Equipment Rarity
The headlining feature of this update is called Equipment Rarity, adding new rarity tiers to all equipment in the game. These tiers each reflect a number of Enchantment slots an item can have, with uncommon items having 1 slot up to Divine items having 4. These slots will always roll with enchantments in them using a new revamped enchanting system we will talk about later.
Items that are enchanted will obtain a colored glow associated with their tier and replace the UT/ST/Tiered icon in the bottom right with a new icon showing the amount of slots an item had. This icon can also be seen in bag previews when mousing over bags or holding cntrl.
Any item that drops has the following chances for slots, 50% for uncommon, 37.5% rare, 25% Legendary, then 12.5% Divine. Items roll for slots when they drop in a cumulative manner, this means an item has to pass the uncommon roll before it rolls to upgrade to rare, then pass rare to roll to legendary and so forth. Seasonal characters have a 1.05x multiplier on these odds.
While this does equate to Divine items being very rare we will not be using them as a point to balance around and they instead will act as high end goals for long term players, or just as super lucky drops for any player. We expect most players to be running 2-3 slot tiered items and 1-2 slot UT items when they’ve settled into a final build. We believe that most of the power of an individual item is obtained in the first two mods and as such 4 slot items shouldn’t be too much more powerful. We are however going to be monitoring balance on this front and adjusting our approach on slot rates and what we balance around as we view what patterns players fall into.
There will also be different ways to “skip” tiers in the future with some loot sources starting a drop at uncommon and thus increasing all the other odds by not having to roll uncommon first. Shiny items for example always drop at rare or higher.
Enchantments
Accompanying the new expansion of the available enchantments slots is a system overhaul for the enchantments themselves. The main goal of which is to add many more enchantments including extra rare unique enchantments as well as rebalance the general power of enchantments. This comes in the form of a few new features which are explained below.
Enchantment Weight
All enchantments now have a weight value associated with them, this effectively sets their likelihood of being rolled by comparing the weight to the weight of every other enchantment. This allows us to control the rarity of enchantments unlike the old system where everything was equally likely.
Currently all normal enchantment modifiers have 4 tiers of rarity, these have weights distributed across tiers making Tier 1 mods 35% of the weight, Tier 2 30%, tier 3 20% and tier 4 15%.
Categories and Labels
Now that players can potentially obtain up to 4 enchantments it is important that we can control which enchantments can roll together. This is done by having specific labels on enchantments that are incompatible with other labels, usually labels of the same type. This means for example if you roll a Weapon Damage mod you cannot Get a Weapon fire rate mod on the same item in the other slots.
Most of these Labels can be considered Categories of enchantments in which you are only allowed one of an enchantment in each category. The main notable categories to watch out for are as follows:
SingleStat
Contains flat stat mods for single stats, bonus relative, and bonus conversion mods.
DualStat
Contains flat stat mods for multiple stats, and tradeoff stat mods.
WeaponDamage
Contains weapon damage and weapon fire rate mods
WeaponRange
Contains projectile lifetime and projectile speed mods
AbilityModifiers
Contains stat mod mult and mp cost reduction mods
Reward
Contains all of the mods that boost loot xp and dust rates
DualReward
Contains the dual reward mods that are found on rings
We believe it is important players have as much information as we can give them for interacting with this system, so a full list of currently implemented enchantments and their details, weights, and labels. Can be viewed here.
Bonus Relative Stats
Replacing the old Relative stat enchantments is a new type called Bonus Relative Stats, this works similarly to the old relative stats but instead only considers your bonus stats and not your classes base stats. This is because we found those older enchantments were often just flat out better than flat stats and also relied too heavily on what your base class was and not what you were building. This new enchantment type should be used as a tool to accentuate stats you are already focusing on instead of granting free stats for no build cost. You will likely find these mods to be worse than flat value enchantments except in specific builds.
New Enchantment types
We have a selection of new enchantment types available that hopefully will offer more options and decision making when rolling your items.
Dual Stat Modifiers: Have two smaller flat stat bonuses rather than one bonus
Tradeoff Stat Modifiers: Lowers one stat slightly in order to give a single stat a larger bonus
Bonus Relative Modifiers: A stat mod that increases your stat by a percentage of the amount of that stat you already have on your gear.
Stat Conversion Modifiers: A bonus relative stat mod that gives you one stat based off the total bonus of another stat
Stat Mod Multiplier: Only on abilities with stat mod implemented, multiplies the stat total of the scaling stat of your item, for example if you have 100 wisdom and a 20% stat mod multiplier the item will scale as if you had 120 wisdom. This will be added to more abilities as they gain full stat mod support.
