Must everything be BOP and non-salvageable?

abaddon523

I've been playing Module 3 consistently since its release. My question is, once I have my full set of black ice armor (which may or may not be any better than the T2 set I currently have) is there anything in Icewind Dale worth doing long-term? Is there any part of this campaign where my effort will actually yield some return in the form of AD? So far here are the rewards I've gotten:

Black Ice - cannot be sold or traded.
Black Ice Gloves - bind on pick up. Cannot be salvaged for rough AD. Can be salvaged for a few hundred Black Ice.
Black Ice main hand weapon - binds on pick up. Cannot be salvaged for AD. Can be salvaged for a few hundred Black Ice.
Lesser corrupt and purified enchantments - currently selling on the AH for 3500 and 2000 AD, respectively. Not at all worth the time it takes to either craft them or grind them from Kessell's Retreat.

From Kessell's Retreat you get:

Purified and Corrupted Black Ice Cloaks and Rings - bind on pick up. Cannot be salvaged. Can only be sold to vendors for gold.

There is a reasonably large supply of rank 4 and rank 5 black ice enchantments that randomly drop which can be used for refining or sold on the AH. However, the price of enchantments will drop as time goes on and I doubt it will be an time-efficient way to earn AD once the prices come down.

Is there anything else that I am missing anything?

People were a bit unhappy that all of the equipment from Modules 1 and 2 were bind on pickup. That made it difficult to find anything worth doing long term in those dungeons. But even in those modules, at least the equipment could be salvaged for rough AD. In Module 3 any extra equipment you get is just utterly worthless. I got a second pair of gloves for my character and, while initially excited about a good drop, I came to realize it's about as valuable as having an unidentified green in my bag--can't do anything with it. I'm not going to use up 8k refined black ice to make another pair of the corrupted or purified gloves. So...that leaves sell it for gold? Hooray?

Seems like once you have your gear the only reason to head back to IWD is to have some fun doing Encounters or for the PvP area, if you're into that.

Is it intentional that the developers have left the original game content as the most expedient way to earn AD? A player can still earn far more running Castle Never than by doing anything that has been released since. 45 minutes in Castle Never will earn me more than 20 runs of Kessell's Retreat. It feels like one of the goals of the developers has been to choke off any new potential avenues of grinding in their content.

Now, this is not a complaint post. I like the content of the game. I'm glad for the new module. I'm having a lot of fun playing it and I am fully aware that this is a free to play game and I have no right to demand or expect anything of the programmers.

But can I formally request that the developers kindly, well, knock it off with all of the bind on pickup and non-salvageable drops? Can you make the rewards of completing Kessell's Retreat actually worth doing when compared to already released content? I'm not asking for AD to rain from the sky. Just for rewards commensurate to the challenge of the content. Maybe I'm a moron, but I would think that the content most difficult to access and most difficult to complete should reap the best rewards. But it seems as though this game is trending in the opposite direction with every new module being less rewarding than the previous.

silverquick

I agree,

I think this is slowly going to push people away from the game. Once you've played through all the content, many do not wish to go through it again. So they will utilize other methods to earn AD to improve their characters with gear they cannot get through other methods.

Not all people in the game are incredibly skilled or tactical geniuses so... to earn their own may be an impossibillity for them, especially given how the deck is stacked against them with the current dungeon queue system creating parties the game is very hard to succeed with the higher you go.

Add in the burnout with farming HEs in the new system and probably the new skirmish in time, and eventually they're going to just give up if they can't "gear up".

This is going to turn into a self perpetuating problem. I think they may need to reverse themselves on the Bind on Pickup items unless they are the super rare kind.

psyb3rtr011

Regarding BoP... Perhaps some additional coding to make say, 1% of BoP actually BoE.

With regards Black Ice items, seems the Salvage to Black Ice is appropriate, for something that readily decays and continually needs to be re-enchanted with Black Ice.

myowmyow

I'd say once you complete Icewind Dale, just go back to Dread Ring where you can get plenty of salvageable gear.

kiralyn

Get more black ice, to keep your BI gear empowered? Hmm.


I think part of the core issue is that they made AD too central to everything in the game. To the point that people are so focused on "if I'm not earning AD, there's little point to this content". I've been playing Star Trek Online again recently, and - while yes, there's a need to earn Dilithium (the local AD equivalent), it's not the One True Goal.... there's still plenty of things to do with Credits (gold), including the auction house, so.... It's reasonably quick, as a level-capped player, to max out the daily dilithium refine limit. (And no real way to get around that limit, since you can't sell loot for refined Dil) Which leaves plenty of time to work on other things - credits, campaign currency, contributing to your guild, foundries, etc.


Of course, that can't really be changed now, in Neverwinter - it's been designed this way, and altering it would just destroy everything. Lessons learned for the future, eh?