Bone armour: Wet noodle

Ok so here are some basic run down on numbers just for the Lich skull.
Area : Deep Ravenswood
My build: Pure melee, meteoric plate +5 , longsword , shield: Hitpoints 600 ( buffs ), Focus 455

This is aimed at a casual player coming into game, to work towards a set of bone armour ( which is a great and exciting thrill right ? )
Now please keep in mind, I looted a skull after many hours of not counting, so decided to actually see just how many mobs it would take to get another.

Day 1: Full day 108 Lich killed ~ No skull ( factor in time for repairs/sell loot due to encumberance etc )
Day2 : Casual test play 2 hours 41 Lich killed ~ no skull
Day 3: Casual test play time 2 hours = 45 Lich killed ~ no skull
Next session: 2 hours = 44 Lich killed ~ no skull

( edit: couldn't sleep went till broke : killed 54 Lich got a skull !!!!! )

Total killed : 238 Lich = 1 skull

I am not sure if I would have gotten another skull sooner/quicker if I had kept going longer during my sessions, but it is very clear to me a casual player is going to have the hardest time here.

Now, I am no expert on MMO's or game mechanics, I can only offer this possible solution :
Every Lich drops a " Death Regent bone fragment/ "essence of Lich/Troll drop "essence of Troll" etc " ( similar to gem fragments )~ The more hit points the mob has, the more essence it drops ie~ some Lich have only 300hp, some 600hp, Troll have 2000 to 12,000 !!
A set amount can be magically crafted into the desired piece.
Now you may get lucky and loot the completed part, but more than likely, my money is on you not looting it
Worry not, you can grind your way to crafting that piece with the smaller fragments.

* This allows casuals to partake in this madness and also the hardcore gamer still gets the bonus of being able to complete things much faster.
* Much more satisfying grind because you know you can acquire the piece you desire even if you only have 1 or 2 hours to play.

Just an idea.
It is not holding anyone's hand, just allowing more of an even playing field for those with limited time.

 

Twisted from the chaos and evil magics used to create them

 

Maybe the % is less than 1% or so... for a mat for an item that when ench/mw can break dont think that worth the effort, maybe for collectors but for casual players... dont think so.

Your bone fragment idea is really good.

 

Trying to get the components yourself knowing they're rare is a gamble, and when your time is limited you have to ask, is it really worth risking the frustration? In the time you spent trying to get the Lich skull, you could have easily farmed enough gold to buy two of them.

Sure, it's fun to make your own bone helmet, but when you can buy one for 25k gold it makes more sense to just get the gold and buy one rather than struggling to make it yourself, and there's enough powergamers around keeping the price low for the casual gamers. It's a balanced system when you take into account the ability to barter.

 

Well I hope they don't make bone armor the best armor in the game. Because then everyone will run around in it eventually and that will just look silly.

On one hand I can understand that the reward should somewhat match the effort, but in this case that thing just looks too outrageous to be the number one choice.

 

I agree, you are correct but this mad me sad.
Do we want a clinical, stale MMO, relying on power gamers to get our gear/ gold farmers to sell me in game coin?
This to me is exactly what we should be striving for not to happen.
Gold farming just to get anything in game, isn't that just killing the heart and soul of SoTa?

 

I use heavy armour skills, so no matter what happens, I will never look like a cat walk model

 

There's always going to be powergamers. The best thing to do is to give them a role in the economic balance. Before bone armor, powergamers only had the option to farm resources and currency which had a standard rate by the hour. This way, there's a chance that they'll grind all day and not get anything, but there's still enough of them to make sure the prices will stay low enough for the casual guy to afford.

What we need now is more options, like dragon armor, a rare heavy armor variant of the bone armor, possibly made with different color scales for different bonuses instead of socketing with gems. THEN even more powergamers will have their hands full with rare-seeking and that will in turn limit the influxes of resources and currency.

 

What skill level did you need to craft it?

For a piece like this I do agree that it should take some time to get. But I do like the idea of collecting the pieces on each drop to get enough to craft the whole skull to use in the recipe. I also think this should take a realativly high crafting skill in order to make it. Make it 100 Plus crafting skill to start giving the crafters a reason to make it to the higher level.

