Powder of Fortifying - Why not abolish?

[hawkeye_pike]

We all know that Powder of Fortifying has been the crafter's demise. All I need for my current favorite suit is a repair deed every 2 weeks.

I understand that PoF was desired by some players when artifacts and runic crafted items were very rare, valuable and expensive. But today, Imbuing allows us to quite easily tailor our items for our specific needs and replace broken/lost items with moderate cost and effort.

Wouldn't it be time now to think about abolishing Powder of Fortifying altogether, and even limiting the maximum durability of all items to, say, 100? At the same time, each newly imbued item should get a durability of 100 per default. It sure wouldn't harm the players too much, and it definitely would make crafters important for the community again.

Especially power gamers and PvPers use more and more imbued equipment, which cannot be powdered anyway.

Food for thought!

 

[Connor_Graham]

No.

'Nuf said.

 

[Basara]

We all know that Powder of Fortifying has been the crafter's demise.

You Misspelled "Salvation"

Without POF (and the similarly reviled Clothing Bless Deeds), I would have had NOTHING to sell with my crafters for most of the last 7 years.

 

[weins201]

You asked now you get your answer, and just like the other two - NO

It is plainl and simple, No you want to use your imbued suit to fight hunders of mobs with on your own, well every so often your pieces will wear out.

Deal with it.

 

[JL from Europa]

Especially power gamers and PvPers use more and more imbued equipment, which cannot be powdered anyway.

Food for thought!

Yeah that's why you're supposed to powder them to 255 before you imbue the item!

It's NOT easy to replace an imbued suit, have to spend hours farming the regs again, no thanks imbueing would become unattractive.

 

[ACB1961]

We all know that Powder of Fortifying has been the crafter's demise. All I need for my current favorite suit is a repair deed every 2 weeks.

I understand that PoF was desired by some players when artifacts and runic crafted items were very rare, valuable and expensive. But today, Imbuing allows us to quite easily tailor our items for our specific needs and replace broken/lost items with moderate cost and effort.

Wouldn't it be time now to think about abolishing Powder of Fortifying altogether, and even limiting the maximum durability of all items to, say, 100? At the same time, each newly imbued item should get a durability of 100 per default. It sure wouldn't harm the players too much, and it definitely would make crafters important for the community again.

Especially power gamers and PvPers use more and more imbued equipment, which cannot be powdered anyway.

Food for thought!

I'm making more stuff for people than I ever did before with a blacksmith, carpenter, tailor, & tinker. It most definitely hasn't been my demise.

 

[Slayvite]

You've not done much fighting in the Abyss then? I can take my suit from 150 to 0 in about 3 hours fighting down their and every time its repaired it loses some max durability. If id stuck with the original 32 durability on the pieces, How long do you think that would last...

nb, yes i would have took it to max but i didnt have enough PoF's. They are like gold-dust now starting around 200k+

 

[Cogniac]

Equipment is supposed to be a trade-off now:

1. Use Imbued items. They break, but not often enough to make you give up. They are not as hard to get as unbreakable items, and you can make exactly what you need.
2. Use Runic-made items, artifacts, etc. They never break due to PoF, but good luck finding exactly what you need. And if you ever do find exactly what you need, you better make sure you never lose it, because it'll be close to impossible to ever replace it. Ever. ...Ever.

If you abolish PoF, you might as well completely abolish all equipment that doesn't come from Imbuing.

 

[Miriandel]

As a crafter, I fully support the original poster.
If there were no PoFs, crafting would experience a tremendous boom, but the devs should revamp the rare components system to be more consistent.

For example, it takes 15 minutes to get the flesh needed to imbue undead slayer, like goblin blood for repond slayer.
It takes much more time to get demon slayer components, which still isn't bad, but some other components take forever to farm, mainly those which drop in the cavern of the discarded.

Artifacts are a touchy subject, especially since they allow some PvP templates to be near invulnerable (I love fighting a mage with my warrior when he just stands still in front of me taking no damage thanks to his 45 DCI artifact set...), but as an old timer I'm rather disappointed with the item driven mood UO now follows, so...

 

[mjolnir131]

I truly believe that posts 1 and 9 are back-door attempts to undermine imbue,so that they can have the gap back in place

 

[legendsguy]

But today, Imbuing allows us to quite easily tailor our items for our specific needs and replace broken/lost items with moderate cost and effort.

most of the good properties require relic frags and, while i know lots of other people have millions to spend, i do not. i know imbuing was -suppose- to be the great equalizer, but until they make relic frags more obtainable it's still very much a rarity.

besides... can you imbue a collar better than a jackal's?

