Items And Loot Archive

... that would not cut out crafters - an argument used against many a suggestion of ph4t l3wt in the early days of the game - nor severly unbalance the game by making them a requirement for your daily gaming. Most people will agree that the game needs more interesting and valuable loot, especially when it comes to certain high-level mobs that just do not drop anything useful in any quantities that make them worth hunting. Rather than increasing the drop rate for what they do drop, diversifying the drops to include more useful items is better from a balance point of view. This post is my stab at collecting several ideas for loot that could be used as "filler" loot, stuff that would make you go "Cool!" and tell your friends about it, without upsetting the game balance. (An quad-capped scatter pistol would certainly make you go "Cool!" but it could hardly be said to be desireable.

I have blatantly stolen several ideasfrom whereever I've read them (fairly sure some of them come from devs), and they are sometimes modified according to my ownperception of the game. Feel free to call me an idiot for making a particular suggestion, commending me for me effort or - preferably - add your own so I can edit it into the main post.

The above all exist in-game and adds benefits to crafting. Typically, they add damage, modify speed (slightly) and some of them will also reduce SAC costs. While it is nice that there are versions of some of the above that allow you to both max damage and SAC cap your weapons, there's much more room for making them interesting. For example, the existing versions could be modified to sometimes drop with "focused" stats. Rather than a 180+ damage -8 SAC stack of casings, there'd be a chance to drop 50+ damage -15 SAC. This would permit more choses when having a weapon crafted for specific purposes, allowing you to further customize a weapon according to your needs.

Pro's: More control over the end result of your gun makes it more fun to get one made. And, it doesn't cut crafters out of the loop.

Con's: As good as no one will use a version that is "extra heavy" on one stat as long as there are versions of the subcompnents that give significant benefits to both. They wouldn't be desireable one bit with +180 dmg -8 SAC

Alternative solution: Nerf the 180+ damage -8 SAC and similar loot and then add version with heavier stats, significantly increasing the difficulty in double/ytripple capping weapons. Obviously, the problem with this is 1) There are too many of the double-capped guns and components already in circulation 2) Nerf's are generally a cause for lynching.

(Sidenote: What's the status on the melee looted weapon components? I realized I have no idea wha kind of enhancers melee weapons use, what kind of stats you can expect from these nor how to get them.)

Fairly self-explanatory. Pup's with either better stats than crafted, or different stats. Pup's that add a small amount of element damage to a weapon that normally doesn't have it, for example.

Pro's: Depending on the effects and stats these would be quite useful, and useful means desireable.

Con's: Unless introduced as a schematic it cuts out crafters. Drawing the line between balanced and useful isn't easy either.

Alternative Solutions: Introduce them aslimited use schematics. Would work nicely with pup effects not currently in the game, a bit harder to introduce when it comes to special version of effects already in the game. Lootkit style implemention of either pup or schem.

Best illustrated with an example: Regular Caf (according to SWGCraft) takes 10 water, 5 cereal and a crafted subcomponent to make. TatooinianLight Caf - which would be a looted schematic - only takes 5 water and 5 cereal and the aforementioned subcomponents. In a run of 1000, the chef (in this case) would save 5000 resources, which is a considerable amount with certain out-of-spawn resources. The principle could be applied on as good as every regular schematic in the game, which would mean a lot of extra loot items. The schematics would work just like their regular counterparts, except they'd be limited use.

Pro's: Does not increase the actual stats of the items. It could be applied to a lot of different schematics from all crafting professions (A ship chassis schematic that saves 5K resourceswould be quite useful), thus generating loads of new loot to be gotten. By making it fairly useful aswell as limited use, there'd be a constant demand for it.

Con's: *Might* serve to further the gap between long-time established chef's and new and upcoming by making the longtime chefs resource storages last longer. Depending on how the dev's want the resource influx/outflux this idea could alsobe totally unbalancing.

I'd say it depends largely on what it's applied to. The Caf in the above example uses 15 resources total, and the looted schem removes 5. That's a 33% reduction, which is quite a lot. Where asa ship chassis that loses a 5000 resource from the req's when the total for building it is 100K+ is, in terms of %, not a lot and thus more balanced.

Alternative solutions: Lootkit-style implemention of the schematics, where the number of uses could depend on the quality of something lootable. All schematics for ship components could be aquired in space, which would further increase the available loot up there.

