There is a grand total of... (in regards to loot)

[Petrify]

Zero monsters that are worth killing for their items, other than peerless's (waste of time) and champ spawn bosses (too infrequent). Even with luck their is nothing worth killing, I mean go kill 50 ancient wyrms with 1700 luck and see what you get. Odds are you won't even get close to anything as good as val runic armour. I'm not sure if the problem lies in luck or in that their is nothing worth killing. In my opinion the problem lies with the minimum intensities, currently the only thing worth doing for loot (other than Bods) is strongboxes. Why? Because it's minimum intensity is 75% (or 76%). This basically means if you roll hit chance or defense chance the minimum it's going to roll is 11%, so on the odd occasion you do get a weapon with hit chance, you know it's going to be high.

Monsters on the other hand have the tendency to be completely random in terms of luck (e.g with 1.4k luck you'll get 1 fire resist sometimes then 15 others), which leads me to believe that luck determines how high the maximum intensity is rather than the minimum. I purpose that a new looting system should work something like this:

1. Luck: Luck should determine the minimum intensity of the items off of the monster; 1400 luck should provide about a 60% minimum intensity. However the minimum intensity cannot exceed the monsters maximum (nor should it be above 75) which is determined further on.

2. Fame and Karma: The fame and karma of a monster determines:
A. The amount of items which a monster drops. E.g: An ancient wyrm would drop roughly 10 items, a minimum of 3 weapons, 3 jewels and 3 pieces of armour. Peerless bosses will drop at least 30 items.
B. The maximum intensity. E.g An ancient wyrm has a maximum intensity of 100%, a long with Barlons, ML mini bosses, peerless bosses, greater dragons and other high end monsters. A Ogre on the other hand would have a maximum 30% intensity, a mongbat would have a maximum 10% intensity.

However, with this new system monsters towards the high end of the spectrum should have their health increased, they should do no more damage than normal, nor should they do anymore special moves or anything but most definitely don't increase the health of any of the tamable pets (to keep the balance in order).

By adding in this system not only will you remove the problem of people duping val hammers to create items which are quite literally impossible to get by PvM, but you will also add a reward for PvM. I mean be honest, when was the last time you killed an ancient wyrm for the loot? And when was the last time you got something good off of a monster other than a peerless?

 

[Farsight]

I can't argue with your conclusions.

But I still find it worth checking out items on most monsters, which is a significant waste of time in the long run. The last non-jewelery item I looted that I still use is a -22 mage weapon spell channeling kryss with DCI. I got that from a demon in Nov 2007 (Magincia).

My jewelery all comes from strong box quests (except for one ring which I bought from someone who did a strong box quest).

My barely-adequate ornate axe came from a solo peerless run over a year ago.

Good items as monster loot seem to be more rare than marties, arties or even set-pieces.

On the other hand, I wouldn't want loot-items to be better than crafted gear.

 

[Petrify]

On the other hand, I wouldn't want loot-items to be better than crafted gear.

In theory it can't be. You can always craft things like leafblades of ease to ALWAYS get usbw. Thus 6 mods. Not to mention if monsters can have a maximum of 75% minimum intensity then it still cannot be better than a val runic hammer which has a minimum of 85% and if you did get a good piece of armour then you would still have to first of all: Roll leather, otherwise it's worthless, and secondly successfully enhance it.

 

[HD2300]

Runics >>>> PvM loot now because it is an incentive for BOD scripters to open additional accounts to collect BODs. Valorite runics are scripted just like BRKs. They cost more, because they require more BODs to get.

It is sad that real players are getting the shaft, but I believe EA thinks currently subscribers are so addicted whatever happens they will just keep paying.

Who does the BOS nerf benefit? Who does the LJ and Mining nerf benefit? It is what it is.

 

[hawkeye_pike]

How about the idea that
monsters would gather loot and keep it?
I was thinking of:

• Monsters killing other monsters (like in the Terathean Dungeon) and keep their loot.
• Monsters killing players and keep a part of their insurance.

This way, monsters that survive longer could have more loot on them.

 

[Petrify]

Then they would just have lots of bad loot...

 

[Maplestone]

Putting all desirable items on higher and higher end creatures means that the only creatures people will interact with less and less of the world - powergames can be almost as bad to the economy as scripters.

No matter how good the gear dropped, after you've loot a hundred of that creature, it won't be much good any more. You can't have an endgame based on greater and greater loot and keep it feeling like you're always getting something worthwhile.

Perhaps we need to start backing off high-end PvM (or any grinding system for rares) being the source of all that is good - make it more about rares and decorative rewards/titles, than high-end gear? Keep the masses of loot, but make it all useful recycling (coming with imbuing). Scatter more ingrediants / system-starting-items across all tiers of creatures. If you flatten the curve to getting the things characters "must" have to be fully developed, you remove much of the reward for scripting and powergaming.

 

[Connor_Graham]

Zero monsters that are worth killing for their items, other than peerless's (waste of time) and champ spawn bosses (too infrequent).

