The RNG Problem, Enchantment System & Gem System “TOGETHER” (BETA)

Wicked Feedback
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22

This is very interesting idea. I would definitely like current enchantment system to die. Yesterday i was creating new character for scythe build. I’ve lost like 50 stag antlers, which i’ve been collecting since last 4 characters (around 150 hours playtime) to craft a dark leather set, just to have a nice looking outfit. And this very nice lady Eleanor, time after time butchered my items making them blue. I swear once i finish my grim reaper build im gonna pay her a visit to collect her soul as a payment for all those poor deers that had to die for my new outfit :laughing:

As for this gem system, below are my thoughts.

GENERAL OVERVIEW

  • there should not be too many sources of gem drops, or inflation kicks in
  • gems should not drop too often to prevent a player from having all slots filled with best in slot options for his build early in the campaign
  • extracting a gem should cost a fallen ember and destroy an item to prevent easy gem acquisition from ground items with multiple slotted gems
  • destroying a gem to create a slot should have some cost too, but not destroy an item
  • game difficulty would have to be rebalanced to accommodate the situation that every player would have a good amount of useful gems slotted

CURSED GEMS

  • items should have fixed number of slots for normal gems and 1 slot for cursed gem
  • cursed gems should have a strong and or unique positive effects to make them worth slotting in, it should be almost always an aspiration to do so
  • each cursed gem positive effect should be different, +2 slots is kinda boring and places player focus in a choice on filtering which negative effect player does not want to have in his build, instead of which positive effect he wants and thus how he should overcome the negative

GEM TIERS

  • gems should have tiers, which would increase both minimum and maximum values of an effect and possibly add some other benefits
  • effect value of a gem should be randomized between possible minimum and maximum value upon slotting into an item
  • slotting same type of gem repeatedly on an item that already has it should randomly increase its value up to a maximum for its tier, this would be a new “exalting” that players would engage even during campaign
  • slotting higher tier gem on a lower tier one would upgrade it and randomize its value within its tier range
  • lower tier gems could not be slotted on items that already have its higher tier version
  • each major area (beach and surroundings, nameless pass, lowland meadows and marin woods) should drop higher gem tiers to introduce a new progression axis, where each time player enters new zone he is excited to farm more powerful versions of gems he’s using in his build

Now i see two possible ways of handling gem drops.

PRIMARY SOURCE IS RAW GEM DROPS

  • raw gem drops should be a reasonable occurrence
  • items should drop without gems slotted or be it a rare occurrence to balance out raw drops
  • Negative: item drops without slotted gems could feel less rewarding

PRIMARY SOURCE IS EXTRACTING FROM ITEMS

  • raw gem drops should be very scarce to balance out item drops with multiple gems slotted
  • Negative: making items primary source of gems could lead to players hoarding each item for potential future gem extraction
  • Positive: finding an item with multiple good gems slotted would pose a choice, either extract one gem from it or maybe use the item instead

That’s it for now, cuz i have to catch Eleanor :angry_face_with_horns:

1 Like
23

Yes, but I don’t have access to the drop rate data so I don’t know how to propose the change, but ultimately it’s the kind of thing that needs to be tested empirically to be balanced.

My intention is that in the early game the player has to do the best he can with what he has, in the mid game the player has access to many builds, in the late game he has access to almost all builds, in the post game he has access to all builds

It depends on the amount of gems found, if they can be removed without destroying the item then there should be less gems in the items found around, and if the item is destroyed then there should be more gem drops.

If you look at the values of the gem system and the values of the current enchantments, you see that they are very similar, currently it is easy to find a good weapon by changing one or two enchantments and using the armor not based on the appearance but based on the enchantments and have a very strong build for the mid game, the problem is that the player is not encouraged to try new builds, this system may seem easier to you since I suppose you are the type of player who decides not to use an armor set because you do not like the drip (I do it too) but all the players who ignore the aesthetic aspect until the post game will find that the systems have the same level of difficulty, obviously the system needs to be tested and balanced since I also added some new effects.

The system I wrote is heavily inspired by the current system and I decided to hold back on making some variations. These are some of those variations I considered.

