TOPIC : Enchantments/Craft/Grimoires/Spells

[draego]

Josh sort of implies it in statements in his tmblr post about enchantments and in statements like this from twitch. But ye maybe there will be a flaming sword and flaming bow for example. Not quite sure. The way it is stated though makes it seem there is only one flaming weapon. I guess i could read it more generously. Below is from https://www.twitch.tv/videos/122368156 around 38:00 minute mark

 

 

Will there be changes made to the enchanting system or will it largely stay the same as in Pillars 1?

 

JS: I'll try to answer this quickly, 'cause I've already answered it a few times: it's changing a little bit. Weapons — you can't just change them however you want, and there's not a generic set of enchantments. You can enchant things within a certain range, and you can enchant things in a way that expands what they do rather than changing them fundamentally.

Instead of being able to put a Flaming Lash on any weapon you find, if you find a Flaming sword that's the Flaming sword. You can change that flame to be like a Flaming Burst, or Flaming Chain or something like that. But it's still ultimately based around that. If you find a weapon that is of bane versus dragons, you can make that a weapon that is of slaying dragons, but it's fundamentally what it is. [Had a hard time hearing this last sentence, possibly incorrect]

I think that will make the weapons feel a little more unique, and the enchanting system feel less like it's wrecking the economy of the unique items.

 

There are other twitch statements but this is the quickest one i could find. There was a thread about this a back in February from the community side: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/91497-from-the-twitch-qa-enchanting-and-ceiling/page-1

Edited June 10, 2017 by draego

[Katarack21]

It makes enchanting into very a narrowly focused and narrowly useful sort of niche deal. You won't be able to keep equipment you like from early game, you won't be able to modify a weapon you like into a useful tool for different enemies, you'll be *stuck* with what the devs choose to give you.

You want a flaming sword? Better hope the devs give you a flaming sword, and you better *keep* that flaming sword around *FOREVER* just in case you encounter an enemy that is vulnerable to fire, because you can't bloody make one.

[draego]

It makes enchanting into very a narrowly focused and narrowly useful sort of niche deal. You won't be able to keep equipment you like from early game, you won't be able to modify a weapon you like into a useful tool for different enemies, you'll be *stuck* with what the devs choose to give you.

 

You want a flaming sword? Better hope the devs give you a flaming sword, and you better *keep* that flaming sword around *FOREVER* just in case you encounter an enemy that is vulnerable to fire, because you can't bloody make one.

 

and you better hope you find that sword mid to late game and not early otherwise you cant increase the quality enchantment to anything useful late game

[Quillon]

Course there'll be more than one flaming sword. But it will be equally rare as any other elemental wep. so when you find it, it should shock & awe & burn & somethings else.

 

Guess everybody's in agreement with restricting elemental&slaying enchantments but not quality. Personally I'd like them to restrict quality also, it'll only push em to make more unique equipment. At the end of the production if there aren't nuff equipment to accommodate that, then they could increase it by one quality level or un-restrict it etc.

[Quillon]

 

1. you can upgrade equipment from lowest to highest tier. 2. you can use every different enchantment on it which makes most unique equipment not so unique any more.

1. false (technically Legendary is second highest enchantment level)

2. false

 

My whole life has been a lie.jpg

 

ed: double post.

Edited June 10, 2017 by Quillon

[JerekKruger]

Course there'll be more than one flaming sword.

 

I wouldn't be too sure of that. Even if we assume what Josh said about it was more illustrative that definitive, how many unique swords are there likely to be in the game? In Pillars there were five properly unique swords, two named exceptional swords sold by Vincent Dwellier, and Steadfast. Assuming Deadfire has a similar number of unique swords, I doubt Obsidian will double up on flaming.

 

I assume there will probably be more than one flaming weapon though.

[Abel]

It makes enchanting into very a narrowly focused and narrowly useful sort of niche deal. You won't be able to keep equipment you like from early game, you won't be able to modify a weapon you like into a useful tool for different enemies, you'll be *stuck* with what the devs choose to give you.

 

You want a flaming sword? Better hope the devs give you a flaming sword, and you better *keep* that flaming sword around *FOREVER* just in case you encounter an enemy that is vulnerable to fire, because you can't bloody make one.

 

That is precisely what i like. I would have hated if BG2 would have allowed me to craft every 2 handers +1 into a divine sword. Carsomyr is Carsomyr, because there is only one. And i like the idea to be able to expand the specificities of the gear. I'm pretty sure we will have several ways to go, depending on how we plan to use this flaming sword. Unic enchantments are more than unic now.

 

I don't need every item to be OP all the game long or against every opponent. If they write a bit of lore for the stash, i would even be glad to use it in Deadfire to prepare thoughtfully in the room of the inn my next exploration. I love good skins. If my flaming sword becomes useless at some point, i may just use it in town to scare the hell out of some menacing hooligans .

