Low Level Currencies/Seals - Exactly why they are broken and how to fix them

mentaltelepathy · May 2014

After leveling 10 characters, I decided on this next one, I would use the currencies I had saved up on all 10 characters to buy gear using those bounty vendors. I thought, SURELY, there would be enough currency to gear this character out during the entire leveling experience with 10 characters worth of currencies that were never once turned in to the bounty NPCs. Right?

I mean, look... they can barely even all fit. lol

So I'm looking for the seal vendor (they really should all have an extra tab on the bounty guys to buy the seal gear - come on) and I find some gear and write down the cost.

Cowl of the Concentration - 10 Lion Seals
Eldritch Gloves - 10 Lion Seals
Cord of Restraint - 8 Lion Seals
Adept's Wraps - 12 Lion Seals

Okay, so just for these items, it's 40 Lion Seals. Right? So I go back to the Bounty guy in Neverdeath Graveyard.

To buy 1 Seal of the Lion, I need 20 Necromatic Sigils. I have a whoppin 329 of these things saved up.

Wait... hold it right there! I can only buy ONE THING??? Ya... you got that right. Takes 200 Necromatic Sigils to get 10 Lion Seals to get ONE THING! LOL

So 10 characters worth of leveling... and I can only buy ONE THING.

Not only is it that ridiculous in cost that 10 characters being leveled could only buy ONE piece of gear, but the item that you could buy, had no utility slot!

And by the time you level 10 characters, you learn real fast that enchants are super helpful and that putting Azures on your utility slots gives you more experience while leveling. Like, if you don't figure that out by the 10th character, and you don't already have some enchants you can put on there, then you are playing the game wrong.

And what's crazy, I can't afford any of the seal items with the bounty items from LEVELING 10 CHARACTERS. lol

Devs... come on. That's broken. That's not just broken, why would anyone ever even do it? Or collect them? Honestly, just go look at your database and see how many people have bought low level items with seals. Go look. It's useless.

And it's such a cool thing in the game... or at least it could be. But you need to cut that cost down by a TENTH to make it even feasible.

Like, by the time you have enough currency items to buy ONE PIECE OF GEAR, you would have leveled to 60 over 10 times. lol Think about that please.

crazymikee · May 2014

the bounty items arent meant as a main source for the seals, only as an extra bonus i guess. doing the lower level dungeons gives you far more seals then if you were to go around collecting the bounty items for seals

mentaltelepathy · May 2014

I agree, but by the time you could get enough items, you would out level the gear you can buy.

crazymikee · June 2014

more like get two characters to lvl 60, if it dropped morethen that would be better i guess

eldarth · June 2014

+1,000% agree.

By the time you can afford one 10th level seal item, you are already at 60th.
What's the point of even having them in game?

ulviel · June 2014

More efficient way to use zone tokens is to buy those backpacks with random (usually green) items. And seal items? The only use I could think of is using them for gear transmutation, some of them look nice. If you have nothing to do with your AD that is.

And low lvl seal? I'd remove them altogether, nobody would miss them. If any, that would make people happier that they have less junk in their currency tab.

theskymoves · June 2014

Far be it from me to defend the whole bounty-for-seals things, but by my calculation, you have more than enough to buy 40 Lion Seals:

With bounties from all four 'Lion Seal zones':

17 (many arrows)
28 (blackdagger)
16 (necromantic)
29 (ashmadi)

= 90 Seals of the Lion

And for the sake of completeness:

7 (deathknell)
16 (grey wolf)
25 (blackdagger gold coin)
25 (mithral nugget)

= 73 seal of the manticore

26 (blue fire)
11 (lolth)
13 (ember shard)
10 (dwarf relic)

= 60 seal of the pegasus /pedantry

silverkelt · June 2014

any seal that doesnt get you a purple epic item you can salvage or isn't a lvl 60 item you can use for pvp, is pretty worthless. so hence the cost is too much. Any gear you get you will out-level in one day, so Im with the OP.. that amount of seals should get you full sets of armour for your entire leveling campaign.

