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

Yeah... if the old RIG was "variably trashy loot punctuated by the occasional gem", this one seems to be "variably useful loot punctuated by the occasional gem or stinker". It's definitely noticeable, even if the absolute best items haven't gotten more common than before. (... To be fair, I'm not entirely convinced that they haven't, given how many people have been posting about their high-end items lately. )

The added variety of armors is probably the best improvement I've seen so far, though. Before the revamp, I generally knew I wanted to target one of these milestones where possible:

• Heavy martials: Mithral full plate with 12-13 base DEX, except Siril or Kana, who can afford less DEX and adamantine (or literally anything with good stats, in Kana's case) plate.
• Light martials (basically anyone with Light Armor Proficiency and no wizard/sorc/monk levels): Light mithral armor with 14-19 base DEX.
• Arcane Tricksters: -5% ASF padded armor with 22 base DEX. (I should probably have invested more in my caster stats, but I'm a sucker for AC. )

Now? I'm not sure what to target anymore, but I'm sure I'll eventually find a use for some of the more exotic armors.

DaloLorn wrote: ↑Tue May 10, 2022 4:33 am Yeah... if the old RIG was "variably trashy loot punctuated by the occasional gem", this one seems to be "variably useful loot punctuated by the occasional gem or stinker".

And judging by the selection of gems I can buy from Blunt every day, the gems are better, which is great!

I'm hoping the cursed-item chance hasn't been affected - since I know the severity is decreased with the inclusion of Alignment as a malus property.
(Though I'm probably the only person hoping for an entire loot run of super cursed stuff)

I like the changes to the RIG as well. Overall it feels like an improvement.

Though I'd still wish that "useless" mods were removed from the mod pool. Or at least curated in some way to not appear with other mods. The two I see the most often are:

• +1 Attack Bonus on an item that already has an Enhancement Bonus
  Since the two don't stack, the Attack Bonus does absolutely nothing
• 10% Fire/Cold/X immunity on items serve no purpose
  I know of no one stacking such mods on items in favor of Saves, AC, and Attributes

Such items are only useful for selling to vendors for gold. And gold, after a certain point, becomes worthless. I'd rather prefer just removing such modifiers from the mod pool, and increase gem / gold drops to compensate.




Negative modifiers are fun for role-play, however, and should be kept.


Overall: Great and welcome change. Room for improvement still, but a big step in the right direction.

The +1AB property is there to represent it being a masterwork item.

That being said, it probably would be possible to omit it from items which have an EB property... I'm not sure how much work it'd be to make that happen, but I can't see any reason for it to be impossible.

The +1 isn't from the pool. It's attached to the baseline item. Like Bonus Feat: Disarm for whips. It does not lower your chances. It reflects the item being a masterwork item.

Nathe wrote: ↑Wed May 11, 2022 10:14 am This is something that does not truly matter, but I'd love to have the posibility to add VFX effect when a weapon has elemental damage

As I recall, the visual aura is partially determined by the order of abilities, and the first one is checked for the visual until a VFX is either chosen or strictly no-visual. So I guess that could be sortable if special damage was put on a weapon first.

Kitunenotsume wrote: ↑Wed May 11, 2022 10:21 am

Nathe wrote: ↑Wed May 11, 2022 10:14 am This is something that does not truly matter, but I'd love to have the posibility to add VFX effect when a weapon has elemental damage

As I recall, the visual aura is partially determined by the order of abilities, and the first one is checked for the visual until a VFX is either chosen or strictly no-visual. So I guess that could be sortable if special damage was put on a weapon first.

The elemental damage VFX is often found on epic weapons. Not the ones bought from the epic store, but the ones that are truly epic. The added VFX is an added bonus for having such a weapon, as opposed to a weapon anyone can get their hands on.

One such example is the store bought weapon Viper Blade. It doesn't have the VFX. However, it's big daddy version The Viper (Epic) does. This version also has an added +1 Vampiric mod, but is otherwise the exact same stats. Lesser, Regular, and Greater versions of The Viper also exist, but none of them have the VFX. The VFX is reserved specifically for the Crème de la crème version.

While I too would like to see VFX from elemental properties on weapons, I also think it would be detrimental to rob the truly special weapons of that extra bit of cool they have.

Maybe an addon to the appearance tool that scans weapon properties. If it detects 1 or more elemental/energy damage effects, it allows you to select one of them/toggle them.