Battered Shells and Frozen Hearts are still a real issue for me when trying to build characters.
Since many important components rely on them and neither are quickly farmable what happens is I always end up not having any and then rather then going out and finding some by playing the game (because they’re so slow to gather) I end up loading up every character in my list and scavenging any incomplete components or hoping that they have old gear pieces with related components I can break down (silk swatches, bloody crystals, resilient plates, tainted hearts etc.).
This seems to happen a lot more often than not and it turns ‘upgrade sessions’ into a far more time consuming slog then seems necessary. I have a fairly recent new levelled 94 char just sitting around because I don’t have the Shells/Hearts to gear it and can’t face re-running the same area (Dermapteran Hive) for hours to get them.
After a Hive run if I’m lucky I’ll have like, two complete components. To fully gear a char from scratch I could need anything from 16 to 20+.
Frozen Hearts don’t seem to drop anywhere specific and I mostly convert Battered Shells into them if I need to.
Even though I’ll blow through Ugdenblooms, Cthonic Seals and Aether Crystals rapidly I don’t complain about those because I can go out and reliably farm a decent amount in not too long of a time. Ugdenblooms and Crystals I can get also by doing the roguelikes which is an extra bonus.
So it would be nice if these components either dropped more frequently or the components relying on them required fewer shells and hearts to complete.
It also might be good if roguelikes, SR and Crucible had the chance to drop the odd stack of any of the components mentioned above, Blooms, Crystals, Seals, Hearts, Shells (like 5-10).
Most important farming route for altoholics: tomb of korvaak (seals), dermapterean hive (battered shells), warden’s cellar (aether crystals), ugdenbog (ugdenblooms) with the occasional undercity (kilrean’s soul)… Dungeons? Not worth.
I mention the roguelikes because for aether crystals I usually run to the door of Port Valbury which gets about 30-35. Doing Port Valbury itself is just something I’d do for a change of scenery and gets another 20 or so. Ugdenbog sure I have a route I run to get the stumps for normal farming and you don’t get as many from the Roguelike but at least it drops a few if you feel like doing something different so thought it worth mentioning.
I def run only Tomb of Korvaak though to get seals. Running other zones (like Blood grove through Village to Karoz) takes too long for what you get.
Nice proposal. It’s always strange to see rare components need each other for crafting them. Also some components are used in multiple recipes and same time they tend to drop from very few locations.
I really like the idea to add a generous pile of important reagents to the rewards for roguelike dungeons. I’d recommend to add the same to nemesis troves.
Overall I like the feeling of gradual iteration and improvement on a character after hitting the level cap but before you have final gear and components, but it takes much, much, much too long. I’ve spent more than 3 hours grinding battered shells, aether crystals and ugdenblooms for the spellbreaker I’m playing right now, and it’s seriously tempted me to just start another character and give up on this one, even though I really like playing it. I can’t imagine ever trying different gear, because I’d have to spend hours grinding components again.
Making nemeses and roguelikes fairly quick grinding spots for crafting components would make the grind more challenging, more fun and faster. It would be a huge improvement on a very boring stage in a character’s development. Please implement this, and don’t be too conservative with drop rates to begin with, at least until people give feedback that farming crafting components is trivial!
Battered Shells are ridiculous. I started from scratch lately and this is the very thing that killed it for me. I’m not playing GD to spend 50% time in one location.
It would be fine if not the fact EVERYTHING in GD is made of Battered/Frozen.
Also to the list: Ancient Armors. Fuckers can’t even be targeted - when they’re out they’re out, Game Over.