I’ve started playing again yesterday after a year when I was playing in Alpha.
As far as I remember, back then, you didn’t just have shards randomly dropping and I now have a crafting panel with 50 or so shards altogether this early in the game. (Just killed Pannion and Im level 16)
Runes of shattering also didnt drop a lot, but at least a little bit more than they do now. So a lot seems to have changed on that end.
I very much preferred a playstyle of using runes of shattering as my source of obtaining shards. It made me look for nice 3 or 4 attribute weapons that had exactly the shards that I needed to shatter. If the trend continues that shards can just drop from wherever, I very much foresee that its more efficient to mindlessly grind zones and arenas for randomly dropping shards and only pick up some gear for shattering, using filters to hide most item loot drops.
Which is a shame, I really loved the feeling of deciding whether to use my precious rune of shattering on a blue item that happened to have tier 3 attack speed, exactly the shard that I’d been looking for. It makes even items like that worthwile to hover your mouse over on the ground.
I’ve not followed much news the past year about the crafting direction. Does anyone know if the current way of obtaining shards is a placeholder or likely to put in the final game as is? Im only on the early game, but is thought out / planned shattering items for shards something that is more common in the endgame? (Like holding on to your shatters because you need to find a specific shard for your craft) Or are there enough random shard drops that you can just shatter good stuff at will?
Well… if you think grinding shards is mindless all grind is mindless. If someone is farms all the dropped shards it’s all well and fine who cares? The supplements are far more important to have a good crafted item shards simply stack up one way or another and I could’nt care less about it.
I just wish those shards would be auto picked like gold and HP pots.
I care though, because shattering as your main source of shards means you need to select which items to shatter. If runes of shattering are uncommon as well, then you want to shatter only select items. So you go about your crafting plans strategically. If you want to craft a 2h sword with attack speed and damage, you need to find lesser items first with those stats and shatter them.
And I understand that in the current iteration the shard economy is all about the supplements. But that’s understandable when shards are so common that they should be auto picked up. If shards are easy to come by, then fracturing and supplements become more important to sink all the shards.
If shards themselves are more rare, they could probably increase chance of success and have supplements be nice bonuses to push items even further.
The whole discussion is just a question about deterministic grinding, really. I prefer(red) having to think ahead and plan out a craft I’m doing. The current system feels more like… ‘grind for a day. Hope you have enough shards and supplements and sink in all farmed stuff. Try the craft and rinse/repeat if failed.’
The added benefit is that items that have one or two highly sought after affixes for crafting but are otherwise unusable can create an entire own trading subsystem. Where items are being picked up for selling because they have say attack speed so the buyer can fracture the item. Everything to make it more fun to actually look at dropped items and actually loot them because you use them to get shards or sell them so someone else can shatter them. And move away from the Path of Exile style “loot only currency and hide all actual item drops” kind of game style.
Just one question: Did you ever craft a 100% rolled T5 with BiS stats for your class? I didn’t because of the roll ranges on the tiers. If you wan’t the best possible outcome there are far to little shards and supplements right now.
Sure thinking ahead and planning is still a thing but on the other hand I had bad luck with the weapon for my druid for example and it fractured while not even all rolles were T3. I get where you are coming from I realy do but tiresome hunt for the right stats isn’t something good. On top of that people with less time to actually play the game would have bigger problems to get hings done if you nerf drop rates. On the other hand I’m ppretty sure nothing is final about this.
