Convert companions and mounts to upgrade tokens

dazdranagon88

Hello. I offer a simple solution to two problems at once.

1. There are a lot of companions and mounts in the game that are not in demand among the players. Prices for them are extremely low, and during the event of a double chance of dropping loot in dungeons, prices drop to almost zero.

2. Periodically from various events, we get sets with mounts and companions to choose from, but as a rule, those who have been in the game for a long time have all of them.
We also get mounts and companions of various qualities in Valenhas from Juma, and we already have most of them.

Solution: The ability to convert mounts and companions into upgrade tokens will solve both of these problems at once.

Depending on the quality of the mount or companion, the number of tokens will change, as well as items for the entire account will give more than items for one character.

Those who have been playing for a long time will be able to convert repeated items, and the price of the most unclaimed mounts and companions will not fall below the price of the number of tokens into which they can be converted.

@nitocris83 Please pay attention to this, in my opinion this is an excellent solution to these problems. Thanks in advance.

stryker80

Yes, please.

For mounts, an additional option to turn them to insignia powder would be fantastic.

dazdranagon88

Or turn into Tarmalune Trade Bars. at least something...

rikitaki

Well, I thought about that a long time ago, so pardon me to be a hamster about it.

A salvage system for mounts and companions would actually require a systematic approach from the developer side and an existent QA department. As for the current practice, the inevitable consequence of an attempt of a salvage system would be a crash of many accounts by stack overflow in the mount and companion tokens amount (as one or more reclaimables would surely not be excluded from the salvage option.)

To be constructive, a possible execution: Game shall reward only not bound or account bound stuff. All reclaimed stuff shall be char bound. No char bound stuff would be eligible in the salvage system.

Oh, btw: collars need a salvage system as well.

jana

rikitake why shouldn't the developers have a systematic approach. Why couldn't the unbind tokens work on bound stuff. though Ihave yet to find anything they work on.

admiralwarlord

How this topic came at the right time. I no longer know what to do with so much HAMSTER piled up in my alt bags. Companions with a price of 1 ad in AH, remembering the time when it launched the chult and it rained Batiri everywhere, since 90% of the players non-stop farmed the newly released Skirmish.

plasticbat

admiralwarlord#3792 said:

How this topic came at the right time. I no longer know what to do with so much HAMSTER piled up in my alt bags. Companions with a price of 1 ad in AH, remembering the time when it launched the chult and it rained Batiri everywhere, since 90% of the players non-stop farmed the newly released Skirmish.

1. Hoard them and sell them later if it worth it later. If not, trash them later.
2. trash them.

I do #1.

If what OP proposed becomes reality, all those 1 AD companion/mount will be wiped out instantly. Nobody will buy the actual upgrade tokens. May be some should 'stock them up' now.

admiralwarlord

plasticbat said:

admiralwarlord#3792 said:

How this topic came at the right time. I no longer know what to do with so much HAMSTER piled up in my alt bags. Companions with a price of 1 ad in AH, remembering the time when it launched the chult and it rained Batiri everywhere, since 90% of the players non-stop farmed the newly released Skirmish.

1. Hoard them and sell them later if it worth it later. If not, trash them later.
2. trash them.

I do #1.

If what OP proposed becomes reality, all those 1 AD companion/mount will be wiped out instantly. Nobody will buy the actual upgrade tokens. May be some should 'stock them up' now.

Well, I believe in the diversity of builds, but there are companions that have bonuses that are terrible even for new players. As there are always new companions being released or new players who need a lot of these tokens, the price of companion tokens would hardly go down.

mentinmindmaker

Hmm, I probably should go through AH and buy all the low cheap green companion I miss.

History has taught us that you never know which companion is BiS tomorrow, so having them all probably is a good idea.

plasticbat

admiralwarlord#3792 said:

plasticbat said:

admiralwarlord#3792 said:

How this topic came at the right time. I no longer know what to do with so much HAMSTER piled up in my alt bags. Companions with a price of 1 ad in AH, remembering the time when it launched the chult and it rained Batiri everywhere, since 90% of the players non-stop farmed the newly released Skirmish.

1. Hoard them and sell them later if it worth it later. If not, trash them later.
2. trash them.

I do #1.

If what OP proposed becomes reality, all those 1 AD companion/mount will be wiped out instantly. Nobody will buy the actual upgrade tokens. May be some should 'stock them up' now.

