Tweak shield/heal/regen runes/infusions some.

[Razakai]

I ended up writing an addon just for myself playing NM to remove white items from rune/inscription shops, remove sun infusions and add a light/digger store in LH. It kept the randomness of shop lists while greatly increasing the chance of getting something useful, so maybe something along those lines? Might be nice to have more common shop restocking too.
Playing a melee char on NM makes it extremely unfun if you don't get a good movement and regen right away, as you can potentially never see one until Dreadfell thanks to the variety of loot tables, so I'm sympathetic to feeling the need to reroll if you can't find one in shops.

[donkatsu]

I just find it odd to go to all that effort over a very small number of inscriptions compared to the huge number you will see in a single play through. It just seems like looking at one card in a deck, and throwing away the whole deck if you don't like that card. But anyway...

Your analogy assumes that there is no advantage to having good inscriptions early rather than late, and that all of the inscriptions you find throughout the game are the same quality. Last Hope shop inventory is better than what you'll find as loot for a significant portion of the game and you have access to it before you even fight anything. Also, "all that effort" consists of ~45 seconds to just restart the game and go to Last Hope.

Not to mention all the usual problems that tend to plague analogies that try to turn a complex situation into a simple one. I won't take the time to point those out one by one.

[edge2054]

I brought up a related issue a couple of months ago. The variance in base values, at least on shielding runes, is pretty large.

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=3 ... lit=+runes

[Doctornull]

Reposting edit:

Oh, and shops should have fixed inventories at start, which should include a white radius 4 lamp, a pickaxe, a crappy psychoportation torque (so loot still matters) and a mindblast torque. Decent gloves. Possibly an "of the deep" cap. Reroll inventory after finishing "Into the Darkness" quest, inform of that the player in the quest description so they can maybe hold off a bit to buy a particularly nice piece.

I wouldn't mind a new store which had basically just that stuff.

Needful Things or something.

Alternately, ambush the player upon leaving the last Into the Darkness dungeon with a traveling salesman who sells that stuff.

[jotwebe]

Alternately, ambush the player upon leaving the last Into the Darkness dungeon with a traveling salesman who sells that stuff.

The idea was to make rerolling starts for equipment less pointless. Just having one fixed shop with that stuff might work, but I suspect people would keep doing it for the extra edge. My proposed solution would be no easily accessible random items in the early-early game (the stick) but guarantee the essential stuff (the carrot). If this was done, shop-scummers should pipe up and say what those things are, personally I just die when the RNG screws me so I don't really know.

The "Into the Darkness" shop inventory change is to have a point when shops resume normal operations and stock randomly again that the player can control somewhat and that is communicated clearly and obviously. It's meant to be late enough into the game that restarting because the new randomized equipment isn't good entails a significant loss of time (the stick again), so people hopefully wouldn't bother anymore.

[HousePet]

My analogy makes no assumptions at all. Its about a deck of cards.
As to assumptions of there being no advantage to getting a good inscription early: Half of the dungeons in the game happen before you get half way through the game. They cannot all be late.
Why go to all the trouble of pointing out the problems with analogies and then not comment on a suggested possible solution?

[donkatsu]

My analogy makes no assumptions at all. Its about a deck of cards.
As to assumptions of there being no advantage to getting a good inscription early: Half of the dungeons in the game happen before you get half way through the game. They cannot all be late.
Why go to all the trouble of pointing out the problems with analogies and then not comment on a suggested possible solution?

Early and late is relative. They can and are all late, compared to shops, which come before all drops (usually).

Making shopscumming easier/better is not a solution, because shopscumming is kind of lame to begin with. No more solutions are needed; the solutions already proposed are just fine:

-Make the starting inscription scale with your class's primary stat. (PurpleXVI)
-Reduce variance on certain inscriptions. (edge2054)

Personally I think just that would be good enough, but additional things to make the system a little better would be:

-Fix shop inventories until "Into the Darkness" is complete. (jotwebe)
-Drastically increase the cost/level for inscriptions, so that better inscriptions have a higher price commensurate with how much better they are.

[HousePet]

A class's primary stat can be vague, and could be spread over multiple stats. May as well just scale with level. In which case you may as well just remove the current inscription egos entirely. Or rather, make them interesting, rather than just having them give a different scaling stat.

Fixing shop inventories would face a similar issue like what is a class's primary stat. You would have to work out all the possible items that could be needed by any combination of build choices. Otherwise you are dis/advantaging some classes over others. The randomised nature of shops works sort of better in this regard, as a Monte Carlo approach works very well with systems with loads of variables.

