Runics are outdated and unrewarding.

[Ork]

Unsurprising that sailing players are coming out in droves to defend their gold mine.

[Kushion]

A handful of the non-sail based runic dungeons were hit with nerfs in the past several months, making them more difficult and longer to do. It's a bit disheartening, because really I'd prefer to spend less time on these boring solo dungeon runs. With the RNG of runic rolls and adamantine spawns, even bringing a second along drastically reduces the amount of profit you'll make without constantly hitting the dungeon over and over again (I did this and the dungeon I was doing it on got nerfed within the month)

Being able to roleplay while sailing while also bringing in hoards including unique loot unable to be found in any other way sounds really nice.

[For Sound and Silence]

Unsurprising that sailing players are coming out in droves to defend their gold mine.

Weighing in a bonus for even low-end sailing (non-map game sailing): I used to play a pirate character for a little while who averaged 102k an hour even with bad sailing luck. Part of that was because they never removed +1 weapons from the good/neutral-aligned ships, even though they removed them from evil pirate ships. I've mentioned this before asking if it's intentional. It's still in.

The rest of it? I would just do any level of pirate/prisoner/Cordor/Amn/reaver/merchant ship to pull a minimum of 20k/ship on the worst of them. I had some Search and Appraise, but was missing Leadership and Sleight of Hand. It's not "amazing", but it was nice. I'd make 1mil every 3-4 days on my play schedule. I enjoyed gaining my gold this way because it wasn't playing the lootbox gamble simulator that is clicking runic or pirate chests. It also let me roleplay with people while gaining gold actively, rather than people wanting to go fast because dungeoning has such a high risk of running into others and isn't as rewarding with time:value if you slow down--especially if your end goal is "make money fast now".

[PowerWord Rage]

Unsurprising that sailing players are coming out in droves to defend their gold mine.

You can join the fray too and become part of the big family.

[Peacewhisper]

You can join the fray too and become part of the big family.

Why? So I can do six hours of work finding map pieces for y'all and then get paid the same amount of gold I make on a ten minute dungeon run? So y'all can then go open the chests without me and never say a word to me about what was even in them? Because that's pretty much been my experience so far and I feel I'd be better off learning to do this solo just like I did with runic dungeons when everyone I went with always ninja looted the chests and claimed they were empty. The worst part is these chests have certain requirements for opening which often give the captain a convenient excuse to exclude whoever he wants from the crew that found them. This is very bad design and makes me just want to solo all the sailing content instead of joining a crew.

[Xarge VI]

I kind of like the timer idea because I don't usually have the time in my day to gather a group and go through an epic dungeon. And on the rare occasion when I have that kind of time to spend the chest is empty or it has euklian clay.

Meanwhile I hear people talking about amounts of coin and runes that feel INSANE to me like it was nothing. Only time any of my character has been able to obtain a masterwork blade rune was by embezzling a city treasury.

My main concern with the writ style runic is the OOC bleed. Like with the writ agency, unsaid rules seems to have formed around it such as drow not bothering writ workers on the surface, people leaving a dungeon if someone is on a writ etc. I'm worried if it has visible OOC information it's going to create another set of OOC etiquette.

[Peacewhisper]

Putting runic loot on a time based writ will just make the bottom fall out of the runic market even more so than it already has, meaning 99% of the wealth will end up in the pockets/bank accounts of sailing players. If anyone needs their source of income nerfed its the 1% of people making 1 million gold from sailing every 3-4 days, not the people making 1 million gold from runics every 3-4 months.

[AstralUniverse]

Other than dungeons with ruinc chests, which require a ship to get to, I'm really confused for why sailing is relevant in this thread. I dont think anyone asked to nerf pirate chests(?)...

[Peacewhisper]

Other than dungeons with ruinc chests, which require a ship to get to, I'm really confused for why sailing is relevant in this thread. I dont think anyone asked to nerf pirate chests(?)...

The reason it got brought up is because sailing is SOOOOOO much more rewarding than trying to peddle runic materials. I don't think there's any need for comparison seeing as not a single item found in dungeons sells for 4 million gold.

[AstralUniverse]

I dont see how it's relevant to the topic, which is considering ways to make runic dungeoning a better experience over all. Yeah sure, sailing is op. But it's not for everyone.

[-XXX-]

Pirate chests could vanish altogether and sailing characters would still be richer than characters optimized purely for combat.
It's simply because alongside sail they also build and gear for search and appraise.