The old system I wrote used them but I decided not to include them to stay more in line with what the devs have done so far. However, I made sure that curses are always something the player must keep in mind and not something to ignore or counterbalance with the opposite effect.

Enchantments Rework Detailed Suggestion (OLD) - Google Docs, If you go to the curses section you will see that in principle they follow your idea, and nothing prevents them from being added as gems in the future.

Everyone wants this feature XD, Sublimation could be improved, and this is a way to do it within the framework of the gem system I proposed, and I like the idea. But I won’t work on it because this post is already long and complicated. If the devs incorporate the gem system into the game then I will definitely try to develop this idea, But I’m against variable values. If I added the terars, I wouldn’t make values that vary from 5% to 20% like they are in the game now. I’d rather have the values always be the same for each terar, so they’re easier to balance and not based on RNG. In fact, the gems I’ve indicated always have the value on the left, and I get the one on the right with sublimation. There are no intermediate values, and you can’t get lucky and immediately find the sublimated value.

I think there is actually a middle ground, simply the items that contain gems often do not have all the slots occupied, This would work well with the ability to remove gems without destroying items.

In any case, whatever direction is chosen to balance this system, it is a system that solves all the main problems of the current system, and it is more fun. Thanks for the detailed feedback :smiley:.

24

Best part in my opinion. Too much RNG at the moment. I don’t know if this is the best solution, but we have some ideas to explore here, for sure.

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25

If a lot of “wiki research” are required to help your theory-crafting process, sorry not sorry, but some of your in-game systems are broken.

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26

You don’t have to write everything in such detail. I even think it is actually worse than writing just the outliers of the idea. For example detailed list of gems and their effects you wrote is unimportant implementation detail in the grand scheme of gem system as a whole.

I simply wanted to highlight that if this system was to be implemented in the current game version, then it should have some guardrails to prevent gem inflation, because items with 3-5 mods drop quite often.

Yes, that’s exactly how i thought about it too.

I think it is better to drop items with higher number of gems slotted and let player extract just one, than to drop items with 1-2 gems slotted and allow extraction of all gems. This way players have bigger pool of gems to choose from and the choice itself is more important if there are 2 or more good gems slotted in some item and players can extract just one.

What i meant mostly is that during mid game most players would have a good chunk of powerful mods on every item, like reduced damage taken. Im not sure if this is the case in current game version. I would assume that the campaign was balanced on players not having such amount of good mods.

And remember guys, drip is always more important than stats :laughing:

I quickly went through the gems you proposed, but didn’t analyze them much, because it’s unimportant implementation detail and im more concentrated on the idea itself.

The most important thing for me is to make cursed gems really worth slotting in. Curses should be paired with interesting good positive mods to make players consider using the gem primarily based on positive mod. With currently implemented system and one you proposed (+2 gem slots), players are only making choice based on negative mods - “I don’t want this curse, and that curse, so i’ll pick this one instead”. So naturally they go with curse they either can completely ignore or somewhat easily play around. It would be better if they choose cursed gems based on positive mod instead - “Oh, i really want this positive mod, but can i handle the negative?”.

In current game version and the gem idea you proposed players add mods they want to an item and are essentially done with it for the rest of the game. If they are extremely lucky this could happen even in the first zone. The tier system is simply to add another layer of progression between each zone.

Variable values serve the same purpose as gem tiers, but on micro scale. It is meant to add a small progression opportunity within each zone. It would create a limited sink for duplicated gems.

Example:
A player drops five first-tier gems in Marin Keep. These gems grant increased health, with a randomized effect ranging from 2% to 5%. The player slots one gem into their body armor. The game rolls a random value within the range, and they receive a +3% health bonus. To improve this effect, the player uses more of the same gem to randomly increase value of socketed gem. For example the second slam could increase the effect to +4%, and the third slam to +5% reaching the maximum value for this gem tier. Or maybe the player was lucky and second slam increased the effect straight to +5%.

Later, the player progresses to the next zone and begins finding second-tier health gems, which provide 6% to 10% increased health. When the player slots a second-tier gem into their armor, regardless of whether they previously had a first-tier gem in that slot the effect is rerolled randomly within the new tier’s range. For instance, they might now get +7% health.