I don't think that higher level inscriptions need higher cost scaling. I've paid 1000 for a great heroism inscription before. However, Heroism is the only one I've ever seen get that high. So assessing the costs of each individually needs to be done. Also, as the stat scaling currently provides the main scaling on inscriptions and it wouldn't be affect costs, so that would be why the costs don't seem to reflect the inscriptions usefulness.

I don't disagree that they need tweaking, or the general desired end goal. I just disagree about how to get there.

[jotwebe]

Fixing shop inventories would face a similar issue like what is a class's primary stat. You would have to work out all the possible items that could be needed by any combination of build choices. Otherwise you are dis/advantaging some classes over others. The randomised nature of shops works sort of better in this regard, as a Monte Carlo approach works very well with systems with loads of variables.

So what? It's not as if the are perfectly balanced at the moment, or ever. Since starting gear is mainly used to plug holes in capabilities, I think they'd mainly benefit the weaker classes.

[HousePet]

The what is that I think we can do better than that.
Like a hybrid system where the shops contain a fixed item and the rest are random?

Hmm... Ran a few new characters to check the inscriptions in shops. There seemed to be a few decent inscriptions available in each game. How good do they need to be to make you not reroll the shops?

Looked at the code, and I agree with edge2054 about the variances. I got lost trying to track down the source of the variance though. So many random number functions.
The base values could do with looking into as well. Healing infusions have a base amount of 20.
There is also no consistency about how much of an inscriptions power comes from the base value or the stat modifier. Some are heavily stat based, and other are more base value based.

[jotwebe]

The what is that I think we can do better than that.
Like a hybrid system where the shops contain a fixed item and the rest are random?

I suspect people would still shop-scum, so we then might as well not bother. I'd rather move the point forward at which shops restock the first time, perhaps after the first tier 2 boss?

[Zizzo]

Oh, and shops should have fixed inventories at start, which should include [...] an "of the deep" cap.

This. So much this. I had to scrap three Marauders in a row recently for lack of this. I was sorely tempted to create another addon just for this pupose (I was going to put it in the lost merchant's shop in Last Hope).

[jotwebe]

Personally I usually do it without water breathing, but it sure is more convenient when it's around.

[Sradac]

I think instead of fixating on shops like this thread has become, we should look at the original proposal of making inscriptions "better"

Better is in the eye of the beholder, but i'm all for them becomming more interesting like HousePet said above. I rarely aim for a specific ego on an inscription because the majority of the time if im playing a character an "optimal" one is barely different from a "non-optimal" (not a stat I use) one. There are even times when im playing say a mage and a strength inscription actually gives better effects than a magic scaling one.

So maybe we look at the egos like we looked at attack runes. We spiced up attack runes to give them secondary effects, why not make the egos also have secondary effects other than just stat scaling?

I don't remember all the names here for the inscriptions like of the warrior or whatever, but based upon the stat, here could be some secondary effects:

1. Strength: After using, you will also be infused by a rush of adrenaline, giving x% increased combat speed for y turns.
2. Dexterity: After using, you focus intently on your surroundings, giving x% evasion for y turns.
3. Constitution: Upon use a wave of heartiness washes over you, granting x% increased armor hardiness for y turns.
4. Willpower: You focus your mind upon use, restoring x% of all your resources immediately.
5. Magic: Lingering essence of the Spellblaze fills you upon use, guaranteeing your next attack will deliver a critical amount of damage.
6. Cunning: Upon use, you are able to perceive your foes weak points for x turns, granting you an increase of y% to all damage.

These numbers should not be astronomical, but they should be a little extra "something something" to give you not only more of a reason to WANT an ego on your inscriptions, but also give more tactical variety on your inscriptions.

Say you have a Shielding Rune of the Mage (I think thats what the magic is called). Now you are actually faced with a choice. Do you pop it as soon as its available making sure you negate as much damage as you can and keep the cooldown under your control because you know 3 turns before its cooldown is up your healing talent will be available, so you SHOULD be safe?

Or, instead, do you hold off on using it. Wait for your really big hitting talent to come off cooldown, then you pop it then to guarantee that talent is going to crit? You might take some extra damage in the process, but we're doing risk vs reward here. You want to rekt that boss's face as hard as you can.


Magic might be a bit OP with guaranteed crit, so maybe just +% crit chance for y turns. But I like the idea of it being a one-shot thing, you get filled with that spellblaze essence which you just can't control so it all gets let out on the next attack. Alternatively maybe make it so your next attack does +x arcane damage on top of everything else?

Just some ideas.

[Zireael]

I like those ideas A LOT, Sradac!