Choice Grade Quartered Materials

[marct]

Obviously game mechanics come into play here... but if we forget that let's talk...

Obviously the differnt kill methods along with the different aim methods could impact both quality and quantity. We already have differring quantities based on "danger level" of the mob Carnivores drop lots, herbies less, and plants the least. (Not sure where kitin classes fall)

I like the idea of better Q mats. maybe if it was just a % chance for each mat to be a certain Grade. As follows for example.

Standard above ground baddie:
50% basic
35% fine
12% choice
3% excellent

Destroyer above ground:
5% basic
30% fine
50% choice
15% excellent

Named above ground:
0% basic
7% fine
35% choice
55% excellent
2% supreme

Goo infected above ground:
0% basic
0% fine
10% Choice
20% Excellent
70% Supreme


Take those numbers above and modify them slightly better for mobs that are underground... EG:

Standard below ground baddie:
20% basic
35% fine
32% choice
12.75% excellent
0.25% Supreme

Named below ground:
0% basic
1% fine
5% choice
80% excellent
14% supreme

Goo infected above ground:
0% basic
0% fine
5% Choice
10% Excellent
85% Supreme


Add a modifier to the amount of mats you can get based on above/below ground...


I also think the destroyer/slayer/etc mobs should be more random travelers, have random spawns, and more frequent spawns. That would help alot too. Similar things for the nameds, but maybe just not more frequent.


All of the ideas expressed as well as hopefully mine are great discussion points... hope someone can see this sometime.

Noin.

[swe999]

In all honesty... a good fix for this would be making all PR mats one step up, so basic -> fine and fine -> choice in PR.

The named PR mobs that currently drop choice(I never saw death anything in PR) should have their quantity increased to 40.

I think this is a fair idea that balances things out and makes sense for why PR mobs are so much harder?

[marct]

My system is simple... could be modified by any number of factors(wheather, ToD, mob class(aggro, kitin, herbie, plant)) as it is an equation, and could be semi-randomized based on environmetals, etc. I would be happy to program it in any language Nevrax would like and deliver it as a module they could implement.

In fact if they would do the design, including any other variables I would spend 20 hours a week coding any module they like to specification.

Noin.

[akicks]

Just so you know, mob mats are better than anything that can be quartered. Would you really want to best weapons to be as easy to make for hunters as it is for crafters?

[aylwyne]

Just so you know, mob mats are better than anything that can be quartered. Would you really want to best weapons to be as easy to make for hunters as it is for crafters?

I think you meant to say "...better than anything that can be harvested".

Harvested and quartered mats compliment each other. For example, mob mats have high "power" stats on magic focus and harvested mats have good "speed". Likewise, quartered mats have good parry while harvested mats have good dodge.

That pattern follows in most areas. The best crafted items generally come from combining harvested and quartered as neither harvested nor quartered cover all the stats.

[sidusar]

I agree that choice quartered materials are too rare at the moment. They can only be obtained from the destroyer/death/slayer/demolisher creatures, who are equally rare and equally challenging to defeat as the named ones. This makes choice quartered materials pretty much redundant, because why go out your way to get choice materials if you can get excellents for the exact same effort?

For foragers, choice materials are far easier to obtain than excellents, so in my opinion the same should be true for hunting. The ease with which we can obtain thousands of choice foraged mats, coupled with the difficulty it takes to get just a few choice quartered ones, creates a disbalance in crafted items.

Choice dodge armor is easy to make, choice parry armor isn't worth the effort (in fact, if I want a piece of heavy armor with +2 parry, it would be easier for me to make it out of harvested supreme materials than out of quartered choice). Likewise, choice damage weapons are easy to get while choice speed weapons aren't worth the effort. In every craft branch some statistics are only obtainable with quartered materials.