 

[BeefSupreme]

If you think that PoF is ruining your game, by all means go ahead and stop using it.
I'd rather actually 'play' a game than spend time running around gathering resources to make myself a new suit constantly.

 

[Ender]

lol, no.

 

[Tina Small]

I can't even begin to count the number of hats of various types with decent mods that I've looted over the years and that have a durability of around 10-12. Unlike many, I suppose, I still use a large number of unenhanced monster-loot items on many of my characters. I own next to no runic tools and haven't finished imbuing yet on even one character because, frankly, my interest in UO is very much on the decline. Getting rid of PoF so using monster loot becomes impractical and forcing me into finishing imbuing and/or becoming a BOD slave to get runic tools would probably be the straw that breaks this camel's back.

Trying to find cheap imbued full LRC or full resist suits for sale on player vendors as an alternative to doing my own crafting seems to be an impossibility. No, what I see on most of the smaller shards I play are the same old expensive "god-mode" pieces of armor that someone made with runic tools or imbuing. Seems that very few people in the game want to be bothered with selling anything at a reasonable price. And that is why this game is going downhill fast. Seems like anymore almost everything in the game has become focused on making a profit with your vendor. It's very disappointing but not surprising, I guess.

 

[AtlanteanAngel]

Allow me to enlighten the misguided (albeit well-intentioned) individuals who think abolishing PoF is a great idea because it will support crafters :

Even before Imbuing, most players already had their own crafter characters. Now after Imbuing (having proven itself to be the single most important skill in all of UO), almost everyone now has his/her own crafter/imbuing characters.

Abolishing PoF, introducing more rapid item decay, nerfing insurance, etc. All of these will efforts to "support crafters" are doomed to fail simply because their proponents are misled by a failure to recognize my abovementioned fact, as fact.

 

[Stupid Miner]

If your crafter--now that imbuing's out--isn't doing well, you're doing something very, very wrong.

 

[Warpig Inc]

When it comes to crafting items in Wood or for Luck all the Imbuing has to be done first. And before that the items has to be powdred. Then enhancing destroys the item and the POF x2 and all the imbuing resourses have to be gathered again.

I agree my time spent crafting has increased ten fold. remaining time goes to hunter gathering or gathering. I have to go out my way now to do a community hunt just for a break. And for that statement on POF value. We all soon will be saying "Remember When POFs here cheeper then 10 Crystaline BR?"

I wouldn't mind a 100 cap to durability. As long as there is a mod chance to items to increase durability cap by 50 - 100 - 150 through looting, runic or Imbuing.

As far as items going away to breakage for better crafting market sales. I like to see the classic Rust Monster type creatures put into the game. Sort of Grizzled Acid that attacks items main durabilty. Immunity to Summons/Pets and missle and spell reflection 50% chance. Class of creatures that have to be Toe to Toed to kill, giving dexers new life. Reward vs Effort. Unique items and with loads of loot on them that starts to decay at spawn unless stone or glass. Have to fresh spawn monster and kill it fast before the loots all burnt. Unique loot, not some uber artifacts but, regular items that would spawn as loot could be glass or stone. Would have all the normal mod chances and resist numbers of same item just immune to acid effects. What would full set of human Marble or Armored Glass Platemail go for?

"Long Live the Gelatinous Cube!" True old gamers know how much fear the Cube or Rust Monster struck at players.

As far as the insurance haters wishing for the days of old. We just need new areas that are in fel and tram that does not reconize the bank box for insurance or BOS. I died in the abyss and couldn't get back to my corpse in time. The bad of this was realizing the Harvester Blade I grabbed wasn't insured. Remembers back to dieing at the city of dead and not making the trip back on time.

 

[UOKaiser]

I can't even begin to count the number of hats of various types with decent mods that I've looted over the years and that have a durability of around 10-12. Unlike many, I suppose, I still use a large number of unenhanced monster-loot items on many of my characters. I own next to no runic tools and haven't finished imbuing yet on even one character because, frankly, my interest in UO is very much on the decline. Getting rid of PoF so using monster loot becomes impractical and forcing me into finishing imbuing and/or becoming a BOD slave to get runic tools would probably be the straw that breaks this camel's back.

