Offer a choice of three items from the merchant

[bricks]

This came up somewhere; IRC or in-game chat, maybe. The impetus to scum for a good artifact here is pretty high, since the investment is so large and the reward so potentially great. I suggest that the player be offered three different items to inspect, of the item type selected, and then be allowed to choose one of them.

If this seems a little too strange, make the merchant's items pre-generated, and allow the player to inspect the full bill before choosing. It already seems a little odd that you hand over your money for something you've never seen before, and the randomness... isn't super fun.

[Final Master]

??? what merchant are you talking about?

[greycat]

The Lost Merchant, in his store, after you return from the Far East.

[omni]

Let me chime in here since I'm certainly one of the ones guilty of scumming it.

The lost merchant reward of making a random unique item with your choice of 'base.' (shoes, robe, armor, shield, amulet, ringe, etc).

It's scummable if you have access to See the Threads (via either timeline threading on paradox mages, or the threads of fate artifact cloak). Essentially, cast see the threads, pay your 4k gold and choose a couple of items to make in the first two realities, if your not happy stick with the third reality where you didn't buy a thing, wait for cooldowns and try it again.

My main concern with the merchant reward though is there's a chance- a slight chance- that it makes things that are ludicrous. Since it appears to be three egos on the base that have the potential to stack, it's entirely possible for it to roll the same ego three times.

Anyways, as an example of what it's capable of making -eventually- here's my new staff 'Omnipotence.'

Omnipotence
+3 Phys Power, +9 Mag +8 Wil
+4% phys damage, +28% temporal damage,
Stamina each turn +.8, Mana each turn +.38;
+10 max life, +89 Max Mana,
+86 spellpower, +5% spell crit,
Use to activate taking 80 power of 80/80 for metaflow, resetting 5 spells of tier 3 or less.

-Or in other words, a dragonbone staff that picked up the paradox ego and probably two metaflow egos.

Anyways, I believe it's certainly an exploit of the system to use time travel to scum the merchant reward. What would probably be the most elegant solution is having him generate artifacts on entry INTO last hope, one per each base category, and then you can pick what kind of item you want. No perceived change on the player end, but prevents time travel exploits. I... think it's somewhat in the mood of time travel though that there's a chance to manipulate time and reward with see the threads. I also know that edge has worked hard to prevent that abuse on level generation though.

Regardless, I think it brings to mind the ridiculousness that's possible with the random artifact roller. Usually, random artifacts are mostly a loss, but eventually, eventually it makes something that just escapes the power of even the end game artifacts. Double ego'd great speed bows for example, with attack speed at 20%. You may want to look at preventing stacking of the same ego's, or perhaps reducing the effectiveness of stacking the same ego twice on a random artifact. I believe that's the true problem. I could have gotten that staff on the first try, if I were supremely lucky.

That staff probably shouldn't exist to begin with. Nor should +180 life rings with +36% global speed activateables, which I saw as well. I think the random artifact generator may need a bit of tweaking to accomodate it's power gamer end.

After all, even if/when the merchant quest is fixed, it's still possible to hit farportals repeatedly until you get something gamebreaking. I've also heard via in game chat that at some point, you get enough money from a farportal trip to power ANOTHER farportal trip, which may not be intended as well.

[Grey]

In svn the chronomancy abuse is removed (along with some similar abuses elsewhere).