Fanpatch and loot

[boof]

Hello all, I used to play TQ quite a bit a while back, and am back to revisit.
I installed the fan patch and got started.
Now, my memory of how loot used to drop is a little hazy, and I suppose I could be imagining things, but the drops seem to really be excessive now.
Not only that, but the drops are nothing but whites and yellows. I seem to remember yellow being a relatively rare item, with green being the standard "magic" item.
Now it's an endless stream of yellows (mostly from chests) and I have not seen one green item from level 1 till 10.
I also mentioned the excessiveness. For example, clearing out the Fetid Caverns for the naiad quest, I had to make 5 trips to town, just to sell off the yellows that dropped. I really don't remember the game being like this, and the only difference now from before is I installed this patch. There is such a thing as too much loot. Also, the stores only sell yellows/whites as well.
I noticed in the notes that something about "loot tables" has been done. Is this related?
My main concern isn't too much loot to carry, but rather a broken drop system.
Can anyone shed some light on this?
Thanks.

edit: Another peculiar thing that tipped me off that something may be wrong, was that on one of the first quests to kill the satyr shaman, at level 1-2, I found 2 yellow items which both had a level requirement of 8. That can't be right.

[yerkyerk]

Now, my memory of how loot used to drop is a little hazy

Remove the 'little' and we've got an explanation to your concerns

Yellows are the standard magic items, always have been. Greens are usually magic items with more powerful affixes. Thus, they drop less frequently. Always did.

Whites (and greys) have always dropped in abundance, as monsters drop all the equipment their carrying. This has also always been the case.

The fanpatch does fix some broken links regarding loot and I think even introduced a few loot possibilities that were accidentily removed, but it didn't change the droprate.

If you've got enough money, only pick up greens, blues and purples to sell, you'll get enough money from those. Picking up every single item will become a dread real soon - this has also always been the case.

[boof]

First of all, thank you for the lightning quick reply.

Second of all, wow, I can't believe I got the yellow/green quality mixed up. This puts me at ease, as I was feeling kind of stupid being decked out in what I thought were rares by level 2.

Thanks again!

[Echonian]

Is there a real reason as to why enemies even drop items bellow yellow quality? I can't see why anybody would ever pick them up, let alone use them...and selling them isn't even worth it in many cases when you have a limited inventory space to a degree.

Of course, this could be fixed by making magical items and such more rare so that you can't always have a full inventory of them. But then again, people wouldn't like losing their loot. Oh well.

Edit: Oh, and I actually think it makes sense for enemies to drop what they're carrying. I just don't think gameplay-wise it adds to the experience at all, instead just cluttering up your screen. :/

[yerkyerk]

They drop it because they drop everything they wear. And they look better when decently equipped

This was a designer's choice, I think it's pretty neat actually. The filter keys filter out the white and gray junk, so no real problems there.

[Echonian]

I was mostly just pointing to the idea that a future fan patch or balance patch implemented into a fan patch could help make the less valuable items still valuable. The main issue I see is that items sold by vendors are less valuable than ones dropped from enemies, even for extreme costs. Being able to teleport to a town at any time without any cost to yourself is also a bit iffy to me, as it allows anybody with enough patience to rack up an unlimited amount of gold.

Of course, things like this are inherent with the game itself as characters are not stored on any kind of server, instead, they are stored locally.

The only real fix would be to make a fan-supported server somehow replacing the gamespy servers or running alongside those, which would store character information based on the server rather than locally. Though then the characters would also have to be unique to this server (as in you could export them from games played on the server, but not import other characters that you could have edited or cheated to get extremely rediculous things for).

Then again, you can already transfer gear and such between characters. So in the end, whether people will play "fair" is based on their own decisions. I just wish that the multiplayer servers for this game were something that could be updated alongside the game itself via the fan patch. So perhaps the multiplayer of the game could have options to only allow certain mods inside games, or be updated to only allow new characters or server-stored characters...though that's not feasible.

/rant

Going to post this even though I probably shouldn't. Lol.

[Megika]

Originally Posted by boof

edit: Another peculiar thing that tipped me off that something may be wrong, was that on one of the first quests to kill the satyr shaman, at level 1-2, I found 2 yellow items which both had a level requirement of 8. That can't be right.

Just wanted to mention this: those items would have the 'Light' prefix, which reduces all requirements by 8% IIRC, and also has a level requirement of eight.

Oh well, I should give this post a little relevance.

Originally Posted by Echonian

Being able to teleport to a town at any time without any cost to yourself is also a bit iffy to me, as it allows anybody with enough patience to rack up an unlimited amount of gold.

Being able to rerun an area, any area, will allow people with enough patience to rack up an unlimited amount of gold. If you can't rerun, you're screwed if you come to a boss which you can't beat at your current level of power.

Originally Posted by Echonian

The main issue I see is that items sold by vendors are less valuable than ones dropped from enemies, even for extreme costs.

Not entirely true. When it comes to jewelery, for a lot of characters, the best rings (say, Hale Rings of Strength or similar) are best found in shops - you can find them from a monster, but it's exceedingly unlikely. You can get some pretty **** nice greens from a vendor. Of course, MIs tend to be better in every way than a standard green, but they're ridiculously rare.

[tuteng_batute]

if youre using defiler, you can max out the item drop for rare blues from monster
nice thing is it seems to buff the monster themselves since their def and att dps also shoots up because of the items ( seems that way since i almost got killed by just 4 normal creeps wielding 4 maces each that stunned me to hell )
im now having 2 mind if i still want to revert to the old low rare item drop ration since im having much fun w/ just normal creeps w/ their difficulty buffed up because of the said defiler setting