Prime Root creatures giving choice materials would be a nice quick and easy fix for this situation. They take twice as long to kill as normal creatures so it would make sense there's a higher reward for killing them, and at the same time it's not worth grinding on them. I do think if you want quartered choice mats you have to specifically go after them and not get them as by-product of levelling combat skills, but going after them should be a lot easier than it currently is. I like the idea of little hunting trips down into the PR to get a stack of choice materials.

This is a good quick solution to the lack of choice quartered materials. For the long run I hope they're still planning to implement a system like Oshido explains, where we can effect the grade of quartered materials by the way we kill the creature.

The grade could be dependant on the skill used or we could have special stanzas that improve the grade. Hey, we could even have special attack stanzas which are material specific, attempting to leave a certain part of the creature intact thus improving the chances of getting that material from it. And under that system it still would be nice if the PR mobs, with their double health, get a boost to the grade of the materials quartered from them, compared to normal mobs.

There could be some problems like the one Ali points out. If killing a normal creature with daggers gives choice, then does killing a PR mob with daggers give excellent? That would make excellents a bit too common I think. And what would killing a boss with daggers give?

So in that light I think Noin's system would be a good idea. The percentage numbers like he's proposing could lean more towards better grades for certain methods of killing. They just have to make sure that the difference here is substantial and not a negligible bonus like the slow effect or the berserk ability. If killing with daggers gives me 5% more chance to get choice mats, I'll leave it

But such a system would take a while to implement and most of all to properly balance. In the meantime we'd still be stuck with very little access to choice quartered materials. So by all means make the PR mobs give choice materials. I think it would make crafting a lot more interesting, specially for those who don't have access to boss materials.

In all honesty... a good fix for this would be making all PR mats one step up, so basic -> fine and fine -> choice in PR.

The named PR mobs that currently drop choice(I never saw death anything in PR) should have their quantity increased to 40.

Right now the grade of quartered materials from normal creatures doesn't make much sense though. They alternately give basic and fine as their level goes up: 2 star jugulas give basic, 3 star give fine, 4 star give basic again.

I assume it's because they don't want every creature dropping the same grade material, but it seems kind of random.

To my knowledge there are no quartered choice prime root materials. In the forest there's "destroyer" creatures, in the desert "slayer", in the lakelands "death" and in the jungle "demolisher". There's no Prime Roots variant. Actually I don't see why these creatures exist at all, they seem to be nameds in every aspect except that they give choice materials instead of excellent.

Just so you know, mob mats are better than anything that can be quartered. Would you really want to best weapons to be as easy to make for hunters as it is for crafters?

I disagree. Quartered materials are just as good as harvested ones, they just improve different statistics. For armor, smashing and piercing protecton are from harvested mats, slashing is from quartered mats. For jewelry, poison protection is from harvested mats, fire/shock/electric protection from quartered.

An item crafted from choice quartered materials wouldn't be better than one from choice harvested mats, just have the statistics switched around differently. Why should it be so easy to get choice poison protection jewelry and so hard to get the same grade electric protection jewelry?

Besides, the top players out there generally aren't satisfied with choice items, and usually have no trouble obtaining excellent and supreme quartered materials. They're already walking around with 100/100 amps, weapons with both max damage and speed, and Aen armor. Easy availability of quartered choice mats won't make the least difference to them. But it will give the less uber players a lot more options with their equipment.

[akicks]

I think you meant to say "...better than anything that can be harvested".

That I did, my typing fingers got the better of me

[swe999]

sidusar can you format your post so its readable

it has a lot of good info but is a meaningless block of solid text

[sidusar]

Well, it wasn't supposed to be that long, you people just brought up too many points I had to reply to

Sure you want me to add in more empty lines and make it even longer?

[rushin]

coming into this a little late

a quick and easy solution maybe worth considering is increase the mat drops for the destroyer/death/etc to ~40 and maybe the named to ~50 then u bring it inline a little with bosses at ~60 and generate access to quartered choice/exc in slightly more useful quantities..

i do like the pr idea but i get the feeling it wouldn't be trivial to implement.