Astral Diamonds and How They Are Used In-game?

comicaldemon · March 2013

I know as a Hero of the North and Guardian Founder, I get 875,000 Astral Diamonds, but can we get some information on how useful, or how far exactly this many Astral Diamonds will go? I know it is a large amount no matter how you look at it, but I am just curious on how exactly this much is going to be used, besides cosmetic looks. Any hints? :rolleyes::rolleyes:

Edit: Basically what I am asking is can I get a reference to how much something is that cost Astral Diamonds so I can compare to the amount that we get.

vikinggamer · March 2013

You use them at special vendors to buy stuff such as mounts. The lvl 20 mount can be had for 130k I think. the lvl40 mount I think as in the 400k range but I could be way off on that. I do know that the lvl 60 mount was 2m though.

You also use astral diamonds, not regular gold on the games auction house, so any gear there will be astral diamonds and who knows what things will cost.

braxzana · March 2013

You can also use Astral Diamonds to, for example, change the appearance of you new uber-leet but fugly armor to match your weaksauce but faaaabulous old armor.... it's probably level dependent, the price, but I think it was like 1,000 to 2,000 or something at one point... which you can earn via your first Invocation on each day, so not TERRIBLY expensive (unless it ramps up at higher levels of course).

What's really galling to me are the prices for the warhorses that I saw in the press videos where it was like several MILLION for something. Granted, you may only ever need ONE of those, but still that's a LOT of time to build up that total, and I would be sorely tempted to spend "just a little" here and there and really draaaaag out the collection of enough AD to get the really good stuff. Of course prices fluctuate since Astral Diamonds are on a sort of zen exchange.

silvergryph · March 2013

The 2 million wasn't for a warhorse. It was a Nightmare. A black shadow beast with flaming hooves and a mane of fire. It should be a very rare mount indeed.

braxzana · March 2013

I suppose that's the point of the outrageous prices --- SOMEONE will pay for it, but ~most~ people won't. So you preserve rarity.

And it's likely (hopeful) that things bought with Astral Diamonds --- even things that cost MILLIONS of them --- won't be uber super powerful compared to things acquired through other means. They'll be status symbols, for sure, but won't mean insta-wins.

wulfster42 · March 2013

We don't, and really can't, know yet as nothing has been finalized (even the costs for the nightmare etc might change and may be so high to prevent beta players from getting them).

You can also try and sell your AD on the AH for zen...which can be used to purchase account upgrades. The ratio is unknown, as is the supply (since at least from all current accounts someone needs to pay zen to buy your AD...and if nobody is interested (or there are 300 people selling AD and only 30 buy them)...you might not be able to sell your AD for much if anything.

I've mentioned a few times in the past I think the founders packs should come with Zen as well for account upgrades and not just astral diamonds. We already get character slots etc...which are account upgrades, but it would be nice to have some options (through the use of zen) as well (Ie, you could buy another character slot, buy a new race if it's sold or class etc).

For the most part though the value of astral diamonds is time based, and that depends on how they will set up the refineing/collecting system in game. Will it be per character (like it is now) per day, or per account per day...and how much total can be refined etc.

If it's 10k per character per day for instance, even with only 2 characters thats 20k astral diamonds a day, which means you could get 800k astral diamonds in about 40 days ( a bit over a month of constant play). That is still a fairly significant amount of time.

In the last beta you could create new characters though and each new character would get the full first time astral diamond bonus for invoking, and in theory could refine the full amount per day as well. It took about an hour to do that (little less), so hopefully that will be fixed or restricted.

In the end, I consider buying a founders pack as supporting the game, not gaining advantages etc in the game itself. I looks (at least for now) like even if you buy a founders pack you may still need to purchase some things with Zen after the game launches. I'm ok with that for the most part, although I do admit getting even 25% of the founders pack cost in Zen...would have been nice.

keirkin · March 2013

vikinggamer wrote: »

You use them at special vendors to buy stuff such as mounts. The lvl 20 mount can be had for 130k I think. the lvl40 mount I think as in the 400k range but I could be way off on that. I do know that the lvl 60 mount was 2m though.

You also use astral diamonds, not regular gold on the games auction house, so any gear there will be astral diamonds and who knows what things will cost.

While that 2 million mount was a level 60 mount it was not THE level 60 mount. That mount looks like a special "unique" mount.

comicaldemon · March 2013

braxzana wrote: »

I suppose that's the point of the outrageous prices --- SOMEONE will pay for it, but ~most~ people won't. So you preserve rarity.

And it's likely (hopeful) that things bought with Astral Diamonds --- even things that cost MILLIONS of them --- won't be uber super powerful compared to things acquired through other means. They'll be status symbols, for sure, but won't mean insta-wins.

My guess is that it was that high so people would not be able to buy it yet. With a 200$ Founder pack, I would think the AD we get from it would allow us to buy pretty much anything in-game, even if it is one buy and then all your AD is gone. I can understand some things such as the Nightmare being a little higher, but 2 mill seems a little excesive, I could be wrong though.

shaudius · March 2013

keirkin wrote: »

While that 2 million mount was a level 60 mount it was not THE level 60 mount. That mount looks like a special "unique" mount.

It looked to me like that 2 million astral diamond mount wasn't a mount at all but was a mount upgrade in order to make a lower level mount a higher level one.

freekimdotcom · March 2013

Is there a way to get cool mounts that don't require the AD?

comicaldemon · March 2013

freekimdotcom wrote: »

Is there a way to get cool mounts that don't require the AD?

I want to say you can get a mount at level 20,40, and 60 that do not cost AD, but these are the normal mount everyone gets I THINK.

shaudius · March 2013

comicaldemon wrote: »

I want to say you can get a mount at level 20,40, and 60 that do not cost AD, but these are the normal mount everyone gets I THINK.

In the first beta weekend the regular L20,40,60 mounts were 1,2, and 3 gold, respectively iirc. They were all horses from what I remember.

Astral Diamonds and How They Are Used In-game?

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