I never even bothered looking at the system, I use green junk till im 60 then move on.

Sometimes when i died a couple times while leveling I have to remember to actually slot new stuff, as sometimes forget and use stuff like 30 levels old.

angrysprite · June 2014

Bounty vendors and the items they sell are Red Herrings: useless, except as a mental reinforcement in giving players the 'idea' and possibly hope they there is another method of obtaining any gear. That is their primary purpose (and it looks like a lot more loot is dropped when four of the five items dropped are bounty items) - it's a psychological excursive to help the player 'feel good' that they are reaping rewards for their effort.

I usually ignore bounty stuff and throw away the ones I accidentally pick up (have you noticed that bounty currency and lock boxes are picked up automatically, but you must press the F key to take anything else other than gold?)

I rest my case.

beckylunatic · June 2014

I consolidated bounty items when levelling my HR and used lion seal gear on him, and it was ok. Seal gear does tend to have unique skins and may be useful for transmuting your epic gear. One big disadvantage of it over ordinary drops on the lowbie stuff is the lack of enchantment slots. Plus you will outlevel it very quickly. Pegasus seals can give some really nice rings for TRs and HRs, not to be overlooked.

Edited again to remove something I read wrong.

djarkaan · June 2014

Again there should be a seal exchange merchant with a 100:1 ratio exchange for the next seal.

doriangreigh · June 2014

crazymikee wrote: »

the bounty items arent meant as a main source for the seals, only as an extra bonus i guess. doing the lower level dungeons gives you far more seals then if you were to go around collecting the bounty items for seals

I can't say I disagree but the problem I ran into, is it's hard to find people to run those dungeons with even the non epics tend to start failing after cragmire.

Another issue I had is that I tend to level past the dungeons long before getting enough seals to do anything with. I would have to play the game going through story to level tot he point you do the dungeon then stop playing and only do dungeons until I hit the level of the next dungeon and even at that rate I still tend to level before acquiring enough seals to do any good with.

The only productive dungeon runs are from DD events and most of the time while leveling from 0 - 60 I was rarely on during one of those and or was unable to get a group before the dungeon even time lapsed.

I get really tired of standing around asking people to run dungeons for like 2 hours to find a group willing to do one and most of those tend to fail for one reason or another. Even in a guild most players are in the elder game which means they don't really want to run through low level dungeons wasting their time.

At times this game does seem a bit hard to get decent groups with, especially at the non epic dungeon runs.

tinukeda · June 2014

I tend to think that the lower level seals (less than Pegasus?) are essentially useless.
And even more so the bounty items that lead to them.
Why does it take 5+ characters worth of work to come up with enough bounties to afford enough seals to gear 1 character (for all of the few hours that gear remains useful, too)?

And anyway, the leveling campaign is so facerollingly easy, there's no point to buying blue gear anyway. So that just leaves cosmetic purposes?

It seems to me that these mechanics were from early game design and haven't seen any TLC since then. They could sorely use a re-think; perhaps add some level appropriate potions to the bounty vendor?

And, on the subject of vendor stuff that needs attention: the Adrent Coin vendor could use some TLC too; none of the blue weapons are even remotely worth buying (maybe if they were free transmutes they would be) and the only thing worth saving for is the Angel. I would love to see a bit more usefulness fleshed into this market.

mentaltelepathy · June 2014

tinukeda wrote: »

And, on the subject of vendor stuff that needs attention: the Adrent Coin vendor could use some TLC too; none of the blue weapons are even remotely worth buying (maybe if they were free transmutes they would be) and the only thing worth saving for is the Angel. I would love to see a bit more usefulness fleshed into this market.

Good point. I agree totally.

Low Level Currencies/Seals - Exactly why they are broken and how to fix them

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