TS-ers take note: Upcoming Cultural Changes

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Euan
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TS-ers take note: Upcoming Cultural Changes

Post by Euan »

Posted 4/9/07

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts ... _id=109985

Dev-Ngreth
EQ Designer

There are many changes coming to the culturally tradeskilled armors.

The first change that we'd like to announce is a change to the names of the armor sets and symbols. The current names did not facilitate future expansion for higher level armor sets and symbols, so... The armor sets have been given a prefix that will more appropriately describe how ornately decorated the armor is. The symbols have been given a prefix that will more appropriately reflect the level of deity-specific connotation associated with them.

Level Armor Symbol
20 Simple Blessed
40 Ornate Revered
60 Intricate Sacred
70 Elaborate Eminent
80 Elegant Sublime

The second change we'd like to announce is the introduction of a new skill-up path for both Tailoring and Smithing. This path will required dropped components, as has always been the case for these skills, however, they will be more widely available and spread out over much more of the known world. This path will consist of making armor templates that, while unable to be used themselves, will be used as the base used to craft other armor, including cultural. These templates range in difficulty from 15 to 465 and can be sold back to NPC merchants for the difference in merchant greed, allowing for a much more economical skill-up path.

The third change that we will be making is the possibility of changing the word "trivial" to "difficulty", in an effort to make everything as consistent as possible between you guys and us. The goal is to help remove some confusion as to why the combine is not no-fail when you reach that ‘trivial' level, and the word ‘difficulty' doesn't carry with it the same implications.

Now, back on track.

The fourth change that we'll be making is to change the cultural armor recipes to use the above-mentioned templates in the process of crafting the base cultural armor piece. The cultural armor will still require the quested books, as their patterns are what you will use to apply the culturally specific designs to the armor. This will require a new drop that is generic for all races, as well as either ore or thread (for smithing or tailoring, respectively) that is specific to your race and sold by NPC vendors. The symbols will receive a similar treatment and will still require the quested books in order to craft.

This change will nullify the usage of all existing drops in the cultural armor crafting process.

Those of you who have stockpiles will want to make use of them as best and quickly as possible, as once the changes go in, the currently existing cultural recipes will no longer work.

There will be no exchange of the drops. The entire goal of these changes is to balance the drops, not create a surplus of the drops.

There will be a means for you to ‘learn' the new recipes easily as a means to prevent you guys having to ‘experiment' to learn all the new recipes. This will be provided via books in game that you can ‘scribe' by right clicking them to learn all of the recipes associated with that book. These books will start out inexpensive, though we are considering increasing the price in a couple months to something more appropriate, so you'll want to make sure you get them as soon as possible.

There is no current ETA for the launch of these changes, but we are working diligently on all the changes listed above (actually, they're about 90% complete!). There are still a few loose ends to tie up, some code to be implemented and tested, and a host of other ‘small' things for us to do.

The majority of the changes are in and we're in the process of evaluating what drops what, and how often. The recipes themselves have already been converted and tested via our QA department. Once all the loose ends are tied up, we'll make another post to let everyone know that the changes are up and available on the Test Server for you guys to check out, as well as letting you guys know the tentative launch date for the new changes.

For safety reasons I have not yet put in the changes that will disable the old recipes, so if there is a patch in the meantime, all of the existing cultural will still work.
Disclaimer: The views expressed by the cranky board admin may not be aligned with those of MLF leadership.
Romelus
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Post by Romelus »

Great, nullify months and months of tradeskillers complaints about the pathetic droprate on most of the needed items...by utterly ignoring any reasonable method of change and making them ALL obsolete...idiots. Now if they can only make it easier to get the GM books, cause unless you are one of the lucky few who can just chain "The Creator" to get your books, good luck. Also of note, way to raise the caps again on TS's, and reveal that there will be a level cap increase in the future.

Yes, I'm bitter about this.
The lunatic formerly known as Darkreaper Romelus
Ketharyl
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Post by Ketharyl »

So... when does the next expansion and level 80 go live? Soon it seems, if they are already gearing up TS for it....
Ketharyl Lichbane
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