Trader Quest rewards are really bad now

[Zackhron]

Is it gonna get better or just suck now? Are they gonna nerf the poi's reward loot too? I missed getting exited to get back to traders, turn in the quest and get the "surprise" rewards.
Now, they are just good for resetting the poi's because the rewards are all garbage.

[Undefined]

It's a big reason why I won't be upgrading to 1.0.

The magazine RnG system is inconsistent so having the Trader sell or reward you an item you've been grinding for is nice to have.

[Lady MacBeth]

Traders were way over powered before. Did they go too hard in the nerf direction? Maybe. Maybe not. Time will tell, once people get over their knee-jerk reactions.

[Tahnval]

It's a deliberate choice by the devs to reduce the importance of traders, which they deemed to be excessive and thus an imbalance in the game. I agree with them, although that's irrelevant. This is an oligarchy, not a democracy. By A21 traders had become so important within the game that not focusing on traders was a challenge game in itself. Focusing on traders was a far more effective strategy than anything else. The idea in A22/1.0 was to reduce the emphasis on traders in the simplest way possible, by nerfing them. Along with making crafting harder by massively increasing the amount of materials required. The goal being to slow progression within the game, obviously.

There might or might not be some fiddling with the details in future versions before the actual release of the finished game (whenever that might be and whatever name or number the devs assign to it). Either the trader job payments or the POI loot. Or both. Or neither.

[Tech]

Traders in general are nerfed. At a certain point in the game before, it would just become a buy/sell game. One would reach a point where you would just go around and hit all of the traders and sell loot and then buy all you needed. I am glad they are trying to gimp this. The traders imo are supposed to occasionally help you out with a rare and random piece you have been looking for, not to supply you with all of the ammo food and weapons you need.

[Tahnval]

Originally posted by Tech:

Traders in general are nerfed. At a certain point in the game before, it would just become a buy/sell game. One would reach a point where you would just go around and hit all of the traders and sell loot and then buy all you needed. I am glad they are trying to gimp this. The traders imo are supposed to occasionally help you out with a rare and random piece you have been looking for, not to supply you with all of the ammo food and weapons you need.

And all the XP. It was entirely possible to get more XP from selling the loot from a POI to a trader than you got from clearing the POI.

[Ogami]

I dont mind the nerf in principle but its now completely pointless to invest into the trader perks in the Intelligence skill tree.
Even with maxed out Barter and Daring Adventurer the rewards stay pathetic.
Getting the choice between a Yucca Smoothie and 500 Cobble Stones for a tier 5 Infected quest is a joke.
They promised that the higher tiers would give more rare crafting materials, did not see any of that yet.

[Voilodion]

The trader rewards have been tuned down but they're certainly not all garbage. You still get offered a box of three skill magazines frequently, or a hundred rounds of ammo, a load of cobblestone (time is money), or sometimes a filling meal right when you need it.

Since the only extra thing you're doing, compared to just going and clearing the POI on your own initiative, is talking to the trader before and after, getting a relatively small reward seems appropriate. And the "tier graduation" rewards seem to still be as good as they were before.

[Ogami]

Originally posted by Voilodion:

The trader rewards have been tuned down but they're certainly not all garbage. You still get offered a box of three skill magazines frequently, or a hundred rounds of ammo, a load of cobblestone (time is money), or sometimes a filling meal right when you need it.

I dont mind that stuff on tier 1/2 and maybe even 3 but this should not be the standard on tier 4/5/6 as its now.
100 rounds of 9mm ammo means nothing a few weeks into a game on level 60-70 or so.
And if you still build with cobblestone at that point then something is wrong.
My problem is that there seems to be no evolution of the rewards from tier 1-6, its all the same low level stuff that is just not useful in the mid/late game.

And other stuff that was way easier to exploit like the insane loot from infected loot chests or how easy you can reset POI for infinite quick look runs is still the same as in the last few Alphas.

[a4twenty]

Originally posted by Tahnval:

Originally posted by Tech:

Traders in general are nerfed. At a certain point in the game before, it would just become a buy/sell game. One would reach a point where you would just go around and hit all of the traders and sell loot and then buy all you needed. I am glad they are trying to gimp this. The traders imo are supposed to occasionally help you out with a rare and random piece you have been looking for, not to supply you with all of the ammo food and weapons you need.

And all the XP. It was entirely possible to get more XP from selling the loot from a POI to a trader than you got from clearing the POI.

so why not increase the XP for clearing the POI?

trader rewards were OP but they could have balanced them in updates all through the alpha.

I'm only at tier 3 quests right now and have stopped as it's nearly a waste of time. which means I don't have to go live in the horrible looking biomes. build my base where I like and day bases in the ugly biomes.

[Underscorecow]

Alot of people were asking for trader nerfs because they made the entire rest of the game meaningless, now traders are more in line with everything else and you can still get away with being overly dependent on them if you want to build your character in that direction.

[8_Hussars]

Originally posted by Khronos:

Is it gonna get better or just suck now? Are they gonna nerf the poi's reward loot too? I missed getting exited to get back to traders, turn in the quest and get the "surprise" rewards.
Now, they are just good for resetting the poi's because the rewards are all garbage.

Trader Quest rewards are really balanced now... FTFY

[Ruffio]

Don't have purples running out of my whaaahooo which is a good thing. Trader doesn't offer you a t6 auger or a chainsaw eveyr time you hand in a mission is a good thing. Although, rewards such as hey here have 5 ductape... or hey have a single unit of hobo stew.. really?

The mission reward shifted from reward from looting the mission, not handing it in, which isn't that bad.

[Trooper Bri]

I liked seeing it nerfed.
The trader is still OP a bit giving away the bicycle. But they had to do that after eliminating randomly functioning workbenches. And then locking workbenches into the Forge Ahead book tier made it pointless to bother with bicycles since you'll be making the minibike about the same time you unlock workbenches.

With 2800 hours in the game it's easy to figure out where your sunken cost fallacy is with trader quests, versus straight up door-to-door looting without the back and forth travel. In A21 I'd take smaller/mid POI Tier 4 quests, but otherwise switched to old school looting. In 1.0 T4 quests I may not bother with unless I'm bored.
T5 quests I haven't bothered with since quests were introduced. They are the biggest time/resource sponge unless you just want to go ape crazy.

I'm still buying and selling to traders of course, but it's all about efficiency. The clock is ticking.

[Mithrandir]

I was one of those asking for traders to be toned down. They were giving 2 tiers and quality better than any gear we could craft. I'm very glad that looting and crafting are back to relevance.

[JimmyIowa]

It's better now. They sucked in A21 by making crafting pointless, and giving away end game gear by week 3. Like getting a full set of purple steel armor by week 3. Which was insane.