Feldon Today’s update is all about Itemization, specifically Group and Raid zones in Chains of Eternity.
Heroic Itemization
Players have been clamoring for Chains of Eternity Heroic zones to drop items even as good as some of the powerful items found in Advanced Solo zones, and it looks like those sentiments have been heard. (Don’t worry Soloers, the solo zones still drop a ton of loot).
Sleeper’s Tomb (Contested) has had a bigger problem as players quickly abandoned it when they found that the loot was hardly better than that from the much easier instanced heroic zones.
Pre-Adorned Items
After 3 expansions with Yellow and Red Adornments being sold by vendors, Chains of Eternity tried something new with Pre-Adorned items. The most desirable adornments are now found in dungeons and raid zones already attached to items (often of a different class/spec to the adornment). While this is an intriguing concept, and it has the potential to extend gameplay, it has also led to player confusion and frustration.
But one slice of the EQ2 playerbase who have yet to see the silver lining in this concept of Pre-Adorned loot are Raid Leaders who have been given the unenviable task of deciding whether Pre-Adorned items will go to someone who needs the gear upgrade, or someone who needs the adornment.
While Kander isn’t yet ready to throw in the towel on pre-adorned loot by slapping all the adornments on a vendor, it seems he’s recognized the inherent difficulties and is now providing an alternative to dividing the child:
There will not be a merchant for CoE adornments. We are adding green adornment removers that will remove green adornments without destroying the item, they will be available for plat from a merchant. We are also adding adornment removers that will remove any one adornment without destroying the item. These will be very costly, plat wise from a merchant, but will be rare drops in all CoE heroic and raid zones.
After the jump, the full Update Notes, including the pricey new Adornment Dislodgers which don’t destroy the items…
From the EQ2 Forums:
POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Chains of Eternity
- Heroic zone bosses have been given new and improved rare dropped items. They will continue to drop everything that they previously dropped.
- Heroic zone bosses now have a better chance to drop Ethereal items.
- Heroic zone bosses and all raid bosses now have a chance to drop [eq2u]Superb Prismatic Adornment Dislodger[/eq2u]s. These will remove adornments without destroying the item they are attached to.
Obol Plains
- [eq2u]Superb Green Adornment Dislodger[/eq2u] and Superb Prismatic Adornment Dislodger are now available for purchase from Mattrim Axios in the Cardin Ward.
Sleeper’s Tomb [Contested]
- Sleeper’s Contested named now have new rare drop tables and also have a chance to drop Superb Prismatic Adornment Dislodger.
Wurmbone Crag [Advanced Solo]
- Gaping Wounds no longer does fatal damage when it results in Bleeding Out when it goes uncured.
GUILD HALL AMENITIES
Guild Depots
- The depot windows on the default UI can now be stretched and sized in game.
ITEMS
- Beastlords can now use the [eq2u]Dragon Sinew Strung Bow[/eq2u].
BATTLEGROUNDS
- The health bonus given to players level 90 to 94 in battlegrounds has been reduced.
NOTE: The EQ2U popups will work once a player has discovered each of the two adornment types.
Good changes for once. Plus the game needs another plat sink.
is “Mattrim Axios” in game yet or did i just miss something?
Mattrim Axios will be in one of the little side buildings in Cardin Ward, not in the main building.
100p for the Green remover, 1000p for the prismatic and it will only remove one adornment…better hope the drops are not too rare.
I wonder how far out those changes to the Steward’s gear are. With “better” stuff coming to heroics in this change, will they even been needed?
What’s the armor values for solo, contested, heroic, obols, and raid?
Solo = 160
ST Contested = 163
Heroic = ??
Obols = 174
RAID = 180+ ?
Addition
Before patch
Solo rare fabled with red slot – 179
Heroic – end boss class specific no red 183
Contested – x2 – have seen 179 no red slot
Raid –
Trash – see solo rate fabled
Boss – 187 and up
Raid gear needs some signifigant boosts in light of this.
LOL,
Yea. pricey is one word for it.
Superb Green Adornment Dislodger = 100 P
Superb Prismatic Adornment Dislodger = 1000 P
1000p sounds pricey . 500p sounds about right to me
Given the fact they drop off heroic and raid nameds, 1000p sounds reasonable.
1000p for One single adornment of any sort (if the text is right) is bit pricey 😉
Lol, did they forget to buff raid gear?
EM raid is 187 stats, obols were 174, solo was 179 and group 183 BEFORE were buffed, but I didn’t see in notes that raid gear was bumped up at all :/
Sounds like the heroic rare table will be better than raid, ALSO where is our ‘rare’ raid tables for both ez and hm encounters? WTF
ya 1000p for 1 adornment is ridiculous, thats 250 more then a krono… I guess if i want a red adorn that bad i wont mind destroying the item to get it now.