Well, I believe in the diversity of builds, but there are companions that have bonuses that are terrible even for new players. As there are always new companions being released or new players who need a lot of these tokens, the price of companion tokens would hardly go down.

You don't need much upgrade token after the mythic account wide companion flood the market. It will be like mythic account wide mount. The price of mount upgrade token has dropped a lot.

admiralwarlord

For my final consideration, I find it quite strange to win something that in the end is worthless. I think that's one of the reasons why I'm playing a lot less.

Refine ad, buy insignia in the market, run rc, run legacy quests on some character and that's it, this is my script for the day. When in a good mood and free time, maybe radq and rtq on an alt other than my main or my tank. Negotiating some items bought with stamps helps to have an extra ad gain, but having the feeling of finishing the content and feeling before opening the chest that 99,999...% of the time nothing or something will drop like a companion that almost no one uses it's pretty frustrating. The other day when I finished VoS in my tank, the drop was a Wererat Thief, I think this one is worth less than 500 ad in AH, try to imagine my happy face when I saw this.

hustin1

While I have literally hundreds of spare companions sitting in the bank across several characters, I think it's a bad idea to salvage companions into something so sought-after. My concern is that the result will be that we'll never see most companions for sale on the AH again as they'll all wind up being salvaged.

I've always thought it would be cool if we could donate spare companions to populate certain areas of our strongholds, as a sort of additional decoration -- not as enemies, but as either NPC's or allies. I'd love to sic the army of redcaps I have on the Thayans who have suddenly invaded my stronghold! You might think they're weak but you underestimate just how large my redcap army is

plasticbat

hustin1 said:

While I have literally hundreds of spare companions sitting in the bank across several characters, I think it's a bad idea to salvage companions into something so sought-after. My concern is that the result will be that we'll never see most companions for sale on the AH again as they'll all wind up being salvaged.

I've always thought it would be cool if we could donate spare companions to populate certain areas of our strongholds, as a sort of additional decoration -- not as enemies, but as either NPC's or allies. I'd love to sic the army of redcaps I have on the Thayans who have suddenly invaded my stronghold! You might think they're weak but you underestimate just how large my redcap army is

I would not worry about that. I am not saying I support converting companion to token. I am indifferent. The extra companion would be like insignia. It will still be sold in AH and the price will be "right" if not better. I have tons of duplicate companion that is currently worthless in AH. I am taking about over 10x of the same companions. I am stashing them because it does not worth my time to sell them for few AD.

Eventually, many will have 10 account wide mythic companions. The companion upgrade token will like the current mount upgrade token. The AH sale of cheap companion will like the AH sale of insignia.

hadestemplar

You can upgrade companions either with tokens or with Astral Diamods.
So whats the problem here??

For mounts, it need same feature, which would make easier to upgrade them.

As for idea to salvage old companions/mounts.. Hah.
The whole idea is to cash out.. Buy Companions/mounts from vendor for few coins of copper/silver, salvage to tokens and sell off via AH..
Lets not forget there are tons of unused companions/mounts which are stockpiled in various accounts by various players.

You will have same outcome as what is with mount collars, Up to epic version cost little to nothing. So if salvage would get implemented up to mythic rank mounts will be considered as trash. Even mythic mounts value will drop significantly. Mounts lost value, then what the point to even open lockbox??

You guys should look to bigger picture..

admiralwarlord

hadestemplar#9918 said:

You can upgrade companions either with tokens or with Astral Diamods.
So whats the problem here??

For mounts, it need same feature, which would make easier to upgrade them.

As for idea to salvage old companions/mounts.. Hah.
The whole idea is to cash out.. Buy Companions/mounts from vendor for few coins of copper/silver, salvage to tokens and sell off via AH..
Lets not forget there are tons of unused companions/mounts which are stockpiled in various accounts by various players.

You will have same outcome as what is with mount collars, Up to epic version cost little to nothing. So if salvage would get implemented up to mythic rank mounts will be considered as trash. Even mythic mounts value will drop significantly. Mounts lost value, then what the point to even open lockbox??

You guys should look to bigger picture..

You are also not seeing what the game is proposing in relation to multi builds and how difficult it is to keep up with it. I recently did a build on Rainer's excellent program for my GF tank focusing on stamina restoration via recharge speed and at will, to update my build that was made when Sharandar's module came out, I would have to max 4 out of 5 companions for bonus , also maximize the summoned, change artifact set and change race, etc. After seeing the cost of this and with a new module with new equipment focused mainly on AOE approaching, I preferred to give up trying to improve my alt (it's my character I play the most), since it would be impossible to make an update, imagine two .

rikitaki

hadestemplar#9918 said:

You guys should look to bigger picture..

