Thoughts on revamping Item ID skill

[Par]

Was hoping to get others thoughts on revamping the Item ID skill. I was thinking that Item ID could be used in conjunction with items generated with the Random Magic Item Generation System.

Specifically, a GM craftsman (e.g., blacksmith or tinker) using Item ID could identify (and modify) the "hidden" powers of a randomly generated magic item. For example, a ring with 5% SSI, could be converted to a 10% SSI ring.

In particular, I was thinking that Item ID could do the following:

• Enhance (discover optimum usage) - e.g., turning a bracelet with 5% SSI into 10% SSI). At 50 skill, a random item can be enhanced. At 80 skill, a particular item can be enhanced.
  
• Reveal (discover hidden power) - e.g., discover that a bracelet (that originally did not have any SSI) actually could be modified to have SSI on it. Minimum Item ID skill: 80
  
• Cleanse (discover how to remove negative property) - e.g., discover how an item's curse can be removed. GM Item ID required.
• Convert (discover how one item property could be converted into another property (e.g., converting a ring with +15 ninjitsu to +15 animal taming). Increasing Item ID skill means more control over the conversion process.
• Combine (discover how to combine two item properties into a different but more powerful item property) - e.g., combining +5 ninjitsu and +5 spirit speak and converting them into +10 animal taming.

Failure of using sufficient Item ID skill on the most powerful items could result in the item being destroyed. The more one uses Item ID on the same item, the greater the chance of it being destroyed. Runics and talismans can increase the chance of success (runic will lose a charge).

The nice thing about this is that Item ID would no longer be a useless skill, and it would also be a way to tweak those magic items that would be great if only they were a bit more powerful or had a different property.

Thoughts?

 

[Vor]

Pretty interesting idea. Some of your suggestions seem rather powerful though.

 

[Zeph Wightfyre]

I like the idea a lot, but I think the scope of the benefits would need to be narrowed a bit. Still, it would definitely make it relevant again.

 

[Jason-]

I think that sounds awesome. I would really like to see crafting skills become as important as they used to be....I feel like Legendaries have taken away from the crafting skills.

On the other hand tho I would like to see armor/jewels take a step back. Years ago it was difficult to make a great suit....you had to spend time and money to build that perfect suit. After the Launch of AOS It took me FOREVER to build the perfect suit...I would have to craft or buy tons of items before I would get something to upgrade a pieces in my PVP Mage suit. The negative to that was that people with more gold often had better suits and it created a gap there, but it also made it fun and hard to build a suit. Once you did though you took pride in your completed suit. Now days you can build a suit for 20m that would have cost 100s of millions back then.

It is nice to be able to throw something together for a new character and be able to go compete or go hunt. I have often helped new or returning players out with a fairly decent suit because it is so easy to build one. So there are obviously good and bad to all of that. I would like to see a little more balance in Crafting items compared to looted items....and @Par I think you have suggested a great idea for regaining some balance.

 

[Lord Frodo]

Was hoping to get others thoughts on revamping the Item ID skill. I was thinking that Item ID could be used in conjunction with items generated with the Random Magic Item Generation System.

Specifically, a GM craftsman (e.g., blacksmith or tinker) using Item ID could identify (and modify) the "hidden" powers of a randomly generated magic item. For example, a ring with 5% SSI, could be converted to a 10% SSI ring.

In particular, I was thinking that Item ID could do the following:

• Enhance (discover optimum usage) - e.g., turning a bracelet with 5% SSI into 10% SSI). At 50 skill, a random item can be enhanced. At 80 skill, a particular item can be enhanced.
  
• Reveal (discover hidden power) - e.g., discover that a bracelet (that originally did not have any SSI) actually could be modified to have SSI on it. Minimum Item ID skill: 80
  
• Cleanse (discover how to remove negative property) - e.g., discover how an item's curse can be removed. GM Item ID required.
• Convert (discover how one item property could be converted into another property (e.g., converting a ring with +15 ninjitsu to +15 animal taming). Increasing Item ID skill means more control over the conversion process.
• Combine (discover how to combine two item properties into a different but more powerful item property) - e.g., combining +5 ninjitsu and +5 spirit speak and converting them into +10 animal taming.