So... somebody clicks red man to get big numbers and somebody else clicks the peddler to get big numbers.

[Peacewhisper]

Pirate chests could vanish altogether and sailing characters would still be richer than characters optimized purely for combat.
It's simply because alongside sail they also build and gear for search and appraise.

So... somebody clicks red man to get big numbers and somebody else clicks the peddler to get big numbers.

Literally have high search and appraise on my dungeon running character, who also has high sail. Plus leadership for heads. The pirate chests are absolutely where the big money is. I know this because I played a pirate and they were actually fair about loot sharing. I made over a million gold and rolled my pirate for a major in 2 months.

Edit: Also I had the highest appraise of any crewmates on the last voyages I went on so yeah, big numbers and all.

[-XXX-]

Yeah, we're not very picky about who we bring along even if extra people means smaller cuts in the end - who cares? Sailing is supposed to be fun and chill.
On average after 3-4 hours of sailing everybody gets around 30-50K gp and if we're lucky with map pieces and we get to open a chest so 1-2 people randomly get a rune and some adamantine on top.

None of that seems excessive to me and last I checked the navies were doing things pretty much the same way, so what are we really talking about here?

• People solo sailing? Yeah, It'd probably be good to tweak the 1 crew sloops and that should address the issue - I already talked about this.
• Parrot chalices existing? They are ultra rare but ultimately little more than an inocuous high-end collectible that's easily replacable with wisp bottles (unlike way back when blade runes used to be priced at 2-4M).

[Sincra]

viewtopic.php?p=353945#p353945

As per this post,
Runes are on my agenda alongside the Dweomercraft update.
It's something I said at the beginning of all the work on that update, that i'll be taking careful consideration of where runics are at either during or when it's released.

Good examples of the step by step approach from myself and the team are:

• Chance in runics drop table adjusted to be kinder and more rounded.
• Crafting recipes that involve runes of lower tiers to drive value and sales during the interim.
• The now multispawn of loot in runic chests, due to search.

All of the above are part of a longer vision that will hopefully become clearer once the release is done and I can implement the final stage of runic loot adjustments.
Of course, worth noting, there are discussions we have internally that can take considerable time especially given how core these items are to Arelith, glacial but calculated is how I'd like to describe my approach here.
Even if the glacial bit could be a little warmer!

For that reason It's probably best not to speculate or argue too fervently!

[Dedman1234]

In my opinion, you can’t really talk about running dungeons without also mentioning sailing. Ignoring it would be like trying to discuss reviving Blockbuster without ever acknowledging that Netflix exists.

Dungeons are hard. Many characters can’t complete them alone, and the rewards often don’t justify the effort. If that’s by design - if runic materials are supposed to be rare and require a group or some PvE god to collect - then that’s totally fine. I love it when dungeons force players to slow down and think. Those moments when your party realizes pushing ahead will get them killed, and actually has to stop and strategize? That’s great gameplay. And the rewards used to reflect that, too. Remember when a Tier 3 blade rune sold for around 2 million gold? I do.

But sailing kind of ruins that epic dungeon experience. During sails, gold and runic materials are handed out like candy, and while I genuinely enjoy the challenge of a dungeon, the main reason I go into dangerous places is to advance my character with valuable items. Sailing overshadows that.

Let me preface this by saying: I actually love sailing. The system is well-designed, the experience is rewarding, and it’s just… chill. But it’s impossible to ignore how ridiculously powerful sailing is compared to everything else.

Pirate chests vary in value, sure, but the very fact that they’re opened so frequently proves how overpowered sailing is right now.

That’s because you don’t even need to open the chest - or even find it, for that matter. The map pieces alone are worth over 600k gold. That’s not hypothetical gold either. Selling them is easy. Put them in a temp shop, price them at 90k-100k each, and they’ll probably be gone before you have to refresh the stall. Players are offering to buy them - no questions asked - for 80k. You can literally just collect and sell them, and you’ll probably make more gold than if you actually dug up the chests.

But hey, we like gambling and dopamine hits, so a lot of people open the chests anyway.
Which means sailors are so rich that they regularly gamble away items worth half a million gold. Sometimes daily.

If you know what you're doing, you can find six map pieces in a day or two, solo. If you lean into piracy, you can easily take down Cordorian ships and snag tons of map pieces with minimal effort.