This ensures that duplicate gems within each zone remain useful not only when player wants to change his build or change items for fashion purposes.

1 Like
Embers and re-rolling
27

Yes, in fact I made it so that the negative effects only punish you when you play badly and not punish you just for Existing. I want cursed gem items to be stronger if you make fewer mistakes, and weaker if you make a lot of mistakes.

The idea is that after the player has inserted 3 gems, if the player wants more he must add a curse, he can choose based on his way of playing or based on the build like "I really want this extra positive mod to complete the build, What negative effect should I choose?”

The idea is that all curses offer the same difficulty, just in different ways so that each player makes different choices and we don’t always see the same curses like “lose health over time” or “irreparable” and devs should have a way to control how much individual gems are used, and balance them so that they are all used,

For more unique effects this is a nice approach and in fact I added two unique gems that do just that: “Unstable Minerals” and “Heavy Metals”.

I agree but adding the details allows for a better understanding of how the system works. I don’t expect everyone to read all the details but I hope that those who aren’t convinced and want to know more can read them to understand better.
I also think it was necessary to demonstrate that gems can replace enchantments (without it being a forced change), and in fact all the interesting enchantments are present within the system and there are also many new additions and some reworks.

List of issues and suggestions as of The Breach Refined, Hotfix #6
LIST of Great TOPICS that DEVS should see
28

I like the idea of building with gems. This makes masterwork gears much more appealing in the endgame scenario. It gives players true agency in creating builds without having to rely on the rng factor of rerolling with embers. However, what I imagine is, this system, with some modifications, can coexist with the current enchantment system where the rng factor of enchantments is still present. Of course, there has to be delineation between the two in terms of the benefits such as there could be some attributes that you can only get through masterwork gears and some attributes that you can only get through enchantments. To make this short, I like this idea as it goes towards the improvement and viability of masterworks gear.

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29

Short Answer

It’s definitely possible to keep both, and I’ve thought about it a lot, but I don’t see any benefit I think it’s likely to make the game’s buff system more difficult for devs to balance, and confusing for players.

Also the enchantment system hasn’t really been removed but merged with the gem system into one system, if you check the individual gems you’ll find pretty much all the interesting buffs provided by the enchantments are still there and even the less interesting ones have been reworked rather than removed.

Long Answer

Having two systems that serve the same purpose, with small differences in detail (i.e., there are buffs that are only present in gems and buffs that are only present in enchantments). It sounds interesting, but what’s the benefit?

A similar mechanic is already present in the game; blue items and purple items have effects that are specific to only one of the two. But it’s almost never part of the decision, first because the system is hidden from the player’s perspective, and without the list of enchantments, you don’t even know if there are any differences and what they are.

Purple items are almost always superior when optimized, and although there are some exceptions precisely because of an effect that is only present on blue items, For example, I only use blue pants because they have “gain focus on damage dogged,” but once you’ve discovered it by looking at the list, what changes? If “gain focus on damage dogged” had also been present on purple items, I don’t think it would have changed much.

In a similar way, you would have both the gem system and the enchantment system, but what benefit does it offer?
The only thing that comes to mind is that if you don’t have the gems, you can still enchant and give yourself to the RNG as a temporary solution, but in reality, it’s not a problem because you can simply move the gems from one gear to another.

“Given the chance to the player will Optimize the Fun Out of the Game“

If we keep both systems many players will only use the one that is stronger (and this is an even bigger problem if you consider that having 2 parallel systems makes everything more difficult to balance), While there are small differences based on build and player preferences, jumping from one system to the another isn’t exactly intuitive or interesting and doesn’t add much to the experience.

At most, it can overwhelm someone who isn’t very good at comparing stats, and often a majority of players already have difficulty building even with simple systems like the Elder Ring talismans.

Furthermore, the enchantment system also retains all the flaws I’ve listed, so it should be reworked to be easier to understand and more fun to use. I’ve been thinking about ways to do this, but the most promising idea is to have enchantment books like in Minecraft, but it would take time and work to set up a system like this, since as I said before, the benefits in improving cases are not clear or specific, but it’s likely that having both systems would make the entire buff system more difficult for players to understand and more difficult for developers to balance.