Yes, we saw that the market is already crashing because there is absolutely no sink for over-abundant companions, mounts and purple mount collar packs, so we suggested an option to ascertain a certain value of mythic mounts and companions in the future lockboxes. ATM the "improved" drops immediately became worthless drops, which is sub-optimal.

callumf

admiralwarlord#3792 said:

hadestemplar#9918 said:

You can upgrade companions either with tokens or with Astral Diamods.
So whats the problem here??

For mounts, it need same feature, which would make easier to upgrade them.

As for idea to salvage old companions/mounts.. Hah.
The whole idea is to cash out.. Buy Companions/mounts from vendor for few coins of copper/silver, salvage to tokens and sell off via AH..
Lets not forget there are tons of unused companions/mounts which are stockpiled in various accounts by various players.

You will have same outcome as what is with mount collars, Up to epic version cost little to nothing. So if salvage would get implemented up to mythic rank mounts will be considered as trash. Even mythic mounts value will drop significantly. Mounts lost value, then what the point to even open lockbox??

You guys should look to bigger picture..

You are also not seeing what the game is proposing in relation to multi builds and how difficult it is to keep up with it. I recently did a build on Rainer's excellent program for my GF tank focusing on stamina restoration via recharge speed and at will, to update my build that was made when Sharandar's module came out, I would have to max 4 out of 5 companions for bonus , also maximize the summoned, change artifact set and change race, etc. After seeing the cost of this and with a new module with new equipment focused mainly on AOE approaching, I preferred to give up trying to improve my alt (it's my character I play the most), since it would be impossible to make an update, imagine two .

Pretty much this - I agree very strongly. The various changes mean that my original 5 [was it five?] orange companions needed to get turned into 10 mythic companions ON EACH TOON. Same for mounts, they needed to get upgraded to 10 mythic. That took a few months for my small toon army of 3.

And then enchants... im still not up to all mythic, but its ok, i know its a long grind.

And I also know its good to have stuff to work towards.

But when the goal posts get moved as often as they have the past few years it does get disheartening.

And not to mention when a certain companion becomes suddenly BiS players grind to get it, then it gets nerfed, and weapon sets, nerfed, and kind fo lots of stuff.... nerfed.

plasticbat

callumf#9018 said:

admiralwarlord#3792 said:

hadestemplar#9918 said:

You can upgrade companions either with tokens or with Astral Diamods.
So whats the problem here??

For mounts, it need same feature, which would make easier to upgrade them.

As for idea to salvage old companions/mounts.. Hah.
The whole idea is to cash out.. Buy Companions/mounts from vendor for few coins of copper/silver, salvage to tokens and sell off via AH..
Lets not forget there are tons of unused companions/mounts which are stockpiled in various accounts by various players.

You will have same outcome as what is with mount collars, Up to epic version cost little to nothing. So if salvage would get implemented up to mythic rank mounts will be considered as trash. Even mythic mounts value will drop significantly. Mounts lost value, then what the point to even open lockbox??

You guys should look to bigger picture..

You are also not seeing what the game is proposing in relation to multi builds and how difficult it is to keep up with it. I recently did a build on Rainer's excellent program for my GF tank focusing on stamina restoration via recharge speed and at will, to update my build that was made when Sharandar's module came out, I would have to max 4 out of 5 companions for bonus , also maximize the summoned, change artifact set and change race, etc. After seeing the cost of this and with a new module with new equipment focused mainly on AOE approaching, I preferred to give up trying to improve my alt (it's my character I play the most), since it would be impossible to make an update, imagine two .

Pretty much this - I agree very strongly. The various changes mean that my original 5 [was it five?] orange companions needed to get turned into 10 mythic companions ON EACH TOON. Same for mounts, they needed to get upgraded to 10 mythic. That took a few months for my small toon army of 3.

And then enchants... im still not up to all mythic, but its ok, i know its a long grind.

And I also know its good to have stuff to work towards.

But when the goal posts get moved as often as they have the past few years it does get disheartening.

And not to mention when a certain companion becomes suddenly BiS players grind to get it, then it gets nerfed, and weapon sets, nerfed, and kind fo lots of stuff.... nerfed.

