Item and Dungeon Levels, Gating, and Locks

[thorien]

That sounds great!

[trylobyte]

Dec 18, 2015 17:08:21 GMT -5  @belladonna said:

I think having a high-level vendor with rare, single-use items, is an awesome idea.  Put it down in Sakkors.  Or in Gnolls.  Or in the Frost Giants.  Or put it in the Serpent with a level check, where it won't talk to you if you're below level XX.

How about all those places, with a twist that the ones in certain locations only sell items with a certain theme?  Suppose in frost giants the vendor is the frost giant barkeeper, in the same room with NikNak, and he sells exotic liquors with special effects like speeding you up, granting a large AC bonus for a very short time, or give spell resistance.  Or the gnoll vendor is a fletcher who sells powerful arrows, bolts, and throwable items, the same one who supplies all those gnoll archers their bows and arrows.  Maybe the vendor in Sakkors is a ghostly Netherese merchant who sells one-shot consumable items that allow the user to use powerful utility spells like Energy Immunity, Mind Blank, or Shadow Shield.

[Deleted]

I like that.  

[Dismus]

That would be awesome.

[Vincent07]

Personally I'm not in favor of more consumable items with spell casts on them.  It just further trivializes a need for actual casters.

[Deleted]

While I understand keeping extra-high level items out of lowbies' hands. There's still some weak links at the merchants.

Anyone can sell anything at a particular tier shop, so when, for example, a green tier person is carrying a blue item, they can sell it in the green tier shop.

This means that anyone who shops at that tier sees items they can't yet use, and those who -could use said item can't access it to purchase it. There were a ton of blue tier items in the green shop the other day. No less than three of which I wanted on Naleeah, who opens the blue tier shop. Sadly, I had no access to them. And asking someone else to buy it with a green tier PC to resell it to mine feels... metagamish.

Further, there are legitimate times a higher tier PC might want a lower tier item. Some of the green tier gear is perfectly suitable for a blue tier PC when there's a lack of something higher and more suitable, but you can't access the lower gear shop, yet again.

What I would suggest, is that there be a dialog added to the conversation of every "buyer" shopkeeper, to allow for higher level PCs to access lower level shops. So when a 11-15 PC talks to Hawk, for example, it gives the option: "Which shop would you like to browse?" 1. lower tier shop, 2. lower-mid tier shop, 3. upper-mid tier shop. This would allow the higher level PC to access the items from those shops, be it a lower tier item, or one that's actually at their tier.

[drakaden]

Jan 2, 2016 13:24:36 GMT -5  @misplacedmaskarran said:

While I understand keeping extra-high level items out of lowbies' hands. There's still some weak links at the merchants.

Anyone can sell anything at a particular tier shop, so when, for example, a green tier person is carrying a blue item, they can sell it in the green tier shop.

This means that anyone who shops at that tier sees items they can't yet use, and those who -could use said item can't access it to purchase it. There were a ton of blue tier items in the green shop the other day. No less than three of which I wanted on Naleeah, who opens the blue tier shop. Sadly, I had no access to them. And asking someone else to buy it with a green tier PC to resell it to mine feels... metagamish.

Further, there are legitimate times a higher tier PC might want a lower tier item. Some of the green tier gear is perfectly suitable for a blue tier PC when there's a lack of something higher and more suitable, but you can't access the lower gear shop, yet again.

What I would suggest, is that there be a dialog added to the conversation of every "buyer" shopkeeper, to allow for higher level PCs to access lower level shops. So when a 11-15 PC talks to Hawk, for example, it gives the option: "Which shop would you like to browse?" 1. lower tier shop, 2. lower-mid tier shop, 3. upper-mid tier shop. This would allow the higher level PC to access the items from those shops, be it a lower tier item, or one that's actually at their tier.

Completly agree and i like the idea, merchants should allow higher levels to browse lower tiers.

[ladybug]

Gotta be honest. This looks like a lot of work that would make it all the easier for a handful of epic characters with more money than they know what to do with to buy all decent loot from the lower stores to give out at their discretion, thus encouraging packrat behavior that contributes greatly to the server's lag.

[Edge]

Exactly what Lady said, yes.

[Deleted]

We have the tier system in place for a reason.  At this time, we will not be changing that.

[Vincent07]

Pretty much.  Allowing higher levels to have access to the lower tiers violates the entire purpose of the system.

[Darvins]

Dec 17, 2015 13:24:18 GMT -5 Fire Wraith said:

If anything, I think we'd like to reduce the amount of gold in circulation, not increase it, especially at high levels. Low levels seem to work okay in terms of consumable use, but at high levels it can get out of sync.

One thought was to possibly put in a system where people could break down/disenchant/shatter/etc existing magical items of a certain tier, for a chance at getting (random) enchanting shards. This would change a number of dynamics though, and we'd have to look at it carefully. (For one, probably would mean a massive decrease in T3/T4+ items available in Hawk's. For two, might also mean a massive increase in the presence or use of crafted gear.)

One thing through it's a side point I dislike about the cash limits, is it renders Appraise a very weak skill to begin with well weaker. Why invest points in Appraise if the items you sell hit the cap? At some point the guy with no Appraise can sell a lot of items for the exact same price as the person with 15 points of appraise. This seems... well unfair.

[Vincent07]

The max buy price is there as a limit to GP gain.  Appraise does make quite a difference, even with a 15k limit per item.  Some items will hit that limit sooner than others.

[Edge]

Yeah maybe you haven't been traveling with people who have their Appraise maxed, but there is a very noticeable difference in profits between a group with someone like that and a group without. Sure, if everything you get sells for gold-cap there won't be much, but you're never going to get a loot run where everything does. There'll always be something that doesn't go for nearly that much, and the Appraise-based sway of selling those can make a great deal of difference between the final amounts.

"Weak" is definitely not what I'd call Appraise as a skill. "Limited" might be more appropriate - as it only really comes up in selling/buying things from shops and on extremely rare occasions in DM events - but by mid levels definitely NOT "Weak".

[foo]

I really would also like to +1 the argument that we should be getting less T1 and mundaine items and more crafting components, and smaller 'valuable' items, since the inventory management is hellacious. Ideally I'd like to have no more than one or maybe two tabs of loot. You can keep the valuable items weight scaled so a few are heavy, worth a lot and take up a large ammount of space, and some are light, worth little, and take up  less space. but generally it would be nice to have fewer useless items.