When I rolled my Hunter Ranger, I decided to play him as if he was a new player just starting Neverwinter. Rather than twink him with high level enchants, I have been using the new enchant system and building my enchants from what I have looted thru normal gameplay.
I have completed both solo and group content up to lvl 48 and built my enchantments up to the point where I need the blue marks to raise any higher. However, in spite of running dungeons and looting ever skill node I find, I have not seen a single blue mark drop. I am aware I could buy them, but that is not the point. This system is broken for new players. There needs to be a way for new players to progress thru the blue mark stage without having to buy blue marks.
Got your artifact ready to upgrade? All enchantments in all slots (including companion gear slots) and all companion runestones up to rank 5?
Blue marks are only supposed to drop in end-game instances (epic dungeons, Sharandar and Dread Ring mini-dungeons) so not finding any by level 48 doesn't mean much (and if you have the AD, the blue marks of potency are available from the Bazaar. Pricy, but available to all. It's the marks needed for artifact upgrade that are really the sticking point, all else is available.
The PWI info-fox formerly known as Mayfly - Dreamweaver
Well, that's not strictly true: the lack of marks to upgrade R5s and R6s has been a major bugbear since the system went live, turning all epic dungeons into "comedy nodecamp failsauce" and so on. The lack of blue marks basically hurt everyone, not just new players.
Allegedly they now drop from nodes in L60 content (so solo dungeons in sharandar etc) so this should hopefully be less onerous.
I started playing NWN just after M2 was released and had my artifact ready to upgrade and was starting to make blue marks in my mid/late 50s iirc, turning all my enchants into blues shortly after hitting 60 (most of them had been ready to upgrade for a while at this point due to me feeding them enchants to clear up inventory space after my artifact maxed out at 29). Maybe it's because I never had any specific expectations on what my enchants should be, but I have never thought of it as an issue.
The new system for enchants blows chunks. I like a lot of the Module 2 stuff and don't have many crits (quite the reverse actually) but in the case of the new enchant system its all kinds of facepalm. Its incredibly difficult to get enchants leveled up now and is extremely annoying to use - lots of clicks and messing around for very little gain and actually what you end up with is non-stackable and a direct enemy of careful inventory management.
Dreadful system.
Roo. Cleric. Mad as a bag of badgers, will heal for beer.
xabersedgeMember, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 119Bounty Hunter
edited December 2013
The system itself isn't flawed, its actually quite nice. The problem is the required reagents for upgrading. THAT is just ridiculous. You already have a <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> chance at upgrading, so you need wards. This is easy to deal with because nothing changed there. The different marks should be easier to find, especially for (imo) levels 35+ I just don't see the point of easy upgrades, if we can't have the required drops until we are 60 and have to trudge dungeons just to get them. MAKE THEM MORE ACCESSIBLE and for goodness sake, stop trying to gouge people for them at the AH.
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katbozejziemiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 856Arc User
Once again, again and again I'm writing the same thing - I've never got any blue mark from T1/T2/Gauntlgrym dungeon so far, since the day 1 of Module 2 came live. I swear I completed over 40 dungeons. New system sucks.
M6 almost drains your soul given how boring it is. (c) joocycuzzzzzz
With the same frequency as other rare materials? You might find one in your whole time to 60.
Yeah, like those ultra rare epic purple marks that you never, ever find (apart from every dread ring dungeon). Rarity is not consistent.
I'd judge it unlikely that they actually intended to create an artificial bottleneck, I just don't think they're very good at forward planning. And it's been like..what, just over ten days? Give em time.
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inthefade462Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited December 2013
First problem is you are trying to make rank 5s to enchant your gear at level 48. Don't bother enchanting any gear while leveling up. Unless of course by "playing as a new character" you mean you are playing as a true newb and making the same mistakes you made the first time around.
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darkstarcrashMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,382Arc User
First problem is you are trying to make rank 5s to enchant your gear at level 48. Don't bother enchanting any gear while leveling up. Unless of course by "playing as a new character" you mean you are playing as a true newb and making the same mistakes you made the first time around.
Why wouldn't you enchant your leveling gear? Especially now, when it costs probably 50 silver or less to unslot an enchant from mid-level gear.
(I'm guessing here, but the unslot cost varies based on enchant rank and gear level and rarity, with a max of 2.5 gold with epics and blue gems).
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beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
(I'm guessing here, but the unslot cost varies based on enchant rank and gear level and rarity, with a max of 2.5 gold with epics and blue gems).
