Can we lower the different types to 3 or 4? aka, leather, stone, metal, woodland? There are WAY too many types right now, I don't think it is being taken advantage of.
It is too far... Leather, studded, studded samurai.. hide, bone, plate, chain-mail, ring-mail, woodland -- all the gargish counter parts to these (stone, plate, etc) -- so that is 11 variations right there! and now 5 levels.. I know you can combine them, but some I actually want broken down, not combined up... and it takes a TON to actually move up (and speaking of combining.. I rather combine mallets to get high level mallets)This topic has been brought up several times before. Sometimes the developers just take an idea too far, and I think most players think the system is too complicated. But there has really been no response from the developers, so we don't know what they think.
Personally, I think there should just be 4 or 5 levels that work with any material type.
hehe you wrote and posted while I was doing the maths on mine. We ended up at roughly the same solution, get rid of the armor types altogether! Just make the deflect/reinforce work on anything with different levels.This topic has been brought up several times before. Sometimes the developers just take an idea too far, and I think most players think the system is too complicated. But there has really been no response from the developers, so we don't know what they think.
Personally, I think there should just be 4 or 5 levels that work with any material type.
Basically everything Miss Echo said. Especially the stuff in white.Dropping it to just
Woodland (wood)
Leather (leather, bone, hide)
Stone
Metal (ring, chain, plate, scale)
would have to be an improvement, with the 'types' applying to diff armors, so eg metal refinement can apply to both human and garg armor types. Woodland to any item made of wood etc.
Even so at this level it will STILL BE A PAIN as it would still require 8 types once you add in reinforced and deflecting.
Just make a refinement apply to ANY FLIPPING ARMOR TYPE.
and get rid of all the material types all together.
Much better to just have
Reinforcing refinement (that can be applied to ANY armor type to increase resist cap)
Deflecting refinement (that can be applied to ANY armor type to increase dci cap)
with the 5 existing levels def, pro, hard, fort, invul. That can then be applied to ANY type of armor. Even if you 'upped' the amount of each type you need to produce an upgrade it would be a useable system, ie
5 Reinforcing (defense level) = 1 protection
10 Reinforcing (protection level) = 1 hardening
15 Reinforcing (hardening levels) = 1 fortification
20 Reinforcing (fortification levels) = 1 Reinforcing (Invulnerability level).
Much simpler, 2 'types' (reinforcing, deflecting), 5 levels.
I know I for one would actually USE the system all the time if it was simplified. As it is now I am at the point where I am going to fully abandon it and just use the things for clean up points.
Refinements are just ±1 for one resist on a single piece, but that would be nicely flexible to have ±5 per resist per piece, with a ±6 maximum per resist for the character. It could be coded, but I don't know that the system is popular enough for the Devs to spend time. All I want them to do is improve the odds on getting the bonus mod! Invul is too hard to find to go to waste almost all the time.The difficulty is building a suit that has had refinements applied to it in conjunction with all the 'other' things you have to select, reforge, enhancing, imbuing etc, and trying to 'explain' it to someone else. Using the refinement is also not intuitive, I couldn't figure out how to take +5 points off say one resist eg poison on ONE piece, still not sure how to do it as I ended up taking -1 of phy, fire, energy, poison, cold on my pieces as couldn't work out how to get it to actually take off all 5 from the one resist. There is obviously a way to do it, but when I was using the refinement be buggered if I could 'figure' it out. Due to the scarcity of getting the invul ones when I made the suit (was long before they allowed you to upgrade') you didn't get second chances once you used them and because the reforge/enhancing was done before the refinements were applied you didn't get a second chance if you messed it up.
Perhaps second time around would be easier, but unless it is simplified there will never be a second time round for me
That is the "simpler" part of it. Like Miss Echo has said, there's a whole other gauntlet of crafting options to go through, on top of the process of actually farming the "refinements" themselves. Trying to explain that to a guy in general chat. There is no simple way to explain that. Do champion spawns save the wash/varnish/polish/etc keep the like types together and you can toss them in an amalgamator to enhance their potency. Spam in general chat that you're looking for certain ones and possibly get one or 2 of the ones you want/need every month, mostly because most folks tossed them on the floor at the bank soon after the whole system came about.Hrmm, I thought the Refinement System was quite simple... You Increase Resist Caps, while lowering Defense Chance Caps, or the other way around.
I eventually figured this out enough to improve my sampire suit quite a bit, but I also vote for simplifying the system. I sometimes think some of the developers must think, "These UO players are looking for ways to waste time, so let's make things more complicated so they can get their money's worth wasting even more time." And sometimes we do seem to enjoy just wasting time, if the path is clear and the payoff worth it. But in this case, the path is not clear without a whole lot of trouble and study, and the payoff is debatable, so it's obviously time to simplify. To be fair, though, the developers have simplified a lot of things in the game that used to be more complicated and time consuming, so maybe this.Can we lower the different types to 3 or 4? aka, leather, stone, metal, woodland? There are WAY too many types right now, I don't think it is being taken advantage of.