 

What would be great would be if some very special effects on very special items could make some NPCs react to them. "Wow! *That* looks pretty dangerous dude! This flaming sword! Shall we turn back?" Something like this.

[MortyTheGobbo]

Adding dialogue for an item that the player may or may not find, may or may not use and may or may not have replaced by the time they reach that NPC strikes me as a waste of the writers and programmers' valuable time.

 

Everything is pretty vague right now, so I guess we need to trust the devs that they won't repeat the BG2 situation, where the efficiency of a weapon type depends on how quickly you can find a unique piece of it. In Pillars 1, I couldn't find a good crossbow for a while, so I just enchanted a generic one with Fine/Exceptional, Kith Slaying and Acid Lash. And that was fine.

[draego]

Here is a new update on enchantments for josh. https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/161718781511/hi-josh-talking-about-the-revised-weapon.

 

I don't want to make this a bigger deal than it is. I am sure whatever they design will be at least interesting and the game overall will be fun. I mean i love POE1. I like that they are trying to tie better lore and make more distinctive weapons. It just seems weird to me that any special weapon you find that has a low quality enchantment will have to be discarded for later weapons even though a later weapon of the same type may not contain an enchantment even similar to what you want to use or even be useful for your build.

 

I ran into this will my melee ranger build with pollaxes. I didnt want to use other weapon types and there was only one useful (my perception of useful which is what should matter) pollaxe, Spectacular Spetum (and early game weapon) for the build. Traitors' Merit came way to late in the game to be useful right before the end. Half-Mast was inaccessible to me because i killed the dragon and it wouldn't be useful anyway because i had stunning shots so crits to prone seemed kinda redundant.  The Wind's Arm was also a no go, i didn't want to cast spells and interrupts were not as valuable due to stunning shots. 

 

This is the point of weapon focuses or their equivalent specialization in POE2 to build your character to use one or two weapon types. In some cases it looks like you will have to use a completely different weapon type to get the same enchantment simply because the quality enchantment cant keep up. In POE1 some weapon abilities were perceived as better depending on your build and that perception whether aesthetically or power gaming or special build driven should drive what weapons you get to use. Not an arbitrary setup by the dev that gimps some weapons will low quality enchantments.

 

Maybe all special weapons will have mid to high level quality enchantment so they dont become gimpy later in the game. Again I am sure enchantments will be interesting it just feels like they are throwing out the progress POE1 made for player choice and going backwards to games like BG2 where meta-gaming was perceived as needed so you didnt make the wrong weapon choices for your build for later in the game. Never played Icewind Dale so dont know how the itemization was in that game 

Edited June 12, 2017 by draego

[Katarack21]

"That’s how I designed all of the unique items in Icewind Dale and, though there were gaps in the lineup (e.g. shortbows), there were a lot of memorable goodies even when they were relatively basic in terms of their stats. --Josh Sawyer"

I'm honestly concerned about how their doing this, at this point. We're probably going to get screwed out of the ability to maximize our exploitation of the vulnerabilities of enemies due to lack of weapons with necessary attributes and an inability to imbue weapons with attributes (instead simply altering attributes they already have in limited ways). We're also probably going to see gaps in weapon set usefulness--ie, there *will* be categories of weapons significantly less useful because of a dearth of weapons of that type.

At some point you will most likely be forced to hold onto a crap weapon because it has a specific attribute which enemies at a later point are vulnerable to.

I'm *really* disliking this.

Edited June 12, 2017 by Katarack21

[smjjames]

He seems to completely avoid the enchantment question, or at least makes it rather ambigous, IMO.

 

Also, Icewind Dale was over 15 years ago, he's worked on a lot of projects since and I'm sure he'd build on past experience since doing Icewind Dale.

[injurai]

Isn't the whole point of enchanting to boost non-unique, non-soulbound weapons to play the "elastic jack-of-all-tradesy cover your bases" role? Otherwise the special items will just out class them. I see uniques as suggestion cool builds, but then enchanting is there for you to build your own.

[Katarack21]

If you have a game where a solid part of the combat of the game relies on various different damage types, immunities and vulnerabilities to those damage types, and the exploitation's thereof then limiting access to those damage types is a kind of arbitrary difficulty limitation.

One of the things I loved about Pillars was the ability to enchant any old weapon I had on hand with whatever elemental damage I needed at the moment. If the enemies around me were all immune to frost, and all I had was frost weapons, I could still have options because I could just put flaming lash on some **** sword and, while not do maximum damage at least get through the encounter. You could also keep sets of different elementally enchanted weapons to switch out as needed, maximising your damage potential against specific types of enemies.

I will *really* miss that. Instead I will just hope to find a weapon with the needed damage type, and then just hold it until the end game because I might need it.

