Adra Ban and other gems -- bad design ?

[ekt0]

As a player who have not finished the game yet, I am wondering.

How can players know the best way they want to use Adra Ban or other limited gems for upgrading gears without Google ?

1. Players have no way to know if they will find any new better gears they like, and replace them with the currently used ones.
2. Players have no way to know if those gears will require which gemstone for upgrading.
3. Players have no way to know how many limited gemstones are there in this game.

These constraints result in either :

1. Players use those gemstones ineffectively. By the time they discover any new gear they like,  they might not have any material left for upgrading.
2. Players save up those materials until the very end of game, so that they are certain about the gears they want to spend these materials on. This is also ineffective because there will not be much content left to use those upgraded gears on.

I find that the only way to use these materials wisely is Googling everything in advance, which is not the right way to play the game in my opinion.

What are your opinions though ? Do you agree with my arguments ?

 

Edited May 31, 2020 by ekt0

[Noqn]

Agreed. I think it's fair to say that the Quality Recipes are not very well-thought-out. Bunch of blatantly copy-pasted recipes, such as the Shield Quality mods, and all the Weapons Quality mods up to Superb.
(Which absurdly makes a 40g gem one of the most desirable resources in the game. **** you, Pyrite.)

I have a theory, though. Because Double2HIngredientCost defaults to true, the ingredient cost of all unique Two-Handed enchantments are at twice their intended values. Hence the Adra Gem x2/x4 enchantment costs.

Edited May 31, 2020 by Noqn

[Haplok]

Adra Ban is pretty much the only problem. All other ingredients can be shop bought (at random...). 

Since you can camp at shops, it's only a matter of patience /persistence. 

[thelee]

4 hours ago, ekt0 said:

How can players know the best way they want to use Adra Ban or other limited gems for upgrading gears without Google ?

They can't

This is probably the worst part of the enchant system in Deadfire. There's basically no indication in-game just how valuable Adra Ban is - it doesn't help that random scroll recipes also use up Adra Ban, so it doesn't seem like a finite ingredient, but for all intents and purposes it is. I definitely squandered the enchants (and scrolls) of my first couple runs just because I had no sense of how valuable certain materials are.

 

2 hours ago, Haplok said:

All other ingredients can be shop bought (at random...). 

Too bad this is extremely tedious to do. Also doesn't work if you're on an Eothas challenge.

 

3 hours ago, Noqn said:

(Which absurdly makes a 40g gem one of the most desirable resources in the game. **** you, Pyrite.)

lolololol yep. Pyrite is another material that I have squandered in the past. It doesn't help that Pyrite is also subject to RNG drops from more normal enemies and chests (whereas Adra Ban RNG drops are pretty rare so it's pretty much a fixed commodity), so I didn't fully appreciate how valuable Pyrite was until a run with minor bad luck and no drops.

It also doesn't help that you can't "skip over" upgrades. You could have all the materials to do a Superb, Legendary or Mythic upgrade, but if you don't have 2-4x or however many Pyrites to do a silly normal->Fine and/or a Fine->Exceptional upgrade (and/or Exceptional->Superb for the leg/mythic cases), you're stuck.

Edited May 31, 2020 by thelee

[Elric Galad]

That is a bit the reason why I modded Adra Ban to be in Una's Shop (for 10 000 gold each) : there are enough Adra Bans (with other alternate ingredients) for you optimal party set up. So the only thing it does is forcing player to use meta knowledge and party planning. This is more annoying than actually limitating.

[bugarup]

6 hours ago, Noqn said:

(Which absurdly makes a 40g gem one of the most desirable resources in the game. **** you, Pyrite.)

 

3 hours ago, thelee said:

lolololol yep. Pyrite is another material that I have squandered in the past. It doesn't help that Pyrite is also subject to RNG drops from more normal enemies and chests (whereas Adra Ban RNG drops are pretty rare so it's pretty much a fixed commodity), so I didn't fully appreciate how valuable Pyrite was until a run with minor bad luck and no drops.

Ha. I normally don't mind gem RNG - tons of weapons and stuff in the game, if I don't have mats to enchant something I planned, I can enchant something else with mats I have and possibly discover shiny new gear I didn't pay attention to before - but pyrite is a nasty little exception to that. I still remember unfondly the run with nary a drop of that blighted thing.

[Kaylon]

On 5/31/2020 at 5:35 PM, Haplok said:

Adra Ban is pretty much the only problem. All other ingredients can be shop bought (at random...). 

Since you can camp at shops, it's only a matter of patience /persistence. 

Sapphires and rubies can't be found in shops either, but they're less scarce than adra ban.

[Haplok]

I think rubies can be shop bought. Maybe in Fort Deadlight? Not sure about sapphires.