Actually, I'm finding that the unslotting costs are currently always less than what I get back selling the gear afterwards. I believe the cost is based on the level and rarity of the gear, and has nothing to do with the enchantment itself. (But removing an enchant from a level 60 blue is 1.5 gold, so it doesn't always remain under the recouped cost, just at the point when gold is a concern.)
So *not* enchanting your gear is kind of silly.
My approach though is to give levelling characters a rank 5 of each enchantment colour which they then get to use as a bucket for all their matching drops. Keeps the rank 1s and 2s cleaned right up.
First problem is you are trying to make rank 5s to enchant your gear at level 48. Don't bother enchanting any gear while leveling up. Unless of course by "playing as a new character" you mean you are playing as a true newb and making the same mistakes you made the first time around.
:rolleyes: You obviously don't understand the new system, and how much cheaper it is to unslot gems compared to the old system. There is absolutely no reason not to enchant your gear under the new system as you level up. Well, unless you're so cheap you can't part with a few copper or silver to remove the enchantment from your old gear to be able to put it in your new gear. I mean, it's not as if there's so much else you can use that gold for...
The PWI info-fox formerly known as Mayfly - Dreamweaver
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orangefireeMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,148Arc User
edited December 2013
You are up to rank fives at level 48? I don't think you are supposed to be using higher then that until level 60. I have never heard of someone using rank fives in the old system either. I think this is intended.
Neverwinter players are stubborn things....until you strip them down to bone. (Cursed players, my flowers, MINE!) Oh how I plotted their demise.
Maybe they will make blue refining marks drop out of an event box like they did with Dragon Eggs just before Fury of Feywild was released .. * hint hint Christmas event*....
After my first character, I never bothered to enchant anything with more than rank 3s while leveling, and then only at high levels while soloing. Under the current system with my new chars, I've been enchanting items since stuff with slots for them started dropping. Even with the large number of times I've switched gear, unslotting and reslotting enchants is quite affordable. Their gold keeps growing all the time. Honestly, there's no reason not to enchant things now. The refining system works pretty well while leveling, it's only the blue marks that cause a bottleneck.
"We have always been at war with Dread Vault" ~ Little Brother
I came back after Module 2 and have been grinding the Dread ring and Sharandar boons every day since on at least one character and occasional leveling alts. I finally got my first Mark of Power (from the daily mini-dungeon main chest reward in Dread Rings), so I know it can be done, but the drop rate does seem to be rather low. In fact, increasing it by a factor of two or three wouldn't hurt....
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silvergryphMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 740Arc User
edited December 2013
It is difficult to go past rank 5 before 60. That is not broken, it is by design. It should be very rare for a character to have the most powerful magic before then.
In the old system, your level 48 probably would have had no enchantments at all. Now it is trivial to unslot enchantments while leveling which in turn encourages using them in the first place. But, level 60 is still when you work on epic enchantments. It is one of the endgame grinds. You may have noticed that almost all epics are level 60 items.
Yes, you may face someone in PvP who is so wealthy and/or twinked out that they have epics at lower levels. But, that rarity existed in the old system too. And every part of PvE short of T2s (maybe) is doable with all blue gear and blue enchants.
You are up to rank fives at level 48? I don't think you are supposed to be using higher then that until level 60. I have never heard of someone using rank fives in the old system either. I think this is intended.
1. im using R5s in my lvl25 HR.
2. Not supposed to use R5 until lvl60? Really? why the hell would you ever think that?
3. The reason you never heard of anyone using R5s before mod2 was because of the crazy high AD cost to unslot them. Which was part of the reason that cryptic made the changes to the old system.
Back on topic, over all I think the single biggest mistake with the new system is the reagents. If they removed them from the system it would almost perfect.
The new slot-unslot system is a tad fail. The new refine system is a tad fail as well.