Mana and Life Regeneration: A new enchantment that can give you regeneration directly without giving you the associated vit or wisdom, this allows for much higher regen values.
XP/Loot/Dust drop modifiers: Modifiers that can increase your various rewards earned.
And many new proc modifiers.
Any existing modifiers should convert directly over to their new versions when the update goes live with the exception of a few discontinued modifiers. Any discontinued modifiers have been reassigned to some new modifier and will instead appear as one of those upon the update.
Decimal Value Stat Modifiers
You may have noticed in some of the images so far things like +2.1 Wisdom or +2.6 Speed. This is new tech for enchantments and effectively works as a granular balancing tool. Player stats are still whole numbers but we wanted to be able to more precisely control the balancing on some of the stat enchantments.
Decimal Stats always round up, this means if you have 2.9 or 2.1 of a stat that will still be a total of +3 to the stat, but this allows us to put a little extra power in individual modifiers without it being as high when we have that modifier on all 4 of a players pieces of equipment. This is mostly experimental and might not have that big of a balance impact in the end but we are hoping this lets us at least temper off stats a small amount when a player is making a “perfect” Build without making certain enchantments too low impact.
We understand that these can be confusing to look at and track and we will be trying to make improvements to the visibility of these in the near future.
Unique Enchantments
Unique enchantments are more powerful enchantments that are much rarer than normal. These enchantments can range from simply having a stronger stat boost than normal to entirely unique effects or combinations. You can only have one Unique Enchantment per item so roll them wisely.
In addition, unique enchantments can fall into the categories mentioned before, so if you already have a Attack Bonus IV mod you will not also be able to get the Shaitan’s Might mod on the same item as they both belong in the same category.
Awakened Enchantments
Awakened enchantments refers to any enchantment that is specific to an item or items. Using old engravings as an example Buzzing Bullets would be an awakened enchantment under the new system. Awakened enchantments do even more unique things than unique mods as they can be built and balanced around specific items having them. These can roll like normal enchantments but will only be available on those specific items. We are planning to really build out the selection of Awakened enchantments over time but we are starting with mostly earlier game UTs. You can also have only one Awakened enchantment but are able to have them in combination with a Unique enchantment.
Similarly to uniques the awakened enchantments may belong to certain categories, many weapon awakened mods exclude additional damage or range mods for example.
Any old engraving enchantments applied from before this update should be still on any items you may have as legacy versions. A few will have converted over to the newly update version of their modifiers. The only exception to this are the lucky and hardworker engravings which will instead be replaced with their respective tier 4 versions of loot and xp bonus upon the update.
Artifacts
Artifacts are a new Item type that are replacing the old engraving system. These items can be selected when rerolling in the enchanter and will alter the reroll with various effects. They can increase or decrease the weights of various mods, exclude mods entirely from being rollable, or add new mods into the pool for unique mods like the aspirant items. These items let you try to roll for specific mods instead of just rolling the entire pool at once and hoping you get one specific mod. Artifacts do add a bit of dust to the cost of rerolling though so there is some cost to using them.
These will drop all across the game with varying levels of strength and effects. The current list of obtainable artifacts are as follows:
Tarot Cards
A set of 10 cards that each have a minor effect on rolling, these all focus on specific stats or labels for enchantments along with one related unique mod. These are found from most early content in the game and from any realm setpiece or encounter in the form of tarot card packs. When consumed these packs will give you a stack of 5 of a random tarot card.
Precision Cog
This artifact drops rarely from the Kogbold Steamworks as well as much more commonly from the Advanced Kogbold Steamworks. This artifact eliminates tier 1 mods from the mod pool as well as providing a large bonus to attack mods, tradeoff mods, and a selection of Kogbold themed awakened mods.
Amber Honeycomb
This artifact drops rarely in The Nest and much more commonly from the Advanced nest. This artifact eliminates tier 1 mods from the mod pool as well as providing a large bonus to dexterity mods, summon mods, and a selection of Nest related Awakened mods.
-Note there are not many summon mods at the moment but more will be added in the future.
Ivory Heart
This artifact drops form the Ivory Wyvern. It boosts a collection of modifier labels that cover a wide variety of useful modifiers, additionally it boosts the weight of the Drake Warden Awakened Mod.
