Have to disagree. Good dungeon gear, monster sets, and things like transmutation crystals should be harder to get and should be in short supply. It costs 50 crystals to transmute one item. For most builds, you need 12-13 items (armor, weapons, jewelry). That is 650 crystals, max.

For daily dungeon rewards, you can average 6-8 crystals a day if you do vets. Assuming you have the worst RNG luck in the universe, and run with the most selfish groups around, it would take you just over 100 days to get enough crystals to transmute all 13 pieces of your gear into the right traits. By adding 7 into crafting writs, that alone cuts it down to 50 days. Then you want to add in more for normal trials? That's nuts. You can easily run 4 to 5 Craglorn trials in a few hours, which would cut the 50 down to 30ish, or even less if you obsessively farm trials.

And remember, this is all assuming you never, ever get the armor, weapon, and jewelry piece in the trait you want in one of these dungeons or trials, while you are running them for the crystals. That just doesn't happen. Obviously, there are some items that don't drop (i.e. VO dagger in nirnhoned). But for the most part, you can get 1/3 to 1/2 of the gear you need from the group in the right trait. Sticking with the Stam DPS example, all of the jewelry drops in robust, meaning only one ring might need to be transmuted. Which means, conservatively speaking, you are transmuting about only 7 pieces of gear (dagger, bow, ring, monster helm, monster shoulders, 2 random body pieces).

By doubling or tripling the amount of available transmute crystals, you can easily get your BiS gear in a week or two. That's ridiculous. And that's before adding in the 5 per run from running VMA while you try to get the weapons you need there. Might as well make trial and dungeon gear open to sell or trade at that point.

El_Borracho wrote: »

Have to disagree. Good dungeon gear, monster sets, and things like transmutation crystals should be harder to get and should be in short supply. It costs 50 crystals to transmute one item. For most builds, you need 12-13 items (armor, weapons, jewelry). That is 650 crystals, max.

For daily dungeon rewards, you can average 6-8 crystals a day if you do vets. Assuming you have the worst RNG luck in the universe, and run with the most selfish groups around, it would take you just over 100 days to get enough crystals to transmute all 13 pieces of your gear into the right traits. By adding 7 into crafting writs, that alone cuts it down to 50 days. Then you want to add in more for normal trials? That's nuts. You can easily run 4 to 5 Craglorn trials in a few hours, which would cut the 50 down to 30ish, or even less if you obsessively farm trials.

And remember, this is all assuming you never, ever get the armor, weapon, and jewelry piece in the trait you want in one of these dungeons or trials, while you are running them for the crystals. That just doesn't happen. Obviously, there are some items that don't drop (i.e. VO dagger in nirnhoned). But for the most part, you can get 1/3 to 1/2 of the gear you need from the group in the right trait. Sticking with the Stam DPS example, all of the jewelry drops in robust, meaning only one ring might need to be transmuted. Which means, conservatively speaking, you are transmuting about only 7 pieces of gear (dagger, bow, ring, monster helm, monster shoulders, 2 random body pieces).

By doubling or tripling the amount of available transmute crystals, you can easily get your BiS gear in a week or two. That's ridiculous. And that's before adding in the 5 per run from running VMA while you try to get the weapons you need there. Might as well make trial and dungeon gear open to sell or trade at that point.

Dude every patch its the same grind all over. It would not be an issuse if u could run a set for mor than a few months.

El_Borracho wrote: »

Have to disagree. Good dungeon gear, monster sets, and things like transmutation crystals should be harder to get and should be in short supply. It costs 50 crystals to transmute one item. For most builds, you need 12-13 items (armor, weapons, jewelry). That is 650 crystals, max.

For daily dungeon rewards, you can average 6-8 crystals a day if you do vets. Assuming you have the worst RNG luck in the universe, and run with the most selfish groups around, it would take you just over 100 days to get enough crystals to transmute all 13 pieces of your gear into the right traits. By adding 7 into crafting writs, that alone cuts it down to 50 days. Then you want to add in more for normal trials? That's nuts. You can easily run 4 to 5 Craglorn trials in a few hours, which would cut the 50 down to 30ish, or even less if you obsessively farm trials.

And remember, this is all assuming you never, ever get the armor, weapon, and jewelry piece in the trait you want in one of these dungeons or trials, while you are running them for the crystals. That just doesn't happen. Obviously, there are some items that don't drop (i.e. VO dagger in nirnhoned). But for the most part, you can get 1/3 to 1/2 of the gear you need from the group in the right trait. Sticking with the Stam DPS example, all of the jewelry drops in robust, meaning only one ring might need to be transmuted. Which means, conservatively speaking, you are transmuting about only 7 pieces of gear (dagger, bow, ring, monster helm, monster shoulders, 2 random body pieces).

By doubling or tripling the amount of available transmute crystals, you can easily get your BiS gear in a week or two. That's ridiculous. And that's before adding in the 5 per run from running VMA while you try to get the weapons you need there. Might as well make trial and dungeon gear open to sell or trade at that point.

I would agree with you but as I said before. In PvP it is still a lot easier to get them just by simply enjoying playing. And in PvE you actually have to struggle way more than you should.

Bevik wrote: »

I would agree with you but as I said before. In PvP it is still a lot easier to get them just by simply enjoying playing. And in PvE you actually have to struggle way more than you should.

I'm not saying this fact doesn't frustrate me, as I prefer PVE to PVP. But at the same time, it hasn't been that big a problem. I don't grind away every day and can still amass enough crystals to transmute what I really want to transmute. But I could see the more obsessive doing exactly that if crystals would be rewarded after normal trials or dungeons or crafting. Its just too easy to amass.

The fear I have is when something that makes access to top level gear is opened too wide, it lowers the skill level necessary to play. I've used this game as an example before, but its like GTA Online. For a long time, it was difficult to access highly destructive weapons that you could grief players with. The game was still balanced and a lot of fun. Then they made attack helicopters cheaper. Then they made harriers cheaper. Then they made jets that could outrun rockets. Then they made a ridiculous flying motorcycle with rockets that was next to impossible to kill. And on and on. While it was "balanced" in that everyone could get the top level gear, it became much less fun.

While both are different in terms of game play, there needs to be an artificial barrier to top level gear. I'm not totally against transmute crystals being available in PVE. Vet level content seem appropriate for it if you wanted to make them slightly more available