Failure of using sufficient Item ID skill on the most powerful items could result in the item being destroyed. The more one uses Item ID on the same item, the greater the chance of it being destroyed. Runics and talismans can increase the chance of success (runic will lose a charge).

The nice thing about this is that Item ID would no longer be a useless skill, and it would also be a way to tweak those magic items that would be great if only they were a bit more powerful or had a different property.

Thoughts?

You forgot a lot of Skills (Craftsman) that could use this new skill and should be combined with Imbuing. Your skill required are way to low 50/80, more like in the range of GM or better just to start. The more skills your Craftsman has the chances are to a slight degree. Runic uses would need to lose more than 1 charge. There is no way to remove bad/negative properties and to do so needs to be at great cost and have a low success rate with a somewhat high item lose rate. This new skill combined with other skills can not be too overpowered. Blacksmith/Tailor/Imbuer all 120 with 100 Item ID/Tinker (560 Skill point used so far), swap in/out Fletcher for Bows / Carpenters for Wood Armor. I know there is more but I am drawing a blank. Make the PURE CRAFTER more viable but do not overpower them.

 

[Luc of Legends]

I like the idea.

"Cleanse (discover how to remove negative property) - e.g., discover how an item's curse can be removed. GM Item ID required."

This is one thing i really like but feel probably wouldn't happen. I know i have a few cursed item that would be awesome if they were cleanse. Can we cleanse item now of curse? I didn't think we could but be awesome if we could. It would be nice to make some of the old skill relevant again.

The coding on this idea is interesting to say the least, there would a lot of coding to make this work.. I can think of a lot that could get broken like when combining skill and loose both skills . (this could be a failure to combine but still a lot could go wrong).

luc

 

[MalagAste]

I like the idea.

"Cleanse (discover how to remove negative property) - e.g., discover how an item's curse can be removed. GM Item ID required."

This is one thing i really like but feel probably wouldn't happen. I know i have a few cursed item that would be awesome if they were cleanse. Can we cleanse item now of curse? I didn't think we could but be awesome if we could. It would be nice to make some of the old skill relevant again.

The coding on this idea is interesting to say the least, there would a lot of coding to make this work.. I can think of a lot that could get broken like when combining skill and loose both skills . (this could be a failure to combine but still a lot could go wrong).

luc

I like the idea of being able to remove Curse from an item. I'd like to be able to do this and if we could that would be so super awesome.... however I highly doubt it would happen.

To me there is Item ID, Taste ID and Camping which are largely unused and well no longer needed. Even though I've GMed all these at least once I still find them utterly useless. Forensics now has a use... but it's honestly not that great still. I had always thought that if you had Forensics and Tracking you should be able to "see" the footsteps of the person who killed you or stole from you and you ought to be able to really follow them. But that's me.

Tracking is a nifty sort of skill but it doesn't really work. Most the time I've found tracking to be very unreliable. And honestly I get irked that someone with JoAT Tracking can "see" someone with 120 stealth and GM hiding. This IMO should NEVER happen. IMO you shouldn't be able to track me until your Tracking is at LEAST 80. At 60 you maybe could have a 10% chance... and at 80 you might have a 40% chance... but Tracking should be scaled better... there is no way someone with 20 JoAT should track anyone with 120 REAL stealth and GM hiding. There ought to be a good reason to work Tracking. As it is you don't even need to bother working the skill up to use it and use it with success which IMO is just WRONG.

 

[Chazztizer]

Tracking should help find larger animals in the huntsman quest..

 

[Lorddog]

Tracking should help find larger animals in the huntsman quest..

and the new skill bribery - we can bribe the quest giver to give the reward to us instead of the worthy one

 

[Nexus]

Was hoping to get others thoughts on revamping the Item ID skill. I was thinking that Item ID could be used in conjunction with items generated with the Random Magic Item Generation System.

Specifically, a GM craftsman (e.g., blacksmith or tinker) using Item ID could identify (and modify) the "hidden" powers of a randomly generated magic item. For example, a ring with 5% SSI, could be converted to a 10% SSI ring.