Trying to find cheap imbued full LRC or full resist suits for sale on player vendors as an alternative to doing my own crafting seems to be an impossibility. No, what I see on most of the smaller shards I play are the same old expensive "god-mode" pieces of armor that someone made with runic tools or imbuing. Seems that very few people in the game want to be bothered with selling anything at a reasonable price. And that is why this game is going downhill fast. Seems like anymore almost everything in the game has become focused on making a profit with your vendor. It's very disappointing but not surprising, I guess.

I hope theres more players around like you that don't want to craft. Currently us dedicated crafters are getting killed out there. POF is the only thing that is keeping us crafters still usable.

On a side note reasonable pricing is different for everyone. What is resonable pricing with someone with max 100k in there account? max 500k?,1mil?,10mil?,100mil?,500mil?1billion?,50billion?more?

2 different guys walk down luna. 1 has 300mil in there account the other has 1 mil in there account. They both stumble on a item they both want and need the price of it is 1 mil. The seller makes maybe 50k profit out of this 1 item. The 1mil max guy says it will take everything I've earned in my account to get it this vender is so over priced but I need it man I hate greedy luna!! The person with 300mil in there account says aha it's exactly what I needed I would of payed 30mil for it this guy doesn't know true value hehe I love luna!! Anyway thats what usually goes on in the market which breeds different opinions on pricing.

 

[Connor_Graham]

besides... can you imbue a collar better than a jackal's?

Jackal's Collar sucks. Any dexxer/archer worth his salt is using either a runic crafted or imbued medable gorget with SI, LMC, MR, and possibly MI or HPI. Getting to 150 Dex is easy to do without having to use a Jackal's to get there.

 

[Warpig Inc]

Big problem also with pricing for the guy with 1 mil gold is Unraveling. Can't price anything anymore in new player range without some unravel shopper cleaning you out.

 

[Tina Small]

2 different guys walk down luna. 1 has 300mil in there account the other has 1 mil in there account. They both stumble on a item they both want and need the price of it is 1 mil. The seller makes maybe 50k profit out of this 1 item. The 1mil max guy says it will take everything I've earned in my account to get it this vender is so over priced but I need it man I hate greedy luna!! The person with 300mil in there account says aha it's exactly what I needed I would of payed 30mil for it this guy doesn't know true value hehe I love luna!! Anyway thats what usually goes on in the market which breeds different opinions on pricing.

This is exactly what is killing the game--so much greed.

Try making a new character on a shard you don't usually play and resist the urge to buy gold from a broker. Go look for power scrolls. You're damn lucky on most shards if you can find anything less than a 115 scroll. 110 scrolls are very rarely for sale and the ones you can find are for almost-useless skills. And stat scrolls.....they seem to have vanished. So you end up using your newb character to grind away at low-level spawn for weeks/months in order to afford to buy power scrolls to get their skills to a reasonable usable level. You may say you don't need skills over 100 but it just isn't true. I've got several tamers now that I'm trying to make 10 to 12 million gold apiece on just to buy power scrolls to get them above the GM level so they can hold decent pets to handle some tougher spawn. Bouras have been a boon, but they will not handle the majority of the stuff in the Abyss. Their resists are just not that great.

So you spend weeks and months trying to get gold for power scrolls and you do the quest to donate to the library and then become bored out of your skull gathering stuff like leather or wood or ingots to donate to get talismans.

In the meantime, you scout around trying to figure out what to buy to put on your character that will last for a while because ALL you do is go out and hunt stuff. What do you get as artifact drops while doing all this hunting in your low-luck suit made out of monster loot items? Almost nothing. When you do get the rare artifact drop it's almost always something that's utterly useless (a freaking wooden steed, a map, a luck statue that gives you a boost for one lousy hour/day, a cavorting club you don't need, your fifth pair of sollarets, blah blah blah). And what do you find that is affordable and semi-decent because you're really trying to save most of your gold for power scrolls? Again, very little.

Yeah, the game's a mess right now if you're a new or returning player that doesn't have much. If you don't want to immediately join a guild that you can mooch stuff from, you're looking at a horrid grind. Yes, I know that grinding is what you do when you start out. But it used to be you could actually find power scrolls for 10-25k each that would get you up to 110 and you could find a full LRC suit or a full resist suit for 60-120k. And you could find a full spellbook for 5-10k without wasting 4-5 hours scouring the whole shard to find it. Those days seem to be gone. Very very few players anymore seem to cater specifically to players who don't have millions in gold sitting in their bankbox.