The only reason people feel things aren't worth killing is because their equipment is already at a point where the intensities on each piece of armor and every weapon is already at 85-100%, with 3-5 properties each. What's considered to be a lootable piece by someone that's been playing for 5 yrs for several hours a day and another that's only had a few hours a week over the course of that same 5 yrs will be completely different. There are plenty of people that find lootable items on the creatures you named, and find them to be improvements on items they already possess.

 

[Turdnugget]

Lower end monsters should have more mediocre loot for those starting the game out.

It sucks trying to find halfway decent armor/weapons w/out paying a lot of money. Especially if you're training, actually fighting monsters to gain skill/loot. You'd think it'd actually be nice to end up with a halfway decent weapon as the end result and not just a pile of gold.

 

[Moreeg]

It sucks trying to find halfway decent armor/weapons w/out paying a lot of money.

This is my biggest complaint on returning to UO. I dont know what happened in the time I was gone that made a person with 5 million gold be considered poor, but I seriously dont know what I could possibly do to become financially viable in this game... short of hours and hours of grinding or buying gold.

This is complicated by the game having become completely item based. Then Im told that I shouldnt buy the item I just found and finally found at a good price, because its probably a dupe...

 

[Prince Caspian]

I always thought it would be neat to design one artifact for every (EVERY) monster in the game, one that had a 1 in 1000 chance of dropping (regardless of luck).

When I farm in UO, I farm efreets in Ilsh. They are far from the most profitable monster to farm in the game, but there are two perks that make it more interesting.

Daemon Bone Armor -- Yes, its pretty much moot, it's not much in the way of functional armor, and its hardly rare. But the fact of the matter is the Helmet is rare (in perspective)... so the fact that a Helmet might turn up keeps the treasurehunting excitement.

Paragon Chests and Arties -- Yeah, again, they are tired and we've been there done that. But the fact is, they still break up the monotony, they make the farming a little spiced up when a para appears.

These perks aren't really much, but they stop it from being so mind-numbingly boring. There needs to be more than just gold drop.

 

[Petrify]

Putting all desirable items on higher and higher end creatures means that the only creatures people will interact with less and less of the world - powergames can be almost as bad to the economy as scripters.

The problem right now is NOBODY is interacting with creatures in the first place, plain and simple monsters are just an annoyance with no reward.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

The only loot I have picked up in a LONG time has been loot that can be utilized in a "resource" type of fashion, thus I pick up all metal items for either resmelting or filling junk BODs, and fight monsters that either have alternate loot tables (i.e. ant lions), or drop a decent amount of junk iron. As stated above, Runics >>> loot, so might as well make use of the junk as I can.

We need MUCH less quality and better overall quality. It would be a MUCH better system to only get a few magic items over the course of a night of hunting with them being more cohesive in terms of mods, and better quality overall.

With the amount of crap dropped just in general in PvM, it makes one of the big purposes of Treasure Hunting completely moot (in that T chests when they came out had MANY more items than you would generally get in the course of normal PvM).

Loot needs a HUGE revamp IMO.

 

[Draxous]

The problem is item insurance.

If loot was reasonable... with-in a couple months everyone would have every item they ever wanted for their suits.

Item insurance is what's killed the economy. Items players get and use never leave (unless the player trashes it/closes acct.) so what point is there to making monster hunting worth while? In a couple months people will start pancakes that there isn't anything left to do.

I'd suggest this:

Get rid of item insurance.

Revamp item intensities so that loot off of ettins is USEABLE and ALL loot from bosses is godly (max prop/max intensities for every item the boss drops)

allow crafters to CUSTOMIZE and pick/choose the properties on the items they make. Allow no-runic and GM+ crafters to make 3 properties at max intensities and in order to get 5... u need a runic.

Make the items flow more fluid...


Which is pretty much the major problem on Siege. While we are set up in this manner... the item property and loot system really holds the shard back.

I've been lobbying for years to fix PvM and loot on Siege... and I tell you where is the best place to perfect this idea? Hint: Siege.

Once Siege is perfected with the loot drops... remove insurance from all the other shards and watch the economy go back to normal... with you know, crafters crafting and monster hunters... hunting.

Not just powergamers and businesses trying to turn a buck hording the item market like we have now.

 

[Magnus]

The problem with loot isn't the monsters, its the system. Mainly AoS. There is just too many variables to get on an item, and it takes high intensties on most of them to make it worthwhile. We need something simpiler like AR, because that way it was worth picking up stuff and it truly let much more customizablity.

 

[Azmira Zalof]

What's considered to be a lootable piece by someone that's been playing for 5 yrs for several hours a day and another that's only had a few hours a week over the course of that same 5 yrs will be completely different. There are plenty of people that find lootable items on the creatures you named, and find them to be improvements on items they already possess.

Ok, so there is nothing worth looting for people that actually play the game. The argument still stands that there isn't anything worth hunting. I stopped hunting years ago, only thing worth doing is peerless with high luck (and that's reaaal hit/miss) or strongbox quests. Do people still hunt plain monsters?

