Scavenger League – An attempt at creating a self-found league with sensible progression

A1.) Basic rules: No trading between players, no way to exchange items between players in any shape or form (By making all items owned by a player account-bound or something along those lines), permanent allocation always on. (This is to actually make the league a self-found league.)

A2.) Only show players their own loot and dropped items on the screen in order to lessen clutter, with the exception of unique item drops.

B1.) Introduce a new loot table to each boss consisting of unique items. The general idea is that the first time a character kills a boss, a unique item from the unique item loot table is dropped. Subsequent kills have a low chance (5% for example) of dropping a unique item from the same table. A character can only receive a given unique item once. Unique item tables should consist of a relatively low number of uniques (5-10 I’m thinking) and will be of or around the same level as the boss that drops them.

B2.) This system will replace the unique drops within the current systems. This means that all other items besides unique items will drop as they normally do. A mob will drop what it would usually drop with the exception of unique items, but bosses have the added chance (100% for the first kill, 5% for all subsequent for example) of dropping a unique item in addition to everything else. Even with this change chance orbs would still be able to generate unique items.

B(elaboration): This change creates a reasonably challenging but less random way of obtaining uniques. Possibly the most central problem to a SFL is the lack of easy access to all the wonderful build-enabling items that can be found within the game, but this change will ensure that players can work towards the specific uniques they want in a meaningful way. By letting a given unique only drop once for a certain character, you allow players to either get what they want or at the very least be one step closer to getting it each time they kill a boss and a unique is dropped, thereby removing the otherwise frustratingly random nature of finding a specific unique when trade is disabled. This change has some cool side effects. First of all it makes the first time you clear a boss a very cool moment. This is especially important in the higher difficulties and when running challenging maps. An issue that I reckon is still widespread is that players have little motivation to actually kill map bosses because they feel the reward is not worth the risk and time investment. With this system, the motivation to actually defeat the bosses will emerge, and I could imagine that groups running certain maps to farm a specific boss due to the players each wanting an item from the drop table will be very common. The most awesome of the uniques are still restricted through the difficulty to obtain them, since the highest level ones will be dropped from the highest level bosses, most of which are notoriously hard. Since a given unique can only drop once for a character, there are two ways to obtain more than one copy of the same unique: Making another character to get it, or using Chance orbs to generate one.

B(example): Merveil at normal difficulty is level 15. She has the following unique item loot table: The Magnate, Hyrri’s Bite, Solaris Lorica, Ondar’s Flight, Facebreaker, and Malachai’s Simula. The marauder “Maradak” reaches Merveil and slays her for the first time. She drops Ondar’s Flight, and a bunch of other non-unique stuff. Deciding that he really just wants to punch faces, Maradak decides to farm Merveil for a while. After 14 kills, Hyrri’s Bite drops. This disappoints Maradak, but realizing that the loot table options now are reduced to 4, he continues the massacre with renewed hope. After 22 kills, Merveil finally gives in and a Facebreaker magically emerges from her guts, and so the facepunching begins.

C1.) A revamp of the orb system is required to incentivize the actual use of it instead of just hoarding orbs until one reaches the absolute end-game. For a self-found league, crafting will be central, and one shouldn’t feel punished each time an orb is used. Now, this is a bit more heavy handed than what I’d like, so feel free to come up with better solutions, but here goes: Create 4 tiers for each orb, one for each difficulty level (normal, cruel, merciless) and one for maps. The idea is that tier 1 (normal) can only be used on items dropped in normal, tier 2 (cruel) can be used on items obtained in normal and cruel, and so on and so forth. The orbs could be visually distinguishable through a simple number indicating the tier.


C2.) Allow players to trade (at the vendor, of course) lower tier orbs for higher tier orbs with a certain disadvantage, and allow higher tier orbs to be traded in for many lower tier orbs. For example, 5 tier 1 chaos orbs can be traded in for 1 tier 2 chaos orb, and vice versa. It should be more appealing trading higher tiers for lower tiers.

C(elaboration):These changes should promote the use of orbs in all tiers of play by making it more reasonable to do so. The reason, as I see it, for not doing something similar in the normal leagues is that it would ruin the way that even low level characters can obtain trade currency that is relevant to all players. In Scavenger league, we do not need to be concerned about the impact of trading and therefore we can make full use of the rather ingenious crafting system without feeling penalized, with the described changes.

D1.) An overall huge increase to the drop rate of orbs and gems. What percentage exactly is up to debate, but it has to be in the hundreds I figure, in order to make up for not being able to trade for specific orbs and gems.

D2.) Increase the amount of gems that you receive from quests and increase the options to choose from. Instead of choosing 1 gem out of a catalogue of 8, you choose 3 gems out of a catalogue of 20.

D(elaboration): To make a SFL work normal drop rates are not adequate. I know many will feel uncomfortable about increasing these numbers, but one must remember that without trading your options would be severely limited without more orbs to craft with and more gems to use for your build. What we need here is an increase that doesn’t trivialize the game but makes for a slightly if not significantly harder progression path compared to standard league. What number that will do the trick, combined with the other listed suggestions, is hard to determine without testing. It could be 150%, it could be 400%, we will find out together. I claim that despite all these changes, Scavenger league will still prove to be rather difficult league to play in.