Coming Soon: Discussion Thread (2020)

[Valefort]

The endboss of Gullykin crypt is CR 30 (yes in a CR 15 area, the design is questionable but you're heavily warned too).

[Theodore01]

The endboss of Gullykin crypt is CR 30 (yes in a CR 15 area, the design is questionable but you're heavily warned too).

He's not that strong and quite doable with mid level toons. (If you know what you're facing - of course...)
But if he is -shouldn't he drop epic loot then ?

[Steve]

The endboss of Gullykin crypt is CR 30 (yes in a CR 15 area, the design is questionable but you're heavily warned too).

Creature HD doesn’t equal 1-to-1 Challenge Rating...or does it?

Challenge rating (CR) measures the level of characters a monster will be best suited to oppose.

For instance, a party of characters of 2nd level should face a creature with a CR of 2.

This

[Valefort]

Well that boss has 30 HD, is undead, has a slew of mean spells and lots of HP. If you don't know what you're going to face he'll wipe the floor with any teen levels group with high DC wail and meteor swarm, he deserves his CR 30 imo, even if NPC casters are much more easier to shut down than melee ones.

[Cinnamon]

Well that boss has 30 HD, is undead, has a slew of mean spells and lots of HP. If you don't know what you're going to face he'll wipe the floor with any teen levels group with high DC wail and meteor swarm, he deserves his CR 30 imo, even if NPC casters are much more easier to shut down than melee ones.

I stumbled upon this boss by complete accident, but Cinnamon knows what the signs are with automatic rolls and the fight really wasn't that hard at all?


I mean, I just threw Summons at him repeatedly and proceeded to interchange Sanctuary and Mass Wounds, and he fell in a few minutes.

Cinnamon wasn't even Epic Level at that point IIRC, was about 18-19 at most, with no gears to speak of besides +3 Shield and simply just used spell slots.
I also did that fight with most of my book missing from earlier fights.

I had no idea he would Dismissal, High Wail and Meteor Swarm either, first time doing it.

[Valefort]

Little demo to show the transfer of spells, feat usage, temporary item properties and hp.

[Hakken2]

Absolutely amazing! Looking forward to this

[Theodore01]

One thing that is quite noticeable is - the auction house became quite empty - because now people don't find that much overall.

[Snarfy]

One thing that is quite noticeable is - the auction house became quite empty - because now people don't find that much overall.

^ I've noticed this too.

In other news, one area that might need to be looked at is Forest of Wyrms, I took my cleric/SF there and went with two friends. All I can say is: Oof. I am going to just retract my previous claim that my strongest character could survive there solo. Was this area changed at all in the last year? It seemed WAY more difficult than what I remember.

In any case, as far as loot is concerned, we cleared the entire zone including the golem boss, green dragon(well, my friends killed it... after it ate my character before he could get off two spells), beholder + mindflayer, undead group outside of Lyrans, nightwalkers inside the locked tomb, and the group of 3 monsters that spawn on the SW side of the map, and looted every container that we could find. Some of the containers had low gold yields, and the best thing I found was some fire throwing axes... I think I netted between 2000 - 3000gp total after selling, while using between 6 - 8 healing potions during the trip. Is my luck just this bad? How have other people found the loot in this zone?

[chad878262]

I have a different theory...the auction house is empty because people find too much.

Everyone seems to mostly have +3 dodge/deflection/natural armor items so there is/was a lot of competition and thus rather than hoping to sell such items for ~3-5K and risking losing gold if/when such items don't get purchased, players simply throw them in with the vendor trash. Same goes for most weapons and armor. Since plain +4 weapons can be easily had for ~3-6K and +4 armors for ~5-10K, maybe 15 if it's full plate, why would someone purchase +3 armor or weapon? Again, it becomes vendor trash. AH is dead because players are learning that most items they put on there are skipped by so they don't make any money off it. On the plus side less trash to look at on AH, since folks don't always rename items to make it easy to separate the wheat from the chaff. However, it does mean the only real market at this point is for epic or very unique RIG items...Everything else is pretty much vendor trash.

[Tanlaus]

I have a different theory...the auction house is empty because people find too much.

Everyone seems to mostly have +3 dodge/deflection/natural armor items so there is/was a lot of competition and thus rather than hoping to sell such items for ~3-5K and risking losing gold if/when such items don't get purchased, players simply throw them in with the vendor trash. Same goes for most weapons and armor. Since plain +4 weapons can be easily had for ~3-6K and +4 armors for ~5-10K, maybe 15 if it's full plate, why would someone purchase +3 armor or weapon? Again, it becomes vendor trash. AH is dead because players are learning that most items they put on there are skipped by so they don't make any money off it. On the plus side less trash to look at on AH, since folks don't always rename items to make it easy to separate the wheat from the chaff. However, it does mean the only real market at this point is for epic or very unique RIG items...Everything else is pretty much vendor trash.