Ages old dev suggestion made when they were talking about a "loot revamp". Guns would have an additional enhancer slot added to the crafting process, in which an all-newlooted component would go. This component would then altereitherthe colour/appearance of the bolt.

Pro's: As all decorative items it doesn't touch balance, while it's still nifty enough to cause most people getting special guns to want one. Plus it'd be cool to have a DE-10 fire blue bolts again.

Con's: I can't see any in-game con's. Anyone else?

Alternative Solutions: Introduce the item as a schematics; You loot it, *someone* makes it, and then you can add it to the weapon. To make it even more interesting, the schematic could be aquired in a lootkit kind of fashion, where the hunt would be for parts that could be combined to form the schematics. And then, we could make the schematic we just got depend on looted items. We'd get a lot of of loot to hunt, it would have a clear effect for all ranged combatants, but it wouldn't affect balance one bit.

As is, the only bonuses that will go into the "appearance enhancer" slot on armour can modify health. Creating various sets of drops that permits the final armour to modify other stats would be a simple, yet effective, way of introducing new loot people would use. For example, all combat skill mods not belonging to jedi(ranged defense, 1H Melee Accuracy, Pistol Speed etc.) could be introduced as belonging on plates that could be added. As a suggestion only, each mod would come +2 (or a random value between 1-5 to really spice it up), which- in a 7 piece suit - means you'd be allowed to near-cap or cap a single stat without stealing any sockets from the suit. You would however be sacrificing the health bonus.

Pro's: Desireability. As good as everyone wears armour and any loot that enhances it would be fun to get. A relatively simple change would also introduce several useful

Con's: Balance. Effectively, we'd be giving away a capped skill from skill tapes without taking any sockets. Granted, one would be sacrificing health bonuses, but due to the way armour crafting is handled, you would not be sacrificing all health bonuses and unless we fiddle some more with the AS crafting code. This severly limits the effectiveness these mods could be given without tipping balance way too far.

Alternative solutions: Make them armour pup's with temporary effects counting in hits on that particular piece (and adjust the theoretical droprate accordingly). This would allow for greater stat bonuses without being quite as unbalancing. The health bonuses, even those added before the "appearance enhancer" stage could also simply be replaced with bonuses to the regen of the HAM stats.

Or make the enhancer contain negative bonuses. Adding a +4 Rifle Speed to a piece of armour also means the armour gets a -6 Rifle Accuracy.

[Idea blatantly stolen taken from -Incubus-, here]

Modifying the originial idea slightly; Looted items that with a stat bonus. These items would get higher stat bonuses as the appropriate exp is "added to them". You would then apply them to yourself and thus gain the bonus contained in it.You would only be able to have a limited number of these implanted, Incubus suggested 2, I'm more inclined to sayone myself. I'd rather make them tradeable aswell, because it improves the fun in getting the lootif you can actually sell it.

Pro's: Fun, relatively simple, and it combines looting with grinding playing for quite a bit of time to spend.

Con's: Free sockets again. Could be offsett byan alternative version below.

Alternative Solutions: Lootkit-style implemention on the item, or a BE schematic, or a combination (Several different pieces are brought togheter to make one schematic). Assign negative modifiers to them aswell; A Pistoleer specific implant could improve the pistoleer speed while reducing the accuracy. The more you "level" your implant before attaching it, the bigger the drawback.

[Stolen and remade from concept presented by Summerflame, here]

Combat related skill mods could be looted in a third form (Summerflame suggests converted from regular SEA's) that could be applied to weapons, in a special slot. The weapon would then get skill mods aswell.

Pro's: Lots of new, useful loot, for a singlechange.

Con's: Free sockets again. Could be solved with negative modifiers aswell. Might also become too useful.

Alternative Solutions: Summerflame's originial post contains a suggested to make master level weapons contain some form of skill mod that would be inherent to the schematic.The looted bonus she(?) suggestedwould then be in extension to those. One way of both making master cert weapons worth more and and adding loot is to make only master level weapons accept this kind of loot.

To attach the skill mod to a weapon you could need components aquired through further looting and/or crafting from a different profession (lootkit-style).

The more ideas we can throw into one place the better. If you have a seperate thread with an idea, write a short synopsis similar to what I've tried to do above and present the link. Or just post it in this thread. Ideas aren't welcome, they're needed!