unique changes

[Oblivionnreaver 5,175]

Unique spawns as they currently are, are pretty predictable and swing between easily farmed by even one or two dedicated players checking frequent spots on the potential spawn timers on 8x8 servers, to you might not even see one playing for a decade on xanadu. A full rework probably isn't in the books and out of the scope of current development but a list of some of the changes that i think would improve it

 

1. Move spawn timers off the 6 hours from uptime. Currently 1/300 chance per unique every 6 hours to spawn. between two people on alternate timezones, very easy to check all the common spawn points at server reboot and then every six hours after. instead, lower the chance and time between checks, 1/1800 every hour or 1/3600 every half hour or hell 1/6480000 every second for fun would make it harder to monopolize and increase chance of players stumbling upon them naturally

 

2. Remove spawn lockout after one spawned, lower spawn chance to compensate. Currently uniques cannot spawn for 14 days after one spawns. with the 1/300 every 6 hours 14 days after last one spawned this means uniques spawn every 20-21 days on average. This ends up creating a feedback loop for the finder of the unique, if they're checking every 6 hours, they can narrow down the spawn time of the unique, know exactly when the next one can start spawning again, and do not waste time searching when there can't be unique spawns, whereas everyone else not privy to this information will be wasting time trying to find them. Remove the lockout timer and lower the spawn chance so that while the amount of uniques isn't higher or lower, there won't be a large difference in difficulty finding between people who found the previous unique and those who didn't.

 

3. Redo the "Cannot spawn within 40 tiles of a deed" mechanic. As it is, this mechanic effectively locks spawns into very predictable spots. Rifts have similar spawn requirements and are usually only ever found in two or three locations per 8x8 map for comparison, so with what was listed in the previous two points you can just search these locations every 6 hours, 14 days after the last one spawned and find the vast majority of the uniques that spawn on the server. This also makes uniques basically only ever spawn in the centre of the map away from rivers/lakes, as most of the shoreline has at least one deed per local. This is hard to fix on a 8x8 server, but letting them spawn anywhere outside of a deed and prevent targeting people inside deeds/prevent idle bashing walls would help make it less predictable while avoiding the whole "dragon spawned on me and wiped my deed out".

 

4. Scale spawns based on server size. Currently, all servers have the same spawn chance, leading people who live on smaller servers to have a disproportionate chance to find uniques compared to those living on larger servers, who both have multiple times more landmass to cover and more people on the server who could find the unique before them. Larger servers should have higher spawn chances to account for this, and potentially higher population servers also have higher unique spawn rates.

 

5. Remove Hatchlings from the unique pool, and add them to other content. Drake hide and Dragon scale both enter the game at roughly the same rate (roughly 1.1 set per drake/dragon on average), but drake is only slightly better than other common armours available (often worse than chain depending on what you're fighting), and scale heavily outperforms all other armour. In terms of progression it makes little sense that the intermediate of commonly available armour and endgame armour is as rare as the endgame armour while barely beating out the common armour. They should be removed from the unique spawning pool, loot per each one lowered (but still increased amount dropped per month compared to now) and rare bone changed to a potential rare bone fragment to one of the killers and made slightly weaker so that they're roughly comparable with rift warmasters or sea serpents and instead added to other content. Possible suggestions would be - Rare but not current unique spawn rare in the wild, maybe similar to rift camps, Difficulty 7 kill mobs/traitor missions potentially spawning one, Difficult treasure maps occasionally spawning one (or perhaps having a hatchling egg) alongside the treasure casket - Chance to spawn alongside rift warmaster in rifts, increased chance with the libila colossus built - Killing strong mobs/champion mobs having a small chance to draw them out, increasing the longer it's been since one spawned. Probably a harder one of the lot to balance, but moving them to other content adds more mid-game combat content to the game and makes drake hide more of an accessible mid-game armour choice instead of a "scale was too expensive".

 

6. Add non-unique ways to get tomes. Tomes are largely a cosmetic thing on pve, and absurdly strong on pvp to the point that a weak toon with tomes is better than a strong toon without them. Due to how many were spawned from personal goals, this leads to a pretty big imbalance from people in the past being able to buy every single tome in the game for cheaper than what you can currently buy some of the more expensive tomes for, so pvp players can be massively outmatched, and pve collectors can be left with incomplete collections that are prohibitively expensive to finish. Both groups would benefit from non-unique ways to get tomes, and tome fragments which were added for epic valrei scenarios would be a great way to add them to other content, especially considering that no matter the changes you do to uniques, many would prefer a non-competitive way to get them. Missions to keep true to the history of tome fragments, killing mobs, archaeology, and treasure maps i feel would all be great ways of finding them, but they should be very rare drops to not add an absurd amount of them to the game, and encourage trading.

