Why Gems and Enchantments NEED a boost

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Let’s be totally honest here, after the first exciting moments where you’re learning the game and absorbing all it’s new enchanting features. You can sit back and analyze what you enjoy and find lacking about the game.

On a developer interview I watched on the YouTubes, the developers mentioned that they wanted gear to be exciting and that they didn’t want item rarity to be so linear. Basically that White and blue items would FINALLY be interesting to the players…

Well… they are not. Not really. If you were to be the harshest critic, the gear doesn’t really vary all that much. All the enchantments orbit around 3 primary things, Health, Stamina and Focus. Sometimes you get some magic damage, or maybe some extra XP gain, small things like that. But nothing really changes your playstyle really. You could strip all your enchantments and it wouldn’t change how you fight almost at all if you ignore Weapon movesets and Runes.

Your build, is your weapon, runes and your weight capacity. That’s it really.
Everything else gives you small bonuses to make some stats slightly better, which don’t get me wrong is helpful; but doesn’t really create a build.

I believe it’s at the core of an ARPG to find a drop that can potentially change how your adventure is going to continue. Find a drop that adds significant value to the role you want to play, or even pivot it to something different.
I would love to see in the future, moments where you go “wow!, this thing dropped, so im going to invest my efforts around making this be my strategy.” That’s what I think a lot of us would find exciting about gear. Uniques, are meant for this kinds of moments, but i think blues and purples can do the same to a lesser degree.

My solutions

Change what it means to be an enchantment and a gem. Make it so enchantment’s are effects that can significantly change how you play, or what your basic actions (attack, charge attack, rolling, etc…) do or add a significant effect to your character.

Enchantments

Enchantments now give you a guaranteed primary affix with a unique ability that has a mechanical effect on your character; but also paired with 1 or 2 secondary support enchantments at random that are just like the current ones in the game. Cursed items give you better secondary affixes that you can’t have on blues with the additional curse.

Primary Affix example:

  • Burning Aura: Deal “X Faith” burn damage and burn build-up in a small radius around you.
    This gives you a very simple effect that has some implications, such as you probably want this on a melee character and you probably want bonuses with burning damage.
  • Gravity Pull: Your charge attack creates a field around impact area pulling enemies in and dealing your INT attribute bonus as physical damage"

Secondary Affix example:

  • " Heal 5% health on kill"
  • " ‘x’ chance to recover 15% stamina on hit"

This way you can hunt and play around these primary affixes that change your playstyle and still have the secondary affixes to support your stats.

Curses

I think curses also need some changes, the current curses are either so bad they almost become garbage, or not really engaging. Curses are a bit of a loss potential, because you could make curses be an interesting way to create even more build variety.

Curses examples:

  • Curse of Burden: Your roll is always a heavy roll, regardless of weight capacity.
  • Curse of Ailing: Consuming food has a small chance to poison you based on your poison resistance.
  • Cursed Metabolism: Potions and Elixirs effectiveness reduced by 50%.

Gems

White gear is still basically a hollow shell of an item on armor, which let’s be honest you will simply enchant into a blue, basically turning it into a non-white item anymore. Sure, White items are much more interesting when you’re talking about weapons, but armor is quite lacking; I can almost guarantee you that if you forbid players to use anything that isnt white armor, you will see the exact same gems on armor regardless of your build.
To fix that, I think gems need to be stronger and more valuable. I would even add rarities to the gems to create this extra layer of excitement and power when finding one.

Gem examples:

  • Lesser Gemstone: (Common) Tiny Feather " Reduced weight capacity -x%
  • Greater Gemstone: (Uncommon) Grand Feather “Reduces weight of item to 10”
  • Exquisite Gemstone: (Rare) Painite " Damage increased by x% when HP below 30%"

Having more powerful Gems would make white automatically more valuable yet not mandatory. Gems are good! Having 4 gems is really good! There is a downside, Gem’s don’t have the same types of abilities that enchantments have. Gems are more specific and following the developer’s statement, more customizable.

Making enchantments have a primary affix that gives the character a unique ability, would allow for more playstyles (builds), especially when making use of certain attributes ( Int, Str, faith, etc…) while making gems more powerful but with more specialized bonuses will create more interesting decision making and giving White items value.

Let me know what you think about this idea, and maybe you can add an example for an enchantment and one for a gem on this post!

Cheers!

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But I find white and blue items to be interesting unlike in some other ARPG’s where I don’t even give them a notice. Most of my gear on my lvl 30 char are upgraded white items and I see them for being bis for what I want and for what is currently available in-game.

I think what you want are unique items that radically change things up. Enhancements do this to a point and Moon has said they have more things planned. Like I got a purple ring that allows me to heal via damage and it totally changed how I played. So there are some things already in the game with more in the works. Also, some cool drops have pushed me to make an alt to try them out.

