So I finally beat Gargabol on ultimate, and as a quest reward Mogdrogen gives me a Soldier shield that I can’t even use… b/c I’m playing a 2H Shaman. Starting to see a pattern here with really difficult quests and tasks that NPC’s give, the quest rewards end up not even being usable, or I guess technically usable but has tons of stats for other classes/masteries, just not the one your char is playing. :furious:
This mechanic is frustrating and stupid. It’s taken me at least 20 tries to beat Gargabol and after seeing the reward I feel like it was hardly worth it. For as hard as some of these quests are (Anasteria gives some tough ones too, esp. if you’re a new player) shouldn’t the reward be something that makes you go “oh, hey this might work with my build” instead of “gee, thanks for the vendor trash”??
I hate to complain but I’m really annoyed and don’t understand why quest rewards can’t be USEFUL.
You just get a totally random item. There’re many items in this game, and likely only one set for your build, therefore you think it’s bad design or anything. Also, quests are not the only way of obtaining items.
I never cared about items that npcs give to you for free. I have a very interesting mind set, where I never trust in what item I get by someone (npc). I played many, many games, where quest rewards were only helper items, e.g. provided stats good enough to survive but dropped items always provided more of them.
This game, as every other ARPG (or most of them), is focused on farming, as a end game “ritual” (:P). Legendaries, on ultimate, drop fairly often. You can do rogue dungeons (Broken Hills, Necropolis, Port Valbury, Ancient Grove) for one guaranteed legendary drop (although I experienced it’s not that guaranteed as I sometimes, very rarely, don’t get a legendary drop).
Long story short, don’t get hyped after you see item reward after doing a quest.
There’s that randomness, true, but even though it’s like other games do, havin reward to choose from traditional warrior/mage/rogue choices could be helpful.
My pet peeve about quest rewards is the lack of dupe-checking for Origin of the Slith. I’d hoped that quest would fairly quickly (over several alts) fill out all the level 18 and 25 relic recipes - nope! All dupes, every time. Finally got Squall from a dynamite chest four months later to finally finish the set… :mad:
The issue is, there are no classes like that in GD. One item can be both, to a “warrior” or a “mage” (non-caster or fighter, however you want to call it, and caster) item.
You will say “Then they could make it so you choose between masteries”, yes they could. Problem is, most items don’t give mastery bonuses at all (chest, medal, ring, glove, boots, pants, shoulders).
“Smart loot”, like we know it from Diablo 3, simply doesn´t work in Grim Dawn.
There are too many different mastery combinations. They game couldn´t possible “know” what build you have and what item you might find useful.
So we have to take what we get and see how to make it work. Also some grinding and trading. You know, ARPG style…
yeah, I’m mostly farming and trading sometimes, just kinda got fed up today after finally beating this quest from Mogdrogen. Then thinking about all the other times I got a trash reward from an npc. I know it doesn’t work like D3 does but that sure would be nice, lol
I have played on character throughout all quests, and all three levels, and all special quests. In playing, I’ve found all one-shot chests.
Let me first say that I find the mechanics fun. But mechanics are not everything.
During the actual campaign, I can honestly say the none of the quest rewards were actually useful for my Pyro/burn character.
Yes, I did find a variety of greens and eventually useful drops throughout the game and after completing the game and vigorously farming (probably a thousand runs) I did find some nice final gear.
So I suspect quest rewards are from a limited pool, and my RNG was poor. Based on how many of certain Legendaries I found in the farming run, I often wonder if the random-seed needs a fix or if the drop list is limitied in cases too.
However…
I originally thought, wow! this is fun and I think I’ll do Hardcore. But after seeing the length you need to go to just…get…something…practical for the current character= Nope. I really am not a fan of creating a farming character first. Note practical to me does not mean BiS. Just something appropriate for the level.
Why can’t quest rewards be something useful to the class combination. Even if it is just a green!
To be blunt, it hinted at lazy reward design (aka diablo 1) and soured me on trying other combos from scratch.
I’ve not used grim tools for items, but I certainly would not fault anyone for doing so to avoid wasting time on thousands of runs purely for items. Many of the proposed build guides do just that to promote their ultimate build.