 

7. Enable reveal creatures/pendulums hitting after a certain time of being alive. Something (especially on larger, more mountainous servers) that is a bit of a problem is uniques can end up in some pretty remote places, and the uniques aren't equally easy to find. A dragon is going to be a pretty obvious silhouette when you're looking up a mountain and run someone down eventually, but a goblin leader or troll king can easily be glanced over and walk so slowly that even someone riding a donkey rides right past before they've gotten attacked. If a unique hasn't been tagged by going underground or getting in combat with someone, it should eventually be able to be located via pendulum or reveal creatures. maybe a week or two to give residents of the server a chance to stumble into them naturally. PVP servers could have them up instantly, as there's not really much drama between searchers when they can just kill each other, and makes them into potential pvp.

[Atndy 385]

13 minutes ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

7. Enable reveal creatures/pendulums hitting after a certain time of being alive. Something (especially on larger, more mountainous servers) that is a bit of a problem is uniques can end up in some pretty remote places, and the uniques aren't equally easy to find. A dragon is going to be a pretty obvious silhouette when you're looking up a mountain and run someone down eventually, but a goblin leader or troll king can easily be glanced over and walk so slowly that even someone riding a donkey rides right past before they've gotten attacked. If a unique hasn't been tagged by going underground or getting in combat with someone, it should eventually be able to be located via pendulum or reveal creatures. maybe a week or two to give residents of the server a chance to stumble into them naturally. PVP servers could have them up instantly, as there's not really much drama between searchers when they can just kill each other, and makes them into potential pvp.

 Perhaps a line that once a week passes and a unique is above ground it sends a global message "The ground is rumbling; what was that?" Can just be in white text letting people know there is a unique wandering around and giving a bit excitement and perhaps a rat race over a unique up for grabs. (If said things above are fixed.)

[Egard 3,369]

from a freedom perspective, these sound like great changes. +1

[Sinnjinn 509]

One of the best Unique change threads I've ever encountered, and I 100% approve of all of it.  I also like Atndy's suggestion.  Maybe have the msg give you an approximate location like mission Avatars, or traitors?

 

And:

 

8. Please have NFI spawn uniques at the same rate as SFI.  The population of both is roughly equal, yet SFI get almost 3x more Unique spawns then NFI does.

[Synjor 466]

The only thing I don't want to see uniques turned into is another point system. Loads of good ideas in here and in other threads to change things up while keeping the same feel to the hunt. 

 

A few ideas I've heard or come up with over time that go along with what was suggested by others here...

 

Some random amount of time after a unique has spawned(7+ days,) have messages appear server-wide alluding to them being out there somewhere. (You hear a distant roar, You hear distant, loud stomping, The goblin gangs seem more organized..)

 

Allowing uniques to spawn all across a server would go a long way in preventing them from being routinely hunted for and found. For example, Melody has a number of mountains on the outskirts of the server that sit uninhabited, trafficked so little that I've found Auld Lang Syne's from the previous year, nearly decayed away. Spreading uniques out more will lead to more people finding them

 

Implement rare steps to treasure maps that lead players to high mountain tops, where they find themselves attacked by a Hidden dragon or hatchling when they go and dig up its hoard of treasure. This would allow players another avenue of encountering uniques without spending time mindlessly hunting for a spawn.

 

With Goblin Camps (hopefully) coming out, add a chance for a goblin leader to be included in the group. This further incentives players to hunt for and participate in the event. Doing this would also give an obvious way to further use the Camp system, adding Troll Caves, Giant settlements, Dragon Dens, etc. 

 

Tome fragments could be dropped in treasure maps, and from uniques the fragments could be distributed by rolling based on damage done, as there seems to be a system in place with the rift rework that allows damage tracking

 

Reward a random non-marks tome when a player 100% completes their standard journal (basically Personal Goals reward lol)

[Atndy 385]

35 minutes ago, Synjor said:

The only thing I don't want to see uniques turned into is another point system. Loads of good ideas in here and in other threads to change things up while keeping the same feel to the hunt. 

 

A few ideas I've heard or come up with over time that go along with what was suggested by others here...

 

Some random amount of time after a unique has spawned(7+ days,) have messages appear server-wide alluding to them being out there somewhere. (You hear a distant roar, You hear distant, loud stomping, The goblin gangs seem more organized..)

 

Allowing uniques to spawn all across a server would go a long way in preventing them from being routinely hunted for and found. For example, Melody has a number of mountains on the outskirts of the server that sit uninhabited, trafficked so little that I've found Auld Lang Syne's from the previous year, nearly decayed away. Spreading uniques out more will lead to more people finding them

 

Implement rare steps to treasure maps that lead players to high mountain tops, where they find themselves attacked by a Hidden dragon or hatchling when they go and dig up its hoard of treasure. This would allow players another avenue of encountering uniques without spending time mindlessly hunting for a spawn.

 

With Goblin Camps (hopefully) coming out, add a chance for a goblin leader to be included in the group. This further incentives players to hunt for and participate in the event. Doing this would also give an obvious way to further use the Camp system, adding Troll Caves, Giant settlements, Dragon Dens, etc. 

 

Tome fragments could be dropped in treasure maps, and from uniques the fragments could be distributed by rolling based on damage done, as there seems to be a system in place with the rift rework that allows damage tracking

 

Reward a random non-marks tome when a player 100% completes their standard journal (basically Personal Goals reward lol)

 I really like the tome fragment idea for treasure chests. Just make it like 30 frags. (Just to keep it a little head of the price of a rare bone). Also could probably do a two different tier system with regular tomes being 25 frags and a superior tome frags needing 30-40 that make the high end books/cherries. 