I would also add that one’s build is also hugely influenced by their stat allocation as well as some purple/legendary gear.

If you want game changing unique items I don’t think you’ll see a lot of this anytime soon. Runes/legendary items and purple rings already give us something like that and more will surely come.

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I sort of disagree with you.
Im not saying blue items and purple items are useless, but they don’t really change your playstyle all that much.
Sure maybe my enchantment suggestions are more aimed towards uniques but I really don’t think the regular enchantments change your playstyle. You can weild any weapon in the game, and that cursed item that you mention heals you when dealing damage will playout the same way every time.

I know this because I’ve had the same enchantment, in fact I think that it’s one of the best enchantments and basically a no brainer. I think there needs to be enchantments that are on par with that one. That’s why I came up with the primary affix and secondary affix. The primary affix gives you an effect that hopefully changes up your playstyle and allows you to strategize around it, while the secondary ones are your regular enchantments that give you small bonuses.

About white items, they are pretty bad actually. Most gems on armor are not that great and you can only have 1 of each kind. There’s only a few that come to mind that are good such as + armor and + health, otherwise you’re better off with blues. Unless you’re talking about a weapon because you can add runes; but even then, you’re stuck to gems which are decent on weapons.

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On a white pair of pants I can add 4 gems that give me focus gain, stamina regen, armor and weight decrease. It will be really hard to beat that with the typical enhancement route. Sure, the RNG gods may smile on ya and you could win the lottery but I find white items, properly upgraded are really good in this game.

Yes, you can wield almost any weapon in the game but each weapon and the runes you put on them changes the way one plays. For example I put blink on my staff and it opened up an entire new strategy for me to implement in tough fights.

And saying that the purple ring I brought up earlier plays out the same every time can be said for just about anything in any game unless you really want an item to have a random variable each time it is used but surely you don’t want all items to be like this. Maybe a couple could be fun but not all.

Edit: One more thing on white items. The same type of weapon or armor piece drops with different weight, armor, stamina costs and focus stats which means finding good rolls for these stats are easier to find on white items since they drop in larger quantities.

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Wholeheartedly agree on the current direction of enchantments. They currently focus on three categories, as you pointed out: Health, Stamina, and Focus. Enchantments could affect a number of other pieces of existing systems:

  • Consumables,
  • Weapon Types,
  • Weapon Attack Combos,
  • Elements / Status Effects,
  • Weight / Rolls,
  • Rune-specific,
  • Potentially Attributes.

There’s a great amount of potential that has yet to be discovered with what we already have. I know Moon is cooking more enchantments but it doesn’t hurt to have discussion and help further their efforts while they’re in the process of creating more.

There is potential in a Primary & Secondary enchantment system. I don’t want the Secondaries to be negligible like they were in Diablo III, so hopefully they can be compelling enough. We don’t want to get too complicated with the Primaries though, the more difficult combat has to remain intact as much as possible.

Gravity Pull: Your charge attack creates a field around impact area pulling enemies in and dealing half of your INT as physical damage"

For example, Gravity Pull might be too much. Maybe it’s not but it just rings too strongly of current screen clearing in ARPGs. I’m also just overly cautious and you’re spitballing to get discussion rolling which I appreciate.

Gems are the key to White gear. I know there are players like @Bandit17 that make use of them and that’s great. They are still better than most ARPGs I’d argue. I am a perfectionist though and I believe they can be better.

Ultimately, even if current systems work, I think they’re unoriginal. Wicked, compared to every ARPG, is focused on delivering our class fantasies to us and I think we have some room to grow to reach this.

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Yes for Weapons I do agree with you that whites do open a lot of possibilities. However on armor, the gems and enchantments are so similar in nature, that you will almost always favor enchantments. A lot of the gem bonuses are not great on armor. In fact, i bet if you were to tell people that they can only use whites for their build, you will find pretty much the exact same gems on every single slot for every single character. That’s not a lot of freedom in terms of build variety is it?

And to your second point, yes indeed, the same cane be said about almost anything in the game when it comes to gear; and that’s precisely my point. The enchantments are not allowing for much variety, there’s pretty clear enchantments that are useful to every single weapon and enchantments that don’t do enough to change the strategy or build of any character.
I don’t think every item should have a massive effect that totally changes the way you play, of course that wouldn’t be ideal. But that’s why I think having the distinction between primary affixes and secondary affixes can help. It allows for some direction when building and making decisions on what to wear, and also variety and randomness with min/maxing your secondary affixes.

