ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I feel the game needs more diversity in shops and more ways to spend gold. I've got a few thousand on each character with nothing to spend it on and never anything in the shop interested in buying.

if you saved the merchant, and "came back from a quest" (there is a long way to come back from that one)
the merchant will sell you ANY rand-art items you want for 4000 gold. you cant have "too much".

to be more specific with rand-art.
you chose the base t5 item, and the merchant make it into a rand-art. you cannot chose what's in it.

I'm going to have to agree with nintura here. Although this topic probably fits a little bit better in the Ideas forum. Sure, getting randarts for 4000 gold each may be a great option, but it's also pretty much your ONLY option. In the early game, you have a lot of different choices you can make on how you spend that early money. In the mid to late-game (well I can only speak for the mid-game because I've never actually gotten to the late-game), it effectively becomes a randart meter. I think players would find it more satisfying to have things to buy throughout the game instead of simply one thing to spend it on near the end.

The thing about money in real life and several other video games is that it is meant to be managed because it is a limited resource and there are so many different ways it can be used. It can be a challenge to decide what things are worth spending money on and what things aren't -- worth is determined differently by each person.

ToME starts out with this idea in mind but the management portion goes away fairly quickly -- I understand that it can help sand out runs where drops aren't all there in the beginning, but it's almost ubiquitous between experienced players: the only thing worth spending money on after you cross a certain threshold is the previously-mentioned 4000g randarts.

It couldn't hurt to have a few more interesting choices sprinkled throughout the game so saving for the however many randarts your character ends up affording is more interesting than just filling a pool with no other purpose -- perhaps players might find financial choices valuable enough that they might risk having one less randart in the end. Of course this idea is incredibly abstract but I think it conveys what sort of thing we're going for here.

More trainers! And they should be more expensive too; even the full Staff Combat training is pretty cheap in randart terms. 4k for an escort tree, locked at 0.8 mastery, for the people who really can't live without certain escort trees and don't want to get that prodigy. No option to unlock it for money though, since that would basically be a free category point and it's hard to put a reasonable price tag on an entire free cat point. Maybe another 4k for a single point in a locked tree, like what escorts can do for you.

Or how about, the alchemist that wins the Brotherhood competition thing opens up shop, selling each of their 3 elixirs for 4k each. Each elixir only works once on a given character, regardless of whether you buy it or you got it for free for helping them. This will help prevent situations where you get the generic points elixir from Ungrol, and then Agrimley finishes his class points elixir, locking you out of 2 class points for the entire game.

donkatsu wrote:More trainers! And they should be more expensive too; even the full Staff Combat training is pretty cheap in randart terms. 4k for an escort tree, locked at 0.8 mastery, for the people who really can't live without certain escort trees and don't want to get that prodigy. No option to unlock it for money though, since that would basically be a free category point and it's hard to put a reasonable price tag on an entire free cat point. Maybe another 4k for a single point in a locked tree, like what escorts can do for you.

Most characters don't have 4000 gold before going East and Mindstar/Staff mastery are character-defining trees that the player will usually want to invest in early.

Money is definitely something that could be improved in the game. Right now if a player decides to pursue an allegiance with the Assassin Lord they are going to end up with a huge sum of cash towards the end of the game - before entering High Peak. Even outside of the Assassin Lord and Randart Merchant, there are few uses for the money in stores and other activities - notably the only one that really comes to mind would be 'Power is Money' which does eventually cap out.

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The idea of Trainers getting some increased use with gold might be worth pursuing if the Early/Late Game was balanced for it. IE - it might make sense if for some very general Early and Late Game orientation to optional Talent Categories a player might invest in - with some input from Escorts on the side. This could also branch out to Escort Categories currently not offered via Trainers as a way to make Escorts less relevant for 'final build' purposes.

Maybe what could be done is that we could have it so that a player could acquire Locked Escort categories at 0.8 with the Trainer for very cheap 1k gold. Additionally, if the player wants to they could 'Upgrade' these Locked Categories for a hefty sum or 5k gold at the Trainer and bump the category levels up to 1.0. Via Escorts, players could choose a reward that simply let's them obtain the Locked Escort categories at 1.0 regardless of whether they paid the Trainer anything or not - so they skip the gold costs. In both cases, whether acquiring the skill from the Trainer or the Escort, they would need to unlock their category via a category point.