Well, the current goal is:
1. All account wide enchantment in mythic.
2. 10 account wide mythic mount (do not do upgrade). There are more than 10 account wide mythic mounts in game.
3. 10 account wide mythic companion (do minimum upgrade or wait until more account wide mythic companion available). There are 5 or 6 account wide mythic companions in game.
4. selective upgrade afterward.
5. don't do anything that cost major effort but minor gain.

99. They will change everything.

dazdranagon88

It's not about getting upgrade tokens, but about increasing the cost of companions and mounts that drop in chests.
It is not necessary to receive improvement tokens from them, you can get gold (in a larger amount), or something else.

admiralwarlord

I thought that the topic was directed to the question of the prizes obtained at the end of a challenge having insignificant values that do not gratify the player for executing them and how to make them attractive from a perspective of reducing their quantity or availability in the market.

The thread also reminded me that the event that doubles the chance of winning is an event that has been somewhat ignored by most players since demogorgon was removed. I myself have tried a few times to create groups for ICT or CoDG (I have many keys to these contents) and I have not been successful. Yes, I've seen countless CN or RDQ groups being made, as it seems, they are the same drops in any content, which is another problem in my view, in which they already promised an improvement - the more challenging the content, better would be the drop chance - for that matter, but apparently there wasn't.

grogthemagnif

dazdranagon88#4986 said:

Hello. I offer a simple solution to two problems at once.

1. There are a lot of companions and mounts in the game that are not in demand among the players. Prices for them are extremely low, and during the event of a double chance of dropping loot in dungeons, prices drop to almost zero.

2. Periodically from various events, we get sets with mounts and companions to choose from, but as a rule, those who have been in the game for a long time have all of them.
We also get mounts and companions of various qualities in Valenhas from Juma, and we already have most of them.

Solution: The ability to convert mounts and companions into upgrade tokens will solve both of these problems at once.

Depending on the quality of the mount or companion, the number of tokens will change, as well as items for the entire account will give more than items for one character.

Those who have been playing for a long time will be able to convert repeated items, and the price of the most unclaimed mounts and companions will not fall below the price of the number of tokens into which they can be converted.

@nitocris83 Please pay attention to this, in my opinion this is an excellent solution to these problems. Thanks in advance.

I have enough alts that it will be a LOOOOOOOOOOOONNNG while before all of my characters have ALLLLLLLLLLLL of the mounts or companions.

hadestemplar

admiralwarlord#3792 said:

You are also not seeing what the game is proposing in relation to multi builds and how difficult it is to keep up with it. I recently did a build on Rainer's excellent program for my GF tank focusing on stamina restoration via recharge speed and at will, to update my build that was made when Sharandar's module came out, I would have to max 4 out of 5 companions for bonus , also maximize the summoned, change artifact set and change race, etc. After seeing the cost of this and with a new module with new equipment focused mainly on AOE approaching, I preferred to give up trying to improve my alt (it's my character I play the most), since it would be impossible to make an update, imagine two .

Multi builds. I have two dps loadouts and one healer loadout( in memory of templocks. All three have different set up's gear/companion/mount and enchantment wise.
So do I know how hard? Oh yeah. And also I can say it's not so hard.


Since we talk here about mount/companions.

During Astral Lockbox event time, VIP players buys from Wondrous bazzar store with 25% discount( VIP), and sell them via Auction house. In last event ime the 10 astral lockbox costed like 300k AD.
By opening Astral Lockbox you always gain certain sum of Tarmalune trade bars.

Then you wait for Tarmalune Trade bar discount event. And in that time you spent them for Companion/mount upgrade tokens. Prefered for mounts, cuz unlike companions you can't upgrade mounts via AD.


Here you have easy way to get boisters to 100%, and upgrade specific companions/mounts.
Lets not forget that all new companions/mounts added to game become account wide since mounts mythic rank introduction. Which made them more available in AH, and due market competition prices went down. So it's no longer to get these companions/mounts. Unless you want latest mythic rank ones from special packs.

The only problems are only some old companions, yet cryptic love to reuse them. As example icosahedron stone, which you could get only from Foundry, players could get from campaign.

The [Mini Apparatus of Gond] augment companion which where gift for those who participated in foundry activities. But now it's yet regular companion. Should I give others as example??

In these days it's more than easy to gain companions/mounts, and also to max out them.

So do I can see bigger picture, oh yeah I do.

