Do you know what would be nice? Getting dungeon set gear in the 5-key undaunted coffers.

BloodyStigmata

EDIT: I just realize I posted this in "Players Helping Players" instead of General Discussion, but since I can't move it over without reposting it, I'm just going to leave it here, unless a staff member can help me out.

Okay, hear me out.

So you know how we can already completely bypass gear farming in ICP and WGT by using key fragments on those chests? It's great, right? It costs a lot of key fragments and can either be time consuming to get them or expensive if you're buying them, but it gives you an opportunity to get a handful of guaranteed set piece drops to help fill out your sticker book, as well as cut down on the amount of dungeon runs you have to do before a certain piece you're looking for drops. It's a great feature, and some of those sets aren't too shabby either.

I wish other dungeons had that feature. In fact, I think other dungeons should have that feature, but not quite in the same way. Folks and fairies, I'm here to propose the following idea, one that, frankly, I believe is long overdue;

Add dungeon set pieces to the 5-key coffers sold by the undaunted quest givers as an alternative means of acquiring dungeon gear.

To explain why I believe this is a good idea, I'd like to present the following bullet points;

1. The current RNG system is unforgiving: I don't need to tell anyone here how annoying it is to farm certain pieces for certain sets. As we all know, only certain kinds of pieces drop from certain kinds of bosses in dungeons and with three different sets and a multitude of unique set pieces that seem to drop far more frequently than they should, it can be a nightmare trying to find what you're looking for, even in a full group. Anyone who's farmed Arx Corinium or City of Ash 1 for literally months, like me, can attest to this. Adding set pieces to these coffers gives us additional chances to roll for gear we need by doing tasks we were already going to do anyway--that is to say, doing our pledges and earning undaunted keys.
2. Finding groups to farm specific sets can be a challenge: Are you one of two people still running proc-sets in PVE after the last patch? If so I feel your pain my friend, but that's not what we're here to discuss. Anyone who runs an off-meta build using sets from any of the DLC dungeons probably knows this struggle, but let me explain. Have you ever farmed Depth of Malatar for Aurorans Thunder? Of course you haven't. Do you know why? Because it's a trash set that no one wants. No one, of course, except for me. I'm the Trash Man, and I want that trash, because using it in a weird build I just theory-crafted while dumpster diving is my definition of fun. But try finding a group that wants to farm Depths of Malatar of all places. Alternatively, que for that dungeon specifically and watch how many people quit. "Aint nobody got time for that. When I clicked 'random' what I really meant was Fungal Grotto 1."
3. On that note, time is another major factor here: There's probably a lot of people, including myself, who would like to fill out a lot more of their sticker book or even experiment with different sets, but just don't have time to farm dungeons all day every day. Those same people however might have just enough time to get their pledges done, stockpile their keys and log off for the day. Do you see where I'm going with this? If I'm already running dungeons to earn undaunted keys for gear I need, what's the harm in extending the loot pool available to me? If I open a coffer that costs five keys, it means I either did 5 normal pledges, 5 veteran pledges, 2 veteran HM pledges and a normal pledge, or any mixture of the aforementioned. Case in point, I just put in a hell of a lot of work and probably only have crappy gear to show for it. The least you can do is offer me a second chance at that Burning Spellweave Inferno Staff by letting me open a City of Ash coffer. At least then I'll have gotten extra grain solvent out of it if nothing else.
4. Where there's tradeable gear, there's a market: So story time. I actually have my sticker book for Arx Corinium completely filled out--not because I wanted to fill it out, but because by the time the Medusa Inferno Staff finally dropped, it was six months after I started looking for it. I'm fairly certain I can do that darn dungeon with my eyes closed now. At night, I still occasionally hear the screams of an angry lamia, and dream of being devoured by an angry electric lizard while the pretty water ladies watch and do absolutely nothing. Crap, where was I going with this? Oh right... well, this only lasted so long because, as it happens, I was soloing it for the most part.
   
   Why on Nirn would I do that if I was looking for gear? Because I was angrier than a sea sload, and twice as salty. Why was I salty? because for a good long while there, I was grouping to take on that dungeon. And do you know what happened the first time someone who didn't need it got the damned thing and I asked about it? They tried to sell it to me. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a merchant. I'm in a pretty great trade guild and I can respect the hustle when it comes to making that sweet gold, but when the both of us just put in the effort to go through that dungeon as a team and one of us gets something that the other needs, it seems like such a slimy move to then try and sell it knowing that you've got that person by the short hairs. There's an argument to be had that since they also put in the work, their potential monetary gain is the reward they earned. I respect that argument actually. Like I said, I'm a merchant.
   
