Blacksmith Never Has Anything New?

[DiMono]

Ever since I started going through the Portal, the Blacksmith has less selection available than he did the first time through. Armor only goes up to Ashen, weapons only go up to Hero Swords, shields only go up to Icy Shields, and items only go up to seven options. Is this the expected behaviour, or is something wrong with my game? Being able to advance straight to higher levels, it seems odd that the available starting equipment would always be so limited.

[A miniscule Anne]

It's expected it's more of some items to start off with until you get better gear, I mean it'd be too easy if there was any degree of rares or higher tier in my opinion :P

[DiMono]

Well yeah, but when you have the warp to get to 601 but not the gear to support it then what's the point? I don't think there should be rares or anything, but something a little better than the second armor available would be nice.

[A miniscule Anne]

I usually get that gear, and run the first few hundred levels before doing anything ambitious

[DiMono]

Yeah, it turns out it's really not that big a deal. I'm inheriting 6k, which is enough to buy a set of starting gear and hire five sorceresses, and then running them from 100 gets me enough gold for healers, at which point my party becomes nigh indestructible for a while. I started playing this three days ago and I just portaled to dimension 9 after the 800 boss went down in 3 rounds. So... never mind, I guess.

[Lord Roo]

Yeah, the blacksmith seems kind of a waste of space since all you tend to use him for after the first dimension is just a place to sell your extra trash gear. Or maybe pick up a couple useful items like the heal potions or fire gems to quickly get you past the first 100 levels when you start a new dimension, but overall the smith is just a trash repository and I wish more could be done with him.

Perhaps use him as a gold-sink and allow him to 'uprank' items for a price? That way Inheritance becomes more useful to buy new ranks in, because the 1000 from rank 1 is MORE then enough to see you equipped with sodas and gear to let you smash the first couple hundred levels.

If I could spend that gold to make my lowbie iron sword a +1 star or +2star, and at higher levels spend even more gold to upgrade a touch more to fight that last boss, I would be more likely to buy VIP Inheritance upgrades, and I would think much better of the blacksmith as well.

[Mr. Moyer]

Hey the blacksmith is only there to sell you enough gear to beat level 50 or maybe 100 on your first run, if you're on dimension 2 or more. The whole point of the game is basically to FIND more loot in the dungeon and use that on your heroes. This isn't a shopping sim, it's a casual dungeon loot game. For a free/cheap little casual game, I think the blacksmith gets the job done just fine. Once you get some relics to help you reach dungeon levels 1200+, you will be getting tons of level 10 weapons and armor no sweat. Just takes time and patience to reach that point.

[Lord Roo]

Fair enough, but the point wasn't so much that i'm having a hard time getting loot, the game's quite generous that way. I still feel the smith is under-utilized and could be made more useful to soak up some of the abundant gold at higher dimensions. Having the smith be one-note after the first dimension just seems something that could be improved upon. Sure it's an inexpensive and simple game, that dosen't mean it can't grow.

[tH4b0Mb]

The dev just said in a video about SD2 that the blacksmith shop was pretty much useless in the first game. If you want to find good items, just have a thief with magic find gear in your party.
I'm running 3 darkmages (maximum magic damage), 1 knight (max tank) and one thief (max mf)