Fixin Smithin

[JacTise69]

Well Tip It Forums, I've been pondering this problem for well over a year now and I think I have a viable solution. So I submit it to you, what I consider to be some of the brightest minds in the community, to get your feedback in identifying how this would be good, bad, stupid, or smart.

 

The Problem

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Smithing as a skill is broken. It is one of the few skills that has things to do all the way to level 99, which is good, but unfortunately this caps out at makings a rune platebody...not the most useful piece of equipment in the world. While once the king of its day this baby is what made the first people to get 99 smithing obscenely rich. Now however it is entirely outclassed by all of its barrows counterparts, bandos, some pieces of dragon equipment, torva, fighter torso, etc. As a result smithing has become a money sink, with little incentive to train outside of the sweet cape you will be happy with for a total of five min. This is where my suggestion comes in...

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Another piece of the puzzle

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Another little problem of runescape is the drop system for our most current bosses. Given maxed players can camp some of the older bosses for hours on end solo while some of the other bosses are near unsoloable there is an issue. The harder that the bosses become the rarer their drops have been made. Common estimates put the drop rate of a divine in the 1/800 - 1/1200 range. Thats a lot of kills with a team for a very low chance of even getting the drop. Few people even go to Nex anymore simply because she is so time consuming to fight (finding a team, gearing up, kill count, gearing up again and waiting for the whole team to get the kill count, the actual fight) and can only be killed so few times in a single trip. As a result pieces of lifepoint boosting armour are neigh unbuyable, being placed above max cash and rare beyond all belief. My suggestion will solve this problem and the smithing skill in one clever swoop...[/hide]

 

The Solution

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Simply put, armour fragments. When killing a boss monster after this update you will receive a 100% drop of an armor fragment for the bosses corresponding unique piece of armour(s). If you have the smithing level equal to the defense level required to wear the item you may take your collected fragments and reforge them into a full piece of the set of armour. This is applicable all the way from rune armour to every tier above for the chest, legs, and helm slots.

 

For instance.

 

I kill General Graar. I receive a "Bandos Armour Fragment" for my first kill. After 100 kills I've collected 100 fragments and receive a little chat notification letting me know that I've collected enough for reforging a set of Bandos Tassets. Sweet I think to myself, grab my hammer and run to the nearest anvil. I use the shards on the anvil and BAM there are my shiny new Bandos Tassets (b)...

 

WTF?

 

That's right, any pieces of armour you reforge yourself will be bound to your account and untradeable. This is to balance out people making obscene amounts of money from camping bosses on top of the cash they get from the tradeable drops.

 

"But Jac! Why would anyone want to hunt bosses for these sets of untradeable armours?"

 

Because any armour you forge yourself will have in addition to the stats of its tradeable counterparts life points boosting properties

 

Back to our story, I look down at my chat message box and gasp to see that I leveled up in smithing! But I wasn't even close to a level...checking my exp gains that I conveniently had reset before reforging this piece of armor I find that I've gained (smithing level * 1500) smithing experience for reforging these tassets. Thats a nice chunk of change!

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Potential Problems

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1. There is not a boss for every piece of dragon/rune equipment, such as metal dragons being responsible for dragon platelegs drops. An easy fix to this is have the fragment drop set at intervals (every 5 kills or so) or require a larger amount. Requiring a larger amount can be determined on the difficulty of the boss. At Nex for instance, the legs could cost only 10 shards to make. Another fix for this is to add in lower level bosses specifically for non-maxed players to access these new armours/reforging options. It is also an opportunity to rework the drop tables of existing outdated bosses.

 

2. Nex's armour already has life point boosting properties. Solution? Increase the defensive/offensive qualities of her armours and remove the LP boost. This would make the untradeable version still as desireable as well as making it more rewarding for those who actually go out of their way to kill Nex.

 

3. Some boss's have drops for range/magic armour. I won't lie I don't have a good solution for this, incorporate crafting somehow would make sense. Also how would/could one choose which type of fragment they want to recieve (i.e. at Nex would I get to choose which kind of fragment I want between the melee/range/mage armours? An option here would be to have a toggle function at Nex's banker).

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Summary

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Bosses drop armour shards as a 100% drop.

After acquiring a number of these shards they can be reforged into account bound pieces of armour that boost your lifepoints when worn.

Reforging them requires a smithing level equal to the defense level required to wear the piece of armour.

Reforging provides generous smithing experience to the reforger.

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So there you go, a smithing fix that doesn't involve changing the table for when you can smith things, add new ores/bars, or generally suck. It provides incentive for more people to boss hunt themselves as well as incentives to train their smithing level up. This will get better as Jagex adds the next tiers of armour as well.

 

Things YOU can do.

 

1. Help me come up with reworks for drop tables of existing bosses to include rune armour/dragon armour etc. If we have to include adamantite armour I would not be opposed to it.

 

2. Help me come up with a formula for the smithing experience gained from reforging each piece of equipment at each armour tier (i.e. reforging bandos should be more exp than reforging rune).