The above might be the basis for a solution regarding Escort Categories (notably Celestial/Light) being too powerful as they are in game right now. Simply put, eventually all characters should gain access to the respective Escort Categories via Trainers with this idea - the only benefit of the Escorts is that you can beef up the categories sooner if that is something you aim to do for your build. Players would no longer have to fear RNG or other mechanics screwing up their desired builds, as long as they have the cash they can flesh out their character design.

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Something else of note is that perhaps it might be worth looking at changing up how Combat Training and its associate Talents work in game. I realize that not every character spends their Generics in Combat Training and some classes would really need to get some more areas to dump their Generics, but I wonder if it might be an idea to simply remove Generic Point spending in Combat Training completely.

What I'm suggesting is maybe the player could simply just 'pay' to acquire training in Combat Training talents. If a player wants to level up Thick Skin, they need to shell out some money for it and not Generic Points; same for Daggers or Greatswords or whatever else. This could be less of an issue for Melee characters like Bulwarks, Berserkers or other 'Melee Oriented' characters as they could be given several points in the respective talents and thus have a notable headstart in such matters concern Combat Training.

This could perhaps be another idea for giving a notable Gold Sink by ways of giving something extremely meaningful for players to spend their gold on in game.

Edit: - Something to add to this idea is that Generic Point spending could be kept for Combat Training, but Stat Requirements could be removed in favor of Gold Spending. That could have the advantage of eliminating undesirable play of players just hoarding gear JUST so they can train Combat Training talents.

stinkstink wrote:Most characters don't have 4000 gold before going East and Mindstar/Staff mastery are character-defining trees that the player will usually want to invest in early.

You can already get those for free/cheap, respectively.

I agree with Davion, it seems to me at least that presenting a singular option to a player is not really ideal as it takes away choices from them. Currently the only way to spend money except the beginning to get something with a broken ego like track, disperse magic etc.. or a wild, or tentacle rune, is basically to just save for the Randarts.

Allowing some more accessibility to escorts would be nice in this manner, I don't buy that they are simply something "extra" as stuff like the Anorithil escort is pretty game warping in the advantage they give the player considering the 66% chance you'll encounter at least one in your run.

The merchant randart generation seems to be a way to compensate for drops, so perhaps money could be used in the same way for escorts.

You can already do this for Staff, Mindstar, Combat, Shoot, so I don't see why not. And arguably Leaves Tide is still very much an extremely powerful skill.

Yay for temple in Sunwall, where they teach you chants and light!

How about buying extra training from escortees you have saved?

"there they teach you chants..."

cause wildfire build for the archmage is not already the most popular build, and phantasmal shield has no use...
yes, I am speaking about the last chant, +% damage to light and fire.

light on another side, you can get it from escort.
if you can staffs and psiblades (which are too), why not light.

I would not give up Chant of Fortress for Chant of Light, not even on a Wildfire Archmage, unless it was Normal mode and I was just messing around with goofy builds.

Shopping is very productive at low levels since you can get good t3 gear from Zigur an Last Hope for 50-150 gold apiece and you can get very useful trinkets from Zigur for under 25 gold. Buying Inscriptions is also useful at all points in the game. A solution to the issue of randarts being the only useful late game purchase would be to have all shops carry t4 gear after the first restock and t5 gear after the second. Also shop inventories should increase in size with each restock since getting specific egos (like Dispersal) is much more important late game compared to early where you only really need damage, armor, and stats.

Radon26 wrote:"there they teach you chants..."

cause wildfire build for the archmage is not already the most popular build, and phantasmal shield has no use...
yes, I am speaking about the last chant, +% damage to light and fire.

light on another side, you can get it from escort.
if you can staffs and psiblades (which are too), why not light.

...you do know that you can get chants from an escort as well, right?

There are some very good ideas in here. And those characters that side with the assassin lord really do need somewhere to spend the money.