Weapon/Gear Scaling

[Toybox]

I feel there's an issue with the scaling of gear past Act 1, and it's due to the fact that there are entire weapon tiers just missing from the game.

To put it in perspective, Act 1 is basically structured like this:
Bone>Bone+>Copper>Copper+>Iron => Act 2

But once you get to Act 2, the scaling goes like this:
Iron>Iron+>Dark Silver => Act 3

The problem is, without changing boss levels, access to Dark Silver is locked behind the end of act boss fight. This means that you are stuck with Iron+ (Only a mid-tier up from what you walked into the act with) and are expected to complete the entire act with it. There is no "Copper" equivalent in this Act. Every act after this also has this issue.

I think this is one of the major issues when it comes to difficulty and balance. The pure fact that every Act after the first is missing an entire tier's worth of gear. I don't know if the devs plan to add more tiers in the future, but right now I feel that is one of the biggest issues with the pacing of the game. You just hit brick walls on some bosses and there's literally just NO way to get any stronger until you kill them, which basically means you just keep throwing yourself at them until you get lucky or find some way to cheese them.

On a side note, there also needs to be more variety in gear. Like a set that focuses on physical damage, or one that focuses on magic power, alongside the middle-ground sets we currently have, to give more variety to play styles. Right now every player in a tier is basically running the exact same character, which I guess makes it easy to balance PVP, but also restricts PVE HEAVILY. A work around for this is maybe only add these extra tiers to PVE servers and give PVP servers the more 'standard' gear selections? I'm not sure, but the linear progression makes it very hard to customize play styles because there aren't a ton of good options for actually modifying player stats in the way you want them to be.

Regardless of that though, the current gear scaling past Act 2 is significantly underdeveloped, which is a shame because the rest of the game is incredibly well made.

[Suzaku]

Act 1 is 40 levels. Act 2 is 20 levels. Act 3 is 20 levels.

Act 1 has twice as many upgrades because it has twice as many levels.

[Toybox]

Originally posted by Suzaku:

Act 1 is 40 levels. Act 2 is 20 levels. Act 3 is 20 levels.

Act 1 has twice as many upgrades because it has twice as many levels.

Technically, yes but the second you get your first set of gear you are level 10, which is basically IMMEDIATELY after the tutorial, so realistically it's more like 30 levels because you essentially start the game at level 10. Even with that, You're missing out on two full tiers per act, with only a 10 level disparity between them.

[Suzaku]

Bone gets you to level 10. Bone+ gets you to level 20. Copper gets you to level 30. Copper+ gets you to level 40. Iron gets you to level 50. Iron+ gets you to level 60. Dark silver gets you to level 70. Sanguine gets you to level 80.

Same thing with armor and amulets. Seems pretty evenly spread out to me.

[theworld]

Originally posted by Toybox:

But once you get to Act 2, the scaling goes like this:
Iron>Iron+>Dark Silver => Act 3

There is no missing tier here. There are blue and orange weapons.

All a silver weapon does is give you gear score and some +5-6 Physical damage.

Meanwhile you can get a blue weapon that gives you +5 Spell damage AND something else like +Crit, HP Leech, Attack speed, etc. AND an effect like Condemn that would require a spell cast.

Tier 2 Jewels are also extremely helpful and are cheap to craft, unlike Tier 3 jewels.

If you ever feel like you need gear score to progress then what you really need is to learn the boss mechanics properly instead of trying to turn it into a DPS check.

If you are ever super stuck then the devs have already taken really good care of you:
1)100% Blood
2)Buff potions
3)Blood Moon

I have 1000 hours in this game and the balance is very good, that includes doing Adam with 0% blood and no buffs or potions, got the videos in the "Nerf Adam" thread.

[theworld]

Originally posted by Toybox:

On a side note, there also needs to be more variety in gear. Like a set that focuses on physical damage, or one that focuses on magic power, alongside the middle-ground sets we currently have, to give more variety to play styles. Right now every player in a tier is basically running the exact same character, which I guess makes it easy to balance PVP, but also restricts PVE HEAVILY.

This is customized via Amulets + Blood + Jewels + Spells themselves.

I've tested the Melee Blood Rage + Power Surge and it works vs every boss, Melee vs Winged Horror and Cyril is noticeably more difficult but still more than doable.