And that's just the map pieces.

The regular chests aboard ships, in my opinion, usually have far better loot than any you’ll find elsewhere. Getting runic materials from sunken chests isn’t that rare. My sailor alt currently has, what, 15 bags of mithril dust? Something like that. And I’d wager that’s a low number compared to someone who sails more often.

Sailing also requires very little investment. Sure, if you want to be a PvP powerhouse and solo galleons, you'll need to specialize a bit: go into carpentry or tailoring, adjust your build to hit 100 sail, etc.

But you don’t have to go that far. Just drop 33 points into Sail, wear gear with +2 Sail and some Wisdom (takes 10-15k gold to make), and you're set. On my first sail, I circled Arelith solo with a level 16 character who had around 60 Sail (the build was meant to hit 100, hence the high number at low a lvl - but 60 is easily achievable for a regular 30 lvl character). I’m pretty sure I found two map pieces, loads of valuable items (mithril dust, rare gems), and walked away with roughly 200k in gold just from selling treasure and junk items. That’s probably half a million gold made in 2-3 hours… on a level 16 character.

You can make even more through piracy. Merchant ships carry even better loot - most crew members have 1-2 magical weapons. Cordorian ships? Same deal as end-game galleons, or better. They get elegant chests, too. Their crews are loaded with magical gear, the ships go down 10x faster, and they’re way less dangerous. You might struggle a bit on your first few sails, but once you know what to expect from each ship? The encounters become laughably easy. The only hard part of sailing is selling the loot. It takes that long and requires inventory space, because there is so much of it.

Meanwhile, to clear an epic dungeon, most characters need top-tier gear, actual skill, proper buffs, and a good understanding of the enemies. Even then, one failed save and you’re dead, if you happen to be clearing a 'mean' dungeon.

How much effort does sailing require? You can do anything you want during sailing. Just park your rental in a desired area, do rp... or tab out and watch a movie. Just listen to the bell announcing a ship coming about.

There’s also practically no risk to sailing. Ship PvP is rare, NPC ships won’t attack unless you fire first, and their onboard enemies are a joke. Combat is short, which means characters can enjoy full uptime on their buffs. You can pop War Cry, Divine Might, Improved Invisibility, blast through your limited-use BIG DMG spells, and rest immediately after.

Playing a necromancer pirate? No worries. Nobody can even see the undead on your ship. Worst-case scenario? You get caught red-handed attacking merchants, which is hilariously rare. And there are almost no consequences even if you do get caught. Nobody can check disguises across ships, your -1 bluff "Hooded Man" will never be recognized unless you specifically permit it. When attacked by a bigger PC ship, you’ll have plenty of time to grab the best of your loot and vanish. You only lose a small part of the profit. You keep your gold, your best treasure, and your identity. You’re basically untouchable, despite essentially being a mass murderer. If you have 100 sail, you might not even lose anything at all. It would take another crew with similar numbers to take you down. Hells, you could even very often win the encounter when cornered by a ship that was thrice the size of yours and had 5 ppl on it, but only had around 50 sail (at least before the recent limit on +5 bonuses)

Now try playing a hidden necromancer on the surface. See how fast you get outed and killed before level 30. Or try running a dungeon on literally any character that is not a pve god. Constant focus and effort are required - if you fail, the reward is almost nothing, and you're stuck waiting out the respawn penalty. Your character can also encounter someone with full gear telling you to leave. They might just kill you, too. There is also the risk of someone having looted the place beforehand. Ships are always 'fresh' though.

In the end, epic dungeons were fine when they were the primary source of god-tier loot. They were the dangerous hell-holes you ventured into to find things that could be obtained nowhere else. But with sailing now being infinitely easier and more profitable, dungeons have become obsolete.

That is most likely because we have great devs working on sailing to make it fun and worthwhile. However, it has been a while since runic dungeons got buffed, and most buffs were usually focused on making them harder, rather than more worthwhile.

Either dungeons have to become massively buffed in regards to loot, or sailing has to be made harder and slightly less profitable. You can make big profits even with like 8-10 people aboard, and the coin you get for sailing solo or with 1 other person is straight up NUTS.

IMO, the mean and long runics, things like Mourne or Wells, should have far more loot potential. Maybe make enemies drop sellable magical weapons, place more chests down there, and make sure you don't end up finding the 300 gold + 1d4 essence combo all the time.

