For the items that potentially require two talents (weapons, divine weapons, staffs), there don't appear to be any single gold talent items only single blue talent items. Is there a reason behind this?
I wondered, myself. One approach is that the progression should go in "increments," like: blank & blank blank & minor minor & minor minor & major major & major You wouldn't logically have "blank & major" in such a system. Another is that two-token items have twice as many cards as one-token items (six versus three), and thus the tokens relate directly to the cards. How often would you have a weapon with three cards of "major power token" status and three of "nope, don't need a token" status? Further, at what levels in the game would this happen? The latter is a weird question to answer. (And don't forget that cards really are divided by power token "strength," so it's a serious question, too.)
There's already a lot of variation within items with the same token based on level, and looking at the way that good cards are so frequently paired with drawbacks in low level items, I'm pretty sure it's a maths thing and not delineated sets. To put this another way, 1 minor vs 2 minor seems indistinguishable to me from 1 major vs 2 major. Why should one be harder than the other? The progression thing is a bit trickier, but it seems like you could put it in after the two minor and before the major+minor if you wanted to.
Well, both of my points are really guesswork. The progression is up to interpretation, but I could totally understand it if Blue Manchu said "nope, doing it this way." For the other: Here I'd really like to know what the developers think. I get the impression that in some cases it's math, but in some cases it's delineated so as to create a real progression and limit what can appear at each "token strength." Consider multiplayer balancing: the developers need to control what can and cannot happen on the field. But otherwise, well, this is still guesswork, but it sure feels like a progression. You look through game items for something that has "card X" at a lower token cost, and in some cases you just don't find it. It feels like a whole world of good cards becomes available the instant you break a "token strength" boundary. Edit: I'm probably just overlooking an old thread or dev diary where they spoke about this. Whew, forum exhaustion . . .
I kind of think the opposite, but only on the basis of a single data point. I've got a level 6 uncommon Lunging Glaive and a level 7 uncommon Lunging Spetum. Exactly the same card, except for one level and one point of damage difference, even though level 6 to level 7 crosses the talent boundary for weapons, so the Lunging Spetum needs a minor power token. As a supporting observation, I thought you could only get I thought you could only get Martyr's Blessing with a major power token, until I found a Martyr's Medallion, where a Demonic Feedback seems to balance the martyr to appear on a level 12 uncommon. I'll admit that I extrapolated pretty wildly from that, but there are only 5 token levels, and blocks of 20% is a good number of cards. As an example, there are the 7 levels core "spark" spells - the same spell with damage ranging from 2 to 9. I can't think of a better candidate than Obliterating Spark to be exclusive to two major tokens, but but the wiki shows three items with it - one with one minor & one major token (Mindsplinter Staff, Ironwood Staff Of The Magus, and Superb Electromancy) P.s. the forums sure are getting busier
I find it especially limiting when building out warriors. In particular because they have 3 double token item slots. If you want to save tokens for things other than weapons, your only real options right now are single blue token items or items with no tokens. I think that adding items with single gold tokens would allow for a lot more options. A good discussion. I tend to agree that I think items had to also be separated by level progression for the campaign balancing. I expect things would look very different without the extensive campaign. How items are "built" out of cards is an interesting topic. Item and card rarity obviously impact each other, but then we also have card quality and power tokens. These last two are more difficult to fully understand.
I find "single-token" items very valuable. (Did a thread about that pre-reset, in fact.) Yes, I'd like more single-token items, too. But what exactly do we want to see? When I did that "minor & minor" list, part of the point was to compare it to how very simple other item types are. Most items look like, well, Jon's list itself: No token, then While your Boots are going through that, what is your Weapon doing at the same level? Check out your inventory, and currently power tokens show up slightly "early": it's like their total value is averaged into a gradient. That is, "blank & minor" Weapons show up at slightly lower levels than minor-power-token Boots; then "minor & minor" for awhile; then "minor & major" slightly before major-power-token Boots. As we went up in power tokens to "great" and "ultimate," Blue Manchu would have to fit an absurd variety of token combinations (for Weapons) into a relatively small space (the span covering the same area in Boots). That is: blank & & & & blank & & & & & . . . Is a lot of combinations to cram into a little space. And the "averaging their value to determine when they show up in the level sequence" thing, for comparison to Boots and other items, would be shot. Then, with the above system, you still wouldn't get much use out of it. If you check out the token progression by level (link), you'll see things like how you max out on tokens by level 36: if you were to equip a Weapon with a single power token (of any strength), then you'd forever have a spare token lying around after deckbuilding.
Ahh, I see. So eventually everything can use a power token. At which point this would be a non-issue. If the campaign goes to level 50, that's a heck of a lot more single player content. This game already has one of the most thorough single player campaigns I've seen, I'm completely amazed this is only a portion of what there will be. Side question. Have they said if the multiplayer level will stay at 20? I'd assume they'd move it up (to 36 or something), to utilize all the tokens?