Eh, I don't know what the point is in saying anything anymore. I'm so disgusted with how things are at this point it isn't even funny. EA does nothing to promote the game, other than perhaps in Japan. So I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that things are as they are. It's just disappointing to see what could be a great game devolve into the mess we have today. New players are definitely not wanted or supported, in spite of what anyone says. This game has become a closed, dead-end game that caters almost solely to vet players looking for the latest must-have item that they can obtain by the dozens or the hundreds and turn around and sell for a profit to someone else who didn't have the time to go out and get it themselves.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Abolishing PoF would be bad.

Not everyone wants to have a suit that will wear out. PoF gives you the option to have a forever suit if you wish and can afford, or acquire, PoF. Until very recently I had adhered to a pretty strict "non-imbued items, no replicas" policy.

I should have that option.

This is an item-based game now. The post-AoS era has now been with us longer than the pre-AoS system, and it's really time we got used to how the game works now.

This is an item-based game, and to lose an item permanently is tantamount to losing a skill permanently under the old system. This fact dictates the necessity of insurance and PoF.

Imbuing doesn't substitute for having a forever suit, because unless you make your own Imbuer, replacing equipment, while it's possible now, isn't as easy as people seem to think it is. And not everyone has the time or in-game resources to make their own Imbuers. Even if you establish a relationship with an Imbuer, they could leave the game, join a guild that forbids them from doing outside work, get angry at something you posted on Stratics and not deal with you anymore, switch shards, join an opposing guild, etc.

-Galen's player

 

[Tina Small]

Big problem also with pricing for the guy with 1 mil gold is Unraveling. Can't price anything anymore in new player range without some unravel shopper cleaning you out.

Yep. It's a mess. I've pretty much given up on the idea of trying to train up imbuing on a shard where I have next to nothing. Did give it a good go on Formosa for a while but got too discouraged with dragging endless bags of loot to the soulforge with my human hunters to unravel and then hunting certain low-end monsters for gems. Very disheartening to do it that way when you know someone else is zipping through training up imbuing in a few days by using other methods. It got to the point of just being too hard to decide what the goal of all the endless hunting was--loot to unravel, gems, leather to turn in, or gold for scrolls. And all with characters that couldn't get above GM in their skills without mega-millions in gold for scrolls and who were using gear whose parts constantly needed replacing or repairs.

 

[Ender]

Yeah the economy is pathetic.

 

[Miriandel]

Quite obviously, some people have never known UO's first years and the glory of crafting which is unrivaled at this time.

No game managed to implement crafting correctly and from Evercrap to WoW, all crafting implementations suck donkey balls.

Now... I'm successfull as a crafter only because I sell full imbued armor sets and PoF or not I'll still be successfull. I play on a dead shard though, no clue about it's going on Atlantic and such.

Whatever the future of UO, crafting as us old timers have known is dead and buried, so... well, this thread is just for discussion sake, hehe

 

[Slayvite]

I truly believe that posts 1 and 9 are back-door attempts to undermine imbue,so that they can have the gap back in place

You cant undermine a system that is still flawed and only favours the rich.
Indeed you cant undermine crafting as a whole since it has been broke ever since AoS was introduced.
Like the game itself, it worked when it was a game of skill and luck (not including the mass amount of bugs thou) but they had to change it and now look where we are. Nothing will ever work well anymore as you cant just be a crafter or a warrior, you have to have both now just to be able to craft and vise-versa.

 

[hawkeye_pike]

Whatever the future of UO, crafting as us old timers have known is dead and buried, so... well, this thread is just for discussion sake, hehe

You probably are right about that.

 

[Zyon Rockler]

I think the powder is good to have but is abused way to much. You would think that most of your items would be a minimum of 255 durability.

I say this because if you have a really good hunting day and all your items are 255 by the end of the day you'll be down to 0. So, you would need a repair every day. When items are down around 80 you can only hunt a few hours before you need repairs, which is to much because you could probably figure out exactly how many hours you have before you need repairs. My guess is every 5-6 hours, around 80 durability, not even.

So, for those types of items you definitely need powder but the problem isn't the powder it's the durability. If items had 1000 durability or if they all had self repair you wouldn't need powder as much as we do now.