[This PC]

Originally posted by Toybox:

To put it in perspective, Act 1 is basically structured like this:
Bone>Bone+>Copper>Copper+>Iron => Act 2

But once you get to Act 2, the scaling goes like this:
Iron>Iron+>Dark Silver => Act 3

This is not accurate, it looks more like bone>bone+>copper>copper+>iron>iron+>radium (shattered weapons) and then I haven't gone beyond yet. ;D

You can farm bosses you've already beaten to farm these shattered weapons. Domina is my favorite because she's really easy to cheese around a building, rofl.

[Toybox]

We have the shattered weapons, and they themselves only offer a marginal upgrade to Dark Silver weapons. So even if they are giving you one extra tier of weapons, the Bone>Copper is still a 2 tier upgrade vs the 1 tier upgrade that the shattered weapons give you.

[This PC]

Originally posted by Toybox:

We have the shattered weapons, and they themselves only offer a marginal upgrade to Dark Silver weapons. So even if they are giving you one extra tier of weapons, the Bone>Copper is still a 2 tier upgrade vs the 1 tier upgrade that the shattered weapons give you.

What do you mean ? Shattered/radium weapons are an upgrade on Iron+, they litterally need iron+ weapons to make, I really feel you're missing a tier in there. I don't even have dark silver unlocked yet on my current playthrough and I have 3 shattered weapons remade with the forge.

[Toybox]

Originally posted by jdtuggey:

Originally posted by Toybox:

We have the shattered weapons, and they themselves only offer a marginal upgrade to Dark Silver weapons. So even if they are giving you one extra tier of weapons, the Bone>Copper is still a 2 tier upgrade vs the 1 tier upgrade that the shattered weapons give you.

What do you mean ? Shattered/radium weapons are an upgrade on Iron+, they litterally need iron+ weapons to make, I really feel you're missing a tier in there. I don't even have dark silver unlocked yet on my current playthrough and I have 3 shattered weapons remade with the forge.

The Darksilver weapons make this upgrade irrelevant, and besides that if you compare it to act one, you have this progression:

Bone>Bone+>Copper>Copper+>Iron
vs.
Iron>Iron+>Iron++>Dark Silver

So you're still missing a tier.

[This PC]

Originally posted by Toybox:

Originally posted by jdtuggey:

What do you mean ? Shattered/radium weapons are an upgrade on Iron+, they litterally need iron+ weapons to make, I really feel you're missing a tier in there. I don't even have dark silver unlocked yet on my current playthrough and I have 3 shattered weapons remade with the forge.

The Darksilver weapons make this upgrade irrelevant, and besides that if you compare it to act one, you have this progression:

Bone>Bone+>Copper>Copper+>Iron
vs.
Iron>Iron+>Iron++>Dark Silver

So you're still missing a tier.

*rubs temples*
Whatever you say, friendo, I've actually used radium weapons for waaay longer than I've used base bone, base copper, and base iron, and I don't feel like we're missing a tier, because that tier is like a spectrum, you can get axes with weaken, +7% spell damage, and +12% physical crit damage, or you can get spear with static, +7% phys crit chance, and 14% phys crit damage.

[Suzaku]

How this thread made it passed my first comment is beyond me.

You get another set of stuff every 10 levels, starting at level 10. This continues throughout the entire game.

/thread.

[This PC]

Originally posted by Suzaku:

How this thread made it passed my first comment is beyond me.

You get another set of stuff every 10 levels, starting at level 10. This continues throughout the entire game.

/thread.

Your interpretation makes even more sense than mine, and I agree with you.

[Toybox]

Originally posted by Suzaku:

How this thread made it passed my first comment is beyond me.

You get another set of stuff every 10 levels, starting at level 10. This continues throughout the entire game.

/thread.

The issue mainly is that the order in which you unlock things is kind of wonky. For example Maja is level 47, but it's impossible to get above level 44 before needing to fight her, because everything you need to get above level 44 is locked behind the Study. Even if you've found every book, for the higher tier equipment, you can't MAKE any of it until you beat her. There are a lot of little issues like this scattered throughout the game. So the only option is to go in and manually lower (and a few other bosses) levels to match the game progression. Intermediary equipment tiers would fix some of this issue.

[Suzaku]

Iron weapon: 15
Scourgestone Pendant: 15
Hollowfang gear: 5+5+5+5=20

Player level before fighting Maja: 50

Next.

[Toybox]

Originally posted by Suzaku:

Iron weapon: 15
Scourgestone Pendant: 15
Hollowfang gear: 5+5+5+5=20

Player level before fighting Maja: 50

Next.

Something is wrong here then because in our initial playthrough we literally had all of those things and still were not high enough level to match her.