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Epic Equipment or lack there of if a solo player
blannde
Member Posts: 76 Arc User
There seems to be a lack of options for solo players to get epic equipment, the trade bar store items are worthless. Nothing is coming up for auction. I dont have the time to go grinding for tokens etc . There is nothing you can buy with astral diamonds. So getting the feeling solo players no longer wanted. The vip gets me nothing worth having now so no point buying zen for that. Cant buy anything useful gear wise with astral diamonds so no point spending money on zen for that either. I'm a older player, not much spare time so don't mind spending a few hundred dollars each year to play. Figured the game was there for someone to make money. Well all I can say is you need to get new marketing people and planners because I used to spend quite a lot of real money on this game, but right now there is absolutely nothing useful for me to buy. And if I cant improve my gear, getting splattered all the time or wasting coin on health potions is not my idea of a fun evening. Have around 30 characters, thats alot of zen (read real money your stock holders are interested in ) to keep them outfitted,, if there was something to use it on... Anyways unless things change soon can see my years of playing fizzing out through a mix of boredom and frustration..
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Buy the Epic Deepcrow hatchling from the Trade bar store....that's one BiS epic companion right away.
Just doing the campaign will earn you a set of 3 epic pieces of companion gear. Then you start doing MEs. You will eventually get the Alabaster weapon set, and a pile of Seals of the Mountain. You can use those seals to buy the (epic) IL 940 Spy guild head piece - it has a nice 5% Undermountain damage bonus, as well as rings. (You will soon be able to buy (epic) pants and shirts from the same vendor as well) Running MEs will also give you (epic) pants/shirts and IL 950 armor/arms/feet pieces.
Running MEs also gives you Coalesced magics which you can use in the campaign store to buy artifacts and artifact gear.
You will also get etchings, which you can trade to Zok for a (small) chance of IL 1000 gear, artifacts and artifact gear.
This will give you a full set of epic (or in some cases upgradable to legendary/mystic) gear - all from soloable content.
In fact, the soloable content gives you better gear than some of the group content, as the Successor armor from LoMM is just plain bad.
Also, while we're in a crafting slump due to profession updates not hitting along with M16, Explorer's Charts and MW are likely to see a massive resurgence in value in the near future (unless the crafted weapons and armor are on par with Successor gear, in which case I'm burning down my rank 4 workshops in protest).
TL;DR: Game remains incredibly solo friendly.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
NWO fits the bill as far as I am concerned ... I just wish they wouldn't make as many mistakes as they do.
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
You could buy with seals - but you don't want that.
You want to spend AD - but nothing available.
You don't seem to be running MEs in Undermountain, either, which is a huge source of epic gear (and fairly quick, too!) - but you don't want to spend the minimal time to get resonance (seriously, 30 min will cover 2-3 days of MEs for a toon).
Shockingly, the devs seem to think a lot of character improvement should come from playing the game in some way, not just dumping AD for new gear.
The issue seems to be that you just can't buy BiS gear, and actually have to put a bit of time and effort into getting it.
So he is trying to find a way to fill gaps with AD witch at current state of the game is not an option.
There is equipment avilable for AD even in Yawning Portal merchant but its not epic and lets be honest not too good but still better then nothing.
Newm MOD should bring a new level 80/master craft items witch should fill a AH gap, but then again not sure if those items (MC ones) would be worthy to spend tons of AD for them for secondary alts... but yeah you gona get that oportuinity next MOD (or sooner).
Epic character gear is combat drops in the MEs from bosses or Zok's boxes. Haven't ever run a 3-rune Rage, so I don't know if you can get from the end chest that way.
You could buy with seals - but you don't want that.
You want to spend AD - but nothing available.
You don't seem to be running MEs in Undermountain, either, which is a huge source of epic gear (and fairly quick, too!) - but you don't want to spend the minimal time to get resonance (seriously, 30 min will cover 2-3 days of MEs for a toon).
Shockingly, the devs seem to think a lot of character improvement should come from playing the game in some way, not just dumping AD for new gear.
The issue seems to be that you just can't buy BiS gear, and actually have to put a bit of time and effort into getting it.
So how long do you think NWN would last if no one brought zen? Pretty sure ARC were/are more than happy for me to buy lots of zen. I expect the people I exchanged astral diamonds with were also quite happy. Its that economy that keeps the game running. And pretty sure the people I spent over a million astral diamonds on items they were selling were not all that upset that I spent them either. I play for fun, how I play is irrelevant. How much real money people spend on this game is very much relevant.
Why wouldnt u want the seal gear? Its pretty decent for how easy it is to get.
BiS gear have never been able to just be bought, and never should be. It would make the game seem like pay to win for anyone starting out. Some times mastercraft is BiS and for most its easier to buy it than to make it. But these things are offered from player to player, not game to player so they cant be counted.
And if u dont wanna do grouped content, ur gear really isnt important. Everything solo is easy.
If u do drop zen into the game, transfer it to AD, u can buy bondings, level up pets, get enchantments. U have several ways of making ur toon so strong that gear becomes mostly irrelevant anyway. This is the edge u can get from zen and AD, and edge others free to play have to farm for. But on gear ur on equal ground. As it should be.
And as others have noted you can earn all the level 950 epic gear you could possibly want just by doing the 3 ME quests / day. Gear that is not that far off being BiS.
I have a lot of quibbles about the state of the game - but it is absolutely solo friendly. Until they fixed the dungeon scaling issues you could have argued the game was ONLY solo friendly.
The ME's aren't too bad re length etc except starting to get doubles of gear already, but do appreciate that the gear can be given to other characters of type.
Starting to feel like playing now is more a chore than fun. and I play for fun, the old nwn was relaxing and a bit of fun, building new characters was fun, and fitting them out with gears mounts etc was fun. its lost something since the latest update.
Cant see myself being in any hurray to do 70 to 80 again with all my characters, the story was interesting, but the doing was tedious around 2 thirds the way through. One question anybody else having issues trying to use there old gear to change the look of armor etc ? plus I noticed on the few bits you can they have raised the cost of AD.
But I'm not sure what is the point of getting 'epic' equipment for solo play.... Main stats come from the augment + bondings, and we cap the stats with hunts gear.
Weapon sets are from the MEs anyway.
30 chars for solo play, or any play except storage is beyond my comprehension.
Also they didn't rise the cost of transmutes on their own, what happens is that since inception it was tied to the gear level, and now the level is 80 and not 70.
Moot anyway as the whole system is changed in m17.