The true alt-killer is the offhand/mainhand Cube of Augmentation requirements (especially for the pesky mainhand).
They have to remove the RNG portion because they cost far too much, especially with the frequency of new weapon rollouts.
I have at least a stack and half of Cubes and I'm wary and weary of using them for my alts because a new weapon might popup
and they are far too expensive to replace on and on.
RP is already is expensive as it is. The new Empowered Illusionist's Mask cost 350k RP from Legendary to Mythic. On top of
that's there's the super expensive Cube of Augmentation that's prohibitive for alts.
With the Class changes coming to Mod15 and 16, Cube of Augmentation will even be more sought at.
They should give players FREE initial pick of artifact weapon powers and unlocking the rest should be RNG free.
The bigger question is: why do you have to get the newest weapon when it comes out? Why do you have to replace the existing one for that little edge? It is not just cube. There are RP, ward, regent, RNG, time, etc. I play 6 characters and I know Cube is expensive. However, I don't replace all their weapons every time something new comes out. I usually replace it when the current one is 2 to 3 generations behind. I also stock up cube when they are cheap (such as AD store sales and sometime from AH). I also do not replace my car when there is a new model.
*** The game can read your mind. If you want it, you won't get it. If you don't expect to get it, you will. ***
I have 26 Characters that I use for Astral Diamonds, Gold, Labor and Gems (All Guild Boxes). If that effectively goes away with this new Update.
~snipped~
FYI: Farming all these Professions on 26 Toons, take 45 minutes to an Hour, every 8 hours...If you do it three times a day like I do. 8AM, 4PM and 11PM...
Well, the guild crates will still be there, even though I feel they have intentionally left it until the eleventh hour to add the recipes. Even after this latest preview build, there are still recipes for only two crates: astral diamonds and gold. I don't really count the first as a recipe because astral diamonds are gotten by simply sending an adventurer on the relevant Gathering task. So the only real recipe up on preview is for Crates of Transmuted Gold. I can tell you right now that I have zero intention of actually making use of that recipe, even with the changes they're considering making to it. It's going to be much, much, MUCH easier to just plan a little and bring the Assayer to your SH. Here is part of a comment I made in the Official Feedback Thread that discusses what it's going to take to make crates of gold:
7g to 8g as a base commission price, before artisan multipliers, just to get 15g to donate? On top of that price, you have to gather: 1. Flax 2. Gold sand 3. Oak logs 4. Ash logs 5. Iron Sand 6. Fish stuff (to make fish glue) 7. And stuff I'm forgetting
Then you have to: 1. Turn the logs into lumber 2. Make raw gold ingots from the gold sand 3. Use the Iron sand and other stuff to make black ink 4. Make fine parchment from the flax (and I think fish glue) 5. Use the black ink, fine parchment, and 1x gold sand to make an Aureus Index 6. Use the Aureus Index and 3x raw gold ingot to finally make the crates!
There are probably about 15 to 20 steps to make crates of transmuted gold for the guild.
Due to that feedback, Asterdahl said they are considering increasing the value of crates of gold, as far as how much they are worth when put into the coffer. Given all the stuff you have to gather and then craft, they would have to increase the value of crates of gold by at least 3x in order to even begin to tempt me to consider using professions for this purpose going forward. I very much doubt that I would truly consider it even for that much. It would probably have to be a 6x increase for me to really seriously consider it, and I doubt they'll increase it to anywhere near that much. BTW, as someone else pointed out in a later comment, that's FOUR professions that you're required to employ to make crates of gold: Gathering, Artificing, Alchemy, and Jewelcrafting.
So it's obviously not going to go away, which doesn't really matter because if you either cannot afford the gold costs and/or don't have the crafters to do all of this, then it has effectively gone away for you. And it may be effectively gone away for me, too. That's pretty much the only thing I use professions for, and it will almost certainly be the only thing I use them for after 6 November.
As for the time you spend doing these professions, I feel your pain and give you credit. I do professions on my account and my wife's account. Between us, we have 17 characters. I have leveled all professions to 25 on 13 of those, Leadership and Mailsmithing to 25 on a 14th, and the last three are working on Leadership. I do crates of surplus equipment and gems every four hours, and I do labor and astral diamonds every three hours. It takes 20 to 25 minutes every time I do all nine slots. (I'm lumping in the little bit of time it takes to do labor and AD with the time I spend doing the other crates.) I've been doing this virtually non-stop since just before the update was announced. At this point, I am feeling burned out and I'm looking forward to the update. On the up side, I've managed to stockpile vast amounts of crated resources for the guild. Since I'm also in a small guild (though one I am trying to grow), it will be a long while before I have to worry about very much other than labor.