   That person can still kiss a horker though. I was salty enough that I decided to forego groups entirely and do it my own darn self, and do you know what? I did it. I got that darn staff, and by the time I did, I didn't even want it anymore. If I had the opportunity to open an Arx Corinum coffer using my undaunted keys as currency, maybe I could have saved myself the high blood pressure and a lot of wasted time.
5. You'd have more of a reason to actually buy the 5 key coffers: I can't be the only one who just doesn't buy the 5-key coffers, can I? I mean, when it costs 5 keys to open and there 6 different shoulder pieces that are possible to acquire, and you're only looking for one of them, there's still a good chance you're not going to get the one you want. Couple that with the fact that you're not getting the other randomized loot available in the 1-key coffers, it just seems like its far more beneficial to roll complete random at a cost of 1 and at least have a higher chance of getting something that will at the very least fill out my sticker book. Give me set gear in the 5-key coffers though and now you now you've got my attention. Maybe then I'll actually start doing pledges on all my characters again.
6. You literally already have this implemented in game, just with different keys: And now we've come full circle. Like I said in the beginning, ICP and WGT both have this feature already implemented. Its accessed via the same method as other vaults in the Imperial City--key fragments. With 150 of them in your inventory you can enter the vaults in either of these dungeons and get a key to open the chest inside, after which you'll acquire multiple pieces of gear that can drop from said dungeon. This isn't limited to certain pieces either--weapons and jewelry, normally reserved for the final boss, also drop in these chests. It's one of the biggest reasons why key fragments are such great items to sell in bulk--if you can pay to skip the work, people absolutely will.
   
   The method I'm proposing offers this same function, only without the ability to completely bypass the work needed to acquire said gear. With my proposal you're still expected to run dungeons to earn your keys, only now your keys have more worth. This is still an RNG-based system and the less of that we have the better, but this at the very least gives us another chance to roll for gear that we are so very, very tired of farming for. If you're worried about too many purple mats being put into the economy via deconning, make them white. We have the sticker book now after all. If you're worried about people not doing the dungeons, why? you're still going to have a much higher chance getting that gear by actually doing that dungeon. This only makes they keys we earn for pledges supplement our search for something that is actually going to benefit us.

TL;DR: RNG sucks, so let us use our undaunted keys to get dungeon gear.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

Fennwitty

Agree with most of the sentiment, but you're not touching the root issue of "TL;DR RNG sucks".

You're opening another avenue for RNG.

The Imperial City vault keys are nice as an alternative to running dungeons all day, but they also have crap RNG. I get tons of the same pieces over and over and never get the ones I'm looking for.

A token system would be better. Maybe use the undaunted keys as part of the tokens for example but something that lets us 'buy' the specific things we're trying to get after we complete a dungeon for the umpteenth time. 200 runs for a fire staff with no reason to expect you'll get it for another 200 runs is overkill in the current system.

Calm_Fury

Dungeon Weapon farming is currently one of my main annoyances in the game.

ZOS fixed most, if not all, of the major RNG issues from a PvE view, but getting a specific dungeon farm is still the one thing that it is not balanced.

I've been playing this game for 6 years and still haven't gotten the infamous BSW Inferno, despite running CoA I 3-4x when it is pledge.

As you said, ZOS already has all the tools in the game to fix this.

Personally I'd rather they focus on the weapons, though. Like guaranteeing 1 weapon when you do hardmode (instead of a mix of weapon or jewelry), or having the 5 key coffer give just weapons (or something like that).

El_Borracho

I like this idea, except @Fennwitty has already shown the example of it in practice. The ICP fragments system is a farce. The current Undaunted keys-for-shoulder-pieces system is not much better. I once used over 100 keys before I got the monster set I was looking for in medium. Not the trait and medium, just medium (with a garbage trait, of course).

If they could whittle it down to a chest for weapons and a chest for gear, then I think that would work. The sticker book has made keys less valuable overall as getting transmutes is beyond easy for dungeon runners and you can reconstruct shoulders in the traits you want. I'd be fine with spending keys to get weapons and gear, as long as you would have had to unlock/defeat the dungeon first. Has to be some incentive to play the game.

BloodyStigmata

Fennwitty wrote: »

Agree with most of the sentiment, but you're not touching the root issue of "TL;DR RNG sucks".

You're opening another avenue for RNG.

I did acknowledge this;

BloodyStigmata wrote: »

This is still an RNG-based system and the less of that we have the better, but this at the very least gives us another chance to roll for gear that we are so very, very tired of farming for.

Fennwitty wrote: »

A token system would be better. Maybe use the undaunted keys as part of the tokens for example but something that lets us 'buy' the specific things we're trying to get after we complete a dungeon for the umpteenth time. 200 runs for a fire staff with no reason to expect you'll get it for another 200 runs is overkill in the current system.

I agree this would be far more efficient but I think adding yet another currency of sorts is one of the last things we need, especially when the keys themselves can already be used for this purpose directly, only with a far more limited scope.

I'd prefer to just buy the gear directly with the keys, or buy a coffer containing only pieces of the set I'm currently looking for, but I legitimately don't think ZOS cares to reduce RNG, so I opted to suggest something that would give us additional gear rolls and nothing more.