All I recall from the devs is their initial statement: Yay, that's all I got. If they ever use the higher token types, I think it's more likely they'll create multiple "leagues" instead of "moving the current one up." They need a level where new players can cross over between single-player and multiplayer before they go old and grey. An exaggeration, obviously, but you know what I mean: if there's any selling point to the "your play in each side can support the other" bit, then the current multiplayer level would be good to keep around. Edit: By the way, my three-party game run only recently reached level 11, and I'm pretty comfortable playing multiplayer with (mostly) the minor power token items I've earned. I couldn't really be comfortable with that against people who could use "max power" items. And besides, shouldn't they keep something unique for single-player so it has its own strategic appeal?
Vaguely related to this, not quite a balance complaint but a ... well , weird realization. because there are no Major/ blank token weapons/ staves, when you start upgrading your minors into majors, its... not much of an upgrade? specially for warriors. like SURE i can equip this way cooler shield or this way cooler helm, but weapon wise im out of luck, because EVERYTHING is going to cost 2 tokens.Its obviously partially a design decision to disallow supreme flexibility , but hits warriors really hard.considering they are all about their 3 weapon slots, while priests and wizards have all those delightful 1 token slots,and sure, the warrior weapons DO have twice the amount of cards, but, thats actually a disadvantage since having more tiny slots allows a more fine tuning of exactly what cards you want and dont want. This is also why personally stick with the single power token staves with drawbacks, because SURE, i want more acid, but for 2 minor power tokens? i could just take Akon's Amulet and spend that other token on armor or a racial talent. Edit: Though looking through my gear, it might just be my own bias that the 1 token and less staves just look better compared to the 1 token and less weapons, since warriors tend to be more pure damage while wizards have all their blocks and such on their staves?
Looking at it closely, it doesn't seem to be a huge problem, even for warriors: at level 16 you can equip 3 minor/minor weapons and at level 17 you can equip 3 major/minor weapons. Or you can slowly convert minor/minor weapons to major/minor through levels 15-17. And in case you haven't noticed yet, every token can be used in place of a lesser token, so you can keep using those minor token items even past level 38.
I didn't do any math on it, but my subjective perception is that the first two increments in that progression are much larger than the second two. That is from level 15 to 18, when you don't gain power tokens but only switch from minor to major, that feels like much less of an upgrade than in the earlier levels when you gained additional tokens. Single major token items would help make those upgrades feel more useful.
Weapons actually get decent power boost along with the major power token. It's just that there probably will be plenty of rare and uncommon double minor weapons, where as major+minor weapons will mostly be common. And hence as good or only slightly better. My problems are with extreme rarity of 16+ items. They are next to impossible to get unless you want to grind high tier adventures. Which there is two that might or might not give you 16+ item. Even Multiplayer seems to be decked out with some weird level system. Although I've only gotten up to 20 wins twice, both times item rewards where higher level later on. All and all, weapons with single Major Power Token seem bit redundant. It could be done, but there's very little room between current tiers. And it would have to be way below double minor and very very little over single minor. But if there's higher level items introduced or bigger item reshuffle, it's worth the consideration.
That actually makes sense, since i have no legendaries or epics above level 10, and none of those are weapons, just helms and shoes.
If you assign values to the power tokens (0 for none, 1 for minor, 2 for major, 3 and 4 for whatever the other two are called), then every time you gain a level from 6 to 45 your total power increases by 1, except for level 42 where you increase by 2. And this would explain why there are no major-only weapons: their power level would be the same as minor/minor (which can be used much earlier: level 8 vs level 15).
I'm not sure I'd frame it quite like this. Warriors have 3 "double-slot" weapons and their martial slot focused on hurting people - 21 cards out of their deck of 36 are focused on ending opponents. While that is, in a sense, a lack of flexibility, it's also the primary reason to take warriors: to deal a *lot* of damage. The presence of the Martial Slot gives you the power to spend exactly one major power token on offence. The only thing that a lack of single major token weapons prevents you from doing is achieving a consistent middling power level without spending a lot of minor power tokens. That's a pretty limited complaint, especially because you can do things like load up on raw damage with major tokens and steps with no power tokens to achieve a good loadout without minor tokens (for example, if you wanted your minor tokens for defence). On the topic of relative power - I think that an item's power is determined by it's level, and it's token requirements are also determined by it's level. I'm pretty confident that there's no additional power budget determined by the tokens themselves, it's just that the tokens are tied to level ranges. I'm just a little puzzled by level 13 weapons, that mix 2 minor tokens with one-and-one If I'm right, this means that the difference between token levels ranges between 1 level and lots. For example, the difference between a level 7 weapon with no token and a level 8 token is very minor (Lunging Glaive -> Lunging Spetum) but "no token to minor token" also encompasses comparing a level 1 weapon to a level 8 weapons, e.g. Crummy Short Sword(actually only level 7) to a Woodman's Axe, where the difference is very marked.
Gold token or not, I would like to at least see more single token items (though single golds would be cool too). I guess the math behind it is that only level 7 or 8 staff/weapon/divine weapons have the single token, but there are so few of them that I almost always have a better option at a lower level without the token, simply because there's that many more items available for 1-6. So in addition to limiting deck building (whether or not that's intentional), it also makes most of the items at level 7-8 virtually useless for high level/mp in those slots.
