Epic Gianthold - Augments!

[SqueakofDoom]

This thread is for discussing the new Augment system!

[LafoMamone]

This thread is for discussing the new Augment system!

More options for yellow augments!

Bring back toughness!

Exclamate everything!

[Carpone]

Striding and Insightful +2 Stat are not available for purchase from vendors. WAI?

[Systern]

release notes say that Gianthold vendors sell augments for levels 12 - 20, and Lahar in the 12 has Levels 20 and 24. What vendors sell the level 4 and 8 augments? Are they going to be purchasable or just luck of the draw and maybe we'll find them in chests.

The Guild Augment system was freely available in House K. A Free-to-play or Premium player with limited access to content could take full advantage of the system. Was any thought put into the fact that this F2P feature was being moved to Premium content in the Gianthold pack?

Slots now use up potential in the Cannith crafting System. Will the missing blue augment recipes be made available as Cannith recipes? We see toughness now as a lootgen prefix on cloaks, will Cannith Crafters be able to make it? Is Cannith crafting receiving any updated recipes this release as well?

[Arkat]

Some items like EN Arkat's Cord seem to already have one of their slots filled with an augment crystal. In Arkat's Cord's case, it seems to be pre-filled with a +1 Exceptional CON augment crytal. The EE Steady Handed Armbands seems to have its colorless slot pre-filled with a +7 DEX augment crystal.

Are these examples of items that were filled during a test on your guys' end that slipped into the Lamannia build by mistake? Hopefully, all augment slots will be empty when we find them on Live.

Call for Help End Chest

EN = Arkat's Cord
Belt
Colorless Slot - Ex Con 1 already slotted
Yellow Slot
Reinforced Fists
Toughness

[Cetus]

Hears my feedback thats been reiterated by myself and countless posters:

1. False life Augment situation is very troublesome because they are no longer yellow slots.

2. Toughness Augments seem to be non-existant.

Other than that, the augment system seems to be much better than what we have now. I hope we get some nice treats with epic-style rare augments as well.

PLEASE take a look at points 1 and 2, its almost making me want to waste tokens to stack up on GFL and toughness augments before U17 just in case I can ever find a use for them again.

Also, in addition to point 1 : The removal of guild augments and making the 35 hp augment a false life item potentially nets in a loss of hitpoints since the 20 guild bonus hitpoints aren't compensated for.

Thoughts?

[Systern]

Some items like EN Arkat's Cord seem to already have one of their slots filled with an augment crystal. In Arkat's Cord's case, it seems to be pre-filled with a +1 Exceptional CON augment crytal. The EE Steady Handed Armbands seems to have its colorless slot pre-filled with a +7 DEX augment crystal.

Are these examples of items that were filled during a test on you guys' end that slipped into the Lamannia build by mistake? Hopefully, all augment slots will be empty when we find them on Live.

Why would you want them empty? Overwriting a slot's content is supposedly as simple as double clicking the augment and placing it in the slot. Worst case scenario, you overwrite an augment you don't want. Best case scenario, you don't pay to slot that augment in that piece of equipment.

[Feather_of_Sun]

Some items like EN Arkat's Cord seem to already have one of their slots filled with an augment crystal. In Arkat's Cord's case, it seems to be pre-filled with a +1 Exceptional CON augment crytal. The EE Steady Handed Armbands seems to have its colorless slot pre-filled with a +7 DEX augment crystal.

Are these examples of items that were filled during a test on your guys' end that slipped into the Lamannia build by mistake? Hopefully, all augment slots will be empty when we find them on Live.

This is intentional.
Out of curiousity, why would you want all augment slots to be empty when found?

A pre-filled slot is strictly better. It starts out doing something.
If you don't want whatever is in that slot, then just use a new augment to overwrite it, just like slotting an empty slot.

[Carpone]

Hopefully, all augment slots will be empty when we find them on Live.

Why? It's a nice bonus, and there's no additional cost to replace it with a different augment.

[redspecter23]

Hears my feedback thats been reiterated by myself and countless posters:

1. False life Augment situation is very troublesome because they are no longer yellow slots.

2. Toughness Augments seem to be non-existant.

I have similar issues with the two above points. In the case of false life, an explanation why it absolutely had to be moved from yellow would be very much appreciated.

An explanation for the removal of toughness would also be very much appreciated.

Lack of an explanation for changes such as these historically leads to wild speculation on the part of the forum community. A few words from a dev about the necessity of the change when most other old epic augments seem to fall into the same categories they used to would be a very good thing. Lack of explanations leads to assumptions that it was just a whimsical change with no real game balancing reason. In that case one wonders, why even change it to begin with if there was no reason?

Also, would stocking up on the old augments even be worthwhile? It's my understanding that the old augment recipes wouldn't even be usable after the update. You could have an old epic item and an old augment, but no way to put them together.

[Captain_Wizbang]

This is intentional.
Out of curiousity, why would you want all augment slots to be empty when found?

A pre-filled slot is strictly better. It starts out doing something.
If you don't want whatever is in that slot, then just use a new augment to overwrite it, just like slotting an empty slot.