Ascension Ankh
This artifact drops from the tomb bosses. It applies an increase to a different stat modifier for each boss as well as increasing dual stat modifier weights, It also increases the weight of the Ancient’s Blessing Awakened mod.
Premium cards
There are two premium card artifacts, gold and silver. The are available through the shop as well as events, missions, campaigns, or the battle pass. These cards eliminate tier 1 and 2 mods from rolling respectively as well as applying a multiplier to all unique and awakened mods.
Old Engravings
With the switch to the new system of artifacts the old engravings still have a place. Many of these old engravings are now simply artifacts that have a nice generic effect as well as guaranteeing specific mods when used on specified items. This means a lot of these old engravings can still be used as you are familiar with them, but can also be consumed on other items to get their generic benefit if you would prefer.
The exception to this is any of the old Advanced Nest or Advanced Steamworks engravings, or the Lucky and Hardworker Engravings. The Anest and ASteamworks Engravings can be consumed to convert into a stack of 10 of Amber Honeycomb or Precision Cog Respectively. Lucky and Hardworker engravings will instead convert into a stack of 10x of the new Wheel of Fortune Tarot Card.
Enchanter
The enchanter screen has undergone a few changes to make the enchanting experience better. When opening your enchanter you will still see all of the items you can enchant on the left, but the right side now shows a more compact view of the enchantment list and contains a few new features.
Each enchantment on an item has a Box next to it, this can be clicked to lock that slot, meaning it will not be rerolled in the next enchantment operation. This incurs a 2x multiplier on the overall cost of the reroll.
There is a new dropdown where you can pick an artifact to use for your roll, and finally there is a cost breakdown for the enchantment so you can see what is contributing to the overall cost.
Items now only use one color of dust based on the tier of the game they belong to, items dropped in adept or below will use green dust, veteran content will use red, and expert content and some of the rarer items like Realm Whites will use Purple. Artifacts have their own costs defined so you could have an enchanting operation that uses both purple and green dust but not red. Additionally the dust cost for items no longer increases when you roll, you are free to reroll your item for as long as you have dust to reroll with.
Dust cost does also increase with the rarity of the item being rolled, starting at 50 with 1 slot and increasing to 100 at 4 slots. This is done as items with more slots are not only more valuable but are also rolling more slots with each enchantment roll.
Dust Drops
We have also rebalanced the drop rate of all dust across the game. Dust now drops from any source that drops it 100% of the time where previously it dropped 40-60% of the time, no more rolling a chance to get dust. We have buffed some of the purple dust drops but have also nerfed some of the green dust drops in the endgame. Dust rates are something we will also be watching closely and are open to buffing if it appears players are not able to enchant as frequently as we would like.
Forge
The forge has also received some changes and improvements to tie in with Equipment Rarity. First the UI has been vastly improved with plenty of options for filtering what equipment you are looking to forge. This should make it way easier to find what you are looking for when forging which is needed as the amount of items in the forge increases.
Newly forged items roll for enchantments similarly to how dropped items do, so its a good idea to recycle your unwanted items into new items to try for better enchantment slots. They do have slightly reduced odds than a dropped item, but can still be a solid source of enchantment slots. Additionally if you craft an item with all of the items ingredients being of the same rarity the resulting item will be guaranteed to be that rarity or higher. This can help in your pursuit of high slot variants of specific items.
Items cost generally less forge fire to craft and you should get a little more Forgefire per day so you can use the forge without being as time limited. The forgefire cap has also increased to 2000.
Items forged with upgrade cores ignore the core for rarity and will simply inherit the rarity of the base item used. Have a legendary doom bow? You can craft that straight into a legendary Clockwork Repeater.
Tiered items from tier 7 and up will also now be able to be made in the forge, these have no material values and instead need 4 of any item of the same slot and tier. A t9 Sword will require any 4 t9 weapons to be crafted. This was introduced so you not only can offset bad rng with tiered items into the endgame but also lets you use the forge for rerolling rarities just like you can with UTs.
These changes do come with a nerf to the forge however. In order to prevent players from just recycling the same item into itself repeatedly to try and get better slots all items in the forge starting from adept and higher now require two items from their dungeon (or from similar content if it isn’t a dungeon) to craft like endgame items did before. Marks have been removed from the costs of item forging as this is redundant with this new requirement. This means you need to do the content where the item you want to forge actually drops, and is a way for us to hold forge back a little as items themselves are also becoming much more common from drop rate buffs.