Self Found is a quite established expression, but I know that a lot of people have quite different definition of what Self Found playstyle is.
The two most common definitions are:
Self Found means no trading, simple as that. If you dressed your new character in legendary items you farmed with another character then it’s still counts as self found. If you got said item via trading then it’s not self found.
Self Found means no twinking. If your character makes use of the gear that was farmed with another character of yours then it’s not self found. Usually it also implies no trading with others, even if the item you trade away was farmed with character in question. Using components or crafting recipes you found with another character still counts as self found.
The third, albeit quite rare, definition excludes even usage of shared components and recipes. If it doesn’t emulate the experience of starting the game anew then it doesn’t count as self found.
So, how do you personally define the term “Self Found”? As one of these variants, or somehow else?
But I think all of them are fine (Well, I think every form of gameplay is fine, too). I myself, when I say I play self-found for the first two difficulties, literally just live off the ground on each character all throughout Elite, with one exception: I’ll use components ONLY for the Loghorrean fight. I don’t mind if others have the other opinions offered, though, as those still feel “self-found” to me, too.
In my opinion, “self-found” is an abstract challenge that is created in player’s mind thus anything that helps to player shouldn’t be labeled as self-found…so third option is only valid definition for me. Otherwise it would not be a imaginary challenge that player wants to achieve.
I tend to keep things simple so self found for me means that I found it (droped it or made it) in game, no trade, no third party programs.
Also I, personally, think that using available, legit, in game mechanic like sharing sharable items between your characters does not affect or interferes with terms of ˝self found˝.
I use the first definition because I don’t play mp or trade. I, Pickle, as a person, have personally found every item that my characters have access to so they are all “self found”.
As for the second definition, if people enjoy playing with the extra challenge then that’s great. You should play the game in whatever way makes it fun for you. Personally, I think the loot system in GD is way too shitty to add such a severe restriction.
Voted first option, it’s what I do most of the time. To add difficulty I will sometimes add more restrictions like the other options, when I’m bored with how strong a character is for example.
Trading is out because if I did that, there’s no way to know that the other guy didn’t just spawn that item with a third party tool. I could do that myself, but that’s the way I ruined TQ for myself, so I do neither.
The character Kralw I did play was Self-Found till level 60. He did find everything he was using.
Most of my character are using stuff I found with previous character and in some case even their end-game stuff has been found by myself but I did lot of trade and it isn’t everything that I own that was found by myself. So I am not generally playing Self-Found.
When I play self-found, then I only use items and materials I found with this char. I might break this rule, when it requires me to farm for some specific crafting mats like Kilrian’s Shattered Soul or Salazar’s Sovereign Blade, so that I do not level up from the extra grind. Otherwise I wait until I have found less rare mats or farm them. I make full use of my library of blueprints.
I think the third definition is more accurate, but components are so ubiquitous and it’s such a pain to keep track of which recipes were unlocked by which character that the second one gets my vote just for practical reasons.
Option 2. I don’t really trade so that matters little to me and as for 'prints/components I think they are OK to save /have, and in the case of 'prints I’m to lazy to go delete the file everytime I make a character so why bother.
I went for option 3 since the first two involve trading with other characters, even if they are your other characters. 1 & 2 mean the character you’re playing as hasn’t found the gear themself, so it can’t be self found. At least that’s how it works out in my head.
I think that option 1 is most popular because that’s what most people (myself included) do, and self found is a nice label to put on your build.
Option 1 for me. I see “self” as meaning “me, myself, the person” rather than “me as the in-game avatar I control”.
I do tend to play new characters following the Option 2 rules though - at least up until Lv75, at which point I shower Legendaries upon them as if all their Christmases have come at once.
I honestly didn’t realise people felt so differently about this - I figured most would have thought the same way I did. :eek:
And I see self as the toon…strange, I wonder if this has anything to do with people coming from an SP- versus MP-based gaming background. As a SP player, self meaning me seems redundant. The concept of my toon wearing something that a different human being found with their toons is utter foreign to me.
In my mind self-found would best correspond to option3, where you only use what that specific character has found.
For practical reason, I tend to play new characters with option 2, in order to see how far I can push a build without using gear dropped on other characters.
If there was an option to enable a full self-found character - where shared stash would be disabled and all the recipes would be stored in that character save directly, I would definitely play it more than the rest.
After playing many “end-game” builds, using gear farmed on other characters in Crucible or else, I realized I enjoy the journey to create a character a lot more than the end-build itself.
And the fact of using the character’s own drop makes every new item a lot more valuable, thus making the leveling experience all the more interesting and rewarding.
Pretty much why I made this thread. When a build is said to be self found I expect it to be able to smoothly progress and be able to farm it’s own gear in a reasonable time. If it can’t then I could care less about the source of gear - other character, trading or even cheating.
I’m rather surprised that 2nd option is the least favoured and 3rd option has quite a bit of support.
I’m definitely more of an SP player myself too, so it might not be that. I think it could be more a case of the genre as a whole these days having something of a focus on trading - it’s a pretty huge thing in PoE, and D3 definitely started off on that foot with the whole auction house thing (though I don’t know how popular trading is there these days now that it’s gone). Even if Grim Dawn is an SP game at heart, with the genre being the way it is and there being plenty of people who talk about trading on the forums, trading in ARPGs almost feels like “the norm” for me.
I suppose that saying self-found to mean “me, the player” is my way of differentiating myself from what I perceive as the genre-wide standard. Whether I’m actually “right” to perceive it that way…who knows. All I know now is that whenever I see somebody else say “self-found” on the forums, I ain’t gonna be 100% sure what exactly they mean anymore.
When I talk about whether or not my actual characters found stuff themselves or if they’re using things that another character of mine picked up first, I’ll generally go with twinked/untwinked. Would people who voted options 2 or 3 use self-found and untwinked interchangeably, then? Though I suppose even the terms twinked and untwinked could have several different definitions, come to think of it. :rolleyes:
Interesting, I also use the term. I would even be able to use them together such as “This toon will be self found until level 50 when I twink in that purple 2hander.”
I think the poll options even suggest confusion about the terms. “but components and recipes are okay”? That lost me, leading me to go option 3.
It is just such a personal preference issue really, I was mad when components from stash could be used to complete a shrine cause I felt it trivialized the shrine. But on the other hand, I was also mad when reading blueprints in MP no longer let all party members learn the recipe, as I thought it was really cool to collect them and then party up and learn. Even one person can have contradictory feelings in regards to what is permitted and what spoils the game.
