To start of, I’ve been really enjoying playing the NRftW, completed the story and I’m now exploring, farming outbreak zones whilst also hoping into the crucible from time to time. Aside from a few nitpicks which I’m certain will be ironed out, the game is a masterpiece in the making. The list below is more of my personal ideas/suggestions garnered from playing so far, rather than something essential the game should have.
Faction Based Loot Distribution
I think faction specific gear should have a higher chance of dropping from defeated enemies belonging to that faction. Balak Taw drops their gear, Tanth there’s etc.. this should also affect chests/random drops when that faction occupies an area. This would make target farming faction gear easier and remove some of the randomness of trying to acquire specific faction gear.
Plagued Gear
I dislike the RNG nature of trying to get a plague roll on gear during mid-late game, it’s fine early on but when trying to craft a build during the later stages of the game, it becomes very tedious very fast, and you usually burn through tons of materials and hours of grinding trying to get a plague roll. So to ease this process, I’m thinking why not allow players to purposefully curse gear, using the torn materials from outbreak zones or even plague ichor for guaranteed rolls during lategame.
Uncursing & Unenchanting Gear
This idea also ties to the previous point, why not make use of the church and Pastor in Sacrament? Have them offer a service of removing curses/plague and enchantments on gear for a modest sum. Unique/special gear would remain untouched. This is mainly inspired by Dragon Quest games where you can visit chapels to dispel curses.
Armor Tincts & Dyes
This is directly inspired by Lords of the Fallen, where even without a transmog/layered armor system they managed to diversify armor appearance by allowing the colour palette to be changed using tincts. Tincts/Dyes could be found/bought/unlocked and be permanently accessible to apply to any piece of armor via something like the workbench/alchemy/sewing table. Faction specific tincts/dyes could also be a thing, as per the example shown, using a Tanth tinct would swap the Squire set’s default palette to the red/black of the Tanth faction. This would greatly diversify endgame and even midgame armor/fashion hunting, allow more armors to be mix-matched for cool fashion and bypass the need for transmog/layered armor.
Equipable Lantern
We already have torches and the illuminate rune, but I think something similar to a hip lantern would be more practical. I’d see them taking up a tool slot and being visible somewhere on the character (maybe) and using up those scale oils as fuel (since I barely use them and they just stack up in chests). As a bonus the lantern’s light could change color depending on the scale oil used as fuel!
Home Vault
A giant vault used to store an incredible amount of items, maybe 200 slots. They occupy about the same amount of space as a player forge, and would solve some of the pain of placing tons of chests everywhere, and distributing respective loot between all of them. Purchasing/crafting a vault would be expensive to balance it out properly, price wise I’m thinking minimum 1 Gold, crafting wise maybe 100 iron bars and 100 spruce/birch wood.
Armor Set Bonuses
Wearing a complete set (or maybe 2 pieces, to allow for fun combos when mix-matching) of a specific or unique armor should grant fun/QoL bonuses, such as Balak Taw giving featherfall or Dark leather giving increased stealth/faster sneak speed. This inspired by Monster Hunter and is just me thinking of fun ways to enhance the use of various armors ingame.
Well those are all my current ideas and by no means should be taken as gospel. Even seeing some of these being implemented post 1.0 or maybe through community means via the Steam workshop one day would be amazing!
Thank you for your time!