I would also greatly lower the chance of runic materials or runes coming from sailing. My sailor has so many of them, they are basically running out of storage space at this point... And I rarely sailed solo on that one.
Meanwhile, my other character - one who can solo epic dungeons and has done so multiple times, but isn't a sailor - has obtained exactly one Tier 3 runic item. He got it as a gift. From a sailor. Yeah.

I am glad to hear that changes are coming to runics, and I really hope that they balance things out a bit.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Almost everything you just said deserves its own conversation, which is why people are questioning what sailing has to do with this thread in particular. But I do agree that the longer dungeons need to be more rewarding, and sailing rewards may be reaching the point where it's been optimized and therefore unfortunately needs a nerf.

[AstralUniverse]

Can you guys stop derailing this thread to sailing?

Kythana made this thread, with 0 mention of sailing, to talk about the unrewarding and unfun experience of runic dungeons (which has nothing to do with the rewards themselves other than the runic chest itself, and there was no comparison to sailing rewards anywhere).

It's very impolite to hold the thread hostage and forced into a different unrelated topic.

If you want to trash talk, or defend, sailing.... make a new thread please? my advice tho - if you want to see sailing remains as is, maybe dont mention it here and draw attention where it is otherwise unnecessary.

[chris a gogo]

I agree with Kythana, the runic dungeon are the least rewarding in terms of profit, no idea why this is the case maybe adding a few more chests to them would help up the reward of doing them other than the chance at a runic item.

I honestly tend to avoid them and do other none runic dungeons make alot of gold, then buy the runes from someone that spends a silly amount of time attempting to get them.

My last character made around 20-30 million in 4 months by doing this and i bought everything i needed.

[D4wN]

The link between getting rich and sailing has gotten completely out of balance. It's not just runics anymore (please, no more Clays or samples of djinn uther), but treasure maps too and even adamantine I would say. Sailing has basically become the only viable way to build wealth. And to do that, you 1) have to actually enjoy sailing (I'd rather pull my teeth), and 2) sink skill points into it (I have much better places to spend my skill points).

There was a time when you could at least raid libraries and make some decent gold off treasure maps or bash chests when you're not a rogue or had a pixie (which now can also no longer be used to open chests) and at least still get some loot. Now, if you're not a rogue and a normal chest is locked or trapped? Tough luck, you get to stare at the chest and get nothing or bash it for a little bit of gold.

On top of that, some of the best loot in the game parrots, div mirrors, and other insanely profitable items, are locked behind sailing. Meanwhile, dungeoneering has no comparable reward system when you spend time gathering your friends to do a dungeon to only be disappointed with the 100th clay or no loot at all for the reasons the OP said.

It would be fantastic to see this rebalanced and give dungeon lovers the chance to earn unique, valuable loot like sailors do. Imagine being able to acquire adamantine through dungeons without having to grind endlessly and hoping for an addy node at the end of your dungeon run and not be disappointed to see yet another Arjale node instead. Or look at a Parrot Chalice in a sailor's shop for 5 million gold.

Right now, the disparity between loot and resource gains for sailors versus dungeoneers is just too extreme.

[LivelyParticle]

I do think sailing is massively overpowered in terms of reward compared to the usual dungeon runs, though I have to say gearing for sailing and finding a group to reliably go do sailing content can be tough. (no, I don't mean the dweomered gear stuff, that's easy to get as has been pointed out previously in this thread - I mean having combat gear and sailing gear, inventory space issues, all that jazz. If you want to fish, well, good luck finding inventory space for that, too.)

That said, I do have the following suggestion that addresses the topic/subject of this thread, which was the first thing to come to mind when I saw it.

Remove the guaranteed masterwork rune dropping sea creatures that can be found out in certain places. I couldn't believe this was a thing until I verified it for myself, and I find it pretty crazy that it's possible. Compared to normal dungeon runs and effort to find the components before even making/crafting the rune - or finding someone who can do it for you, I'm surprised it exists.

[Dachlatte]

And to add to the above text: due to mainstream arelith player influx, every dungeon is occupied or visited 24/7!

Means loot is gone already, all chests are empty. Or you have to rush the place, instead of enjoying the dungeon and go slow, or someone will arrive within a few minutes. However, doing a dungeon with haste is the new normal now anyway.

[PowerWord Rage]

Let's not derail the thread that OP is asking feedback of.

