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.