Way Cool! I got 3 I didn't have yet, and bought a couple of duplicates I might have a use for! Beats the hell out of a solid month of nothing and squandering thousands on brown chests. Nothing from the daily, but there might be tomorrow.
What do people think about Heartripper, now that Punishing Bolt has been nerfed? Still worth it? If I buy it I'm not going to be able to afford another legendary for, probably, a very long time. Been playing since release and this would be only my third legendary purchase.
Argh argh argh. Byzner's Black Spear; I already bought one pre-patch, but vamps are so good now that having two is probably a good investment. BUT. Shield Of Ultimate Dodging; Dodge is one of those things you tend to play around with until it disappoints you one time to many and you put it back on the shelf again, but still! The Bludgeonator; a better, more expensive Infused Greatclub. Argh argh argh: I can only afford one. These are only the ones I'd be upset to let go, there's also some other probably-great-but-not-for-the-kinds-of-builds-I-like-to-play; St. Portia's Mail And from Daily Deal, Fabrian's Shield is pretty tempting, though it does suffer from the classic shield problem, in that there's already tons of great shields to choose from... Epics: Sliding Boots; would be my first. Pretty sure I need these... Bought 'em. Aegis Of The Defender; I have one already but don't think I've used it due to aforementioned too-many-good-shields issue. With it now drawing a card though, 2 of these could form a frustration-singularity... Trained Flexibility; pretty rare not to want Leadership in this slot, but that is a pretty good item for highly defensive builds... I have 3500 3000 gold and very little spare time this week.
Arg, I hate the new randimar's too. There's no sensible way to make enough gold to afford these things, even if I was just buying more pizza to convert into gold. The Bludgeonator has only a slight damage increase over Infused Greatclub, AND it has a greater token cost. Usually not worth it. I have three legendaries that are questionable : The Strongarm, Kelharin's Clogs and Bloody Command. Already have one Strongarm I don't use much, and as for the other two... They're good, but I have my reservations.
I love the new Randimar's. It's now less about item starvation than (to borrow Stexe's terms) "thoughtful decisions and meaningful choices". Even with the new version there will probably be some items a player won't see in a year. Other items may repeat endlessly, but you won't know which until it happens. Manage your resources wisely and you should be able to get everything you need, but probably not everything you want. Definitely not everything you see unless you throw a lot of cash at the game.
Honestly, the best way to manage a free to play game. Before this change, I never even had to think about buying gold with $ in this game, I made way too much gold just playing and never could spend it anywhere fast enough. Not the best gameplay, and certainly not the best for the financial bottom line. Now I get to see many, many more items I may otherwise have never seen for years of weekly checks and if I *really* want it all regardless of I actually need them or not? Time to fork over the $.
To be clear, I don't really hate the new Randimar's, and I think in time neither will anyone else. It'll just take time to adapt from a system which had us stockpile gold a lot of the time hoping something potentially useful would show up, to a system which makes gold basically always valuable. The value of legendary treasure is now far greater, since it's far more likely to go into buying useful items soon. The old system had us cursing Randimar's shonky store for weeks on end as our useless gold reserves went up and we added nothing useful to our collections. Now there is basically no such thing as too much gold.
I'm trying to decide between Deadly, Deadly Staff and Heartripper. Problem is, I have plenty of Legendary staves, but only 2 Weapons. I'd prefer to save my gold for weapons, but those staves. Ugh. I hate and love the changes. Edit: Considering I already have Dianon's Staff and Elemer's Pine Staff it looks like Heartripper is in the lead.
Can anyone give me a list or point me to a post with some must haves to keep my eyes peeled for as a brand new player (played in beta)?
I don't think there are any such must haves as before. Also, the balance changes arrived like 2 days ago so I don't think there is any such list. And we have gotten hints that there might soon come another small balance patch which might make some great items not that good.
Not to mention, even if one were to list good items, it's more about what you can afford than anything. The only "must haves" I can think of are skills and very few items like Crusty Helm and Parrying Buckler Basically you want to buy every "Novice" skill, along with Focused Healer/Manifold Healer, Savvy Attacker, and especially Electroporter Novice. After that point... well what you buy is up to you. *EDIT* Trained Flexibility was very useful to me in SP. Superb Command is similar, and common to boot though.
I'm very happy to see that new Randi Shop + Daily little Randi. Now I have the opporturnity to spent my 100+k gp finally xDD
This new Randimar's is absolutely crazy! So many things to buy... Bought my firsts Bolg's Big Iron Plate (could be useful in scenarios where wizards are strong), General Jelom's Helm and Mindsplinter Staff, and my second Oquith's Choking Incense. I had to stop there even though there are 2 more legendaries I want: Bloodchopper and Granwick's Shield (I have one of each already). I'm afraid to run out of gold (only 5k now) just when Randimar's or the Daily Deal has 1 must have item like Bleneth's Skull, so I will need to be much more picky from now on...
I'm not aware if anyone's made a list of great items. It's a pretty subjective topic, since there are items and cards some people think are poop that others will swear by. However, if your collection is lacking, then I think you probably shouldn't invest in any legendary items for a while, at least until you have a sound build you're satisfied with that some legendary would greatly complement; for the time being you could strengthen your collection greatly through rares and the occasional epic. Vastly cheaper and not necessarily less powerful. In fact a lot of commons and uncommons are really great. Best example might be the Parrying Shield, the baseline for excellent shields, which is difficult to compete against with three outstanding defensive cards for one blue token, or the Bejewelled Shortsword, a great strong attack item with step attacks on it. Shielding Token. Shuddering Relic, Diamond Moccasins, Hexagon Shield, the list goes on... the list of great low-rarity items is far longer than the list of high rarity items, and until you've been collecting for some time and need to add missing items that simply refuse to drop I'm not sure you should worry about missing important items from shops. ...though a few low rarity items that are good to have and spring to mind are Novice Piety, Parrying Buckler (as mentioned), Infused Greatclub (the baseline for spike damage weapons), Novice Impaling (really any tokenless skill item with two traits, better when the third card is enhanced by the traits)... I've probably missed literally hundreds of items.
One thing a new player might want from rarer items is items with Mass Frenzy on them - I know I didn't have any after I had done the campaign the first time. Getting a bunch of them really makes priest a lot stronger for any setups where you have at least two melees (priest + warrior or priest + priest). Priest is pretty wimpy class with just common/uncommon gear while warriors and wizards can easily do their job with those, IMO.
So for the staves I've definitely decided on Heartripper. What I didn't notice at first was Bleneth's Frenzy Tome is also there. Does that trump the Heartripper?
I was lucky enough to drop a Heartripper a couple of months ago and it was a must-have for higher level SP builds. Not as sure now that the range has been halved - I haven't played any adventures of a high enough level to be able to use it since the changes.