U55 Preview 2: Itemization

[Bjond]

The 6 artifacts available (all of which are helmets with a set bonus slot)

That they are helmets is irksome. The two major swap slots are back and hat. I swap hat for tanking and for trapping. If dino land also adds a back item with +10 exceptional astute+prudent then it would be mostly a net gain. CC cloaks don't offer incite, insightful intimidate or parry in suffix (like hats), but they do have insightful shelter. So, I could probably mostly get by using just cloak. Keeping just one slot for swaps instead of two makes building gear sets easier.

BTW, it doesn't bother me that this conflicts with existing reaper hat+2 -- I only have one and it's not a big thing for that or any build (just a lucky drop). But, some people spent exorbitant time to obtain nice hat+2's for their characters. It's a shame y'all aren't showing more respect for that kind of crazed devotion to the game by keeping that slot free for their "precious".

Players can do the landscape encounters for the ingredient for their Claw slots

Just the thought of being enticed to farm wilderness makes me sleepy and want to log off. Do you really want to entice folks to landscape farm?

Y'all do have nice wilderness art and I like riding through it on the way to quests, but it's never fun actually farming it for anything -- map unlock, rare bonus, slayer, chests, anything is dreadfully dull.

One part I liked about Saltmarsh was the way Hay was everywhere. It's something people snicker over in game, but it permits people to do the content they like while still "making hay". A dino'ish hay > dino part style conversion would similarly permit people to work the content they prefer. They'd still snicker over having to collect dino droppings. There's no avoiding that.

[WldNCrispy]

There are still dino bone crafted helmets, the artifacts were other, different crafted helmets that also happened to be dino bone but were artifacts. So now there's dino bone crafted in 6 more slots than there were before.

In retrospect, "Oops! All Helms" was maybe not my best idea, but hey, we got there eventually :P

So just to confirm, we'll have dino bone blanks available for 6 more slots than before that aren't limited to minor artifacts?

As an example, will there be a dino bone blank for the belt slot that is not a minor artifact?

If so, this is a fantastic change, and just opens up a lot of possibilities. Limiting dino bone crafting to armor-helmet-cloak slots (beyond main/off hand) would be very disappointing and not as flexible as what was provided by LGS (as noted in other comments).

This would also mean that I get to keep using my +2 stat reaper helm that I just spent years worth of reaper items to purchase - and that would be much appreciated from a long time player

[noinfo]

Some early morning thoughts on Artifact design:

You fine folks are right about the artifacts being helms crowding out the set helms, so here's what I'm thinking:

For next preview you'll see 6 new artifacts instead of the 6 that were there before:

• Belt
• Gloves
• Bracers
• Boots
• Necklace
• Ring

All of these will be in the Legendary Isle's Curse set (the 5pc set) and will have Scale/Fang/Claw/Horn slots (no set bonus slot). They will also still have 4 max filigree slots.

Why these slots? Mostly to help people craft around the 5pc set a bit (although it seems like the bonus might need more work beyond this) and to open up Dino Crafting to more slots. It also means that the artifacts are each fully customizable rather than all sharing a slot but being tagged with a different quality stat. Since quality stat didn't jump up in power level from 29 to 31, there wasn't a lot of compelling reasons to choose those helms over the dino crafted ones, and this way you can get an extra dino crafted item in your item layout without sacrificing a helmet.

You'll be able to mess around with these new artifacts next preview, so let me know what you think!

This is really good news and very much appreciated.
The only thing I would also like you to consider is Quality Spell Focus as a Dino Crafted if you do this. There is a significant lack of it in the new gear and this would open it up.

[Aaabbbcccddd]

Hey Lynnable,

I just read up on the post from Cordovan about the dread isles and vecna, probably the new villian on the dread isles(way more interesting than kodex pages in my opinion). That made me curious and I searched the internet about vecna and in the wiki articel I stumbled over two artefacts. The Eye and the hand of Vecna, and now I am wondering if those could also be artefacts in the game as they are directly tied to vecna and seem to be very iconic. I also like Items that also have some sort of drawback(there are just a few in ddo right now), like with those two artefacts you get corrupted and lose a hand or an Eye, that can make Items more interesting and multi-layered.
Maybe you got some cool ideas for those two artefacts.

[J1NG]

Hey Lynnable,

I just read up on the post from Cordovan about the dread isles and vecna, probably the new villian on the dread isles(way more interesting than kodex pages in my opinion). That made me curious and I searched the internet about vecna and in the wiki articel I stumbled over two artefacts. The Eye and the hand of Vecna, and now I am wondering if those could also be artefacts in the game as they are directly tied to vecna and seem to be very iconic. I also like Items that also have some sort of drawback(there are just a few in ddo right now), like with those two artefacts you get corrupted and lose a hand or an Eye, that can make Items more interesting and multi-layered.
Maybe you got some cool ideas for those two artefacts.

I don't think we'd be getting those two items as Artifacts that players can obtain. For one, they're kinda classed as Major Artifacts and Unique Artifacts. So if anything, they'll be used as "story" objets, much like Codex of Inifinite Planes is not an artifact for casters to obtain, and instead is being used to push story content instead.

If there is any items connected to Vecna, more likely it'll be minor stuff (Robe of Vecna for example, but that's more associated with Baldur's Gate material so probably not available to us either).

J1NG

[DRoark]

I'm just hoping they implement a way (eventually), to make Perfected gear NOT AN ARTIFACT.

It's useless and conflicting to most class sets as-is, forcing it to become one was beyond dumb. Thinking is haaaaard!

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We'll just have to see how much they borked Dread up.