As far as the new system, I don't really think it has anything to do with it. Those items don't seem much better than the ones I craft, definitely not to the point where it's worth having to go collect items, build 3 new skills and create duplicates so that when the suit you built breaks you have to go and replace it.

Think about it this way, you have a suit with maximum 70 resis, I can make that with a runic and it will never break, where you'll lose your eventually. I don't see the point. The system caps you, so you can't do any better.

Now, when we start seeing suits that actually cap all of the attributes, yeah that would be worth it but again alot of work would go into it and in about 2 years it would be dust. To me, this is all hype. I say raise the durability and keep the powder.

Also, side note, If they created a system where you are able to trade your armour and weapons or maybe even use a new special window of trade that would allow you to trade items for repair without having to worry about someone keeping your items.

I mean, it's common sense, your not gonna hand someone an item worth 50 million for a 500 gold repair and no guarantee you won't get it back. Anything could be fixed to bring it back to the way things were but they need to implement systems to accomodate todays' items.

 

[Konge]

I think the powder is good to have but is abused way to much. You would think that most of your items would be a minimum of 255 durability.

I say this because if you have a really good hunting day and all your items are 255 by the end of the day you'll be down to 0. So, you would need a repair every day. When items are down around 80 you can only hunt a few hours before you need repairs, which is to much because you could probably figure out exactly how many hours you have before you need repairs. My guess is every 5-6 hours, around 80 durability, not even.

So, for those types of items you definitely need powder but the problem isn't the powder it's the durability. If items had 1000 durability or if they all had self repair you wouldn't need powder as much as we do now.

As far as the new system, I don't really think it has anything to do with it. Those items don't seem much better than the ones I craft, definitely not to the point where it's worth having to go collect items, build 3 new skills and create duplicates so that when the suit you built breaks you have to go and replace it.

Think about it this way, you have a suit with maximum 70 resis, I can make that with a runic and it will never break, where you'll lose your eventually. I don't see the point. The system caps you, so you can't do any better.

Now, when we start seeing suits that actually cap all of the attributes, yeah that would be worth it but again alot of work would go into it and in about 2 years it would be dust. To me, this is all hype. I say raise the durability and keep the powder.

Also, side note, If they created a system where you are able to trade your armour and weapons or maybe even use a new special window of trade that would allow you to trade items for repair without having to worry about someone keeping your items.

I mean, it's common sense, your not gonna hand someone an item worth 50 million for a 500 gold repair and no guarantee you won't get it back. Anything could be fixed to bring it back to the way things were but they need to implement systems to accomodate todays' items.

three new skills? Imbuing only requires one.

imbuing you can custom tailor your suit for the mods you require. Without burning multiple hammers for a half decent item.

The OP isn't talking about removing the need for PoF, the OP is talking about removing PoF so that people will rely more on personal smiths, but the OP might have forgot most people have their own mule character...

 

[Scarst]

For people shopping in luna yet you're not going to find anything reasonably priced because you are trading money for convenience. Unfortunately the people with houses in luna have realized this and started renting out vendors for up to a million a week or some adsorbent amount which forces the renter who wants to sell the stuff to inflate there prices more. Occasionally I've run into mispriced items that I've bought but besides that I've stayed a scrooge with my gold and recently it's been piling up to my small fortune.

The fact that people have 750 mil is ridiculous and I have no idea how that much gold has even gotten into the game and looking at the rare collectors forum makes me want to weep for the fate of UO things going for 500 mil and being called a good deal. I have no idea how all this gold is being farmed but I do know that gold sellers are around and they **** me off.

As for the no PoF anymore that would probably drive me to quit as I've been wearing basically the same armor since I started back up gradually replacing pieces to make a bit better suits and with out PoF I'd be looking for armor constantly because some days I've torn through 10 total durability in a day.

And while I'm not a fan of these twinked out suits having a decent set of armor for my style of play is needed. Unless we got rid of post AoS armor and weapon system and went back to the old one I don't think PoF should be removed. And reverting to the old system would require reverting magery and adjusting other magic skills.

 

[Jhym]

yeah, let's stick people in the eye and tell them to like it!!


There's absolutely no reason to do this. If you craft good stuff, people will buy it. If not, then do something else.

I have multiple crafters myself and I've never had issues -- however I don't look to players to make my fortunes for me.

This complaint has always seemed very self-serving and only useful to those who would profit from it, not for the game as a whole.