Well, the guild crates will still be there, even though I feel they have intentionally left it until the eleventh hour to add the recipes. Even after this latest preview build, there are still recipes for only two crates: astral diamonds and gold. I don't really count the first as a recipe because astral diamonds are gotten by simply sending an adventurer on the relevant Gathering task. So the only real recipe up on preview is for Crates of Transmuted Gold. I can tell you right now that I have zero intention of actually making use of that recipe, even with the changes they're considering making to it. It's going to be much, much, MUCH easier to just plan a little and bring the Assayer to your SH. Here is part of a comment I made in the Official Feedback Thread that discusses what it's going to take to make crates of gold:
7g to 8g as a base commission price, before artisan multipliers, just to get 15g to donate? On top of that price, you have to gather: 1. Flax 2. Gold sand 3. Oak logs 4. Ash logs 5. Iron Sand 6. Fish stuff (to make fish glue) 7. And stuff I'm forgetting
Then you have to: 1. Turn the logs into lumber 2. Make raw gold ingots from the gold sand 3. Use the Iron sand and other stuff to make black ink 4. Make fine parchment from the flax (and I think fish glue) 5. Use the black ink, fine parchment, and 1x gold sand to make an Aureus Index 6. Use the Aureus Index and 3x raw gold ingot to finally make the crates!
So virtually they have made guild crates null and void. Basically All REASONS for my crafting are gone. Another kick in the HAMSTER for small guilds IMO. And here I thought this PROFESSIONS update was to make it simpler and easier!!!!
Well they have made it simpler for me. I have no reason to play NWN. I might as well go back to a real D&D game in DDO.
HASTA LA VISTA BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TY CRYPTIC
So virtually they have made guild crates null and void. Basically All REASONS for my crafting are gone. Another kick in the HAMSTER for small guilds IMO. And here I thought this PROFESSIONS update was to make it simpler and easier!!!!
Well they have made it simpler for me. I have no reason to play NWN. I might as well go back to a real D&D game in DDO.
HASTA LA VISTA BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TY CRYPTIC
Related to the bold sentence, based on what I know about the gold crates, they have definitely not made this system simpler. I will be crafting crates for surplus equipment and gems because I will eventually need them for my guild. I think I'll be using the Assayer for gold. I might be using the SH temporary structure for gems, too. Fifteen to 20 steps to make crates is really a lot of work. I'll have to spread it across multiple characters in order to be able to craft them in a reasonable amount of time, which means I'll have to mail some stuff between characters in order to accomplish this. I'll put up with it because I have no choice, but I don't expect to be very happy about it. One nice thing is that it should take me considerably less time to manage professions.
LOL I know how much time it takes to spend to deal with this only on 1 character. You can not do it without special software. If you use it. TOS here https://www.arcgames.com/en/about/terms.
Lets assume you are right. So it's 3-5 min per character (Boring scrolling, task assignment; you have 9 slots, right?). And you have 50-54 characters(MAXED) - it's 200 min of your real life OR gameplay. I'm really curious how you do it MANUALLY. 3.5 hours? REALLY?
Just as an FYI, if it takes you 200 minutes to cycle through 50 alts once, you're really doing it wrong:
I have 49 level 25 leadership toons. I have never run a bot in my life on any game (I don't think you can even do it on PS4). It takes almost exactly 45 minutes to invoke and reset all 9 profession slots on all 49 toons.
Here's what you do on PS4: Step 1 - park all your toons in the Sages Shop, because that loads WAY faster than PE as a whole Step 2 - select toon, login Step 3 - invoke (~1 sec) Step 4 - open profs, cycle through resets. This takes approximately 25 seconds per toon if done right - (You pick 3X double coffers (something elementals, Double Hero), 1x AD crate (Single Hero), 2X 8 hour task right below AD crate (forget name, Single Hero each) and 3X single coffer (escort noble, Single Footman or other lvl 3 slow artisan). The AD crate is important because, for some reason, when you turn in all the tasks including the AD crate task, it resets all the selectable tasks, which means you don't have to wait 4-5 seconds for the menu to repopulate. I do this so quickly, I don't know the names of the tasks, but I have been doing the above for over a year.) Step 5 - Change char
So if you do this 3x times a day (every 6-8ish hours), it takes approximately 135 mins, plus the 15 min cycles for invoking when ur not resetting (again, reliant on Sage Shop for fast load times). So yes, you end up spending about 2.5 - 3 hours a day, and for that you get 9 AD crates, 27 ench coffers, 6 other bags, and 5 invocation bags, per toon. Times 50 toons (49 in my case), for a total of 450 AD crates, 1350 ench coffers, 300 other bags ad 250 invocation bags, per day.