Also Consider that building with this new gem system is not trivial since you have to think about how to combine them since not all gems are compatible (just like enchantments) for example you can’t put 4 gems that increase your damage on a single item (obviously because it would be op) you can only put two, so you have to prioritize and think about synergies with the rest of your build.

Edit: I now think it would be a good idea to have both.

So as to maintain the roguelike aspect of the enchantments but at the same time have the security of the “advanced” gem system that I proposed in the topic.

The problems I talk about above remain, But I think that if the enchantment system were improved, by giving the player more control over the RNG, It could offer the player a nice experience, different from the gems one.

An example of how to give the player more control over the RNG:

Removing unnecessary and redundant effects such as: +10% elemental buildup instead of 4 different enchantments, one for each element.

And giving the player a choice between three reroll options that is when you reroll an effect, you’d be given 3 options to choose from instead of automatically selecting a random effect.

30

I love the idea of curses and unique gems, even gem tiers for sure.

2 Likes
31

I had to remove the pool because it wouldn’t let me update the topic (it said that I couldn’t change the pool question even if I hadn’t changed it).

I tried to add icons to make the drop-down menus easier to see but even if inside the drop-down it worked then when I changed the topic they disappeared so I put some arrows above and below even if they are a bit ugly.

32

I couldn’t agree more with your takeaway (before the edit) that we shouldn’t have both systems.

If for whatever reason, we MUST have enchantments and gems, they need to serve clearly distinct roles. One can’t just be a more deterministic or stronger or scarcer version of the same type of effect as the other.

There’s a ton of ways to do that. Offhand, these are some categories that would feel different:

  1. One could affect QOL like movement speed, roll i-frames, attack range, etc.
  2. One could affect character stats like resistances, health, and damage
  3. One could affect build characteristics more surgically, with effects that compound when you’re playing a certain way
  4. One could affect defensive layers more dramatically (solving the fundamental problem with armor being crazy OP and irreplacable)

They already have the full spread of all these things on both enchantments and gems; they should just do more work to refine which characteristics go with which category.

That also requires changing the dynamic of “enchant OR gem” so players can do both.

There are really good examples in the game already that just need to be clarified or leaned into.

The gems that buff an enchantment if you have X hp or runic power or whatever are one solid direction. The enchantment that executes plagued enemies is another solid direction.

The fatal flaw right now is all the other gem/enchantment effects that are literally the same thing, just stronger or weaker than their counterpart.

The problem transcends RNG in creating/testing builds; that’s a separate issue that comes down to the intended play patterns by the devs. Do they want it to feel like an MMO where I have a “main” I play constantly and refine for a year? Or like an ARPG where I have a League Starter and Endgame build I work on every 3-4 months before starting over? That’s a totally separate conversation.

“Gems are weak and deterministic, Enchants are strong and random, they both do pretty much the same thing” is always going to feel unsatisfying and like a poor use of design space. I’m either pissed I bricked a great drop after I hit 10/10 enchant rolls OR I’ll have chests overflowing with unused gems. Lose Lose. (Though the experimental branch’s implementation feels like the worst of all worlds, tbh).

33

I realize that I still haven’t delved much into the reason for the change in my choice, but I think it’s clear that in any case we don’t take the enchantment system as it is now, we have to modify the system to make sure that the gem system (the complex version I wrote) and the enchantment system work well together, and I have an idea for doing it except that it might take a lot of time to explain it and I don’t know when I have time.

Giving different unique effects to the two systems is not the way and we have seen it with the differences between blue and purple enchantments, that it is not nice to have two separate systems for this reason, unfortunately I will leave you hanging here and I will explain myself later.

I will update the main topic I will also talk about the Facets, the new sublimation and the large gems and the changes to the gems, and I will also talk about how I would like to integrate the enchantment system whit the gem system (the complex version I wrote).

It seems that the devs have read this Topic and have taken inspiration for a couple of things; Facet and balanced gems are similar; now the gems have fixed values ​​and are on the same level of strength as the enchantments (even if they lack variety); but maybe they are coincidences (after all they are not such complicated ideas).