 

[hawkeye_pike]

Get rid of item insurance.

Revamp item intensities so that loot off of ettins is USEABLE and ALL loot from bosses is godly (max prop/max intensities for every item the boss drops)

allow crafters to CUSTOMIZE and pick/choose the properties on the items they make. Allow no-runic and GM+ crafters to make 3 properties at max intensities and in order to get 5... u need a runic.

Make the items flow more fluid...

remove insurance from all the other shards and watch the economy go back to normal... with you know, crafters crafting and monster hunters... hunting.

That is almost exactly what I am preaching for months. I totally agree!
Quote from one of my articles:

• Abolish runic crafting (it is an annoying, unimaginative and boring!), or limit it to low level runics which are easy to get.
• Make ALL artifacts craftable. Crafting high-end equipment should not require mindless boring repetitive tasks, but legendary skill and special ingredients. Allow reward artifacts only in rare exceptions (like earrings, talismans, shoes, jewelry, sashes as event rewards), and make sure those exceptions are useful but not too powerful.
• To make crafting a more challenging and interesting, make it more random (to avoid ingredient farming) and more adventure-like (as an example, see a previous column New Craftables Discovered).
• Limit insurance to 5 insured items per character. As all items can be crafted now, they can be replaced with not too insane an effort. You still could insure your favorite weapon and talisman.

What's not (yet) in my list is the topic of monster loot. Monster loot should be rewarding, but not predictable. I like the idea of a better monster AI, where the loot of a monster increases/improves the more players/creatures a monster killed.

 

[Vyal]

Actually there is still one, Coil has not been loot nerfed beleive it or not. Thrasher has been, Swoops loot is still terrible. I remember when Thrasher had items like Coil and you could kill about 60 per minute and get so much barbed hides and so many marty drops like totem of the void and so on.

Coild is to stupid however, constant mortals or DP's every time.. It's like it doesn't use mana to perform specials.

Now I go there kill a hundred I have yet to get a marty and the loot is terrible.

I think the best wep I got was a sc -mage 100% poison dagger from it.



Show some luv to the named mobs maybe?

 

[Heartseeker]

I would like the idea of monster loot to be totally random.

By that I mean that you could get any item on any monster.

Lower end monsters would have a low percentage chance, but it would still make it viable to hunt them.

Random power scrolls, arties and good craftable items, 1 in a 1000 or so.

Would be a lot of fun to kill lower end stuff and get a interesting item.

 

[Connor_Graham]

Do people still hunt plain monsters?

Yes. The people that play the game to have fun. If you're not playing for fun, then what are you playing for?

 

[Lord Patapon]

...


We need MUCH less quality and better overall quality. It would be a MUCH better system to only get a few magic items over the course of a night of hunting with them being more cohesive in terms of mods, and better quality overall.

Loot needs a HUGE revamp IMO.

I totally agree with your post !

 

[hawkeye_pike]

Yes. The people that play the game to have fun. If you're not playing for fun, then what are you playing for?

90% of the people are playing for items.
Which basically means, to them, items are fun.

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

I have never really understood why most monsters have loot to begin with.

Why would a dire wolf, or Bake Kitsune be carrying around a pack full of gear that humans use?

It makes no sense. Ever see a slime in a provisioner shop buying things?

But with all that said, I agree. The loot system we have now is wasteful. If I collected every piece of loot off of every monster I killed, the pile of crap would make most IDOCs look sparse.

Up the gold monsters carry, then lower the chance of getting an item to say 1 in a 100, and then make Luck a factor in determining the intensities on the item that drops...but make the item better than what we get now.

This might actually get some people back into the dungeons instead of just farming arties and peerless drops.

 

[Tina Small]

Why would a dire wolf, or Bake Kitsune be carrying around a pack full of gear that humans use?

It makes no sense. Ever see a slime in a provisioner shop buying things?

Quite a few monsters (including dire wolves) don't carry any loot.

I always assumed that non-humanoid monsters ingest the loot when they kill a humanoid or come upon a corpse, humanoid or otherwise, and that the humanoid monsters use a backpack or a sack to carry around the junk we find on their corpses.

I also always figured that the main reason for the number of items (not their quality, however) on most corpses is to serve as a distraction that further increases the challenge of hunting stuff. You have the trade-off of just grabbing the gold and maybe staying alive a little better or taking your time to look through stuff and maybe find something worthwhile, at the risk of getting clobbered (or yelled at by guildmates) in the process.

I would prefer things pretty much stay as they are rather than make it too easy for folks, because then they will complain even more about being bored and having little reason to hunt.

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

Quite a few monsters (including dire wolves) don't carry any loot.

Ha! I guess you are right! It's been so long since I actually bothered to check a dire wolf for loot that I didn't even realize they stopped having loot.

I know they did back in the old days.

I wouldn't want to see the game get 'easier' either. I just think that we have a lot of items in the game as it is, and spawning even more of them seems like a bad idea.

But I see your point.