New items: █ map modifiers █

Hi all,
well I'd like to see this new kind of items drop in the game.

These would be some kind of "charms" that you can put in your map device together with your map, and they would change its behaviour.
There could be magic, rare and unique versions.
Some could be a 2x1 slots in size, so that only one of them could be used at a time.

I'm giving a few examples, many more could be thought of.

"

Invading Charm of Frost

rarity: magic

Adds an Invasion Boss to the map
Covers all ground with Chilled Ground.
Removes all other ground effects from them map.

+10% extra item quantity
+10% extra itam rarity

"

The Learning Adventurer

rarity: unique

Converts all increased rarity into increased experience.
One random mob drops a unique item.

"

*random rare name*

rarity: rare

Adds a random strongbox
One random rare monster has 10.000% base life.
Monsters deal 15% extra cold damage.

+15% extra item quantity
+10% extra item rarity

"

Cold Flesh

rarity: unique

50% reduced item quantity
100% increased item rarity

Dropped items are converted into their equivalent vendor value.
Only one portal can be used for each party member.

I hope these examples gave an idea.
Magic and rare charms could be crafted just like other items, using Alteration Orbs, Chaos Orbs etc.
Prefixes might give a bonus to the player (one extra strongbox or boss etc) while suffixes could give a malus (more monster damage etc).

I'd like to receive some feedback, and sorry for my English, I hope you understood it.

Well this is indeed a good idea.

I was thinking about putting 2 to 4 different maps with different mods and create a map that has the mods that those consumed map have: of course it cant have ALL the mods, but some of them randomly picked up, so you could create a double curse map or 2xbloodline (more magic monsters with 2 bloodline mods), so that the difficult of the game would be increased a lot, especially if you use the maximum number of maps: 4.
This way the 4 slots in the map device would have some sense, apart from atziri. And it would be justified the super map drop of the lowest tier, since you would consume a lot of maps only for 1 run.

But even your idea is nice too.

Hm. While the concept is nice, the implications are not: Basically, they would become mandatory for high-tier mapping, and thus expensive, making high-tier mapping even more expensive (and even less accessible for single players).

+1, nice idea
As to making mapping more expensive: Why? That depends on the rarity of these charms. Plus they are balanced against sac fragments...

Map modifier items already exist. They're called Chaos Orbs. And frankly, I think it's more important to get that system working better before trying to stack even more on top of it.

That is a very nice idea in fact :-)

I don't see how it'd make high-tier mapping more expensive.
You can do high-tier today, and this wouldn't change that in any negative way. Sure, people may want to use these for their high-level maps, and an economy for them would develop, but what this would do is move currency downwards, from the players running high-level maps to the players finding the charms.

One suggestion though... Increased drop chances should not affect map drops. Map drops are decently balanced today and this shouldn't be changed.

Another potential limitation could be that the charms had a limit for how high a map tier they could be used with. Item level could be used for this (+/-)...

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Cyzax wrote:

I don't see how it'd make high-tier mapping more expensive.

[...] but what this would do is move currency downwards, from the players running high-level maps to the players finding the charms.

"Move currency from players running high-level maps to players finding the charms" is exactly identical to "make high-tier mapping more expensive".

Map drops at the moment are complete crap, and Ascendancy has made things worse because it has made us more powerful. Map drops would be okay if monsters got massively buffed such that T10 maps would actually be a challenge.

My honest opinion: just another "add this and mapping gets a new spice to it" - idea that doesn't really stand out from the other plethora of ideas what I've seen here.

"

Char1983 wrote:

"Move currency from players running high-level maps to players finding the charms" is exactly identical to "make high-tier mapping more expensive".

Ehhhh... No!

Only if you waste your currency on something that on average will not pay off! If you do that, then its your own fault...
If 'charms' (let's call them that), are more expensive than what you get from them, you'll be free not to use them. If they're not, then you gain from using them.

And map drops are fine :-)

So if the "charm" makes me drop on average 0.1 additional T14 maps, which hypothetically cost 20 chaos, then the cost of the charm is fine if it is 2c or less. And worth it.

Unfortunately, the 20c are hypothetical wins, because I will just run that T14 map.

At the same time, GGG will re-balance map drops to take into account the new charms. So the resulting effect is simply that I pay 2c extra per T14 map to be allowed to play it, without actually playing more T14 maps than before.

Map drops are fine if you are usually playing in parties that share the costs, or if you have a reliable way to generate lots of currency (trading/flipping/scamming). If you play solo and don't exactly love trade, maps will simply drain your currency, or you have to stay in T10/T9 maps that are tremendously boring because they offer zero challenge.