But, go ahead, explain to me how much more wonderful the game will be if people's equipment (that some spent weeks to get or millions to buy) falls apart within a month.

I'm waiting.

 

[Miriandel]

But, go ahead, explain to me how much more wonderful the game will be if people's equipment (that some spent weeks to get or millions to buy) falls apart within a month.

The answer lies in your question: millions.
What made UO unique and the best PvP game to date is that nothing did cost millions.
People were fighting in the same GM crafted stuff and didn't have to bother with having a crafting mule since a GM Katana sold for... a whooping 500 gold!

The lucky few who looted vanquishing weapons had to be carefull about when to use them: they would soon fall apart.

The game was balanced around skill and player interaction, not items and selfishness.

But, again, this discussion is mainly for giggles, there is no turning back and I highly doubt there are devs left with the mindset that made UO what it was.
And since imbuing, it's not that bad anyways, many artifacts can now be successfully replaced with crafted items.

 

[Restroom Cowboy]

We all know that Powder of Fortifying has been the crafter's demise. All I need for my current favorite suit is a repair deed every 2 weeks.

I understand that PoF was desired by some players when artifacts and runic crafted items were very rare, valuable and expensive. But today, Imbuing allows us to quite easily tailor our items for our specific needs and replace broken/lost items with moderate cost and effort.

Wouldn't it be time now to think about abolishing Powder of Fortifying altogether, and even limiting the maximum durability of all items to, say, 100? At the same time, each newly imbued item should get a durability of 100 per default. It sure wouldn't harm the players too much, and it definitely would make crafters important for the community again.

Especially power gamers and PvPers use more and more imbued equipment, which cannot be powdered anyway.

Food for thought!

Umm...I repair my stuff about three times a week now from 255 dur. As time goes by and the durability lessens...I will have to fix it more often. You mention 100...that would mean 7 repairs a week from 100...14 from 50...which leaves my items to last for less than two months. Now...as is...my suits cost me about 30 mil to imbue...something I could not afford to do if I had to do this every two months. (thats 15 imbued suits...at 30 mil per...)
*btw...I craft with leather...imbue...then enhance...so my suits cost more than others.

i would hardly call mules useless since the last patch changed the way imbuing works with runic made goods. They mesh quite well really.

Oh and moderate costs and effort? It takes me longer to farm supplies to build these suits than what the suits are worth. It costs me just as much in materials and time to build suits with imbuing than it does with burning kits. Speculate less if you would...and take time to ask others of their experiences before making such blanket statements.

 

[aarons6]

crafters need a durability buff. my 120 tailor should be making 150 durability items, not 35
a successful imbue should also max out the durability to 255..

thats my thought.

youre using magic to imbue the item, it should max out the durability.

 

[UOKaiser]

This is exactly what is killing the game--so much greed.

Try making a new character on a shard you don't usually play and resist the urge to buy gold from a broker. Go look for power scrolls. You're damn lucky on most shards if you can find anything less than a 115 scroll. 110 scrolls are very rarely for sale and the ones you can find are for almost-useless skills. And stat scrolls.....they seem to have vanished. So you end up using your newb character to grind away at low-level spawn for weeks/months in order to afford to buy power scrolls to get their skills to a reasonable usable level. You may say you don't need skills over 100 but it just isn't true. I've got several tamers now that I'm trying to make 10 to 12 million gold apiece on just to buy power scrolls to get them above the GM level so they can hold decent pets to handle some tougher spawn. Bouras have been a boon, but they will not handle the majority of the stuff in the Abyss. Their resists are just not that great.

So you spend weeks and months trying to get gold for power scrolls and you do the quest to donate to the library and then become bored out of your skull gathering stuff like leather or wood or ingots to donate to get talismans.

In the meantime, you scout around trying to figure out what to buy to put on your character that will last for a while because ALL you do is go out and hunt stuff. What do you get as artifact drops while doing all this hunting in your low-luck suit made out of monster loot items? Almost nothing. When you do get the rare artifact drop it's almost always something that's utterly useless (a freaking wooden steed, a map, a luck statue that gives you a boost for one lousy hour/day, a cavorting club you don't need, your fifth pair of sollarets, blah blah blah). And what do you find that is affordable and semi-decent because you're really trying to save most of your gold for power scrolls? Again, very little.