Sorry for any mistakes but I don’t have time to correct the translation errors right now, happy holidays.

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34

:double_exclamation_mark::new_button::double_exclamation_mark: If you’ve read this topic before and are re-reading it in 2026:
I’ve added two new Paragraphs to the end of the topic: one about the Beta and the other about how I would integrate the enchantment and gem systems.

New Questionnaire

What do you think of the Current state of the Enchantment system & RNG?

  • They are Very Problematic
  • They are Problematic
  • I dont’ have a strong Opinion, looks fine to me
  • Go back to the previous system and everything would be ok
  • They are good, they can continue in this direction
0 voters

What do you think of the ideas I presented? [You can select Multiple Options]

  • I share your opinion on RNG
  • I like your Gem System
  • I like how you changed the Enchantment System
  • I share your view on Sublimation
  • I share your view on Facets
  • Other (If you disagree or have anything else to add please comment)
0 voters

@Zenith @BlackWaterPirate @OrdinaryAlfred @Hacefal @jgdeece @Aemon_Oni @rabb1t @Silverblade56 @askan94

I hope the tag doesn’t bother you, I had to remove the previous questionnaire because it no longer allowed me to edit parts of the topic, unfortunately I can’t see who voted to tag them, I will try to contact people who have interest in the enchantment system individually.

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35

@LaroFelix @Kegaran @David_Constante @DarcSamurai @Isao_Komori @QuthLue @Bl.z @Raven11 @exsea @delmontyb apparently I can only tag 10 people per post.

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36

Wrong implementation of the right idea, is what I think.

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37

I really appreciated for your effort and big respect. I mostly agree with your opinions but I also think that the mech shouldnt be make the game more complex than it is now. I dont wanna play poe type of gameplay loop to minimize the rng effect as well so devs must find a sweet spot between rng and gameplay mechs. And I kinda trust them on this they seem like they know what they are doing but the new rng system plans gives me some warning signs anyway.

2 Likes
38

The infuse/gem system is the better one for build crafting and if the developer choose to keep both systems, they should be at least consider to make the infuse/gem system more powerful to at least compete with the enchantment system.

But in my opinion the Infuse system should replace the Enchantments system. Having both systems in place is a development mistake and will become very tedious to balance.

The “exalt” feature is a nice way to negate RNG, but it only works well with infused items and legendary items (i.e items with fixed stats)

I would suggest the following:

1.Keep only the Infuse/gem feature

2.Dropped items should contain gems with RNG stats instead of enchantments (i.e like when you infuse items). Even if they are RNG, you have the exalt feature in end game.

3.The extract/destroy gem feature should work as before, the only difference is that now dropped items can have their gems extracted by destroying the item. This will also increase the rate in which players get gems.

4.Keep the exalt feature as it is.

5.Legendary items should be the only items that have fixed enchantments and that can be also exalted, i.e exactly how it is implemented right now.

6. You should be able to extract as many gems as you want using fallen embers.

So I am basically proposing that only legendary weapons should have fixed enchantments, and the rest of the items dropped or crafted should have the gem system. It’s such an elegant change because everything is moslty already implemented, and it will please everyone, build crafters and people that enjoy RNG.

3 Likes
39

Thats underratedly a good point actually. Cuz legendary items definetely doesnt feel like legendary. Ive been crafting more powerful weapon combinations without utilising any of them at all.

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40

Thanks for replying right away, although I would like it if you elaborated there a bit xD, could you please select an answer to the first question?

If they follow my idea and have the same and identical effects it will not require more development time it is just copy and paste

like in beta or like in live?

Could you please answer the questionnaire so we can keep all the data organized in one place?

Ty, In case you haven’t noticed, in the second question you can select more than one answer.

The reason is that Unique items are Unique, not legendary.

Unique items are designed to have unique effects that you cannot find on other items, they are not designed to be stronger.

That said, they are a bit weak and sometimes they don’t have enough ideas to justify their uniqueness and should be buffed or reworked.

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41

They will definitely become more unique but not necessarily better than an infused item, i.e the idea is that you wont be able to get the same stats by infusing a regular item.