[magaric 149]

I wouldn't says they are easy to find or track down. Definitely seems like the algorithm is busted and they spawn in same areas way to often. Most of the uniques killed are venerable so means they lived for a little while before being found to kill. I do like a lot of this though!

[Atndy 385]

1 minute ago, magaric said:

I wouldn't says they are easy to find or track down. Definitely seems like the algorithm is busted and they spawn in same areas way to often. Most of the uniques killed are venerable so means they lived for a little while before being found to kill. I do like a lot of this though!

No, they can spawn as Venerable.

[Oblivionnreaver 5,175]

1 minute ago, magaric said:

Most of the uniques killed are venerable so means they lived for a little while before being found to kill

uniques are backwards, they spawn as venerable and often revert back to young on server downtime due to the age field overflowing

[magaric 149]

I see well that makes more sense now!

[Wurmhole 3,650]

I think every point from the OP is far better than what we have now.

 

Just Do It.

[Beastwolf 652]

very good thread

[Tor 531]

+1 glad someone touched the subject again, way better then current thing without too much hassle

[Tor 531]

6 hours ago, Sinnjinn said:

One of the best Unique change threads I've ever encountered, and I 100% approve of all of it.  I also like Atndy's suggestion.  Maybe have the msg give you an approximate location like mission Avatars, or traitors?

 

And:

 

8. Please have NFI spawn uniques at the same rate as SFI.  The population of both is roughly equal, yet SFI get almost 3x more Unique spawns then NFI does.

 

Uniques are per server and not per alt and no, you aren't special or exception

[FreeLikeTheWind 290]

I've read about the egg, but I've never seen it. Let's raise our own dragons! The chance of such eggs appearing is cool!
Logical and correct proposals!

[Lethyria 161]

Sounds like a great set of changes, the biggest problem at the moment is the information asymmetry which randomising the spawns further in terms of time and location would help quite a bit. 

[Votip 1,621]

+1, especially about tomes situation.

[Atndy 385]

4 hours ago, FreeLikeTheWind said:

I've read about the egg, but I've never seen it. Let's raise our own dragons! The chance of such eggs appearing is cool!
Logical and correct proposals!

 Still in the game but the requirements are impossible. 

[Blazecraze 464]

+1

Some very good suggestions - insane how so far the only unique thread ive ever +1'd comes from a well educated, non-rage bait.

 

 

Edited September 16, 2023 by Yldrania
Moderation Edit

[Votip 1,621]

1 hour ago, Blazecraze said:

from a well educated, non-rage bait, deed sitting baby.

why so toxic?

[Skatyna 443]

18 hours ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

5. Remove Hatchlings from the unique pool, and add them to other content. Drake hide and Dragon scale both enter the game at roughly the same rate (roughly 1.1 set per drake/dragon on average), but drake is only slightly better than other common armours available (often worse than chain depending on what you're fighting), and scale heavily outperforms all other armour.

 

Dont need to remove nothing. Simply make drake a true leather armour as it is, meaning it gives +30% archery/casting bonus like any leather instead of the -30% penalty it has now like a plate. This would make it valuable to priests etc even the protective stats are somewhat as of chain, but the little total weight (also drake amount to craft), little speed penalty makes up for it so adding +30% would make it worthwhile and sought after set too.

 

18 hours ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

PVP servers could have them up instantly, as there's not really much drama between searchers when they can just kill each other, and makes them into potential pvp.

 

Never even understood why it was removed from PVP servers in the first place

[Wurmhole 3,650]

7 hours ago, Votip said:

why so toxic?

The only see this as an expression of relief, from the typical toxic threads.  Blaze has a point.  When has there been a thread about uniques that didn't just erupt into rage? 

 

Anyway, with so little disagreement after two days, I think devs really should take a seriously hard look at this and consider it a great place to start with an overhaul.

[Jaz 2,666]

Actually the first suggestion regarding unique spawns that keeps the fun in hunting the beasts but makes it more balanced. From the perspective of someone participated in a ton of hunting it looks real good - hopefully not only from this point of view.

[Emi 182]

With all the positive responses in this thread and OP likes, suggestions like this should be discussed by the team seriously. How many countless threads since 2012 have there been alone for unique reworks? To many, please don't ignore this topic. This is one of the best suggestions I've read in a very very long time.

[Sinnjinn 509]

On 9/15/2023 at 1:50 PM, Skatyna said:

Dont need to remove nothing. Simply make drake a true leather armour as it is, meaning it gives +30% archery/casting bonus like any leather instead of the -30% penalty it has now like a plate. This would make it valuable to priests etc even the protective stats are somewhat as of chain, but the little total weight (also drake amount to craft), little speed penalty makes up for it so adding +30% would make it worthwhile and sought after set too.

 

While I really like OP's suggestion, I think I like this one slightly better.  But either one would be a cool improvement