I concur simply because I personally don’t bother with +3 items anymore at all. Just save myself the headache and vendor them. Or give them away to people who are struggling. I’ve noticed the sane behavior with people I run with.

[Tanlaus]

In any case, as far as loot is concerned, we cleared the entire zone including the golem boss, green dragon(well, my friends killed it... after it ate my character before he could get off two spells), beholder + mindflayer, undead group outside of Lyrans, nightwalkers inside the locked tomb, and the group of 3 monsters that spawn on the SW side of the map, and looted every container that we could find. Some of the containers had low gold yields, and the best thing I found was some fire throwing axes... I think I netted between 2000 - 3000gp total after selling, while using between 6 - 8 healing potions during the trip. Is my luck just this bad? How have other people found the loot in this zone?

Having run a few epic zones multiple times just to get a feel for them, it seems to breakdown about the same before for me. Sometimes I have great runs, sometimes I have terrible runs, mostly kind of mediocre. I've pulled more than 6k out of Forest of Wyrms since the chest change (if you add vendoring items), and 3k or less. This was true before the chest change... actually I found the area kind of worse before on average. There's still a fair amount of randomness at play.

[Steve]

I have a different theory...the auction house is empty because people find too much.

Everyone seems to mostly have +3 dodge/deflection/natural armor items so there is/was a lot of competition and thus rather than hoping to sell such items for ~3-5K and risking losing gold if/when such items don't get purchased, players simply throw them in with the vendor trash. Same goes for most weapons and armor. Since plain +4 weapons can be easily had for ~3-6K and +4 armors for ~5-10K, maybe 15 if it's full plate, why would someone purchase +3 armor or weapon? Again, it becomes vendor trash. AH is dead because players are learning that most items they put on there are skipped by so they don't make any money off it. On the plus side less trash to look at on AH, since folks don't always rename items to make it easy to separate the wheat from the chaff. However, it does mean the only real market at this point is for epic or very unique RIG items...Everything else is pretty much vendor trash.

Lol. And who’s fault is that? And aren’t the recent changes making Loot more plentiful going to double-flood the market?

On one hand, I OOC love finding “great” items. It’s a classic video game reward to seek out treasure. Hidden gems!!!

But on the other hand, the BGTSCC economy is so so so messed up in ever which way until Sunday...and I myself don’t see it getting “ better” on the horizon.

That said, I know that I order to fix the economy, we all would have to swallow a very large, very bad tasting medicine. And I realize many players simply couldn’t swallow it.

But if we all are sitting on multiple lvl 30 toons with far more epic gear than we can even equip among our toons, where will that ever really get us?

[gedweyignasia]

The endboss of Gullykin crypt is CR 30 (yes in a CR 15 area, the design is questionable but you're heavily warned too).

Creature HD doesn’t equal 1-to-1 Challenge Rating...or does it?

Challenge rating (CR) measures the level of characters a monster will be best suited to oppose.

For instance, a party of characters of 2nd level should face a creature with a CR of 2.

This

I just want to clarify that in BGTSCC a party of Level 15 is not required to kill a creature with CR15. A creature with CR15 is one that is appropriate for a CR15 dungeon. Individual creatures are usually not balanced as their own encounter, but instead classified based on what difficulty level they would belong as a spawn for. This is because we do not spawn specific encounters, rather we continuously populate maps with creatures of a certain difficulty. This makes our CR system a bit different from PnP, so it's important to check certain assumptions about CR as it translates to BGTSCC just as many other PnP principles are somewhat different here.

[gedweyignasia]

[And aren’t the recent changes making Loot more plentiful going to double-flood the market?

The market is a disaster that has been a long time in the making and was hastened by the addition of the Epic Store. The loot rebalance has done some good in addressing the fact that the best items were (almost) only acquired from gold instead of looting, but it did not precipitate the problem.

Our economy is in trouble because while items and gold can easily enter the world through loot drops, they are not easily removed from the economy. There are a few small gold sinks, but it's not enough to cancel all the looting that has occurred, and there are no item sinks for top-tier gear other than players leaving the server. This means that eventually there will be an overabundance of top-tier gear, unless it is dispensed so very rarely that it shows up only as quickly as people leave the server. (Similarly, if it can be bought in a store, it must be priced absurdly highly or it will accumulate from that source.) The possible solutions for removing items faster than players leave the server are not agreeable to players, so this is a somewhat difficult matter to resolve. Cutting the availability just creates a permanent power disparity between old and new players at this point. The only viable solutions are to create item sinks by some means.