Introducing Astral shards

[Tid12]

Introducing Astral Shards

There is now an alternative currency available known as Astral Shards. A smaller denomination of the Astral Diamond, shards can be used to purchase various in-game services and Store items, including:
Resetting Enhancements
Resetting Epic Destinies
- Feat Respec costs with Fred the Mindflayer
- Airship purchases & ship tier upgrades
- Airship amenities
- Gold Seal amenities have been added to the in-game airship hook point vendors.
- Gold Seal Hirelings
- Gold Seal contracts have been added to the in-game Hireling vendors.
- Item Repairs:
It is now possible to perform repairs away from a vendor using Astral Shards.
You may repair using Astral Shards while you are in a dungeon. The cost is discounted at shrines, and cheapest in public areas.
Astral Shard repaired items can receive a temporary "Blessing of Moradin" (when in Forgotten Realms content) or "Blessing of Onatar" (when in Eberron content), which will apply a random beneficial effect to equipped armor, primary, and off-hand items.
This effect ends upon death or un-equipping the item.
Note that using an Astral Shard repair on an item subsequent times will apply a new random effect, over riding any existing one.
Runearms are not eligible for this effect since they do not take item damage.


As title, these new shards how can be acquired? Are those unbound, BtA, BtC, BtCoA ? Do they drop like Astral diamonds (i.e. 1 in a year)?

I'm not sure I like, it depends on the buffs they can give out. Are we talking about Tea with the Queen-like buffs or something like +2 to a stat?

I cannot verify it because there was no wipe once again but I'd like more info on this.

[Crazy-Freddy]

Well since they are not in the store here no real telling sad to put out a patch to test and half way do it.

[MrkGrismer]

This really depends on how we get them in game:

Bad: If we only get them from the ddostore or in astra diamond-like frequency drops

Good: If we get them like we currently get essences

Meh: If we get them like we currently get renown

[Zonixx]

Sadly, the fact that they did not drop anywhere brings to mind it will probably be just a store item, with a low drop rate like astral diamonds. I am also guessing that is why the plat screen has been smaller, to the left will be your "'astral shards''' currency.

[Vordax]

Sadly, the fact that they did not drop anywhere brings to mind it will probably be just a store item, with a low drop rate like astral diamonds. I am also guessing that is why the plat screen has been smaller, to the left will be your "'astral shards''' currency.

I suspect there will be another tab on the AH to sell things exclusively for astral shards.

[danotmano1998]

This is a big change, depending on what they do with this..

I'm curious, but a little concerned.

On the plus side, at least I'll be able to get rid of that ONE astral diamond I found in the 2 plus years of adventuring.

[Anthios888]

It would be great if this replaced all of the other consumables like siberys dragonshards. They could consolidate all of them into one item usable for many things.

[Tid12]

It would be great if this replaced all of the other consumables like siberys dragonshards. They could consolidate all of them into one item usable for many things.

This would be actually a nice idea.

Forget siberys dragonshard with all those different kinds (Flawless, flawed, exceptional, perfect, sublime, whatever) and instead change Fred to accept only Astral shards.

Depending on how frequently they drop, I'd make something like this:

Char lv - cost in AShards

1-4 - 1 shard
5-9 - 2 shard
10-15 - 5 shard
16+ - 10 Shard

If they drop often enough, multiply those numbers x2/x5/x10 and adjust them.

[SqueakofDoom]

This would be actually a nice idea.

Forget siberys dragonshard with all those different kinds (Flawless, flawed, exceptional, perfect, sublime, whatever) and instead change Fred to accept only Astral shards.

Depending on how frequently they drop, I'd make something like this:

Char lv - cost in AShards

1-4 - 1 shard
5-9 - 2 shard
10-15 - 5 shard
16+ - 10 Shard

If they drop often enough, multiply those numbers x2/x5/x10 and adjust them.

Fred will now accept either the Plat+dragonshard or just Astral Shards for feat respecs

[Tid12]

Fred will now accept either the Plat+dragonshard or just Astral Shards for feat respecs

Yeah, I got that.

I'd just remove siberys dragonshard at all. Too difficult and too much wasted time to crunch the Siberys togheter.

[Munkenmo]

Yeah, I got that.

