Extra material effects and material diversity

Suggestion:

• All materials should have at at least one primary (combat) attribute, but most should have 2-3. Exceptions:

  • T5 gems like Spyrys Obsidian, Awenite and others can trade their primary attribute for an extra effect like adding elemental damage to weapons or a "retaliation" effect (like Charm of Thorns; like-effects don't stack the same as with charms) to clothing.

  • Example effects:

    • weapons with Spyrys Obsidian (because it is electrified in the game world) have the same effect as lightning ammunition, clothes/off-hand (umbrella, lantern) with Spyrys Obsidian have an "aura" effect that deals lightning damage (scaled off of weapon damage, but no other effects) that extends ~4 meters

    • weapons with Awenite (because blue?) have the same effect as ice ammunition, clothes/offhand with Awenite add a "slippery" effect like Winter Wonderland card

    • weapons with Losrewn have a "shockwave" effect (per the spell), clothes/off-hand with Losrewn decrease the player's gravity to decrease stamina costs for jumping and gliding, and increase jump height/decrease fall speed

    • weapons with Pandora's Purity have a self-healing/purifying effect when creatures are struck, clothes/off-hand give players a "sustained dash" that sustains the dash action while draining stamina rapidly until the dash key is released

• All materials should have at least one secondary (max health/stamina, health/stamina regen) attribute and at least one tertiary (resistance, durability, stealth, speed) attribute. Exceptions:

  • T1 and crude materials, should have at least two secondary and at least one tertiary attribute. With higher tiers their values should increase, and they should start adding primary, then secondary, then tertiary attributes.

    • Example: T1 prey = 10 STA + 5 HP + 4% environmental resist, T1 predator = 10 HP + 20 HP regen + 4% stealth.

  • For hybrid materials like melee/range or range/magick, the second primary attribute can replace a secondary attribute.

    • Example: T1 prey = 10 STA + 5 HP + 4% environmental resist, T2 prey = 20 STA + 10 HP + 4% melee or 4% melee + 4% magick.

  • Prey and predator should remain relevant with increased tiers so that they aren't only seen as building materials via animal fibre and hide for aid POIs. T2-4 plant fibres (T1 = crude) should also remain relevant so that fabled animal fibres aren't the main option people take for reasonable builds (fabled would still be better).

  • Stone types that already have primary attributes do not need more. Sandstone is fine with durability, but every other stone type should have a different primary attribute. Beyond the Abeyance realm, stone stops being useful except for cut gems.

• If all hybrid types can't be represented by the available materials, new materials should be added.

• Possible effects

Explanation: Diversifying builds is important to making the game more robust and appealing, but at present there are only a few viable paths to take when playing Nightmare, especially once you hit Ascended realms: melee-crit, range-crit, or snooze-fest magick. Doing melee with full damage is also viable, but it is much slower even if you regularly hit weakpoints.

Since there are only a few builds that are worth using, attribute incentives should be introduced to diversity. Previous attempts to incentivize diversity of builds have not addressed the problem of only certain materials being useful for combat. Resistances and stealth don't help kill enemies quicker, so their priority is much lower than materials that increase damage/critical/magick. Materials from the fabled bear and other creatures, as well as plant fibres, are largely ignored except for glamour textures; early on the plant fibres are useful only because the only other option is crude, but at T3/4 (or even with multiple runs of Jabberwock boss) they get replaced by particular animal fibres (such as from Fabled Beelzeboar, Harpy/Fabled, etc) that provide much better bonuses.

On the same note, there are very few materials that provide hybrid options until you get to T5. Fabled Jabberwock and Brass are two of the few resources that combine two options (magick/range for Jabberwock, melee/range for Brass), but there are no upgrades to them as the player progresses until T5.

Materlias should therefore be updated to incentivize diverse builds, such as adding extra bonus effects like elemental-based effects for gear/tools from T5 gems, melee/range or melee/magick or range/magick to more fabled and non-fabled materials, and...well, no other way to put it, but reducing the health pools of creatures in the Ascended realms so that crit builds are not the go-to for everyone (allowing their hard/soft caps to be lowered to more reasonable levels relative to non-crit builds), and so that magick is better able to compete.

Conclusion: Material attributes funnel players into critical-based builds for melee and ranged, or into a pure magick build that is slower-paced but "safer". To avoid making ultra-specialization necessary rather than a choice, especially for Nightmare difficulty in Ascended realms, material attributes should be relevant to combat such that they are reasonable options; a material that only adds secondary (max health/stamina, health/stamina regen) or tertiary (resistance, stealth, durability) attributes is not a reasonable option if the player intends to progress through the story, or to play on any difficulty above Explorer because of the loss in combat ability.

At least one combat attribute should be added to every material, but most materials should have combinations of two combat attributes (melee/magick, melee/range, melee/ritical, magick/range, magick/critical, etc). If only one combat attribute is added it should be comparable to the materials with combinations, but offset the loss of the other combat attribute with higher secondary and tertiary attributes. No material should have only one attribute, and none should be without a primary (combat) attribute, though an exception would be if a bonus effect (as described above) took the place of the primary attribute.

By diversifying attributes in this way players will have more reasonable options for builds than melee-crit, range-crit and pure magick throughout their game, allowing them to more effectively personalize their experience; at the end of the game hybrids become more viable, but still not reasonably on Nightmare difficulty.

Bound in Ascended realms on Nightmare can have upwards of 5 million health, and some creatures even more. That kind of health pool is not something that current non-crit builds can handle, except for the snooze-fest magick build. For this reason more than most, non-crit builds need to be made more viable so that they don't take minutes to kill a single medium-health target (finding stable parties with the same play schedule is rough, so I've been solo for most of my 2,000 hours playing the game).