1. Refine. It's clunky from excessive regents and ever increasing side items, the old 4 for 1 system was clean and cut and dried, yes there was a high fail rate ever more as you went up levels, but wards could compensate for that. Now you need 5 of this and 1 of that and 2 of those and 4 more of this or the other, it's confusing and frustrating, and you STILL have a ever increasing fail rate that you need to have wards for. And the stated reason for refining? Save bag space..not happening due to non-stacking! You always got one or the other enchant thats got 65% and the other 70% etc. so its still taking multi slots to hold the junk..oh and all those new regents just make it even worse
2. Slotting. Great concept, fail application. The old way cost a prohibitive amount of AD so nobody in the know was slotting anything they weren't willing to vend until they got to 60 gear and epics. The Dev's correctly percieved that it wasn't working as they intended so decided to go to a gold sink to unslot to encourage levelers to switch out and experiment..actually use those enchants and sort of level as you go as your gear does. Failed application..the cost of unslotting is based on gear unslotted from not the enchant, so you had a L40 gear with a L1 enchant in it? It's going to cost you so much in silver to unslot it that why bother? Vend it. What was achieved in getting folks to unslot....A GOLD SINK. Were does that gold go to? Is it lore based? Who is helping you unslot for a gold fee? Why even bother for a fee? Does it achieve ANYTHING game relevant other than eat gold? Remove the gold fee and let them switch out the hard won and much fiddled with enchants they have leveled up. That would really encourage experimentation and purpose driven slotting, bring out the TRUE power of enchants...going into a PvP match? pull out those enchants from your gear and spec for a more PvP friendly build, going into a dungeon? fit out for that! You a healer class and you solo a lot..well your enchants are going to be more DPS oriented aren't they...but what if you get a guild or friends that have you tag allong, wouldn't it be better to be a healer extrordinaire instead of a dpser...without a unslot fee maybe more support players coould be encouraged to do so!
/sarcasm off
Really, I want to know, what exactly is there any unslot fee for? All I'm seeing is a gold sink, maybe I'm missing something.
so far from my experience I have found a 2% chance to find a blue refining stone and about a 10% for a green. This is from looting about 50 resource nodes in level 60 solo mini dungeons.
if they changed it so that all lv 60 resource nodes can do it, that's nice so that means any place in sharandar and dread, whether it is dungeon or regular map will drop it - That's an improvement.
Your not stuck running dungeons in this scenario, just realize you are going to have to loot about 60 nodes to get a 1 in 3 chance of the flavour you want since there seem to be 3 ( or 5) falavours of regeants. power, union, stability, potency. _ not: it's he potency one that seems to be the most necessary for all upgrades, other are artifact specific I think.
Failed application..the cost of unslotting is based on gear unslotted from not the enchant, so you had a L40 gear with a L1 enchant in it? It's going to cost you so much in silver to unslot it that why bother? Vend it.
What are you doing with a rank 1 enchantment in a piece of level 40 gear? Level 40s should be picking up rank 2 and 3 enchantments and sticking them in their armor (if they haven't been upgrading their equipped enchantments to rank 3 and 4 or even 5), having a rank 1 in gear that level is just stupid.
The PWI info-fox formerly known as Mayfly - Dreamweaver
Can you still just drag and drop new enchants over the old ones (destroying the old ones)? Coz that's what I'd do if I had (for some reason) a R1 in level 40 gear.
Under the current system with my new chars, I've been enchanting items since stuff with slots for them started dropping. Even with the large number of times I've switched gear, unslotting and reslotting enchants is quite affordable. Their gold keeps growing all the time. Honestly, there's no reason not to enchant things now. The refining system works pretty well while leveling, it's only the blue marks that cause a bottleneck.
That largely echos my experience with the new system. I'm not playing completely as a new player as I've mailed some items from my existing characters to my new one, which means I have more gold and more kits. Otherwise it seems to work pretty well, just mark availability. Which is a shame as the initial preview description suggested that they would be readily available and we shouldn't need to purchase them. Perhaps that changed when the upfront AD cost for refining got removed.
The recent UI change is an improvement as well. It's solved a couple of annoyances I observed during preview that made the system a little clunky to use.
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Blue marks are only supposed to drop in end-game instances (epic dungeons, Sharandar and Dread Ring mini-dungeons) so not finding any by level 48 doesn't mean much (and if you have the AD, the blue marks of potency are available from the Bazaar. Pricy, but available to all. It's the marks needed for artifact upgrade that are really the sticking point, all else is available.
Allegedly they now drop from nodes in L60 content (so solo dungeons in sharandar etc) so this should hopefully be less onerous.
Dreadful system.
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With the same frequency as other rare materials? You might find one in your whole time to 60.
BUT...they say dragon eggs drop in the game. The AH has them but I expect they come for the boxes people open.
Yeah, like those ultra rare epic purple marks that you never, ever find (apart from every dread ring dungeon). Rarity is not consistent.
I'd judge it unlikely that they actually intended to create an artificial bottleneck, I just don't think they're very good at forward planning. And it's been like..what, just over ten days? Give em time.
Why wouldn't you enchant your leveling gear? Especially now, when it costs probably 50 silver or less to unslot an enchant from mid-level gear.
(I'm guessing here, but the unslot cost varies based on enchant rank and gear level and rarity, with a max of 2.5 gold with epics and blue gems).
