Talk to the Team: Blighted Items

[Grodec]

Here's a thought I figured I'd throw out there. What if when you deconstructed Blighted items you could get Cores as well as other "rare" components. Then instead of making new items, you could use those components to make Tech Kits from the Blighted Item list and apply those to items?

This sounds very interesting.

[Amerelium]

increase both the positive and negative bonuses...

[Machaeon]

The only reasons I don't ever use blighted items are:

1. The chance to get a decent item is about a one in 10000000000000
2. Any decent item will be completely depleted if it is used the way a crafted item is
3. Crafted items have a guarantee of a good bonus and are guaranteed never to fail

[AmonGwareth]

We had a brainstorming session last night and I wanted to pass along some thoughts we had regarding Blighted items.

1) Ensure that all Recharge Kits are for-sale on vendors
2) Remove the maximum charge reduction
3) Consider making new effects for Blighted Items using "Item Sets" (Items that when combined with other matching items gain additional bonuses)
4) (Obviously) Finish implementing the formulas for the remainder of the Blighted Items so that they can be deconstructed/created

[Guaran]

Nice. I think the blighted items could become something desired, with some tweaking.

I wonder though about the formulas. as it is, I know my biped has run out of formula space, and has started deleting the beginner blighted items forms. Would it be possible to combine the beginner into the blighted jman forms? and combine the beginner and jman into the expert blighted forms? Like was done years ago with regular forms?

If that could happen, I could reduce the number of scribed formulas on my characters. If you plan on making more blighted forms, as they currently are, there's no way I could come close to scribing all of them (even for say a single craft school).

[alizarinblaze]

Speaking as a novice reaching the point where level 21 Sslanis gear isn't the greatest any more I would say the proposed updates to Blighted gear sound pretty good. One thing I found was that trying to flip two armor recharge kits between alts through a vendor, they vanished. A jewelry recharge one went through, but two armor ones that were hard to find seemed to fail to list. Gear decay is fine, but the "maximum charge reduction" which would eventually snuff the item makes it hugely unappealing.

A set bonus could be the right way to steer the stats in your favor. It should be a small set though. Wouldn't want to see blighted overtake crafting, but a feasible chance of getting a few useful items you could keep for a while would certainly be an improvement of the current state where the items really are not much good, and as far as deconstructing...I could actually do that on about 2 out of 12 pieces I found, which again tells you that out of 12 items, none were useful even to a lower level alt.

[Tzael]

One of the things that occurs to me whenever dealing with blighted items is that we're meant to be fighting the Withered Aegis and driving back the blight. Blight is considered undesirable on the lands of Aradoth, and while 4 schools have blight skill (spiritist, shaman, reaver and blood mage) it could simply be argued that those schools are adept at handling the power of blight and turning it to good purposes.

So blighted equipment turns up, and the Gifted are exposed to items from the enemy that have all sorts of weird and wonderful properties which makes sense given that most of the Gifted are unfamiliar with blight and are only interested in eliminating it. Strange mystical properties of blighted items won't make sense to someone not familiar with how the powers of blight manifest and react. The Gifted see benefits to using this equipment and while using it find detriments, unexpected side effects.

Crimson Scourge jewellery was a big thing a few years ago, not only did it have some good bonuses for statistics but it also came with a bite - typically reduced healing ability and a blight DoT applied to the wearer. We had giggles with some of us equipping full sets of Crimson Scourge jewellery and killing ourselves when we couldn't out-heal the DoTs at lower levels. Despite the drawbacks, Crimson Scourge jewellery was sought-after because the benefits outweighed the drawbacks at certain points in character advancement.

I'm thinking blighted equipment should carry a similar bite... Forget about the reduced healing - that part wasn't so fun. The DoT was interesting though. Maybe something like the effects proc'd by the Ceremonial Shield and scale, DoTs that occasionally hit the wearer while in combat, not listed on the description of the item. It spices things up and there could be some battles where the wearer is lucky and not affected by any self-inflicted DoTs, other battles where the wearer is hit by several DoTs in quick succession and then has to decide if staying in combat is the right thing to do or if they should make a run for it.

One last thing as a suggestion for blighted equipment - how about formulas that allow us to take a blighted item and using special item drops we can cleanse or harness the blighted properties to make a version of the blighted equipment that does not have as many negative properties, a more desirable version of the same gear? The item drops could be suitably rare, or quest rewards to restrict numbers ending up in circulation.

Those are my thoughts on blighted items. I enjoy the variety and I look forward to seeing what comes of any revamps to blighted equipment.

[alizarinblaze]

As a skill, I thought Blight was Istarian for what would be called poison, disease, or physical in other games, whereas most Blighted gear has nothing to do with that. I wouldn't mind the occasional mystery DoT--heck, I can't really tell when crystal damage procs--but a trove of useless items that won't deconstruct seems like a waste of database.

[Guaran]

Crimson Scourge jewellery was a big thing a few years ago, not only did it have some good bonuses for statistics but it also came with a bite - typically reduced healing ability and a blight DoT applied to the wearer. We had giggles with some of us equipping full sets of Crimson Scourge jewellery and killing ourselves when we couldn't out-heal the DoTs at lower levels. Despite the drawbacks, Crimson Scourge jewellery was sought-after because the benefits outweighed the drawbacks at certain points in character advancement.

One of the big initial draws to crimson scourge jwl was that the dot it put on you would break mezzes. So just having one piece on could be useful. Dev's fixed that years ago though, then it became mostly junk except for the very top end necklace that could drop. Which is now far outperformed by the t6 jewelry.

I'm thinking blighted equipment should carry a similar bite... Forget about the reduced healing - that part wasn't so fun. The DoT was interesting though. Maybe something like the effects proc'd by the Ceremonial Shield and scale, DoTs that occasionally hit the wearer while in combat, not listed on the description of the item. It spices things up and there could be some battles where the wearer is lucky and not affected by any self-inflicted DoTs, other battles where the wearer is hit by several DoTs in quick succession and then has to decide if staying in combat is the right thing to do or if they should make a run for it.

Well, most of them already have a mix of positive and negative effects. And some pieces can have a chance to land a dot (life leak) that applies either to the target, or the wearer.

One last thing as a suggestion for blighted equipment - how about formulas that allow us to take a blighted item and using special item drops we can cleanse or harness the blighted properties to make a version of the blighted equipment that does not have as many negative properties, a more desirable version of the same gear? The item drops could be suitably rare, or quest rewards to restrict numbers ending up in circulation.

A way to remove the negatives could be useful. but it might defeat the purpose/lore of it being "blighted". I suppose we could "cleanse" it somehow. If they just tweaked those effect groupings, maybe lessen the negatives, the gear might not be so bad. Basically as it is now, the items with un-needed skills (like getting +2 hand slash on a shield, which if equipped prevents using a 2 handed sword), or the big negative effects, or self harming effects, are considered the "junk" which is deconned for the blight cores, to become the "fuel" for the few actually useful blighted pieces you might find. So cleansing them might lead to a shortage of cores needed to make recharge kits, and/or too many "good" pieces.

But, if they just tweak the effects some, having the majority being still junk wouldn't be a bad thing.

I do like the idea of interesting effects being placed on them. We already have things like "Drunken stupor", "Converts damage to silver" (supposed to be good against werewolves), and other damage converters. But having chance to land dots or buffs I think could be fun.