And as Sincra has wrote, Runic dungeon and loots are being looked into and that is good because it means that the Dev knows that it's a problem, a concern and it is on their radar.

If anyone has problems with sailing content being too OP, please create a new thread and enjoy the dynamic discussion between /those who love to sail/ versus /those who hate to sail/.

[Kythana]

And as Sincra has wrote, Runic dungeon and loots are being looked into and that is good because it means that the Dev knows that it's a problem, a concern and it is on their radar.

While I partially agree with this, the updates that have been given to make runic dungeons more rewarding have really fallen flat, and I think they're coming at with the wrong approach.

Take, the search update, for example. Something that seems interesting on paper, but in my experience, it doesn't do anything. You need to build a hyper optimal party around it to even have a chance of getting something extra, which is still subject to RNG on what runic material it is in the first place.

And, in the end, it's still an extra split which has to be made. This is fine for something like factions, where they want to keep everything in house, but for your average casual player that is just making a pick-up group, there's almost nothing you get out of it.

What I would really hope is to look at why this RNG system even needs to be here in the first place.

It's been mentioned a few times here, and I think a writ approach would be a lot more preferable, than trying to apply band-aids to a fundamentally outdated design.

It could be something as simple as weekly cooldown writs that require the completion of multiple epic dungeons, that reward one untradeable masterwork rune, for example.

Arelith design has often been influenced by MMORPGs, whether good, or bad. In this case, it's a holdover from 'classic' style games that really do not respect your time. I'd look to some more modern examples of loot systems and how rewards are dished out. There's some valuable insight to be found there.

[Storybook Lass]

I have had the pleasure of sailing with some players who are really passionate about it, and that makes the experience a lot of fun. They make the PvE and exploration exciting, and even just the down time on deck! And of course, the rewards are pretty amazing in sailing, especially if you manage to get one of those treasure chests that requires a map to be put together.

I've met players who have acquired more gold than the treasuries of entire settlements, thanks to sailing. Meanwhile, I can spend hours doing a really big dungeon with really hard mob and boss fights, and then at the end, I get mithral, and an empty chest.

I think there is a gigantic imbalance between sailing and dungeons. Where the entire process of sailing is rewarded every step of the way, you can go through a huge dungeon and at the very end you don't even get a guarantee of things like adamantine or a runic. On top of that, if you do not have an expert locksmith with you, smashing the chest is the only choice, and you get punished for that by getting a broken down runic item. I think if you beat the whole dungeon and the boss, you should not have to have a final test of a locked/trapped chest, and get punished for breaking it, after all the effort you put in. Not to mention that I've run into people who were obviously logged out in dungeons before and showed up when we were there, especially on some of the islands, like Gnit. I saw someone suddenly show up behind us, when we sailed all the way out there, which means they were definitely camping the dungeon the whole time!

So really at this point I don't expect a dungeon reward anymore. I just do the dungeons because they are fun, but I've really lost all expectation of every getting worthwhile treasure, when I think just as like, a video-game aspect, the player should be rewarded for completing content like that, and not have to do extra things like an open lock at the very end, when you just beat the whole dungeon.

Sailing is a lot of fun, and the amount of treasure you get from doing it is extremely high, and it is guaranteed. While dungeon content doesn't guarantee anything, and is often times a bigger challenge in terms of PvE. Especially with marathon dungeons like the Wells dragon, Maurs, and Gyldenheim - To go through all of that and then end up with nothing, or treasure that obviously does not match the effort, is disappointing.

I really like the suggestion above, that talks about a writ system for rewards instead, and stuff you cannot trade. More like an MMO-style award at the end of the raid, where everyone gets something, and you don't have to rely on RNG, and there is no risk of the reward not matching your effort!

[Anomandaris]

Loot from sailing and fishing are overtuned by comparison. From priceless treasures coming out of the bellies of fish to unique loot acquired only via sailing, the delta is substantial. I'm not sure anyone could seriously argue otherwise with a straight face.

The question then is, should it be such a stark difference? It seems hard to justify such an economic advantage just for investment in sail. It's a pretty big reward for a skill and vastly outshines equal investment in appraise, search, leadership, crafting skills, craft mastery and anything else income related.

To the original point of the thread, and relevance to sailing.... I didn't mind so much that runic dungeons were hit or miss, it's part of delving. But when sailing became so profitable it started to feel a lot worse.