Weak special items?

[roehcai]

I might be missing something, but it seems like all the unique items are pretty weak. The sword Chance, the Snake bow, and now I just picked up Refraction armor, and it's stats are horrible in comparison to what you have by then. For example, the Refraction armor had 1 armor (current 5), less health but more movement, and no enchantment (or slot) and one upgrade unit.

I feel like there might be something I'm missing. Like why is it called the Refraction armor? Also, I can see nothing that makes the Snake bow snakey. No poison enchant or anything, kinda low DPS, not even offset by big armor pierce (2).

And the sword Chance, your character's super sword given to his pal Kane, is literally weaker than having no weapon equipped (but with 5% magic pierce).

Anyhow, thanks for any input.

[Panterich]

TL;DR: a lot was changed in terms of balance, but many uniques were not - they became weak-ish. This is a shorcoming of being a small developer.


You are not missing anything. The game had lots of changes since original release. Many of those changes shifted balance. Some things were leveled, some were not. For example, crafting system was changed at least twice. Item affixes were also changed - that affects random items you get as rewards for battles.

This is important, because uniques originaly very much like normal items, but with fixed rolls and a small buff. Then possible rolls for normal items changed, but uniques stayed the same.

Uniques were originaly balanced to be slightly better than what you could have at that very moment, be equal half-floor afterwards, and slightly weaker in comparison to the items on the next floor. They also have fixed stats, which is a good thing if your random drops are not suitable for your party or playstyle. Uniques that you get 'for free' (like quest rewards or picked up from the floor) were never changed in any way iirc. Uniques that you get as rewards for battles were adjusted at some point - they are somewhat scaled to the difficulty of that battle - so they could be better (relative to other items you have) if you play on higher difficulties. You will see that in their name. Better variants should have '+' sign.

For example, at the time of release, sword Chance was a quite powerful dual-wielding companion to another unique sword you could get at first floor for the whole floor and was still usable at the second floor, making Kane pretty much geared up for any challenge, while fighting enemies with low fire resistance, and there was hardly any way of getting better weapon combo. This is not the case anymore, as dual-wield mechanic was changed and random swords are slightly better in stats, but both unique swords (and related quest) are the same as they were from the start.

As for other named items, my understanding goes like this.
You get your first unique ranged weapon on the first floor, and it is (was) good enough at that time. You then get the snake bow at the second floor, which is (was) slightly better - not with damage, but with dps because of speed, which is very different in comparison to first ranged unique. That name may come from its attack speed. It is also found in a secret chamber with the snake iirc.
Refraction armor had low armor but buffed magic resistance. This was quite noticeable at the time. Defensive affixes and rolls were changed a lot in later patch and current random armors are very different from what they were at the time this Refraction armor was designed.

Mechanics behind that thing you called 'upgrade unit' were supposed to give a boost to uniques at some point (uniques by design had none) but not all uniques received that, and 1 slot is still kind of weak, and there is some kind of a bug with that (sorry for the absence of clarity here, as i haven`t played ToT in more than a year).

[roehcai]

Wow, thanks for the thorough explanation!

Yeah it seems almost every unique I've picked up has been less than appealing than whatever I had, even one's won in battles. One big exception was Cindros' Gift, which has been pretty good for a few floors. The 'old crossbow' wasn't too bad either because of it's armor penetration, but I still preferred the bow I had on Maeve.

But yeah, it's a little disappointing to kill a giant super orc boss you had to throw bombs at to weaken, and get a hammer that does 5 less DPS that a random sword (compensated by an extra 10% to cleave damage), or other 'quest rewards' that are meh. But I can understand how it got that way, now.

I appreciate your explanation.

[Panterich]

Cindros' Gift is that very sword i mentioned, to which the sword Chance was a good combination previously (not so much now). The problem here is that 'the gift' becomes useless pretty fast, while 'the sacrifice' stays with Kane forever. And -10 to base health is kind of a high price, because it scales with champion`s growth.