In particular, I was thinking that Item ID could do the following:

• Enhance (discover optimum usage) - e.g., turning a bracelet with 5% SSI into 10% SSI). At 50 skill, a random item can be enhanced. At 80 skill, a particular item can be enhanced.
  
• Reveal (discover hidden power) - e.g., discover that a bracelet (that originally did not have any SSI) actually could be modified to have SSI on it. Minimum Item ID skill: 80
  
• Cleanse (discover how to remove negative property) - e.g., discover how an item's curse can be removed. GM Item ID required.
• Convert (discover how one item property could be converted into another property (e.g., converting a ring with +15 ninjitsu to +15 animal taming). Increasing Item ID skill means more control over the conversion process.
• Combine (discover how to combine two item properties into a different but more powerful item property) - e.g., combining +5 ninjitsu and +5 spirit speak and converting them into +10 animal taming.

Failure of using sufficient Item ID skill on the most powerful items could result in the item being destroyed. The more one uses Item ID on the same item, the greater the chance of it being destroyed. Runics and talismans can increase the chance of success (runic will lose a charge).

The nice thing about this is that Item ID would no longer be a useless skill, and it would also be a way to tweak those magic items that would be great if only they were a bit more powerful or had a different property.

Thoughts?

Just make it use what it used to do, well sort of.

Instead of seeing and being able to use all those fancy properties on looted equipment, it would need identified first. Tie tiers of magic items to different levels of skill..lesser, greater, less artifact, greater artifact etc..

Oh and let the Lich have their ID wands back which always work at GM skill, and unraveling non-identified items would always give the lowest tier resource.

 

[Par]

Thanks all for your input. I think the consensus is that there should be some effort to make Item ID useful, and also that the craftsman skills should have more significance in game play, so, as Jason stated, there would be better balance. It would be great if the devs could do both of these things. If they could somehow enable it so that craftsman have some control over looted magic items, then it wouldn't be an "either/or" situation. In other words, it wouldn't be player-crafted items vs. looted magic items, but rather craftsmen can modify looted items making them more useful. Perhaps a compromise would be to have no more looted magic items at the "artifact" level, but instead it would take a legendary craftsman to turn a greater magic item into a legendary item. Then craftsman would be in demand. But I agree with Lord Frodo that this shouldn't be overpowering.

I also liked MalagAste's suggestion about revamping tracking and Chazztizer's idea about tracking larger animals. In fact, trackers should be able to find anything -- larger and rarer fish when fishing, lost items (for the virtue Honesty), treasure chests, etc.

 

[Merlin]

Decent ideas by the OP, although a bit over-powered. There would need to be more risk, IMHO.

A few edits I would make:
Enhance: Good idea, but I think it should be limited to what you can enhance. Strength, hit points, mana, stamina, the various resists, regens - would all be fine. However, other mods like SSI or FCR shouldn't be allowed to be changed.
Reveal: I really like this one. Unique idea. I would add that only the toon that revealed the hidden mod should be able to have access to that mod.
Cleanse: I don't think 'cursed' should be removable under any circumstances. Maybe the ability to remove negative luck or negative faster casting would be more appropriate. And if 'cursed' were to be removable, then when you remove 'cursed' another random mod should be removed with it. Otherwise, you would have a whole new class of over-powered pieces.
Convert: Needs to be a level of difficulty or penalty added here. Shouldn't be able to just change 15 ninjitsu to 15 animal taming. You should only be able to change skills from one class to a similar class (i.e., magery to mysticism, swordsmanship to mace fighting, etc.). Also, by converting, you should lose some points. If you're changing +15 of one skill to another skill, the new skill should only have +10 or something along those lines.
Combine: Eh, not sure if I feel this is a viable idea. Would need more clarity on that one.

Clearly all speculation here, but I would hope the overwhelming majority of people agree that making this skill useful would be beneficial. OP's suggestions a good and thoughtful response in the right direction (despite my own criticism above ).

 

[Merus]

Refurbish: GM skill + GM or greater in the required crafting skill would give a chance to remove antique. Failure would destroy the item.