Post#4 » Tue Jun 30, 2009 5:31 pm
How's this for an idea...
I was big into tradeskills on Live, it filled up the time when not grinding away mindlessly on AA's or raiding. And this being Everquest, I love a good quest too, so naturally one of my favorite quests on Live was the Coldian Prayer Shawl.
This thing was great, it started out has a rag (1ac, 1hp) and over a long story arc, collecting rare drops from mobs, and spending hours increasing ALL tradeskills, you where rewarded with one of the best shoulder pieces at that time (dropped or otherwise). The quest wasn't easy, but totally worth it in the end.
Anyway, enough reminiscing. What I am proposing would be something along the CPS, but for every slot. Pieces would drop in low level zones, you collect the proper reagents to make it more powerfull, and you would keep it has you gain levels. Higher level zones would drop better reagents, making the piece you already have more powerful and more useful.
It would work something like this:
Torn cloth (slot) - caster
Decayed Chain (slot) - chain wearers
Tarnished Plate (slot) - plate wearers
Moldy leather (slot) - leather wearers
Shinny trinket of (slot) - jewelery
Broken piece of (slot) - weapon and misc.
These pieces would drop in Crush or Pal, and maybe the reagents needed to make them whole is bought or dropped somewhere else. Just basic tradeskills would be needed to make these items, which would be comparable to the dropped items (maybe slightly better if the pieces are harder to get).
You would never get rid of the piece that you made, rather, it would be the main ingredient for an even better piece in the next tier of dungeons. Guk, Mist, and Karnors would drop reagents to make what you have even better, the rarest ingredients coming from the boss mobs of course. But!! Now you need slightly better tradeskills in order to do the combines, on fail, you get your original armor back but lose all the dropped pieces leading up to it.
And so on and so forth up through the levels. At higher levels a piece of forged armor may look something like this to make: (using 2nd stage plate arms has an example)
Crushed Tin Armguards (original plate arms, made from forge, mob drop+reagent, trivial)
Fluffy Leather Padding (made from dropped materials using tailoring and brewing)
Diamond coating (made from diamonds using jewelcraft and pottery)
Rugged Bindings (made from storebought materials using fletching)
Combine all those in a forge to get Resplendent Bronze Armguards, say, 120 trivial or so.
This wouldn't be a replacement for the armor quests that are already in, but rather, something different that gives the players a feeling of accomplishment for working hard at all tradeskills.
I know this is horrifically complex but I think a lot of people are in the same boat has I am, level 70 and still wearing the same armor they had on at level 40. At least doing something like this would give people something to do and look forward to. Also, you could make places like PoF and Icewell more desirable to goto by having reagent drops there for the tradeskill quests...
Let me know what you think,
Bone Head