I tend to agree that this is probably too much, but I also feel the pain of the people who did the leadership grind to get the toons up and have had limited time to generate RP/AD.
I also want the original poster of the quoted comment (pg 1 of the thread) to understand that it does not remotely require botting to cycle leadership toons in an effective manner. It's boring, for sure, and still takes about 2.5 hours a day, but that's what streaming TV is for...
Comments
So it's obviously not going to go away, which doesn't really matter because if you either cannot afford the gold costs and/or don't have the crafters to do all of this, then it has effectively gone away for you. And it may be effectively gone away for me, too. That's pretty much the only thing I use professions for, and it will almost certainly be the only thing I use them for after 6 November.
As for the time you spend doing these professions, I feel your pain and give you credit. I do professions on my account and my wife's account. Between us, we have 17 characters. I have leveled all professions to 25 on 13 of those, Leadership and Mailsmithing to 25 on a 14th, and the last three are working on Leadership. I do crates of surplus equipment and gems every four hours, and I do labor and astral diamonds every three hours. It takes 20 to 25 minutes every time I do all nine slots. (I'm lumping in the little bit of time it takes to do labor and AD with the time I spend doing the other crates.) I've been doing this virtually non-stop since just before the update was announced. At this point, I am feeling burned out and I'm looking forward to the update. On the up side, I've managed to stockpile vast amounts of crated resources for the guild. Since I'm also in a small guild (though one I am trying to grow), it will be a long while before I have to worry about very much other than labor.
Well, the guild crates will still be there, even though I feel they have intentionally left it until the eleventh hour to add the recipes. Even after this latest preview build, there are still recipes for only two crates: astral diamonds and gold. I don't really count the first as a recipe because astral diamonds are gotten by simply sending an adventurer on the relevant Gathering task. So the only real recipe up on preview is for Crates of Transmuted Gold. I can tell you right now that I have zero intention of actually making use of that recipe, even with the changes they're considering making to it. It's going to be much, much, MUCH easier to just plan a little and bring the Assayer to your SH. Here is part of a comment I made in the Official Feedback Thread that discusses what it's going to take to make crates of gold: So virtually they have made guild crates null and void. Basically All REASONS for my crafting are gone. Another kick in
the HAMSTER for small guilds IMO. And here I thought this PROFESSIONS update was to make it simpler and easier!!!!
Well they have made it simpler for me. I have no reason to play NWN. I might as well go back to a real D&D game in
DDO.
HASTA LA VISTA BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TY CRYPTIC
Just as an FYI, if it takes you 200 minutes to cycle through 50 alts once, you're really doing it wrong:
I have 49 level 25 leadership toons. I have never run a bot in my life on any game (I don't think you can even do it on PS4). It takes almost exactly 45 minutes to invoke and reset all 9 profession slots on all 49 toons.
Here's what you do on PS4:
Step 1 - park all your toons in the Sages Shop, because that loads WAY faster than PE as a whole
Step 2 - select toon, login
Step 3 - invoke (~1 sec)
Step 4 - open profs, cycle through resets. This takes approximately 25 seconds per toon if done right -
(You pick 3X double coffers (something elementals, Double Hero), 1x AD crate (Single Hero), 2X 8 hour task right below AD crate (forget name, Single Hero each) and 3X single coffer (escort noble, Single Footman or other lvl 3 slow artisan). The AD crate is important because, for some reason, when you turn in all the tasks including the AD crate task, it resets all the selectable tasks, which means you don't have to wait 4-5 seconds for the menu to repopulate. I do this so quickly, I don't know the names of the tasks, but I have been doing the above for over a year.)
Step 5 - Change char
So if you do this 3x times a day (every 6-8ish hours), it takes approximately 135 mins, plus the 15 min cycles for invoking when ur not resetting (again, reliant on Sage Shop for fast load times). So yes, you end up spending about 2.5 - 3 hours a day, and for that you get 9 AD crates, 27 ench coffers, 6 other bags, and 5 invocation bags, per toon. Times 50 toons (49 in my case), for a total of 450 AD crates, 1350 ench coffers, 300 other bags ad 250 invocation bags, per day.
I tend to agree that this is probably too much, but I also feel the pain of the people who did the leadership grind to get the toons up and have had limited time to generate RP/AD.
I also want the original poster of the quoted comment (pg 1 of the thread) to understand that it does not remotely require botting to cycle leadership toons in an effective manner. It's boring, for sure, and still takes about 2.5 hours a day, but that's what streaming TV is for...