Yeah, the game's a mess right now if you're a new or returning player that doesn't have much. If you don't want to immediately join a guild that you can mooch stuff from, you're looking at a horrid grind. Yes, I know that grinding is what you do when you start out. But it used to be you could actually find power scrolls for 10-25k each that would get you up to 110 and you could find a full LRC suit or a full resist suit for 60-120k. And you could find a full spellbook for 5-10k without wasting 4-5 hours scouring the whole shard to find it. Those days seem to be gone. Very very few players anymore seem to cater specifically to players who don't have millions in gold sitting in their bankbox.

Eh, I don't know what the point is in saying anything anymore. I'm so disgusted with how things are at this point it isn't even funny. EA does nothing to promote the game, other than perhaps in Japan. So I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that things are as they are. It's just disappointing to see what could be a great game devolve into the mess we have today. New players are definitely not wanted or supported, in spite of what anyone says. This game has become a closed, dead-end game that caters almost solely to vet players looking for the latest must-have item that they can obtain by the dozens or the hundreds and turn around and sell for a profit to someone else who didn't have the time to go out and get it themselves.

I get what you saying. Though Vets like us know how to make money out of nothing so begginers are in a load of trouble if they don't get a a vet to help.

Lets say starting out on a new shard whithout transfering money. This would be tough but this is what I would do.
First of all I will need a battle character good enough to kill Sa monsters. Ok so I do some training on a myst mage or something will need lrc suit so I can probably scrape some up from haven. train with lrc suit this will take casting spell over and over in one spot. Will need a full spell book but mage is easy to get. Once I have enough skill head to SA dungeons and farm some imbuing ingrediants,gold and anything else I can get.
Find the going price for ingrediants in shard then use the gold farmed to rent a luna vender. Place the ingrediants farmed on the vender at discount price to get gold quickly. With this gold I will run around the shard in out of way places and compare items on boondock venders to luna venders. Buy what I can afford as long as it's cheaper than going price in luna and place it in luna vender. Continue to do this slowly saving every gold piece to buy higher and higher priced items to sell. In the mean time make sure I've being collecting bods on all my characters and train a miner Im gonna need a home so find a small home anywhere should be one of the first things to do. Mine for ingots and gems using the ingots to fill my bods and turn in for the gold and hopefully pof. Sell Pof,gems and other rewards while still looking for deals and special events.
From there just branch out to other things but eventually will be back on top in no time.
Do I want to do this again naw I rather just transfer gold to another shard and start well of from the beggining. This will take a while but a new player should never have 100's of mil in a month whithout the vet knowledge.

 

[Demonous]

We all know that Powder of Fortifying has been the crafter's demise. All I need for my current favorite suit is a repair deed every 2 weeks.

I understand that PoF was desired by some players when artifacts and runic crafted items were very rare, valuable and expensive. But today, Imbuing allows us to quite easily tailor our items for our specific needs and replace broken/lost items with moderate cost and effort.

Wouldn't it be time now to think about abolishing Powder of Fortifying altogether, and even limiting the maximum durability of all items to, say, 100? At the same time, each newly imbued item should get a durability of 100 per default. It sure wouldn't harm the players too much, and it definitely would make crafters important for the community again.

Especially power gamers and PvPers use more and more imbued equipment, which cannot be powdered anyway.

Food for thought!

sure, just pay me the equivalent gold value for 700 90% chance powder of fort bods and then we can get rid of them

 

[ingsmsico]

and it definitely would make crafters important for the community again.

what community? UO is empty.

 

[Setnaffa]

Are you kidding? PoF's paid for my castle! Don't touch them...unless you are buying them from my vendor.

 

[Connor_Graham]

what community? UO is empty.

Hey Chicken Little, the Colonel is looking for you. He mumbled something about extra crispy or spicy....

 

[Sir Kenga]

We all know that Powder of Fortifying has been the crafter's demise. All I need for my current favorite suit is a repair deed every 2 weeks.

I understand that PoF was desired by some players when artifacts and runic crafted items were very rare, valuable and expensive. But today, Imbuing allows us to quite easily tailor our items for our specific needs and replace broken/lost items with moderate cost and effort.

If i couldn't POF my sampire suit, i'd have to leave Doom each 15 minutes and go imbue new suit. So it's nonsense.

