Feldon If you’ve been thinking of plunking down your hard-earned Velium Shards on Ry’Gorr armor, or burning up stacks of Legendary and Fabled gear from Drunder zones to get enough ore to craft Drunder armor, you may want to wait.
Wednesday July 13th’s Test Update Notes included an item we initially overlooked:
ITEMS
- The first two tiers of Velium Shard Armor should now require less Velium Shards.
- The amount of ore obtained from smelting down a piece of Drunder loot has been doubled.
Thurgadin shard armor currently costs anywhere from 33 to 90 shards per-piece when purchased from the vendor, with a reduced cost when crafted. The new prices on Test are a flat 33 shards per piece, and we can assume that the crafted armor will require 25 shards per piece. With the ease of acquiring gems to make Ry’Gorr armor in the Kael Drakkel zones (especially Iceshard Keep) we still consider Thurgadin armor a poor investment, but the pricing is at least a bit more in line with the quality.
Ry’Gorr armor has also gone under the knife, with its vendor cost of 52 shards per piece slashed to just 25 shards per piece plus the required gem. Crafters will be able to make Ry’Gorr armor for just 18 20 shards per piece once this change reaches live. Yellow adornments remain 5 Velium Shards each.
| Adjusted Armor Prices | ||||
| Old (Vendor) | New (Vendor) | Old (Crafted) | New (Crafted) | |
| Thurgadin Armor | 33~90 | 33 | 25-70 | 25 |
| Ry’Gorr Armor | 52+ Gem | 25 + Gem | 40+ Gem | 20+ Gem |
As we documented in our Heroic Velious Armor guide, Drunder armor requires not only 25-45 Velium Shards per piece, but also a handful of Rage-Filled Ore, Warborne Ore, or several Brick of Bloodmetal which can only be acquired by breaking down Legendary or Fabled loot drops from Drunder heroic zones. Currently, Fabled items broken down by a skilled crafter result in 6 ores/bricks while Legendary items produce 3. According to the Test notes, these amounts would double to 12 ores/bricks from Fabled items and 6 ores/bricks from Legendary.
Once these changes make it to Live, I’ll update our EQ2Wire Guide to Heroic Velious Armor & Jewelry.
OK I’ll ask the question that I already know the answer to… what about folks that just crafted their hard-earned shards into armor in the past week? I got wind of this earlier so have been hanging onto them but others have not. Will they get some shards back?
i bet the response is the same as always, along the lines of you were able to attain the gear first and use it before others now were making it more available… or we cant accurately track(want to spend time tracking)all the ppl who made armor before this change….
Yea i think those of us who have made it are stuck with it, they are not about to go about refunding us shards, and I got 4 alts in Ry’Gorr shard armor, with my 2 raid mains sporting several x4 pieces. That was a ton of shards.
would be nice to get a refund on them but I don’t think that will happen.
A change like this shouldn’t piss me off, but it really does. The current prices are fair and shards are easy enough to get. Why is this change necessary and what is the benefit of pissing off people that have acquired full set(s) of this gear?
If a shard refund was even remotely considered it would reflect an attitude change at SOE that is both unlikely and implausible.
While I feel a little crapped on maybe it’ll help get some of the slackers who show up to raid in PQ armor to pull their head out.
I suppose in SOE style they could simply half the dominance shard rewards to maintain balance a bit. 🙂
Feldon, when do you say this will go live??
thanks!
Klueril,
Updates are normally on Tuesday, but who knows.
Thinking more about this made me realize it’s quite a clever method of getting more people into higher level zones. If we take a casual to moderate time player who starts at the beginning of DoV, there are two hurdles to overcome: skill and gear. Focusing on gear, you can get the very basic stuff from quests, the PQ armor, and then what? You have to get groups to get into Rime zones for upgrades or shards. Then you can run Zek zones for more shards and better upgrades. But very few groups I’ve been in will even consider you until you’ve got all upgrades to PQ armor plus gear from Rime zones.
Lets assume this kind of strict policy for zone progression in DoV. By dropping the shards, they make armor upgrades easier, thereby expanding the pool of players with gear to go into harder zones. Yes, we can always go back to the skill part of the equation. However even with skill, if I get one-shotted because my crit mit is too low, all my skills are wasted as I wait for a rez.
So while this further reduces the variety of armor lvl90 toons are wearing, it hopefully gives more of them a chance to try the Zek and Drunder zones which are a blast to die in, I mean complete.
Its in tonights patch notes