General enchanter service.

[Aquillion]

There's a lot of white items that are simply not useful. How likely is it that you're ever going to use a white copper amulet?

To fix this a bit, I suggest adding a general-purpose enchanter somewhere, possibly in one of the towns or as an early quest reward (they should be available early so copper / iron stuff is still worth enchanting.)

What they do is, very simply, give your white items a sort-of random ego for a fairly high gold price. The price is high enough that this is almost always more expensive than buying the item you'll get from a shop. (Though it doesn't have to be much more expensive, since you're dropping the gold without knowing whether you'll be able to use what you get.)

Not very complicated, yes. It's not particularly exploitable or farmable, because you can't get unlimited white items. It somewhat increases loot quality, but ideally you burn so much gold (especially given that what you get may not be useful) that all it's really doing is acting as a buffer against getting totally terrible shop contents.

But mostly, it's annoying how many white items you find that are totally useless more than five seconds into the game (and sometimes totally useless under all circumstances.)

[bricks]

Perhaps Angolwen could have an Enchanter, Last Hope a Master Smith, and Zigur an Infuser. Each would be able to take a white item and give it egos, with the limitation that the ego list is limited to the appropriate power source (arcane forces/crafted by a master/infused with nature). Plus, the latter would add some options to Antimagic players. Prices should scale to material level, and egos scaled to (material level)*10+5.

[Silvermoon]

I like the idea, if nothing else, because it actually gives a reason for having gold.

[Grey]

Yeah, would be a nice little addition. bricks idea of three separate enchantment services is also good.

[eronarn]

I like this idea, but I'd actually tie it to something more than 'gold + white items'. Like they occasionally give you quests that you have to complete before you can use them again ("I'm all out of faeros ash!"), or something.

[Grey]

Oh no, not more bloody ingredient collecting :(

[bricks]

Oh no, not more bloody ingredient collecting

Agreed. Finding a white item is difficult enough.

[Aquillion]

Thinking about it, it might be best for the price to be fairly low, at least for low-quality materials. Because:

1. No matter what, chances are you're going to find something better than your enchanted iron stuff. If people are going to enchant iron at all (and we should encourage them to, I think, since it makes finding loot a bit more interesting), the price should be low enough that it doesn't place a big dent in your long-term savings.

2. You're spending gold on something that might turn out to not be useful to you at all. Though, granted, smart players will only pay for an enchantment when they've totally failed to find any sort of useful ego for a particular equipment slot... hmm.

But still, tier 1 enchantments should be cheap enough that you can buy one very early on.

[Zonk]

Oh no, not more bloody ingredient collecting

Agreed. Finding a white item is difficult enough.

Nice to see people agree with that... http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=3 ... 58&start=0

I think being able to make items white would work pretty well with being able to enchant white items actually. So that the enchanters would ALSO be the de-enchanters. And if enchanting is expensive, then de-enchanting could be either very cheap or free(They can keep the magical energy for themselves, thus you're effectively doing them a favor)

[Timlagor]

I'd definitely make this significantly cheaper than *buying* the magic item (probably ~50%) but more expensive than you can *sell* it for (the difference is huge).

[Aquillion]

Oh no, not more bloody ingredient collecting

Agreed. Finding a white item is difficult enough.

Nice to see people agree with that... http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=3 ... 58&start=0

I think being able to make items white would work pretty well with being able to enchant white items actually. So that the enchanters would ALSO be the de-enchanters. And if enchanting is expensive, then de-enchanting could be either very cheap or free(They can keep the magical energy for themselves, thus you're effectively doing them a favor)

I would rather actually do the reverse -- have enchanting cheap, but make de-enchanting relatively expensive (maybe less expensive than enchanting, but fairly expensive given what you're getting.)

Rationale: Enchanting has to be cheap for it to serve part of its purpose (making white tier-1 objects not totally worthless, and, in the process, evening out the randomness of the early game a bit. If it's expensive to enchant low-tier stuff, nobody will risk gold on enchanting stuff that they're almost certain to replace very quickly anyway.) Enchanting, on its own -- without a cheap method of de-enchantment -- is inherently limited in the impact it can have on the game, because white items aren't overwhelmingly common.

Clearing items, meanwhile, is a luxury, especially in combination with enchantment (which could allow you to reroll items forever!) With enchantment in the game, it's also much, much more hazardous to game balance, because you can use it as much as you want. (Without enchantment, people will mostly want it to get tier-5 whites, where the cost isn't a huge factor because it's so late in the game and there's little else to spend gold on.)

So I would make enchantment as cheap as it can reasonably be, and make de-enchantment as expensive as it can reasonably be. Both should be very cheap on low-tier items (otherwise they'll never get used with them, and really, they should be), and very expensive on high-tier items (the late game needs more gold sinks, and gold is so common by then that it can't be used as a balancing factor for anything unless the price is really obscene -- which it would have to be, if you could potentially reroll all your tier 5 items indefinitely as long as you have the gold...)