Let's talk about the Ruin Cities

[DudeCommando]

I've seen lots of people (rightly) complaining about the loot in the warehouses, but I don't see many talking about the loot (or lack thereof) in the Ruin Cities. You travel all the way to the end of the map and fight off 3-5 farm bots, for what, 1 bearing and a level 1 piston and some useless seeds? The only thing useful I can them being used for is farming warehouse keys.

[Khelthrai Hellbane]

Well, the thing about loot laden areas is that they're designed to be looted at a certain section of the progression curve. That's why you think the loot inside warehouses is underwhelming, only the point of warehouses is to loot the blocks and parts in there rather than the crates.

In the specific case of ruined cities, the best we can do is to reasonably speculate about what the devs' plan might be for them. Let's do so, shall we?

Acquiring your first spud gun is a threshold in the progression curve, I hope we can agree on that. The gun is needed to deal with farmbots, so we might be expected to loot cities after getting it. In that case, the loot is objectively underwhelming.

On the other hand, the devs might want us to have the opportunity to sneak past the farmbots and get some moderately high value loot before we have a gun and a steady supply of ammo. In that case, the loot rarity would be more or less fine, so balancing these cities becomes a matter of tweaking the number of farmbots in a very simple risk vs reward equation.

Now, I said all this under the assumption that stone nodes and trees will end up regenerating at some point, devaluating the interactive parts that are considered the juiciest loot you can find. This might not happen, and then these ruined cities could become a way for players in the late game to save some embers by just looting some level 1 parts and upgrading them with components, which are renewable.


My overall stance on the matter is that, while you have a point, you do so under the assumption that specific factors in the game's balance are going to stay as they are right now, and we have no reason to think that. Loot tables might change, maybe the devs introduce a new intermediate tier of loot crate, or a new bot is added and substitutes half of the farmbots you find in cities... Too many aspects are still in the air for us to properly base our concerns about this issue, but yes: there is an issue of balance here, we just don't know yet what shape it has.

Either way, you bring up a good point. I'm interested in seeing how this develops once more patches come up.

Edit: grammar is a female dog (suck on that, censorship).

[Rhysandie]

I just encountered my first (only?) ruined city and can I just say, I'm greatly disappointed. All the loot I got was so much more worse than looting a normal abandoned building. I saw at least 4 farmbots lurking near the entrances but aside from a warehouse key in one of the buildings, there wasn't any special loot around the place. I wish we could loot something more unique (like crafted blocks or crafted items such as glue, storage boxes, etc.). I kind of consider garment boxes to be an end game goal/item just because of how everything about it is rng, but from the 3-4 days I spent looking around in all the buildings, I got 0 garment boxes.

Hope the devs can read this and do something about it. I also found a huge chemical plant of sorts with 2 farmbots in the vicinity and a crap load of totebots, but had the same issues in terms of loot. If things stay the same, it would be smarter to stay near the base than explore harder areas with the same loot as easier areas.

[Jigglepin]

for being at the end of the map guarded by 3 - 5 big reds the scrap city should be bursting with all sorts of loot green and gold chests. and i dont mean like a few on each floor like the normal scrap buildings, there should be several green with gold aswell on each floor and in every building. so atleast its a worth while trip and gives you incentive to keep going back