New Primordial Adornments, Amalgamations, and You
An addition to the StationCash Marketplace today has the Pay-to-Win spidey senses tingling, so rather than having a knee-jerk reaction, let’s break things down and see just where these new Primordial Adornments fall, talk about how desirable they are, and look at just how costly it is to acquire them through gameplay vs. the marketplace.
With today’s update, new Primordial Adornments have been added at every tier, with their power scaling to the player’s level. They aren’t like Green adornments (ie Spirit or Soulstones) which gain experience from adventuring. What’s unique about these adornments is not that they exist, but they are NO TRADE and require a very special rare component called a ‘primordial fragment’. The level 95 one is the [eq2u]effulgent primordial fragment[/eq2u].
Qualified adorners can make 10 new adornments:
- Primordial Adornment of Carnage (Forearms) — 5% AE Autoattack
- Primordial Adornment of Force (Legs) — 7% Crit Bonus
- Primordial Adornment of Calamity (Feet) — +750 Ability Mod
- Primordial Adornment of Precision (Forearms) — +8% Accuracy
- Primordial Adornment of Destruction (Head) — +3% Crit Bonus +4% Potency
- Primordial Adornment of Talent (Hands) — +2% Spell Doubleattack +2% Potency
- Primordial Adornment of Elusiveness (Feet) — +1% Extra Dodge Chance (aka 1% Uncontested Avoidance
- Primordial Adornment of Dominion (Legs) — +7% Potency
- Primordial Adornment of Power (Head) — +4% Crit Bonus +3% Potency
- Primordial Adornment of Furor (Hands) — +2% Flurry + 2% Potency
Pay-to-Win?
While these new harvests can be harvested out in the world off any node, they are found at a rate that’s sparser than the already rare Spellshards and Foundations. What’s got everyone in an uproar is the new addition to the Marketplace today for 599SC ($6 without discounts) called a [eq2u]Deluxe Tradesman’s Satchel[/eq2u]. In addition to 100 of each Common harvest in a tier and 3 Rare harvests, these deluxe satchels (there’s also a smaller version) includes a chance at these ‘primordial fragment’ harvests. The recipes require a sufficient Adorning skill, and oddly the harvests and adornments are both NO TRADE. This doesn’t prevent players from crafting adornments for each other though as we’ve confirmed that the recipes are intended to be commissionable.
Mastercrafted Food & Drink from Provisioners!
First we have to give credit to Niami Denmother and other testers who just by pure happenstance logged into Test yesterday afternoon and found that these adornments and harvests had appeared. Aside from the adornments, Provisioners collectively let out a shout of joy as their 10 years of prayers have been answered as they’ve finally been granted mastercrafted Food/Drink recipes for all tiers. They require new rares on the standard harvest nodes. You should read Niami’s March 10th, 2015 Update for more information on the exciting new mastercrafted food and drink choices!
Amalgamations
We’ve been meaning to do an article on this, but anyone who has done Raffik‘s Shipwrecked! tradeskill quest line has learned several new recipes that allow players to melt down a stack of 200 common harvests into a new levelless material called [eq2u]Artisan’s Amalgamation[/eq2u]. There are tantalizing new recipes made with these components such as Mutagenic Essence which increases your Transmuting chance, Potion of Nimble Fingers which increases your Refining chance, and Brew of Readiness which clears almost all your reuse timers out-of-combat.
I mention all this because in addition to the tier-specific primordial fragment required for each of the white adornment recipes mentioned above, each recipe also requires ten Artisan’s Amalgamations.
How Good Are these Adornments?
I expect that how players will feel about these adornments may rest on how powerful they are. How many players will seek them out and then get annoyed at the rarity and then succumb to dropping StationCash to get the harvests through the cash shop?
It is inevitable after the recent sale of SOE that we might see some things that skirt the line of player power for StationCash, but for me as a heroic player in the expansion’s hardest zones, I don’t need any of these adornments and can find these stats in other ways by reforging or acquiring gear. Sure, I can see a few fighters going situationally for the 1% Extra Dodge Chance if they can afford to lose +81 Weapon Skills. I can see mages going for the 1% Doublecast.
In my opinion, the sky is not falling.
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Comments (16)
Oxymorphone
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With the changes to belts. Weapon skill on all of them, that frees op slots. So, Yes, these will be very popular.
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Dethdlr
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The new white adornments have now been added to the calculator as well.
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friggawitch
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Awesome
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Ookabea
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That was fast!
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Dethdlr
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The new design makes it MUCH easier to update now. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with them from now on. 🙂
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jasonx
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I harvested the 4 primordial fragments i wanted in less than 2 hours. The sky is not falling or I got insanely lucky.
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caela
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There is only one adornment i would replace from my current set up.
I don’t see this as pay to win at all.
Non issue here.
Now the provisioner stuff? Very excited!
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Anaogi
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Marginal bonuses? I’m not worked up either. (Honestly, if some lazy folk dropping a few extra dollars into the kitty give my home-away-from-home a better chance at survival, I find I’m actually kinda cool with it…)
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Corydonn
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Good for SoE. Bots already sell power so them doing it in the marketplace is no big deal.
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Saev
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SoE, your mean Daybreak?
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Feldon
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Wonder how long till we see an official Daybreak logo or website?
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Sievert
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Do they even have a logo? Granted I haven’t even bothered to look or go their site if the have one…
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BlacktopNL
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As long as the SoE’s logo is still plastered everywhere its still SoE in my mind 😛
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Armageddoux
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french translated at http://www.guerrier-celeste.fr/48-frontnews/395-nouveaux-ornements.html
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Liftik
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New provisioner food / drink does NOT come with Crit Chance, unless that’s an oversight due to be fixed. I’ll be sticking with the older stuff for now.
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Kittaene
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I think they are aggravating, tbh. Out of all my toons, I only made one Max adorner. I HATE, hate, hate. that these are not heirloom, so that I can hand to my OWN toon. So, I have a max adorner, but I have to get someone else to make them for me, as I cannot commission my own work?? Yes, that makes a lot of sense.
A note on the Raffik questline–I loved Raffik, a quirky little pirate, like Qho on crack. He brings some cool recipes to the table. That said, his Amalgamations need to come with a Warning Label: In Mass Production spec, a player can empty an entire tier of your Guild Harvest Depot, before you realize it. It drains the lowest item first and moves to next stack. I recommend discussing this questline with guildies. The work-around is to Disable the Depot and craft from your bags, a lot more work, but easier than replacing a tier. There is no way one player brings in enough mats in one run to replenish (based on a Mass production build you can go through 10’s of thousands of mats, quickly).
Kitty
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