^^ What she said -- very well stated and put together.I agree this whole 'refinement' thing has been a total wash from the start and one of the most tedious and impractical systems ever introduced to UO. I have collected them, created a suit using them, and I sell them, VERY SLOWLY at invulnerable level.
Right now with all the different types it is just a HEADACHE. We have Woodland, Stone Garg, Dragon, Chain, Ring, Plate, Sam Plate, Garg Plate, Bone, Hide, Studded Leather, Studded Sam (12). It is a joke, and sure you can now at least combine them per level to get a 'greater' level. But basically to get from the lowest level 'Defense' to an 'Invul' you need:
2 def = 1 pro
3 pro = 1 hardening
4 hardening = 1 fort
5 fort = 1 invul
saying that
6 def = 3 pro
12 pro = 4 hardening
20 hardening = 5 fort
25 fort = 5 invul
I don't even want to figure out how many at defense level I would be needed to upgrade to end up with 5 invuls, it is beyond me. Totally moronic
and repeat repeat repeat again to get the 5 invuls you need to actually get a suit at MAX mods with the RNG.
I get a headache just working out how many I need to do the upscale as it is.
And then you need to get same 'type' on top of it. And we have 2 types per armor type, reinforced and deflecting. In total there are 24 'types' before we even start.
Even tho they changed it so you can 'upgrade' them the storage requirements for each type are still ridiculous you either need:
4 refinement amalgamator's per Type (so LOL 96 of the damn things - 960,000 clean up points) or
have one amalgamator and store the refinements til you have enough of a 'type' to upgrade, so potentially you could have waiting:
1 def
2 pro
3 hardening
4 fort
so a potential of up to 10 per 'type' while you wait for the ONE to upgrade to the next level, which would equate to 240 on hand while waiting with none to upgrade. Not including any invuls you have actually made and are storing, given you need a minimum of 5 per type to actually 'get' to making a suit that is another 120 if you just wanted to store ONE set of suit upgrades in case you decided to make a bone suit or something.
And they still don't flipping 'stack' either by the same 'type' or once you do have the invuls made.
Dropping it to just
Woodland (wood)
Leather (leather, bone, hide)
Stone
Metal (ring, chain, plate, scale)
would have to be an improvement, with the 'types' applying to diff armors, so eg metal refinement can apply to both human and garg armor types. Woodland to any item made of wood etc.
Even so at this level it will STILL BE A PAIN as it would still require 8 types once you add in reinforced and deflecting.
Just make a refinement apply to ANY FLIPPING ARMOR TYPE.
and get rid of all the material types all together.
Much better to just have
Reinforcing refinement (that can be applied to ANY armor type to increase resist cap)
Deflecting refinement (that can be applied to ANY armor type to increase dci cap)
with the 5 existing levels def, pro, hard, fort, invul. That can then be applied to ANY type of armor. Even if you 'upped' the amount of each type you need to produce an upgrade it would be a useable system, ie
5 Reinforcing (defense level) = 1 protection
10 Reinforcing (protection level) = 1 hardening
15 Reinforcing (hardening levels) = 1 fortification
20 Reinforcing (fortification levels) = 1 Reinforcing (Invulnerability level).
Much simpler, 2 'types' (reinforcing, deflecting), 5 levels.
I know I for one would actually USE the system all the time if it was simplified. As it is now I am at the point where I am going to fully abandon it and just use the things for clean up points.
A lot of the type I do not want the bonus mod.. I only want 1 increase and 1 decrease; personally, I want to know what the results are before I do it. I already have so much time in a suit, I don't want to flub it up because now I'm missing extra DCI or resistMissEcho, what you said. Too many types, too many required to combine for a greater one, and what always pissed me off to where I gave up after half a year, the poor chances of getting the bonus mod. The 30% is much lower, and 15% is more like 5% to 10%. I could even put up with the other flaws in the system if defense gave one mod, protection always gave two, hardening always three, fortification always four, and invulnerability always five.
The refinement system is one of THE worst implementations of an idea I have ever seen. Who ever made it had to simply be clueless about how this game works, or are just not good designers. I hate to be so harsh, but this system was easily the most bone headed design implementation this game has ever seen. There is simply no defending any of it, because people brought up all the reasons it would be horrible to work with, and they just did it anyway. Then when people kept complaining about it being stupid, instead of fixing it, they tacked a half assed fix item into the clean up system that doesn't even solve the major underlying issue.Can we lower the different types to 3 or 4? aka, leather, stone, metal, woodland? There are WAY too many types right now, I don't think it is being taken advantage of.