 

[Lord Drakelord]

no

 

[georgemarvin2001]

No. PoF is becoming very valuable and hard to get. I'm doing more crafting now than I have done at any time since AOS came out and ruined everything for us UO crafters. My Imbuer will pop maybe 2 or 3 items for every one that successfully enhances. For the average 6 piece suit, sword and shield, that's 8 pieces, maybe 20 pieces destroyed enhancing, and about 22 charges of PoF per piece, for a total of maybe 620 charges, 62 bottles of PoF used to make that one uber suit. At 200k each, that's over 12 million gold per suit for PoF. NOT a cheap part of the process of making a suit.

I have found that the same customer who gets the one uber suit will want other pieces and different weapons for various uses. Durability has very little to do with it now. They will want different items imbued. They will want suits for other characters. They will change templates and need new armor and weapons for the first char you imbued a suit for. If you do a good job and make something really awesome for them, they will be back even if the first item you made never wears out.

 

[Xenobia]

Umm simple answer to this thread.......NO! (this is up there on the list of dumbest thread ever:loser Discuss economy all day long but don't touch my PoF or you will pull back a bloody stump!

 

[Lord Urza]

Pike...

 

[Connor_Graham]

don't touch my PoF or you will pull back a bloody stump!

*pokes her PoF*

 

[Xenobia]

*pokes her PoF*

Ohh it's ON now! *grabs her high powered, silver, vanquishing toothpick and pokes Connor_Graham in the butt with it*

 

[Connor_Graham]

Ohh it's ON now! *grabs her high powered, silver, vanquishing toothpick and pokes Connor_Graham in the butt with it*

*parries easily with 120 Parry & 65 DCI and counters with a stroke of his imbued 30 SSI ornate axe (with Disarm, HLA, and HLD going off simultaneously) powered by both a 20 SSI Assassin Armor suit and 5 SSI turquoise ring*

Gotta stick with the times dear. Stick with the times.

*pokes her PoF again*

 

[Xenobia]

*parries easily with 120 Parry & 65 DCI and counters with a stroke of his imbued 30 SSI ornate axe (with Disarm, HLA, and HLD going off simultaneously) powered by both a 20 SSI Assassin Armor suit and 5 SSI turquoise ring*

Gotta stick with the times dear. Stick with the times.

*pokes her PoF again*

You suck! lol
I have no idea what you just said *sigh* I guess you win but I am hiding my PoF!

 

[hawkeye_pike]

Alright. Let me conclude that the majority strictly declines a change in UO which would make all items eventually break. I understand most of your arguments.

I am convinced that with AoS UO has turned into a game too much based on items, and that this change has brought UO a lot of negative side effects. I also realize that it may be impossible to revert this without forcing the majority of players to sacrifice or suffer. At least, I lack of an idea.

I suggest to close this thread, unless someone has something really ingenius to add.

 

[red sky]

Equipment is supposed to be a trade-off now:

1. Use Imbued items. They break, but not often enough to make you give up. They are not as hard to get as unbreakable items, and you can make exactly what you need.
2. Use Runic-made items, artifacts, etc. They never break due to PoF, but good luck finding exactly what you need. And if you ever do find exactly what you need, you better make sure you never lose it, because it'll be close to impossible to ever replace it. Ever. ...Ever.

If you abolish PoF, you might as well completely abolish all equipment that doesn't come from Imbuing.

This is a tricky argument because there must be a trade off between imbued and non-imbued items, the main being that one will eventually break. If we got rid of POF then all items would eventually break. Perhaps they should make it to where items automatically get 255 durability if they are enhanced with a special material. So therefore, all non-imbued wearables that never had durability will never break. Imbued items (excluding jewelry) will have to be enhanced in order to gain the 255 durability. Then base the chance that an item will lose durability based on whether the item is imbued or non-imbued and what the player's skill is. So any imbued item can be repaired but will always lose 1 point of durability every time it is repaired. Any non-imbued item will have a % chance of losing durability based on the player's skill who is repairing the item. Make the % cap based on 120 or 100 skill only (so blacksmiths can't cheat and never lose durability on items with an ancient hammer). The 120 cap will be only for crafting skills that can go that high such as blacksmith and tailoring. The 100 for tinkering, carpentry and fletching. Finally, the percents could be like an 80% chance of not harming the items durability when being repaired if the user has the max cap for that skill. Then perhaps you could get rid of POF and no one would mind that much. Because regular items would stay in the game for much longer than imbued, all items with durability would eventually break, and crafters would be more demanded than they are now. I see this solution as kind of a win-win for both sides of the argument.