Mattrim Axios needs to be slain and looted asap
Seems to me that you are paying 1000p for the fact that you are not destoying the item not for the adornment itself.
Seems to me that SOE still hasn’t caught on that what they did with the red adornments for this expansion is one of the dumbest things they ever did.
The plat sink that they put in to remove a single adorn is nothing but a token to say we put it in. The cost is so high though that it is not worth it at all. I would rather just destroy the item and get another as loot is plentiful at this stage and the cost is not worth it. Maybe the top 1% of the people playing who have mountains of plat boarded up and nothing to use it for may find this good, but I see little to no reason to even consider this a viable solution.
No adornment in game is worth 1000 plat, Period! and no I am not paying for the item I already have the item.
Kander’s blatant refusal about adding a merchant is downright slapping the player base in the face. He is saying I hear what you want, I don’t care, I’m not doing it.
/rant
If the cost were reasonable I could see raid leaders fronting the cost of this to improve their raid but at 1,000 a piece is just plain ludicrous. The hardcore raider will know that the adorns will come easily once the raid is geared out, the casual player will not be able to afford it, so that only leaves the idiot who has more plat than brains as the one buying this BS.
/endrant
1000 plats might be ridiculous, but tens of adorns (16 yellows, 12 reds) were discoed since the unadorners went in and all those adorns were discovered on nearly all servers in a couple of hours. So I guess there’s a lot of people for which removing an adorn and keeping the item is well worth 1000 plats.
Laughable when you see lengendary gear sell for more than 1000 plat, that people bitch about a good item being at this price.
@Whilhelmina
Those adorns could have been dico’s by any methoc plus the unattuners could have been looted. In fact with SOE’s track record the loot rate could be skewed on them.
It is an interesting point you have but certainly not evidence that even 1 of those has been purchased, though I can believe some wealthier players purchased them for the discos and gearing up alts as well.
I do not see this asa long term solution to the terrible idea of putting them on equipment randomly to begin with.
I agree with you of course. It doesn’t prove anything and the idea of putting adorns on gear is stupid in my opinion.
It still shows the higher rate on world wide discoveries since the release of CoE though. I’m keeping track of new adorns for my adorn list and the highest number adorns I saw showing up per day is 2 or so since December 8 when I first updated my list. So I do tend to think that there is a link between those removers and the massive amount of discoveries. At least for the yellow ones.
I’m unsure about the massive bunch of red adorns which I had never seen before. The red adorns I had so far were updates from the not-proc ones from Momo like [eq2u]Rune: Crit Bonus II[/eq2u] but I had never seen any of the proc ones being updated and it’s those that just massively showed up (for example [eq2u]Rune: Greater Resolute Defense II[/eq2u]).
The improved Momo adorns are from the red slot cloaks and charms that now have a chance to drop in some heroics, and some of my guildies discovered yellow adorns when the Steward gear they had purchased was unadorned. So there are other factors at play here.
i got disco, cause stuff bough woth obol got unattuned and adornment refunded for free with patch (and one of my white adornment got lost in the process)
No one is using those pricey thing.
That item [eq2u]Rune: Greater Resolute Defense II[/eq2u]
dropped for my group last night from a new heroic item, but it was adorned in a MAGE BELT.
Someone in my group claimed that if an adornment is socketed into a slot it can not be in or for a class that would make the item unusable, it pops out on zone (not 100% sure on this though).
If that is true than a lot of the discovery’s may infact be because the newer heroic items contain impossible adornments in their slots and are poping them out.
Or the item is just unusable by all classes since it has a fighter/scout only rune in it and is a priest/mage only belt.
I seen mage pieces come with tank adorns i seen scout pieces come with healer adorns. And folks in raid actually having a conversation about who can roll on a piece of gear because of the adorn.
Madcats scenario is definately the answer for the large number of discos,
I also must add
@Feldon – Your tool tip display for the adornments absolutely rocks, or maybe DethDlr but I think Feldon mentioned to me he did it, either way it is very nice to have.
@Whilhelmina
Many pple unadorned a lot of stuffs lately cause they just discovered the Solo zone exploit(which is gone btw) and got suddenly a lot of stuff in their hands. I m not saying the 1K plat thing has nothing to do with the high discover rate you saw lately but it’s just a litlle part of the picture imo.
Honestly, even if I can (but won’t) afford the 1K plat unadornment, I can t imagine pple use it on a regular basis, specialy on a low population server as ours (Storms).
But anyway, as Lempo said, adornment system in COE is probably the dumbest thing they did in a while. That and the frigid itemization. The 187 EM raid gear is just not enough, barely an upgrade from Skyshrine / Drunder HM, it’s barely desirable and lets no rooms for an interesting Group itemization anyway.