Exactly! I've always had such poor odds (statistically perplexing) of getting the bonus mod that I'd use the next level up, counting on not getting the bonus mod. It worked almost every time.A lot of the type I do not want the bonus mod.. I only want 1 increase and 1 decrease; personally, I want to know what the results are before I do it. I already have so much time in a suit, I don't want to flub it up because now I'm missing extra DCI or resist
I used to make at least a full round most every day, stealing from crates in appropriate Fel shops. Certain shops I stopped bothering with, because NPCs were always too close and would call guards. What always "frustrated" me, to say the least, was when an NPC 10 tiles away would notice my one-stone theft and call guards. I had to use a second client to follow my thief around and res when needed.Before I stopped playing I spent a few days farming shops as the item per hour rate was far higher than champs/t-maps yet I never managed to get enough to even start making a suit. I'd have loved for this to be a good addition that helped to cement me further in the game but, sadly, it reinforced my belief that the devs just don't play the game as a regular player would.
Concept is great even with all the other aspects of craftng but the structure was doomed to fail.
Get enhanced client and use the grid based bags for that situation. It's like the #1 reason I use that client is the grid based bags!Certain shops' containers also became unstealable from: another piece of ore would spawn and stack on top of an existing tile, making it too heavy to steal without NPCs noticing, and eventually all other items would respawn as heavy things like sledge hammers, again too heavy to steal without being noticed. Kyronix said there would be a fix, but...
Out of touch, or not really understanding players - I don't understand why they haven't made changes to the system after all the complaints from the very beginning. Simplifying the system isn't the same as asking for "easy," and I think these suggestions are reasonable.The entire refinment debacle really, really, really made the dev team seem completely out of touch.
It's not a matter of seeing them, but their weight. If a blacksmith's shop spawns two different pieces of ore that are too heavy (NPCs will always notice the attempt to steal), I can still grab lighter items like refinements, and eat fruit, with no problem. But then a container can spawn a heavy replacement like a hammer, and when everything is a heavy item, then there's nothing I can attempt to steal without getting guard-whacked.Get enhanced client and use the grid based bags for that situation. It's like the #1 reason I use that client is the grid based bags!
Derp, shows how little stealing I do. I was thinking like it spawns visually ON TOP of it.It's not a matter of seeing them, but their weight. If a blacksmith's shop spawns two different pieces of ore that are too heavy (NPCs will always notice the attempt to steal), I can still grab lighter items like refinements, and eat fruit, with no problem. But then a container can spawn a heavy replacement like a hammer, and when everything is a heavy item, then there's nothing I can attempt to steal without getting guard-whacked.
That too, especially when ore goes on top of a hammer, which is one of a few times I'm glad for the EC being...different.Derp, shows how little stealing I do. I was thinking like it spawns visually ON TOP of it.
Where in NPC shops?nope, nor were they ever. You can steal them from NPC shops too.
So only in fel towns?A full list of sources of these items can be found below the image on this page:
http://uo2.stratics.com/items/magic-item-properties/armor-refinement
But the resources needed to grab like 4-5 off a pirate ship is unreasonable. Basically you get 4-5 random refinments at the cost of (Calculated using Orc ship w/heavy cannon and guestimated 12 shots):Pirate and merchant ships are probably the easiest way to collect the refinements, but don't expect to see the top two tiers very often. Those are the only two I bother to keep.
I'm all for reworking this system to cut down on the needless complexity and sheer volume of near-identical items it generates. Keep the levels, ditch the specific armor type, and make the things stackable for storage. K.I.S.S.
I do!Although the other loot may help if you like crafting supplies!
Where/what are merchant and pirate ships exactly? never encountered one..Pirate and merchant ships are probably the easiest way to collect the refinements, but don't expect to see the top two tiers very often. Those are the only two I bother to keep.
I'm all for reworking this system to cut down on the needless complexity and sheer volume of near-identical items it generates. Keep the levels, ditch the specific armor type, and make the things stackable for storage. K.I.S.S.
Do all shops in fel have this? or only certian shops?For me it came down to half a dozen shops with a reasonably good chance of stealing without being noticed. The Vesper carpentry shop and Minoc provisioner's are definitely not on this list.
Not every one, but a lot. Smiths, tailors, carpenters, and I've heard some provisioners.Do all shops in fel have this? or only certian shops?
They are High Seas content. You can find them in Tram and Fel in the waters to the east of Jhelom, sometimes south and east of New Haven, and rarely north of Fire Isle. You can find them all over in the Tokuno waters.Where/what are merchant and pirate ships exactly? never encountered one..