, perhaps we could direct those energies into something that might be more in character? More interesting or impactful within the context of Baldur's Gate?

While it doesn't hurt me (save for pvp, I guess) that somebody who puts in the time to grind their brains out will have better stuff than me, does it really hurt them if grinding doesn't result in mechanical advantage, but rather some other kind of reward? Just brainstorming, but if we change the carrot to something that actually matters within the context of the realms, it might be more fun for everybody.

Not really taking sides here one way or the other but to be clear I do try to do boss chests and I am not a super grinder. I probably loot on average 25 containers a day. I don't think that is grinding since 5 of those are on the way from the gate to the FAI and another 8 are within a single map of the Farm. To be clear I do go to all places in the server that I can but not on a regular daily basis.

And when I say I can get 300k in a week it doesn't mean I am grinding mindlessly. It means that "hey there's a chest right over there, so rather than ignore it, as I meander on my somewhere for some RP purpose, I am going to loot it and then sell what I find. Because somebody is going to want it.

chad878262 wrote:As I said previously, the only way to improve the chances of drops would be to somehow limit the number of chances you get. If epic items become commonplace they cease to be epic. The "trash" becomes +4 items with no 'extra's' instead of being +2 (even +3) items. So while I agree with your premise, I've yet to see any actual idea's of how to support the one play style without detracting from the other. This is a medium RP server that aims to support multiple play styles so putting a limit on looting would seem to be going against that model. Doesn't mean there is not a way to do what you are saying, but your post doesn't really give any specifics about how you think it can be accomplished.

So, what if we took the 11 (however many item slots there are, I think it's 11) toughest bosses and made a timed string of quests. When you kill the first guy, you get a mysterious coin. The coin can be redeemed at an epic vendor for a single item of your choice. The second boss in the chain will give you a second coin, but not until an amount of time has passes that the devs find reasonable.

So, if we want it to take a year (little long for my tastes, but whatever people like the sound of), it would take a little less than 5 weeks between when you get one epic token, and you become eligible for the next. Eventually, you'll have one character than has fully kitted themselves out for battle, rawr! Grinders can still grind, as consumables are expensive, and there are actually better items floating around than what the epic shops provide, giving them something to burn their hard won coin on. Also, the string of boss quests will not get you alternate sets of gear (i.e. a detection suite of items for when the hairs on the back of your neck are standing up). Finally, grinders won't have to wait a year (in this example) to get fully laced out in sweet duds. Their reward is just faster acquisition of stuff.

If we feel that ruins grinding (thought I can't see how), we can create a new gold sink in game. Maybe our character's "home" location takes on more meaning. Perhaps donating coin can get you an in-game title. Perhaps we develop some sort of mini-game where there are in-game ramifications of some sort for those with the most coin, or those with the least.

Champions of Darkhold vs. the Gate vs. Nashkel vs Sshamath, etc. A leaderboard like when Artemis and Jarlaxle were collecting goblin ears in the frozen north (for those that read FR novels). Really, we could come up with something as simple or elaborate as we want. As I said, I played on a server where we had very cool territorial games and many aspects of these "mini-games" were tied into the kingdom's treasury. We players were the ones that mainly fed the treasury (although controlling more territory got you more taxes). I've spoken with the developer of that server, and sadly he no longer has any of the scripts, but AoS seems confidant of the team's abilities and we have. . . I guess forever??. . . to work out the kinks. If utimagus could accomplish all the stuff he did on his own in a year, I'm sure we here at one of the longest running, most popular servers nwn2 has known can dream up a fun gold sink to give grinders something else to work towards than just another fully kitted out character. Especially if our balance is dictated by how fast a dedicated grinder can get a level or earn gold. Using that as our measuring stick sort of kills it for the rest of us...

Egg Shen wrote:

chad878262 wrote:As I said previously, the only way to improve the chances of drops would be to somehow limit the number of chances you get. If epic items become commonplace they cease to be epic. The "trash" becomes +4 items with no 'extra's' instead of being +2 (even +3) items. So while I agree with your premise, I've yet to see any actual idea's of how to support the one play style without detracting from the other. This is a medium RP server that aims to support multiple play styles so putting a limit on looting would seem to be going against that model. Doesn't mean there is not a way to do what you are saying, but your post doesn't really give any specifics about how you think it can be accomplished.

So, what if we took the 11 (however many item slots there are, I think it's 11) toughest bosses and made a timed string of quests. When you kill the first guy, you get a mysterious coin. The coin can be redeemed at an epic vendor for a single item of your choice. The second boss in the chain will give you a second coin, but not until an amount of time has passes that the devs find reasonable.

So, if we want it to take a year (little long for my tastes, but whatever people like the sound of), it would take a little less than 5 weeks between when you get one epic token, and you become eligible for the next. Eventually, you'll have one character than has fully kitted themselves out for battle, rawr! Grinders can still grind, as consumables are expensive, and there are actually better items floating around than what the epic shops provide, giving them something to burn their hard won coin on. Also, the string of boss quests will not get you alternate sets of gear (i.e. a detection suite of items for when the hairs on the back of your neck are standing up). Finally, grinders won't have to wait a year (in this example) to get fully laced out in sweet duds. Their reward is just faster acquisition of stuff.

If we feel that ruins grinding (thought I can't see how), we can create a new gold sink in game. Maybe our character's "home" location takes on more meaning. Perhaps donating coin can get you an in-game title. Perhaps we develop some sort of mini-game where there are in-game ramifications of some sort for those with the most coin, or those with the least.

Champions of Darkhold vs. the Gate vs. Nashkel vs Sshamath, etc. A leaderboard like when Artemis and Jarlaxle were collecting goblin ears in the frozen north (for those that read FR novels). Really, we could come up with something as simple or elaborate as we want. As I said, I played on a server where we had very cool territorial games and many aspects of these "mini-games" were tied into the kingdom's treasury. We players were the ones that mainly fed the treasury (although controlling more territory got you more taxes). I've spoken with the developer of that server, and sadly he no longer has any of the scripts, but AoS seems confidant of the team's abilities and we have. . . I guess forever??. . . to work out the kinks. If utimagus could accomplish all the stuff he did on his own in a year, I'm sure we here at one of the longest running, most popular servers nwn2 has known can dream up a fun gold sink to give grinders something else to work towards than just another fully kitted out character. Especially if our balance is dictated by how fast a dedicated grinder can get a level or earn gold. Using that as our measuring stick sort of kills it for the rest of us...

I think all of this sounds pretty interesting, but then I'm not the one who will have to script it.

What would you, each and any of you, prefer:

A) Opening 100 chests for 100 (+/-) +1 items, having to vendor for 100k gold coin, so your toon can purchase Bracers of Armor +4 w/ Haste (10; 3/day).

B) Opening 100 chests, 99 (+/-) being empty but at least one time, that chest containing a Bracers of Armor +4 w/ Haste (10; 3/day).

(Item being simply an example of "upper Tier" NPC Merchant item that sells for 100k).

Which choice, if you make one here, seems more realistic? More fun? More helpful (like to low STR toons)?

You may also consider the 2 options with different values, if that seems more appropriate to you.

EDIT: Chests and containers would continue to contain coin and gems...in abundance!!!

personally. I like opening chests and having something (anything) inside. the second part of the fun(for me) here is going to the merchant to see what fun items you grabbed in your journey.