Actually, I'm finding that the unslotting costs are currently always less than what I get back selling the gear afterwards. I believe the cost is based on the level and rarity of the gear, and has nothing to do with the enchantment itself. (But removing an enchant from a level 60 blue is 1.5 gold, so it doesn't always remain under the recouped cost, just at the point when gold is a concern.)
So *not* enchanting your gear is kind of silly.
My approach though is to give levelling characters a rank 5 of each enchantment colour which they then get to use as a bucket for all their matching drops. Keeps the rank 1s and 2s cleaned right up.
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:rolleyes: You obviously don't understand the new system, and how much cheaper it is to unslot gems compared to the old system. There is absolutely no reason not to enchant your gear under the new system as you level up. Well, unless you're so cheap you can't part with a few copper or silver to remove the enchantment from your old gear to be able to put it in your new gear. I mean, it's not as if there's so much else you can use that gold for...
In the old system, your level 48 probably would have had no enchantments at all. Now it is trivial to unslot enchantments while leveling which in turn encourages using them in the first place. But, level 60 is still when you work on epic enchantments. It is one of the endgame grinds. You may have noticed that almost all epics are level 60 items.
Yes, you may face someone in PvP who is so wealthy and/or twinked out that they have epics at lower levels. But, that rarity existed in the old system too. And every part of PvE short of T2s (maybe) is doable with all blue gear and blue enchants.
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1. im using R5s in my lvl25 HR.
2. Not supposed to use R5 until lvl60? Really? why the hell would you ever think that?
3. The reason you never heard of anyone using R5s before mod2 was because of the crazy high AD cost to unslot them. Which was part of the reason that cryptic made the changes to the old system.
Back on topic, over all I think the single biggest mistake with the new system is the reagents. If they removed them from the system it would almost perfect.
1. Refine. It's clunky from excessive regents and ever increasing side items, the old 4 for 1 system was clean and cut and dried, yes there was a high fail rate ever more as you went up levels, but wards could compensate for that. Now you need 5 of this and 1 of that and 2 of those and 4 more of this or the other, it's confusing and frustrating, and you STILL have a ever increasing fail rate that you need to have wards for. And the stated reason for refining? Save bag space..not happening due to non-stacking! You always got one or the other enchant thats got 65% and the other 70% etc. so its still taking multi slots to hold the junk..oh and all those new regents just make it even worse
2. Slotting. Great concept, fail application. The old way cost a prohibitive amount of AD so nobody in the know was slotting anything they weren't willing to vend until they got to 60 gear and epics. The Dev's correctly percieved that it wasn't working as they intended so decided to go to a gold sink to unslot to encourage levelers to switch out and experiment..actually use those enchants and sort of level as you go as your gear does. Failed application..the cost of unslotting is based on gear unslotted from not the enchant, so you had a L40 gear with a L1 enchant in it? It's going to cost you so much in silver to unslot it that why bother? Vend it. What was achieved in getting folks to unslot....A GOLD SINK. Were does that gold go to? Is it lore based? Who is helping you unslot for a gold fee? Why even bother for a fee? Does it achieve ANYTHING game relevant other than eat gold? Remove the gold fee and let them switch out the hard won and much fiddled with enchants they have leveled up. That would really encourage experimentation and purpose driven slotting, bring out the TRUE power of enchants...going into a PvP match? pull out those enchants from your gear and spec for a more PvP friendly build, going into a dungeon? fit out for that! You a healer class and you solo a lot..well your enchants are going to be more DPS oriented aren't they...but what if you get a guild or friends that have you tag allong, wouldn't it be better to be a healer extrordinaire instead of a dpser...without a unslot fee maybe more support players coould be encouraged to do so!
/sarcasm off
Really, I want to know, what exactly is there any unslot fee for? All I'm seeing is a gold sink, maybe I'm missing something.
if they changed it so that all lv 60 resource nodes can do it, that's nice so that means any place in sharandar and dread, whether it is dungeon or regular map will drop it - That's an improvement.
Your not stuck running dungeons in this scenario, just realize you are going to have to loot about 60 nodes to get a 1 in 3 chance of the flavour you want since there seem to be 3 ( or 5) falavours of regeants. power, union, stability, potency. _ not: it's he potency one that seems to be the most necessary for all upgrades, other are artifact specific I think.
What are you doing with a rank 1 enchantment in a piece of level 40 gear? Level 40s should be picking up rank 2 and 3 enchantments and sticking them in their armor (if they haven't been upgrading their equipped enchantments to rank 3 and 4 or even 5), having a rank 1 in gear that level is just stupid.
The recent UI change is an improvement as well. It's solved a couple of annoyances I observed during preview that made the system a little clunky to use.