[Baltic]

You never need to do that though

[Katarack21]

You don't "need" to, but without the proper damage type some enemies, and therefore encounters, become signficantly more difficult and resource draining. And if you *really* screwed up and brought both the wrong (or no) elemental damage *and* the wrong physical damage, some enemies can suddenly become nearly impossible to defeat.

[MortyTheGobbo]

Unique magic weapons with abilities that match their stories are a great, immersion-intensifying idea, in theory. In practice, they're a big pain in the ass for players. Better hope the unique super-weapons for your chosen category have abilities that match your character idea. Otherwise, tough luck. Oh, and also better hope they're not in an area you visit late.

[injurai]

If you have a game where a solid part of the combat of the game relies on various different damage types, immunities and vulnerabilities to those damage types, and the exploitation's thereof then limiting access to those damage types is a kind of arbitrary difficulty limitation.

 

One of the things I loved about Pillars was the ability to enchant any old weapon I had on hand with whatever elemental damage I needed at the moment. If the enemies around me were all immune to frost, and all I had was frost weapons, I could still have options because I could just put flaming lash on some **** sword and, while not do maximum damage at least get through the encounter. You could also keep sets of different elementally enchanted weapons to switch out as needed, maximising your damage potential against specific types of enemies.

 

I will *really* miss that. Instead I will just hope to find a weapon with the needed damage type, and then just hold it until the end game because I might need it.

 

Yeah. I still think Diablo 2 is one of the games that best did enchanting/crafting.

[Lord_Mord]

Character idea. Blabla. I'm an individual, blabla.

[Wormerine]

Unique magic weapons with abilities that match their stories are a great, immersion-intensifying idea, in theory. In practice, they're a big pain in the ass for players. Better hope the unique super-weapons for your chosen category have abilities that match your character idea. Otherwise, tough luck. Oh, and also better hope they're not in an area you visit late.

 

Yhh, it depends. If you enchant your own weapon starting from a scratch I like the idea of the weapon growing with you. Gaining fame, and special abilities. As far as cRPGs go, when you find "legendary" weapon I prefer for it to have story of its own and abilities connected to its origin. To me its way more interesting. But I am more of a story guy. Games based on loot (Diablo, Torchlight) I find very very boring. Weapons in PoE were very very boring until they introduced soulbound weapons.

[Baltic]

You don't "need" to, but without the proper damage type some enemies, and therefore encounters, become signficantly more difficult and resource draining. And if you *really* screwed up and brought both the wrong (or no) elemental damage *and* the wrong physical damage, some enemies can suddenly become nearly impossible to defeat.

It's an option that's gone but it's hardly necessary to defeat certain enemies. Using the wrong elemental damage should not be making any encounter too difficult. I didn't change enchantments for certain enemies and I doubt that many people did too.

[rjshae]

I'd like to see a soulbound item with a quest to free the bound soul. Do you free the hapless victim, or use it just like everybody else does?

[Baltic]

Wait- does soulbound item refer to it binding with the users soul or having a soul bound to it? Is it both?

[Katarack21]

 

You don't "need" to, but without the proper damage type some enemies, and therefore encounters, become signficantly more difficult and resource draining. And if you *really* screwed up and brought both the wrong (or no) elemental damage *and* the wrong physical damage, some enemies can suddenly become nearly impossible to defeat.

It's an option that's gone but it's hardly necessary to defeat certain enemies. Using the wrong elemental damage should not be making any encounter too difficult. I didn't change enchantments for certain enemies and I doubt that many people did too.

 

Again, as I've said twice now, at no point does elemental damage make an encounter incapable of being completed, but it can make difficult encounters much easier--and if you have both the wrong physical damage *and* the wrong elemental damage some encounters can be nearly impossible to complete. There were at least two occasions where I was only able to defeat the encounter because I enchanted my wrong-physical-damage-type weapon with an elemental lash, which did *some* damage and allowed me to defeat the enemy.

 

That was to some extent my fault, for bringing the wrong ****, but what I'm saying is that the system supported me and helped me to fix my mistake instead of punishing me and making it worse. PoE2 seems to have gotten rid of the system that would have helped me in that scenario.

Edited June 12, 2017 by Katarack21

[Baltic]

It's an option you could use to make certain encounters easier and it's a shame it's gone. But you won't need to carry around weak flaming weapons in order to defeat an enemy that's weak to fire damage. The changes to the enchanting system shouldn't make it so that the game is ridiculously diffficult if you don't.

Edited June 12, 2017 by Baltic

[rjshae]

Wait- does soulbound item refer to it binding with the users soul or having a soul bound to it? Is it both?

 

The descriptions don't say, so there's no reason it couldn't be both. Particularly for an intelligent soulbound item.