Disapointment in new Half Orc Dragonmark of Finding

[Hamoct1111]

Greetings friends.

I made a half orc to try out what I thought would be a wonderful and new twist in this wonderful game....half orc treasure finding! The concept is great but sadly how it works leaves me...disappointed.

First and foremost there are 3 parts
Lesser
Least
Greater
You need the lowest to get the next rank and so on.
The lowest allows you to 'find' useful items by destroying breakables in dungeons with it. What will happen is you will target an item to cast and someone will break it before it goes off... you will complain and explain and then people wont break anything and no breakable bonuses at end of adventure. Also I might add, anything you DO get will drop upon the exit of the adventure... kind of useless >>FIX<< make it instant without a cast time and/or an aoe effect on all breakables around user? Also make the items more consumeables healing pots/wands... noone is going to use a +2 khopesh that vanishes after

The next rank is pretty much a knock spell. Nice to have but doesn't work very much.

Finally the greater dragonmark of finding! 3 feats to get this and wow! We are going to increase the treasure for the whole group by 1 level!!! You would think with 3 feats it would be pretty amazing. It isn't. First, and my biggest complaint is... IT IS CHARISMA BASED!!!! What evil joke is this?! Half-orcs have terrible charisma guys! If anything it should be strength based! We rip the box apart looking for something better! The next is that more often than not someone opens the box before you can finish casting. The animation is quite nice, and the 'Come on Loot!' cast timer is really cute ... The results of several raids and many many many quests using this (WITH improved dragonmark feats for 4 uses of greater...) resulted in pretty substandard items. One instance I used it on a chest (successfully - you see a pink 'up' arrow graphic when it works) and the second chest that was not 'upgraded, someone pulled a portable hole and +2 stat tome and laughingly said 'Nice 3 feats you wasted there'

Did I waste 3 feats?

[flynnjsw]

One thing to note, Humans can take it as well. Say a Human Bard who is going to have a high Charisma anyway?

[Hamoct1111]

One thing to note, Humans can take it as well. Say a Human Bard who is going to have a high Charisma anyway?

It is useless for half orcs was my point.

[Sympl]

1) Dragonmarks. Hello. It's the way they all are and always will be.
2) +1 to the level of a chest means it's a higher loot table. All loot tables still contain cra...junk. It's always down to a good (unseen, but made by the game) die roll. And even an unbuffed chest is going to have avialable loot at it's top end that's better than the low end of a buffed chest. (Stacks with loot jewels though, doesn't it? +2 to a chest sounds tasty to me.)
3) In the matter of full disclosure I have yet to roll up a horc treasure hunter. I do intend to. But it strikes me that the treasurehuntery might be more geared towards solo play.
4) Once again, I haven't seen it, but casting timers? That does sound bad. Part of what makes Dragonmarks good is not having cooldowns or casting timers on the casts (thinking of the healing line at this point). Casting times DOES sound disappointing.

[FuzzyDuck81]

I reckon the "drops on exit" stuff is basically because half orcs are, lets be honest, a little bit dumb - its not so much a game mechanic as the half orc simply forgetting where they put it, or not being able to add up the concept of "my clothes has holes so i can put more stuff in! i'll put stuff in pocket! hey, where stuff go?"

if you see half orcs fiddling about at the doors to guild airship towers, trying to stick a coathanger in there, it simply means they've misplaced their keys and the stormreach guard doesnt have to be called - just phone AA or RAC instead on their behalf

[Hamoct1111]

2) +1 to the level of a chest means it's a higher loot table. All loot tables still contain cra...junk. It's always down to a good (unseen, but made by the game) die roll. And even an unbuffed chest is going to have avialable loot at it's top end that's better than the low end of a buffed chest. (Stacks with loot jewels though, doesn't it? +2 to a chest sounds tasty to me.)

I thought so as well... but after about 60 quests and a full 6 raids I must admit that I have respecced it. Nice idea. Bad in reality. I recorded the gold drops in every chest that I successfully 'upgraded' and compared to chests in the same instance when the animation failed (you can see when it works) and the difference was actually lower gold. The items were exactly the same level in every case (i.e. a level 15 minimum level to use item was never changed to a level 16 for example). These are hard facts of my own experience and record keeping. Was a nice idea... that's about it.

[OzmarDDO]

Something that is really lame is that the "drops on exit" stuff is also generally stuff that my half-orc CANNOT USE.

Seriously: it's usually wands of some kind. And often equipment that has a higher min level than my character, so I can't use it. I got a +2 enfeebling bastard sword or something that was min level 8! This with a L-2 character in a L-3 solo quest (An Explosive Situation). What the heck?! Everything I found in that quest was unusable. Yay.

-Ozmar the Disgruntled

[PopeJual]

Does anyone know what the DC is on the "+1 level loot" power?

I imagine that a Human or 1/2 Orc who is planning on intimidating and has 12 Cha +2 Tome +6 Item might have a decent shot at it.

Also, do Shroud +Cha Skill items work on the Dragonmark?

Do you even get to see the roll on the d20 when you use the Dragonmark on a chest?

Have answeres to any/all of these questions already been found?

[Hamoct1111]

Does anyone know what the DC is on the "+1 level loot" power?

