Opinion: Too many weapons are farm-only

[CazadorDeLobo]

I feel that a huge variety of weapons and playstyles are locked behind 2% or lower drop rates on enemies, some of which only appear a handful of times across the entire game.

Anyone feel the same way? Executioner's Greataxe, Grossmesser, Chain-Link Flail come to mind...

[MULTIPASS]

I think "huge variety" is an exaggeration. There are a handful that are truly unique, most farmed weapons are just minor variations of a default type.

[CazadorDeLobo]

Originally posted by MULTIPASS:

I think "huge variety" is an exaggeration. There are a handful that are truly unique, most farmed weapons are just minor variations of a default type.

In the end, everything is a variation of R1 or R2. But, things like a spear that primarily deals Strike on R1s, weapons with unique R2s like Crescent Moon Axe, or weapons like the Clayman's Harpoon which allows the player to get weird with damage type combinations, it speaks to about 30% of the weapons in the game. That's major, no?

I can think of a few weapons that I missed the first couple of playthroughs, where within those weapon classes I had specialized weapons for a different build, aka Somber weapons. I had missed the one and only locations for the basic versions of such weapons, like the Lance for example. This means I passed up a playstyle on principle of not having a weapon to use.

Another example is the Nagakiba. It's a very long Katana. This can be used in a much different manner than other Katanas with the right Ash of War, and since there's just one, and can be missed due to sequence breaking or just being dumb(as in my case) then you're stuck with one of the others that you may or may not find.

tl;dr what I'm saying is that basic version of all of these weapons should be sold by the merchant at some point in the game automatically. The farmed weapons ought to be made accessible with bell-bearings late-game for high-prices. The subtlety of the weapon design in this game is actually quite meaningful.

[Kyutaru]

Lots of games are like this. And that's why improved drop chance builds exist. If you really want to farm something rare, stack your chances.

[CazadorDeLobo]

Originally posted by Kyutaru:

Lots of games are like this. And that's why improved drop chance builds exist. If you really want to farm something rare, stack your chances.

I do, and it's fine. It's just not fine for a lot of others. I enjoy finding optimal farm routes and locations, but damn... I can imagine, based on how many of these weapons there are, that DS2's lessons were lost.

[Sabaithal]

Kind of agree honestly. The really good weapons should be a one-time static drop/find somewhere. The "drop" stuff should be less important stuff, and it should be higher than 2 bloody percent.

5% should be the minimum, that's reasonable at least.

[itssomuchfun]

No items should be automatically available regardless of your progression route. This game is a journey, not a flea market.

[Rickson]

It's a little annoying, but in some ways I find the non-farmable weapons worse. If I want to dual wield nagakibas on a new run or have multiple claymore's for ash of war hardswaps I need to get somebody to mule or just gift me some. Ideally they just update Hewg to be able to copy any non-somber weapons you find, and add some way to farm/buy ancient dragon stones.
Of course mods and CE fix both problems.

[CazadorDeLobo]

Originally posted by Rickson:

It's a little annoying, but in some ways I find the non-farmable weapons worse. If I want to dual wield nagakibas on a new run or have multiple claymore's for ash of war hardswaps I need to get somebody to mule or just gift me some. Ideally they just update Hewg to be able to copy any non-somber weapons you find, and add some way to farm/buy ancient dragon stones.
Of course mods and CE fix both problems.

I'm about to consider the latter. I've done everything possible to keep my PC version clean of offenses + mods separate from vanilla game, including firewalling the application itself. Might as well make a new save at RL 150 with tons of upgrade materials and all equipment. I already no-lifed it in DS2 to get 100% of every item in that game, and don't feel the need to repeat it, nor have the time.

[Forest]

*laughs in claymore superiority*

[CazadorDeLobo]

Originally posted by Forest:

*laughs in claymore superiority*

Weird flex, Claymore is my #1 and is completely irrelevant lmao

[LuckyCheshire]

I feel like a good middle ground would be to have the chances of equipment dropping increase every time that they don't drop, with the increase slowing as the chance nears 100%.

But nevertheless, still kudos to whoever decides to run dual Celebrant's Rib-Rakes against Marika and the Elden Beast.