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Enchantments can definitely do more the question is do we want them to go the affix route or the weird route? I actually like your idea a lot but I think the Primary/secondary route shouldn’t be guaranteed as it’s still a restriction but like what about an enchantment that has % chance to not use up a consumable, that’s pretty powerful. Enchantments that solely confine to a system of what’s basically a rune in your suggestion then a passive copy can be a little restrictive IMO

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Yeah I understand your point, perhaps my suggestions are a bit too powerful or significant and should be reserved to uniques as @DankMemeGod similarly mentioned.

But Im not assuming that my examples are balanced or should be implemented as is. It’s mostly just a spitballing of ideas to get the conversation going. Im also a game dev and aspiring game designer and I know that often if not always an idea or change has lots of implications in areas that you might not expect. But that’s also to be figured out as you go I suppose.

But yeah the Gravity Pull is perhaps too much for a primary affix for a blue or even a purple item. But I would like to see more drastic effects even at the blue level. To really make a distinction gameplay-wise between whites and enchanted items.

I like the idea of effects like “Chance of “x” when using consumable” or “when blocking” or even highly conditional stuff like “rolling consumes x% less stamina” for primary affixes as you mentioned @death_the_kid

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i think armorloot from everywhere should all be only a hollow shell with basic stats like weight and defence attributes that determine the armor type but if you want it to be effective you need to uppgrade it and enhance like it already do, only difference that you could reroll the affixes or even better add your own gems/affixes that minmaxes the armor for your build for less RNG type system. its almost there but need some changes.
this allow people to play with the armor they see visually appealing like in dark souls games and not sell everything because it have bad affix.

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Something I noticed between enchanting and infusing is that enchanting has the potential to roll bonuses that you can’t infuse into that gear slot.

you can currently use gems to slot healing effectiveness into your helm, but not your chest, boots, or gloves. This gave me a situation where I rolled HE on my helm, which let me stack a gem + purple roll, and then I got a blue HE roll on my chest, with around 20% per bonus, totalling 60% bonus healing effectiveness. I think this is fantastic, as I couldn’t get more than ~20% HE with only white gear, however I think you have a point that purple, blue, and white gear should serve different rolls for excitement, and that the current curses are… not great.

Some absolutely just kill gear, like taking 20% extra damage, no, just no. on the other hand, as soon as you hit level cap, things like xp loss become totally irrelevant. others like gold loss on death kinda suck, but can be completely mitigated with economic prepwork.

I think that the current enchantment system should be tweaked a little so that each colour has it’s own roll to play in your loadout.

Unique/gold (Gold metallic underlay with a rainbow foil finish, like a collectable trading card): Build definition, no infusion slots. This should be the exalted form of purple gear that, if you chose to use it, you make the rest of your build around. Twin daggers that are strength scaling? Give them a bonus that increases their poise damage by +10, but reduces their attack speed by 20%-30%, and a unique rune where you slam the ground with one knife for a stun AOE, then carve the earth with the other for a landslide cone attack that knocks them over. An intelligence scaling rapier? have it blink for free, but you lose 100% of your poise defence.

Cursed/purple (wavering dark animated purple border): Potency, one infusion slot. When you slot a piece of purple gear, it should give you one major benefit, and one major detriment, radically altering what your build is/isn’t capable of. None of the more common/minor bonuses that you would see on blue gear, just potent, build altering effects with immediate combat relevancy. Instead of giving that 22% bonus to focus gain, how about removing the health cost of using channel, but you gain a timed debuff that sets your poise to 0. ;How about increasing your charged attack/poise damage by x%/x, but you heavy roll without the ability to shove?How about you set your weight class to light, but you can’t use anything from your elixir/potion/bomb slot? One thing that I think curses should NOT do is impact you outside of combat. It’s too easily mitigated in the case of exp or gold. On the other hand, some effects really need to be scaled back. Anything that reduces my focus or health, or gods forbid, increases the amount of damage I take, immediately gets thrown in the trash.

Purified/ice blue (blue fractal/crystal border): Purity, two infusion slots. As I said above, blue gear has the potential to really focus your build without the downsides of curses, and I think that should be leaned into, making your build more pure. To this end, I believe that Purified gear should be able to roll any effect that you can infuse, on any piece of gear (weapon AND armour infusion effects), but only two of them. Additionally, Purified gear should always come with a modifier removes the effect of infused crystals, but each infused crystal is purified and provides an x% effect bonus to both rolls on the gear, scaling with the grade of crystal infused. A purified piece of gear should be able to reach greater maximums for it’s two effects than Forged Gear (details below), but should overall come with less total stats than forged gear.

