Introducing a Proper Chest Loot System: The Goods
I already previewed the theory of my Chest Loot System yesterday and now it’s time to talk about the actual loot table. To understand what we are doing here, you need to read that part first.
Without further ado, let’s get through the list and touch on a few things afterwards.
New boss loot table
[su_table]
Dungeon | Boss Loot | Daily Incentives |
---|---|---|
Leveling Dungeons |
|
|
T1 Dungeons |
|
|
T2 Dungeons |
|
|
Castle Never |
|
|
Fangbreaker Island |
|
|
Shores of Tuern |
|
|
Kessell’s Retreat |
|
|
Underdark Skirmishes | — |
|
Demogorgon | — |
|
Epic Demogorgon | — |
|
Tiamat | — |
|
[/su_table]
The boss loot and daily incentives don’t reflect the new system as much, but it gets rid of a few inconsistencies. All group content minus skirmishes now drop some variant of the daily caches and daily skirmish or dungeon RADs. I like that dungeons are still treated separately, but since some modules feature Trials as their main endgame content, it doesn’t make sense to exclude them from the RAD progression and completely force players into other content instead.
I additionally had to scratch all Seals from bosses. These are progression items and only belong in the corresponding chest. As replacement all dungeon bosses now drop fixed RPs and keep their chance at some extra salvage.
New chest loot table
[su_table]
Dungeon | Farm Chest | Progression Chest |
---|---|---|
Leveling Dungeons |
|
— |
T1 Dungeons |
|
|
T2 Dungeons |
|
|
Castle Never |
|
|
Fangbreaker Island |
|
|
Shores of Tuern |
|
|
Kessell’s Retreat |
|
|
Underdark Skirmishes | Bronze:
Silver:
Gold:
|
Bronze:
Silver:
Gold:
|
Demogorgon | Bronze:
Silver:
Gold:
|
Bronze:
Silver:
Gold:
|
Epic Demogorgon | Bronze:
Silver:
Gold:
|
Bronze:
Silver:
Gold:
|
Tiamat | Tier 1:
Tier 2:
Tier 3:
Tier 4:
|
Tier 1:
Tier 2:
Tier 3:
Tier 4:
|
[/su_table]
I’ll admit this is quite a list and you might need to let that one sink in a bit. I mainly splitted the current rewards from dungeons into the two chests though. All RADs, Salvage and RPs went into the farm chest, all Seals, Currency and Gear into the progression chest. The one exception is Fangbreaker Island where Voninblod as farm and progression currency can be found in both chests. When opening the chests, you should roughly have the same amount of stuff in your inventory than currently.
Some optimizations
I tweaked the loot a bit so we have a more hierarchical system though. Farm chests of dungeons now always return more than Skirmishes, Castle Never more than T2s and Fangbreaker Island more than Castle Never. It’s also important that dungeons with the bought 5,000 AD Key remain viable against simply running Skirmishes and Trials. Those do not require a key for the farm chest and should trail.
I set the probability of getting a major reward in the progression chest at 2%. Running your two daily dungeons per day should result in one reward per month, which is not bad. You could probably even make a case for a lower percentage. A few differences to current loot should be noted:
- T2 dungeons now include a chance at a Lesser Armor or Weapon Enchantment
- Fangbreaker Island now drops Restoration Resources
- A few more campaign resources were added to Tiamat
- Several dungeons include a small chance to obtain Elemental gear directly
- Demogorgon and Fangbreaker Island should drop Ring and Relic Choice Packs that let players choose the piece they need.
BoP, BtA or BoE?
Let’s talk bind next. All Salvage and Refining Points should be BtA, which is a small nerf to the current situation. Since the farm chests have been upgraded and you can infinitely run content with a net plus, it’s an economy safeguard though. Progression gear remains BtA, the main rewards BoE (Rank 8s, Artifacts etc.).
Conclusion
I think this dual system does a lot of good things. First of all it enables players to actually farm dungeons. The most effective way remains cycling through the daily dungeons with multiple characters, but even players with only one char don’t run out of worthwhile stuff to do over the course of a day.
With more RP dropping from group content, dailies like Sharandar or Dread Ring are getting slightly devalued. On the other hand, campaign tasks are more viable than ever, because you actually need keys to progress. You either pay for Legendary Dragon Keys, or grind them since you no longer get gear progression from the free daily or VIP keys. This might look discouraging at first, but enables players to concentrate on the area they currently need. If you’re looking for progression, you can focus on farming keys and run a limited amount of dungeons. After finishing progression you can skip the progression chests and just farm through group content.
The monetization is still intact
The good news for the devs is, they still have plenty of barriers to monetize. VIP keys offer even more of an advantage, because it actually makes sense to run more than two dungeons per day now. Then there’s the Legendary Dragon Key, formerly THE overpriced epitome of a dysfunctional system. It can now be traded for progression and no longer has to measure its value against Salvage and some RPs. You want the current gear faster? Buy keys!
I can see why the devs could be hesitant to give players infinite loot and an option to farm dungeons. But even if you limit the amount of farm chests you can open per day or something, this would still make for a better system than we have now.
Thanks for reading through my suggestions, it was fun thinking about the system. What’s your take on the reworked loot? Fanboy or hater? Share your thoughts in the comments below or visit the corresponding thread on our message board.
I’m absolutely amazed about how much thought u put into this, though I must say it is a bit of a shame that they r asking us to propose something while they get paid to come up with ideas. Did you propose this to them on the official forum?
I think ur proposal makes the dungeon grind worthy for the first time in neverwinter history.
On another note, I still would love to see all the old stuff to come back or some eating us completing the old achievements by ourselves like skirmishes of lower levels and dungeons. The game is not whatsit used to be. And I don’t like this stupid down scaling.
We should be able be level 70 always cause we achieved it. And a test or god mode server for the consoles and PC would be nice so we can choose all powers and abilities. That would be fun, well, at least for a while 🙂
Interesting, yet i have 3 things on my mind:
1.normal DEMO has worse rewards than Underdark skirmishes-10% chance at +3/4/5 rings vs 7,5% in nDEMO,other rawards are the same.Those skirmishes are faster and and easier.
2.Tiamat gives aditional Linus favor from chest. I like this adition,however it still means you need to succed in Tiamat 40 times to get the last boon, maybe im just too anti-grind person but it still seems too much for me…even thoguh you practically doubled the Linus favor gain.
3.Lesser weapon/armor enchants in T2s… like too, but isnt it too much? Id gladly rather took more RPs into bottomless artifacts/equips.
Thank you for this suggestions, hopefully Devs will come with somethig like this.