I imagine that a Human or 1/2 Orc who is planning on intimidating and has 12 Cha +2 Tome +6 Item might have a decent shot at it.


Do you even get to see the roll on the d20 when you use the Dragonmark on a chest?

I had a +6 charisma item and it did help some... I had all 4 uses and without it I would need all 4 for one chest.. with the items seemed more like 50/50

You do not see ANY dice roll or message... the only indication is the graphic on failure is a blue/white burst animation and the success is a pinkish 'UP' arrow and white lines... you will see it

[AyumiAmakusa]

Note that I can replace you with a Loot Gem (for myself and not the party, however).

So yes, you wasted 3 feats for a Mass Loot Gem effect.

[PopeJual]

Note that I can replace you with a Loot Gem (for myself and not the party, however).

So yes, you wasted 3 feats for a Mass Loot Gem effect.

According to the devs, the Dragonmark of Loot Gem stacks with a regular Loot Gem and with the +Loot weekends.

I don't figure that this Dragonmark will be significant most of the time, but I am looking forward to running a ToD Elite with a Dragonmarked loot buffer and one of my leftover Loot Gems on a +loot weekend just to see what kind of crazy stuff will pop up. Then maybe a few IQ loot runs to see what comes out of chests when the chest's loot level really is 20.

[donfilibuster]

It's a common mistake, the gem loot works for random drops, which gain a level and thus a little plat when selling.
It does not affect named and rare drops at all.

The extra plat can be handy once you do the math, yet some people keep ignoring the haggle skill yet complain that are poor and can't keep up with the crazy auction prices.
It isn't an issue with the half-orc, but with any toon. It'd be like saying an elf should dump con just coz they have -2.

[ClericDude]

My (human) cleric has a 22 charisma. I get it somewhere between 50% and 75% of the time in Sins of Attrition on hard (19+1=level 20 quest, might be relevant). I did about the same in normal Shroud. I'm planning to get some exceptional charisma to put me at 26 (with a little enhancement respec). We'll see if it bridges the gap. I haven't tested how much it improves it, but I've found it to be pretty neat.

The Least Dragonmark seems to be mostly trash, but I sometimes get good stuff like CL 11 wands of Resist Energy. Knock is fun and I'm really feeling the difference in Shroud puzzles being able to actually hop in to help people who are having trouble. I'm enjoying it.

[Hamoct1111]

would be nice to have a viable dragonmark for half orcs...the single one we can get is... 'broken' due to the charisma required...

[Thriand]

would be nice to have a viable dragonmark for half orcs...the single one we can get is... 'broken' due to the charisma required...

There are really no viable dragon marks regardless of race, for the most part they simply aren't worth the feats they take up, a few rare builds will make use if the halfling healing marks or the human intimidate marks but for the most part they are all considered "broken" due to being mostly horrible, the half orc line shouldn't be any different, espiecially considering how powerful half orcs are.

[TheDoctor]

I gave these feats to my human bard, and I don't care if it works or not since I have 17 other characters to "make perfect". If I can diplo the chest, I sure as hell wanna try the dragon mark that says its gunna do something to help on the chest. IMHO the chests need all the help they can get.

[elujin]

the sad part is those marks are way better then most of the outhers

[brian14]

I reckon the "drops on exit" stuff is basically because half orcs are, lets be honest, a little bit dumb - its not so much a game mechanic as the half orc simply forgetting where they put it, or not being able to add up the concept of "my clothes has holes so i can put more stuff in! i'll put stuff in pocket! hey, where stuff go?"

Humans drop stuff on exit too. Recently my Rog 1/Brd 7 took Least Dragonmark of Finding -- mostly for the Search bonus, as he tends to miss trap panels. Last night I ran Venn's Trail and Freshen the Air on elite, hit bunch of barrels with Dragonmark, and lost all the treasure on exit. Had I known this would happen, I still would not be able to make much use of it. Somewhere in Venn's Trail I got Resist Energy wand, which was redundant (only fire, and everyone had fire resistance already), and in Freshen the Air I got wand of Snowball Swarm, which troglodytes on elite would barely notice. Besides, in a timed quest like FtA I don't have the luxury to search inventory for temporary items and put them into hotbar. In the future I will only bother with Dragonmark of Finding in more leisurely quests.

[dredre9987]

I think some of you are not understanding what exactly these feats or a loot gem actually do. Say your going to open a chest that is one LOOT level below dropping tomes. Does this mean your going to drop a tome if you get your feat to work? Absolutely NOT! It just means you now have a chance if you roll high enough on the loot tables to have a chance at having one.

Portable holes drop from what level 10 quests or so on norm? so a level 9 on hard OR with this feat a level 9 on norm. They dont really do a whole heck of a lot but drop the feats on say an intim fighter that will have some charisma anyways and extra feats and it isnt so bad.

I have a HO intim fighter that i use this on and have pulled some interesting things from boosted chests that shouldnt have dropped on the level quest I was on. There is no guarantee that your getting anything better you just have a chance of a loot table higher.

[VinchenzoTJackal]

Ouch. This convinces me never to use the half-orc race.
After all, EVERYONE needs a dragonmark right?
But a dragonmark that can not only be useless, but harmful to the user, this proves that this dragonmark NEEDS improvement.
I will never spend my precious points on a race that is massively debuffed on two stats as well as his exclusive feat.