Troll Blacksmith "Smith" reward is too weak on the armor side
Troll Blacksmith "Smith" reward is too weak on the armor side
The new troll rewards system is very nice, though the most expensive "Smith" option is rarely useful for armor.
The player can have the Blacksmith smith 3 items for them. They always get to choose from 2 random weapons and a random armor generated using Dwarven Metropolis tier distribution. The items have 15%/55%/20%/5% chance to be upgraded to +0/+1/+2/+3 respectively and are never enchanted or cursed.
At this stage of the game we are usually looking forward to a plate armor, and may have one at +0/+1. Often enough we can upgrade and reforge for 1500 favor and come out with +2/+3 plate.
Now the Smith option, for 2000, has a low chance of producing such an armor and often only produces a Scale mail, rarely a novelty at the troll's level.
Perhaps the armor item should be guaranteed to be a plate?
I feel the same way. I've no use for scale mail, I've observed I just die in the next area without plate. I prefer to just keep my chainmail at that point and cash out for gold in the hopes that I find plate at the shop.
The shop spawns for weapons and armor are completely pre-determined when to comes to tier. You'll only ever find plate on the floor 20 shop.
You have to keep in mind that the smith option is for runs which don't already have good gear, along with upgrade it's more equivalent to the rewards from the two previous quests, but gives you more overall chances for a T5 item than anything else in the game. Guaranteeing strong item drops from smith makes runs too consistent though, and notably boosts winrates. It's the primary reason why I nerfed the smith + upgrade combo in v2.2.1.
I see. Only a +0 plate mail per se is not really "strong". Most times not even wearable at this level.
As things are it is better to come back later with a couple of plates and do upgrade + reforge.
Smith is still great for a choice of strong weapons. Just not useful for armor IMO.
I want players to be able to make that choice, but you're talking from the perspective of a run that's strong enough to move deeper without any reward and come back later, not all players are in that position. The average reward from smith + upgrade is a T4 or T5 armor that's at least +1, often +2, and sometimes +3. For a run that badly needs armor that is an incredible boost.
Went down to hunt an extra plate, came back to upgrade+reforge to +3, and there is still favor left for another reforge 🙂