1st thing that popped into my head when I read that.

And to counter his post, hopefully we them all filled!

[QuantumFX]

This is my take on the system so far:

The Good

• The interface is easy enough to use. “It just works” seems to apply here.
• The augment crystals drop in the random loot tables.
• The pre-filled slots are very clever.

The Bad

• Augment crystals do not go into a bag at the moment. It causes yet more inventory/bankspace clutter that I don’t appreciate.
• There are a lot of missing augment crystals. (ex. Toughness)
• There is no reliable source of low level augment crystals. No vendors and we can’t craft augment crystals with Cannith Crafting.
• A lot of the interaction between augments and traditional item enchantments is vague. (ex. False life items with health crystals.)
• The augment crystal cost did not change with the times. I mean, 20 epic tokens for a ML:8 augment? (Heavy Fort.)

The Ugly

• We now have a 2 tier system of people with Guild augment slot items vs. people who don’t. The annoying part about this is that the whole problem could be sidestepped by making Guild augments into ML:0 colorless augments. This shouldn't be too bad to code since the new system requires you to double click on the augment and old style requires you to put it in the Stone of Change.
• Grandfathered epic items are kind of a PITA to keep track of in this new system. (To paraphrase Strongbad, “You’re left to wonder: Why can I not get ye yellow augment?”)
• The system isn’t finished and will be continued to be worked on in the future… I’ve heard this before. With the woefully unfinished Cannith Crafting system.

[Feather_of_Sun]

An explanation for the removal of toughness would also be very much appreciated.

Also, would stocking up on the old augments even be worthwhile? It's my understanding that the old augment recipes wouldn't even be usable after the update. You could have an old epic item and an old augment, but no way to put them together.

They will still be functional after Update 17, until such time as you use the Cleansing Ritual on your item to change it over to the new slots.
So if you'd like to stock up on Toughness augments now, you still can.

We felt that Toughness, due to it's special stacking nature (It's hardly optional- most people feel it necessary to slot it in their gear somehow), should be a named augment in the new system, especially as False Life-style Enhancement bonus to Hit Points is available as a "common" Augment.

Toughness is coming back in Update 18 as a named augment, along with a sizable batch of other unbound named augments.

[Scraap]

Given it's a proof of concept, I can see why all the vendors are in GH. Further along the line I'd expect to see augs sold by favor vendors, perhaps using the already coded in area-specific crafting mats as currency for anything in particular you feel is too good to just sell for plat, to encourage folks to run everything more often.
More detailed reviews are elsewhere.

[Vellrad]

A simple question: will we be able to disjunk guild slotted items, or will guild slots be gone after disjunction?

[Ovrad]

You need to make augments fit into bags, preferably a new augment bag type. Otherwise we'll have our inventory overflowing within a week.

[Carpone]

Commendations of Heroism:

1. Will these have the same drop rates and quantity in the new raid as CitW? {10% EN, 30% EH, 100% EE} x2 chests.

2. Can they be acquired through other mechanics besides the raid? For example, do they have a chance to drop in all GH quest end chests? If so, no report of them dropping has been posted to this forum.

[QuantumFX]

Toughness is coming back in Update 18 as a named augment, along with a sizable batch of other unbound named augments.

Thank you for finally clearing that up. Is there a possibility that the Voice of the Master might become a ML:5 colorless augment? It would really help with some of the issues with this item. (ex. UMD lag while trying to switch it before you finish a quest with a “kill this guy” objective.)

[Cetus]

They will still be functional after Update 17, until such time as you use the Cleansing Ritual on your item to change it over to the new slots.
So if you'd like to stock up on Toughness augments now, you still can.

We felt that Toughness, due to it's special stacking nature (It's hardly optional- most people feel it necessary to slot it in their gear somehow), should be a named augment in the new system, especially as False Life-style Enhancement bonus to Hit Points is available as a "common" Augment.

Toughness is coming back in Update 18 as a named augment, along with a sizable batch of other unbound named augments.

I'd like to ask you to reconsider this. Your false life style augment isn't all that "common" due to its new status as a BLUE augment rather than YELLOW.

I'd be ok with the toughness augment becoming a named one, but your hurting us twice as bad by doing that AND turning the flase life style one into a blue augment.

Remember, we are also losing guild hitpoint slots - so some sort of compensatory mechanism would be nice don't you think?

Thanks for finally addressing this.

[TreknaQudane]

Some items like EN Arkat's Cord seem to already have one of their slots filled with an augment crystal. In Arkat's Cord's case, it seems to be pre-filled with a +1 Exceptional CON augment crytal. The EE Steady Handed Armbands seems to have its colorless slot pre-filled with a +7 DEX augment crystal.

Are these examples of items that were filled during a test on your guys' end that slipped into the Lamannia build by mistake? Hopefully, all augment slots will be empty when we find them on Live.

You can overwrite Augments, more than likely they went with the pre-slotted approach to prevent people from getting too many high stat items on a certain slot