I'd just remove siberys dragonshard at all. Too difficult and too much wasted time to crunch the Siberys togheter.

or they could leave it as is, you can outright loot the dragonshards you need at lower levels, and i plan around feat swaps on TR's often.

the flawless dragonshard you get for favor from GH really seals the deal, and makes it easy.

[shadereaper33]

The big question that they haven't answered yet is how we can acquire these things. Do they drop in chests at all? Do they drop with a high enough frequency to actually matter? And with the info on drop rates, what kind of costs are we talking about? If you are lucky to find 1 a year in a chest (kinda like astral diamonds), but these features all costs 10+ shards, then this is really just a cash shop item, and loses a lot of its appeal.

[LionHearty]

Isn't Plat useless enough already? No need for a new super currency..

[redspecter23]

I think it depends on two key things

1) How are these shard acquired?

2) Are there any essential benefits that can only be acquired through shards?


If they are store only, I'm thinking it's just a way to consolidate things like Looms, Dragonshards and other very specific store items into one generic store item that can be used for all these things. If that's the case and the effect basically replicates store items then I'm not too concerned.

My big worry is that these shards will start to become necessary to buy things that in the past were either unavailable or things that directly increase the power of your character like the weapon/equipment buffs listed in the note. That reeks of Zyngafication and scares the **** out of me.

The store is all that's needed. Why have a second tier store called astral shards. I just don't really see why we need shards when we have the store already. Unless shards have a reasonable in game drop rate. At that point it's like you can earn certain store features at a faster rate in game, which makes sense.

I'm a bit confused at why no dev has commented on how these are acquired. Silence in this situation leads people to expect the worst which is store exclusive. A dev comment clarifying would be fantastic.

[redspecter23]

I suspect there will be another tab on the AH to sell things exclusively for astral shards.

I had just assumed that shards would be btc or bta until reading this. Adding a currency that can be traded among players is an interesting concept. If there is an option to directly exchange astral shards into TP and astral shards can be bought for TP then it could essentially make TP an legitimate ingame currency through astral shards.

[Kinerd]

It would be great if this replaced all of the other consumables like siberys dragonshards. They could consolidate all of them into one item usable for many things.

This is a really great idea that I regretfully suspect will never be implemented. The introduction of Purified Eberron Shards alone, right?

[jakeelala]

i have this crazy idea: what if we used some coin or piece of metal as currency? we could call it plat and it could be used for anything!

[Crazy-Freddy]

From Release notes.

Astral Diamonds can be converted into shards by double clicking on them.

Well I bought AD and No they can't be converted by double clicking on them. Another thing in this patch that is broken or not implemented.

[smatt]

This is just their way to introduce in-game currency for sale in the DDO store. I'm not casting judgement upon them... I'm just saying.... They may as well just come right out and start selling packages of plat in the store as well.

[Shade]

Played with them a bit.

There mostly silly. Click the new button on inv, repairs stuff and gives a random buff on armor and weapon..

That youll quickly lose if you play like any real player, as its lost soon as you swap your weapon. Armor one i guess you can keep a while, but its pretty minor.

Also like most everything in DDO: bugged. Lots of string table errors on the buffs.

Cost is 3/9/15 iirc. (For in town, at rest shrine, in instance).

Lama Shard cost: 20tp for 20. Thats the only option. Though it allows 10x purchase. So pretty much 1 to 1 on tp cost.

Though diamonds still available, they can be crushed down to these, you get 5 for 1. At that rate, its a huge loss still. Iirc was 2500 tp for 100 diamonds, so 2500tp for 500 shards. 5 times the cost.

Just another silly way to waste money in small amounts it seems to me.. As I don't see the shards dropping in game at any reasonable rate (opened a dozen high lvl chests and saw nothing of value).

The +insight bonus buff is also poor design given all the other buffs stack. The only non stacking buffs in there (if you already ave a source of insight to fort bonus as most people who care about such things would have).. Creates a sort of gamble, as you could lose your +10 hardness for the much rarer insight, which may do you no good.

It also destroys part of the game you previously built: The death penalty. If you can just instantly click a button and remove a big part of the death penalty at will, that breaks the game imo. All thats left is the neg lvls, which are easily overcome, so death again means nothing, even dozen upon dozens of them.