I dunno - I’ve done a couple of playthroughs of vanilla (Pre AoM) entirely self-found, without even much farming. The only thing I’ve found myself farming are components, and that’s three runs at most.
The crafting system in GD definitely lets you fill in gaps. You also can’t be afraid to respec a few times - when you find all those Forcewave and/or ABB items, sometimes it’s best to roll with it.
That’s good. But it really has nothing to do with the topic, which is quest rewards that are appropriate.
If quest rewards are not, the quests might as well reward xp at the moment the quest is complete and not bother with the return to sender/item reward for the story-line.
Quest rewards that are ‘appropriate’. By appropriate, we’re talking talking about an item reward that has a better chance of fitting into your class or build, right?
To what end, exactly? My point was that you don’t need class specific items to finish main content, because the crafting system is quite robust. Having ‘practical’ rewards as quest items would make the crafting system obsolete. You don’t have to farm for items to complete the game - it’s something you chose to do.
There are a wide variety of quests, and a wide variety of rewards for them. E.g., the reward for ‘Burn the Taken’ is a solid caster off-hand (or dagger), especially on your first or second playthrough - if you have a caster that wants an off-hand. There are similar rewards all throughout the game, fixed ‘MI’ type rewards that can fill gaps in your equipment. Point being, some quest rewards are good class rewards, depending on your class. And there are enough of them that you will find something good on a playthrough. Save the rest for Altitis!
Personally it motivates me to skip the first 2 difficulties if I make an alt and just start ultimate with some trainer like GD stash to estimate the leg-work of xp and shrines to that point.
I’ve been using GDItemAssistant to basically record what kind of numbers and drops of blue+ and MIs on those farming runs. So its not like I don’t have a ridiculous amount of items to outfit an alt build.
However, knowing the chances are pretty bad at getting quest rewards and it will be the same RNG search…meh. the middle game loses all interest. An appropriate quest reward to your class combo -whcih could be a green with some particular skill or % that you have…would be more motivating to do the first two over and over. In terms of game flow and repetition.
It’s not thrilling to constantly get reward class items of unrelated distinct builds such as pet items for soldier builds, just as an example. Even if I’ve luckily found better prior to that, at least it is tailored.
I think since they went the extra mile to do a HC mode, the rewards could have been slighlty tweaked to also promote self-found fun for repeat running of the campaign. Or include the option to simply skip the first 2 if a farming/sharing build is so inherent to the design.
It’s RNG, deal with it. Also, how would the system know which exact items to give for your build? What if you are a Demo + Soldier using Fire Strike, but then get a legendary Grenado item? And what if the system tracked what skills you picked and get an item for it? What would stop anyone for abusing this system by literally respeccing out of one skill and spec into another, so that you can get an item that supports another skill?
My point is smart loot in any capacity doesn’t work in this game because of how many builds each mastery combo can have. And also, they are not gonna add green items of all things to these quest rewards.
@medea fleecestealer Thanks for the thread and I read it.
Hmm. That’s a bit more tailored than I was thinking of, but I can see it’s a lot of work for that.
I was thinking more of a tailored green, in that: check a few things on the sheet then pick a prefix and suffix suitable for the level and with those in mind. But peeps like their purples, I guess.
[In my experience, half a dozen farm runs give more purples than the entire quest rewards. So I’m not so dedicated to quest reward purples personally - but no matter.]
Alright. I can accept that.
On the other tangent, but related to the gameplay flow:
Code-wise, it would not be hard to add an option to skip the first 2 difficulties if campaign has been previously completed on ultimate:
If exists character @ ultimate, then add option: start on ultimate difficulty with certain xp and devotion points. No gear.
Not gonna happen. And have fun fighting Ultimate enemies with -50% resistance. You won’t totally die constantly :rolleyes:
Ultimate is balanced with you already having gear obtained from the previous difficulties. And no, the “you don’t need to use it” excuse doesn’t work because stuff like this actually takes work. Work has to be repaid by a lot of people using it. Dev time is based on priorities.