You have also understand one thing. Too easy obtaining stuffs means player max out very fast, which eventually create a problem. Since you have stuffs, you have no motivation to play game, there is no drive to get item or mount or companion or even upgrade them. If there is no motivation to play game, well you know the outcome. Players simply move elsewhere, and this apply not only here in Neverwitner but in any mmo rpg games.

ksell

@hadestemplar#9918 its hard to disagree, yet the problem of salvaging still stand ; as a general rule most item (if not all) should be eligible to convertion for RP and/or gold. In this case we gettin addational curriencies as equivalent of AD.
IF we would like to follow orginal concept i see two options - either expand mount powder system to companions, or use two step exchange similar to what we have with enchantments.

PS. There is similar dead end with most bounty curriencies, especially from discontinued zones.

tchefi

As @plasticbat, i'm also quite indifferent about converting companions to tokens, but the idea seems nice for players who are in the "catch up" phase on their roster of mythic comp, and to give a little more purpose to useless comp.

Let's try to build up on the idea, as it feels like it can have some more potential ^^.



Let's not talk about a direct conversion from comp to tokens like we have with insignias : it would be a cheap (development-wise) and uninteresting (content-wise) solution.

Companions should be considered as NPCs rather than equipment : in a roleplay setup, they are mostly not "things" but "beings". We can obviously argue for exemple about ioun stones to be things rather than beings but, in general, it doesn't feel right to "convert" a companion directly into tokens like we do with insignas => powder, or stones => refinement points.

In Neverwinter, companions are structurally categorized as augment or combat, but also by collection lists (which is like a very rough creature type differenciation, though I would love a more precise one so the sylph, a fey, would not be in the same category as the succubus, a fiend...).

Maybe we can build something around that ?

A companion quest system

make a new option available in the right-click contextual menu of a companion in your inventory and in your roster (if you want to get rid of a comp already listed there) : "Companion Quest".
If the quest is accepted, the questgiving companion is summoned, taking the place of your active comp, and can't be unsummoned until completion of the quest
You can obviously have no more than one companion's quest active at any given time.
Account-wide comp can't give quests.
Once the quest is completed, the comp is gone from your inventory or roster, and you are rewarded with tokens (and maybe other things) in quantity depending on the companion's quality.


The companion quest can be randomly picked from a list of quests, each collection of companions can have a different list of quests.

Exemples of "basic" companion quest :
kill [x] [ennemy name] in [location] (fighters/invokers collection)
kill [hunt name] in [location] (barovia/chult/avernus) (fighters/invokers collection)
kill [boss name] in [dungeon name] (can be an intermediate boss, a final boss, the Mimic King or VoS mini-boss) (fighters/invokers collection)
do [quest from the questlog among the ones already finished (even from the leveling part)] (fighters/invokers collection)
bring [companion name] to [encampement location] (beasts collection)
bring [companion name] + [random ingredient from alchemy craft] to Bradda the Sage (beasts/magical creatures collection)
etc.

Ok, it would feel a bit like
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C3mvRm0aOY
But why not ?

We can also imagine each mythic comp would have his special quest, as the large majority of them would have likely been upgraded from tokens, it is fair to unlock a nice written quest rather than a generic one.
This can also revives the idea to spent tokens to upgrade a companion despite him being bad in the meta just because I want to unlock his specific mythic quest/mini adventure (and maybe his specific reward ?), and in the process maybe increase the desirability on comp tokens and useless companions (for their mythic quest or because their basic not mythic quests are a source of tokens). If I want to do both the mythic quest and have the mythic comp in my roster, I then would have to get it and upgrade it twice into mythic.

Even maybe a "writing/scenari" contest for the community every month to create those quests (free in the creation process or under given scenaristic constraints), in the idea to engage again with the community in a creative way ('member the foundry quest editor ?). (though obviously named character like Xuna, Makos, Bruenor, should have their mythic quest written by the dev team, not the players ^^)

January 2023 "mythic companion quests contest". Take your pen and write an epic quest for/about the mythic Moonshae Druid companion. It must be 4 objectives/steps max, must begin and end in Sharandar and include a conflictual relation with a Northlander.
The winner will get a unique mythic Moonshae Druid (same stats, just a cosmetic color swap/equipement swap) and his quest will be adapted and added to the game in the brand new companion quest system.

mwk

Honestly I think it should be just upgrade tokens as one. Not separate mount and companion tokens. That's my suggestion. It will be labeled as companion/mount upgrade token.

greywynd

Simplify to "Upgrade Tokens". Not like there is anything else in the game that can be upgraded in that manner.