 

Maybe the drop rates are so low because this is not an armor to be grinded but to be assembled due to luck and a long time of playing?

 

I think the goal was to give us something we can work towards. So of course everybody wants to try it asap (ok, not everybody, but many ppl) now, but I think it could be totally fine if you just play normally with the occasional Troll expedition and Dragon hunting and someday you have all the mats to craft it. And perhaps when you have the second piece ready you're brave enough to try enchanting/masterworking. I mean it's not as if we need Bone Armor to play. We can just use Leather / Cloth until RNG is with us.
Personally I'd like a linear fallback solution like @NZguzzi suggested or a better droprate, but I think we should be able to adjust if that isn't implemented.

 

I wonder if the level of the Lich affects the drop rate of the Lich skull. I was thinking this while killing the dragon in Southern Grunvald Barrens just the other day. It's a dragon with between 8-9k health (I forget the number). Would the dragon in the Rise have been better to farm I wonder since it has 14k health? Personally, it would make sense to me for them to make higher level creatures have a higher chance of dropping the materials. Especially since you're likely going to need a group for enemies that tough.

Even so, that wouldn't help the casual players since fighting many of these highest tier creatures require a ton of skill investment and gear investment to be survivable. I remember going to that dragon when I was somewhere around adventurer level 60. He hit me with dragon fire (ranged fireball attack) that crit me for 333 damage. After fighting him just the other day, he's only hitting me for around 100 damage at most. This is partially because I spent 1 million XP over the weekend increasing survivability skills such as Death Shield, Shield of Ice, Douse, and Defensive Stance all to level 80 while also increasing some defensive innates. And he's not even one of the strong dragons.

 

Now factoring in the super rare % we have to even make any piece with how hard it is now to level masterworking and enchanting. The game now only adds 1/4 of the exp on a skill gain it used to. These skills require gold/silver. So to make it worth while we need to have masterwok in tailoring of GM and leather armor special of about the same to get % of about 95%/83%/46%. Even if you do what I do and log out just before enchanting/masterworking to refresh the RNG you still break 2/3 of the item before you get to the 3rd masterwork. so lets say thats 3 items to get 1. then that also means you need 3 to get the 3rd enchant. so that 9 items all together to get 1 3/3 piece. Now remember this does not even factor in that for gloves and boots even with added dura you still need exceptionals to get 3/3. I do not even want to start with those numbers.

So with no bonuses for the special components this armor is a big fail. They might listen one day and add these things but as it is it's not even close to being worth it.

 

Sorry SOTA designers but that skull helmet looks like hammered hell. Human eye sockets, a jackalope's nose, random holes on the sides and a troll jaw with an incredible overbite.

 

Hear that?
That sound is a nail being hit right on the head.
I agree.
It is good to see the numbers like this, by the look of things, this armour was possibly rushed into existence without any real substance/testing/paperwork.
Pushed early for the Halloween theme?
The whole concept just doesn't add up.
Comments from a PR person would be nice, just to clarify what is actually happening here, was this intended or possibly just an oversight, after all we are here to test and this is a perfect situation to work together.

ps. Adding an extra 10 durability ~ yeah, nah

 

They did say they will add more durability. And yes the comment from PR person would solve so many of the hard feeling now. It seams thier MO at this point is to wait for enough people to call them out on something before they say anything. This s exactly the opposite of what they promised in the kickstarter. Wasn't Starr's whole deal back then that they where breaking new ground and setting a new example of open development the likes not seen in the business before?
His whole selling point was open development. coined a new phrase an all. What happened since then?

 

Excellent!
You've finally found a game that's able to hijack your life!
Just image - years of pleasurable grinding for the next gen armor consisting of 100 Lich skulls.
You will never be bored till the end of days

 

Is the red glow on the helm a mistake like the one on the glowing copper armor.... which will be fixed at a later date? I hope not, the red glow is a nice touch.

 

Thanks, it is from the new cloak effect.

 

Oh I heard it was going to be 100 Lich skulls per week for a town deeds tax