Forged/metallic grey (a border patterned after swords, reflecting light of faceted surfaces): Certainty and Malleability, four infusion slots, re-rollable infusions and replaceable runes. Get away from the ‘common’ or ‘white’ gear mindset, forged gear is reliable and flexible. Does your build rely heavily on taking hits without flinching? Slot a Forged chest piece and infuse it with a x% health increase and a x% poise increase to accompany your Purified gauntlets that increase poise. As a bonus, you can slot two more things that don’t elevate your build, but do round it out, like more focus capacity and a stamina shard so you can swing that big hammer one more time. But oh no! you’ve rolled the minimum % of get wrecked scrub! No matter, this isn’t enchanted gear, where the delicate enchantments that give the gear its value prevent you from making changes. Simply use the ‘reforge’ option to re-roll the percentage using other gems of the same type as currency. Forged gear shouldn’t be the best at any one thing, where cursed items have unique enchantments, and purified gear can get higher modifier maximums, Forged gear should give you the greatest amount of benefit, just spread across several stats.

I realize that this is less is a bit of a lengthy response, and should probably go in its own thread so people can comment without going off topic, so I’ll do that in a minute.

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more interesting enchantments are already planned

gems will hopefully judging by the names alone, be upgradable in the future
but mostly i just want to be able to stack the same gems 4 times on an item

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I would prefer white loot only + very rare unique item drops from specific bosses which are unchangeable. But yeah … too much random blue and purple drops at the moment with no meaning and no connection to the wearer.

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Yeah, I think right now there needs a bit of a more streamlined gear system with affixes that allow for actual variety in builds. White’s can be easily boosted by making gems better though.

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So long as the majority of healing is coming from percentage based health returned on damage dealt the %Health gem on chest is actually better than Healing effectiveness, as it increases your raw incoming healing as well as your total health pool and stacks multiplicatively with your existing incoming healing%.

While technically the best possible stats come from an ideal Enchant roll, white items are still very useful in situations where you’re progressing and not sitting down to re-roll enchant on 50 different chest pieces (Impractical for anything that isn’t vendor purchased). Or they would be useful, if Gems were freely available. The main problem with gemming white items as a ‘stop gap’ before you get an optimal Enchant roll is that a stop gap is supposed to be cheap and easily replaced, but it is not cheap to put 4 gems into every white item you want to use.

For comparison, here is the chest piece on one of my lower level alt characters who has only progressed into Tier2 world:

White chest
White chest626×727 77.6 KB

This is a dropped chest which I like the look of. If I had pressed Enchant I would probably have bricked it and lost the item, which I would not be able to easily get another copy of. This gem setup is better than 90% or more of potential Enchant outcomes, so this is a completely fine use of a White item. The only problem is the difficulty of acquiring some of the gems, because poor balance between affixes means you want the Focus% on damage dealt gem to go into every weapon you use. The biggest buff to white items would simply be to have the Enchant vendor sell gems again.

White weapons are also valuable due to having 4 Focus attack slots, particularly while the game gives you no indication of what these do so the only way to try them is to permanently socket them onto your weapon and find out.

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I just don’t understand why we can’t stack the same gem
Let people do 4x decrease weight if they want to
Let us go wild

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Thank you so much for your post, it brings a lot of relevant insight.
I don’t think the gems are useless per se, and White items CAN be used. But I mean look at the example you gave, it’s the perfect representation of what’s wrong about not only white items but itemization in general.
The bonuses are so generic that fit any build, and not only that but these gems you placed are probably the best one to place anyway in any build.
I think we need more types of gems with different effects and strong ones. If gemming a white item is expensive, then so be it, but at least make it interesting and give us variety of build expression.

As it is right now, in my opinion the “classless” approach is too flavorless, it’s TOO classless in the sense that you can’t really make a class. You simply have a moveset and some runes. You could argue that there are 2 classes, Melee and Magic, that’s about it; and they both benefit from the same amount of current limited amount of enchantments.

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Absolutely, and it would be difficult to create situational bonuses which can complete with something as universally valuable as +15% Health. So you would arguably want to nerf these generic stats if you were trying to make way for more interesting build specific stats.

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It might be difficult to design them, but i think it necessary for the longevity of the game.

  • Health bonuses and Stamina bonuses should still exist but I think they should be supportive stats to builds. That’s why I suggested having a Primary and Secondary categorization to be able to use the Primary affixes slot to allow for more interactive and situational bonuses that push you from being a completely classless, into a certain direction.

I mean, all the elements are there. There’s all the stat attributes, there’s conditions (burn, cold, etc…) There’s other mechanics such as poise, money, heck even knockback and such. There’s sooooo many possibilities.
They could even play around with the hitboxes, like increasing melee swing area and such. The game characters seem to be designed with that in mind, I mean look at those long arms!

I say, Challenge accepted.

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  • 1, i also would prefere that we can stack identicla gems on same gear piece up to 4, or atleast make clear in-game what we can or can’t do, like that we can planifiate smarter :+1:t2:
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it’s just so…generalized. if anyone would use white armors, they would all look the same because everyone’s just putting in, well, everything^^

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