Elite items

[fall_ark]

[Nandrew]

Well, maybe I exaggerate -- it wasn't as extensive an argument as, say, the one I just made for the guitar. Just solid enough to let it stay.

As for the approaches the other guys take ... well, it would be more appropriate for *them* to discuss it if they have the time. My personal preferences are Elite, with Apothecary nipping at its heels (though it's starting to fall away more).

Summon Shop if I'm feeling lucky or want to try something different, maybe. Quest items? Almost never, but I'm pretty sure that lots of players appreciate its value (I'm not going to panic too much about the Ward and Soul Orb, no worries ).

Another little quirk of my primary "play" (as opposed to "dev") profile is that I don't have the lvl 3 Witch unlocked (the only building that isn't fully upgraded), so most of my strategies don't actually even involve Whupaz (and my Apothecary prep isn't actually at full effectiveness, either). I've kinda kept it as a deliberate handicap since then to prove the point, more than anything, that Whupaz is gravy instead of game-changing.

I mean, yeah, there's one or two situations where I really could have done with that extra shot or two to finish the boss, but oh well.

[Lujo]

Wow, the holy s**t quotient of this thread is through the roof! WUT indeed!

And about loathign to encurage me, I feel shame where you feel pain (or rather annoyance, and possibly dread). Why does the guy who brings this stuff up also have to be a vicious spam-bot, head-desk...

And I seem to want to comment everything, but just the qoutes would make a text wall! Not gonna do it, no worries!

However, being one of the "never touch the stuff" guys to the point that I litteraly forgot the Elite items existed unill very recently has me wondering wether an analysis of my playstyle with regards to that would dregde up other intersting stuff nobody was aware of didn't get mentioned enough...

Would make an interesting txt wall, but, my "worth paying attention to supply" is at an all-time low, so I'll keep it brief and only expand on it if people feel like it'd be interesting. There really are good questions wich made me think, like the "a golmongering TT addict is completely unaware of Elites, wheyt wut?" Nandrew asked (what in the world am I using all the fuel for?), and I pondered them.

In short, 2 things: Gaan'Telet efficency test tunnel vision (which would need explaining a bit more in depth, as it affected my overall play and feature evaluation in many ways, and sort of led to the old CP monger run), competition with other content (compression seal, locker space, item pool, boons, with various opportunity costs being a huge factor) and obvious synergy and dependence on bonus subdungeons (which you can't rely on, prep or sometimes even find.)

How I remembered they exist at all? Well, the removal of mana burn on Horatio, which I moaned about incessantly, removed the mandatory "quest items" prep for Gaan'Telet and I started prepping the potion shop so the Elites started cropping up. This was my original complaint about it ages ago, and now I can finally do runs with shoop and glyph pools which weren't possible before. It changed the way I look at the game in an immesurable ammount of ways.

(Begging the rest of the guys for a single one-time informative comprehensive text wall on the bolded stuff, in this thread, with no chance of spreading, bumping or otherwise inconviniecing anyone. Won't do anything stupid if I don't get it, an possibly wont have to say anything here any more in either case. Won't start any other threads about this anyway.)

[Nandrew]

[Blovski]

Incidentally I quite like the Blacksmith one - four decent items, 100 odd CP, bonus piety for GG and JJ, only in-game way to get Bear Mace I think

[Lujo]

My thought's about the blacksmith subdungeon exactly - that random badge of honor kicks ass, the knockback mace is actually really usfull (only place to get it appart from prepping it - it was invaluable for the AA floor at certain points), not to mention the CP (its the CP subdungeon!). The SSS is why I complained about bonus subdungeons not being varied enough some time ago - they were really powerfull, could be worked into a strat content wise, but becuase scumming for the one you need would be really insane, having them be more varied would make them less of a "hit-or-miss" head-desk inducers.

With more "wrong" ones in there, I'd feel less bad abut not hitting the right one, especially since they provide a lot their pearticular fuel. Hitting the "right" one is a real bonanza.

And about giving me a hard time - I approve 100%, one random insight or concession or assurance from you is worth a million text walls. And all the textwalls increse in value in proportion to how much of your (or other dev's) attention and response they get. The old monk stuff and TT were probably the only things which could make me go berserk, especially now that mana burn's off Horatio.

And the guitar tips were invaluable!

And to show my appriciation of your involvement, if I have/get permission for that analyis, I'll do my best to be concise about it, and show how exactly using Gaan'Telet as a yardstick affected my gameplay. It was wrong, I know, but provides a whole bunch of info on a lot of stuff, and every note wich would make you guys go "WUT? " and "this wasn't ment to be possible!" or "Oh, we tested that but you're missing out on X" could do a world of good. Just thinking about some of the stuff was illuminating for me.

EDIT: And I won't be asking for or god forbid try to demand anything from anyone, just analyze and explain stuff, I promise.

[gjaustin]

[fall_ark]

Also, about secret dungeons... ENDISWAL is simply too favoured by it. Since glyph and altar spawn is random, preparing a Transmutation scroll is usually not a priority choice (also because both Compression and Translocation is god-tier). Knockback is often not reliable. Can we either make sure that there would be one monster next to the secret dungeon wall, or maybe, spawn a lvl-1 monster / plant on the secret dungeon entrance?

[Blovski]

Eh, I prep transmut. quite a bit basically just for reliable subdungeon use. When I know one's there I can just about invariably pisorf it open with a little effort. One monster next to the secret dungeon wall maybe not a bad idea.

[Fran]

I think the descriptions of the preps could be a lot more elaborate.

Sometimes, I prep the elite items, but I almost never prep quest items just because I don't have a clue about what items they actually contain, or how many shops are are actually exchanged for shops from the preps. The tooltip sounds like the number of shops that gets changed is random, which is rather off putting for the cost of the preps. I also don't know whether items only appear when they are prepped. I feel like elite items never appear at all when I don't prep them, but in my head the quest items occasionally spawn anyway (again, no clue which one those actually are).
Most of the time I also prep translocation regardless of what I prep for the shops (I mostly don't prep anything at all for shops, somehow doesn't seem worthwile to me).

At some point in the future, a display of all the items in the game in the shop window (EDIT: maybe should be more clear here: i meant the window for shop preperations) would be a cool thing to have.
I'd imagine something like a shelf where the case boards have titles with the item category, e.g. "normal", "quest", "elite" and "veto". The items you have unlocked/encountered in a dungeon would be displayed, and the missing ones would have an "?" instead. You'd have all the available information at your disposal and there would be no confusion about which items the preps actually target. And if you were to change the locker in a way that you don't need to scum for the items, this could be the place were you bought them for your locker.