 

3. Point out any other area's that need improvement or need to be nerfed.

 

4. Spread the word.

 

Thanks you :shades:

[Hegelstad]

Why would anyone buy bandos armour when you can get bandos with life boosting for "free"? And how do you solve the LS'ing problem?

[Quyneax]

Ranged/magic armour could require crafting, that needs a little boost as well. The level reqs could be a little higher, putting torva at 95 smith or so.

 

I would say that a 100% drop makes bosshunting too boring, however a 1/10 drop could be nice.

 

You would be dropping both the regular armours, and the LP-boosting variants, I understand? So you could have regular tassets, and tassets (b). The latter being assembled from unique untradeable drops and having, say, +50 lp boost or so?

 

Torva would then be divided in torva (b) with the same stats as current, and purchaseable torva without an lp boost or with significantly reduced lp boost.

[JacTise69]

Why would anyone buy bandos armour when you can get bandos with life boosting for "free"? And how do you solve the LS'ing problem?

 

Because lots of people aren't into bossing at all, either because they have no interest or they don't have the stats.

 

edit

 

what LS'ing problem? It's besides the point for the scope of this suggestion imo, im concerned about adding content to make smithing more appealing.

 

Ranged/magic armour could require crafting, that needs a little boost as well. The level reqs could be a little higher, putting torva at 95 smith or so.

 

I would say that a 100% drop makes bosshunting too boring, however a 1/10 drop could be nice.

 

You would be dropping both the regular armours, and the LP-boosting variants, I understand? So you could have regular tassets, and tassets (b). The latter being assembled from unique untradeable drops and having, say, +50 lp boost or so?

 

Torva would then be divided in torva (b) with the same stats as current, and purchaseable torva without an lp boost or with significantly reduced lp boost.

 

Yea adding crafting would be the best way to go probably. The whole purpose for it being a 100% drop is so that you don't have to play the luck game, gives more incentive to try. But yes a drop rate that common would probably also serve the purpose. The point of making it so that the smithing/crafting level required to reforge/repair the fragments the same as the defense level to wear it is so that once the tier 90 and tier 99 armours come out you don't have the same imbalance as we have now, namely smithing being maxed out for usefullness too soon.

 

The bosses would drop the full pieces of armour that have no life point boosts, and the fragments that when reforged would have the same offensive/defensive stats and a boost to your life points. So yes, you have the concept. The idea for torva is to remove the exisiting lifepoint boosts on the pieces already out there and add it to the new reforged pieces. People will rant yes, but in the long run it will make things better.

[Hegelstad]

Who would get the "100%" drop if you are teaming with lootshare on?

[Th e Doctor]

Everyone gets a fragment, no one is left out. The LS will apply to the random drops in existance. The fragment will appear in the inventory of everyone who helped to kill the boss. Ill edit the OP when i get back to my computer to make that more clear.

[Hegelstad]

Well, its still incredibly easy to do. 100 trio kills doesnt take very long time. It would make more sense if the dropped version has life boosting abilities, and the fragmented version has normal stats?

[JacTise69]

Well, its still incredibly easy to do. 100 trio kills doesnt take very long time. It would make more sense if the dropped version has life boosting abilities, and the fragmented version has normal stats?

 

Well the goal is to get people more interested in killing the bosses themselves as opposed to just grinding the GP to buy it.

[NukeMarine]

It's not a new idea, but it's still good. There are some balance issues, but hear me out:

 

Imagine if to get a Dragon Full-helm one needed to smith one or two fragments WITH a dragon med helm. Imagine if to get Dragon Plate you needed to smith 3 or 4 fragments WITH a dragon chain. In either case, what would have happened to the cost of Dragon Med and Dragon Chain? I'd easily argue that the costs would not have plummented like they did when Jagex released D Full Helm and D Plate as individual drops.

 

With your idea, yes, I understand you want to keep the armor seperate. However, what if you modify your idea thusly: Bosses drop untradable fragments that players with high enough smithing (and other skills to increase difficulty) can smith the fragments onto the already existing armor. Doing such makes the armor untradeable (can be reversed back to tradeable), but have life boosting and maybe other properties added.

 

This way, older armor keeps it's value because it's needed to make the better untradeable armor. With the fragments being untradeable, only those that fought the bosses can make the armor (prestige value). With it further being tied to Smithing (I recommend 87 smithing for the helm, 96 for legs, 98 for chest) and other skills (firemaking, crafting, woodcutting, etc.) , you make it more unobtainable without non-gp based effort.

[AmberPyre]

It's not a new idea, but it's still good. There are some balance issues, but hear me out:

 

Imagine if to get a Dragon Full-helm one needed to smith one or two fragments WITH a dragon med helm. Imagine if to get Dragon Plate you needed to smith 3 or 4 fragments WITH a dragon chain. In either case, what would have happened to the cost of Dragon Med and Dragon Chain? I'd easily argue that the costs would not have plummented like they did when Jagex released D Full Helm and D Plate as individual drops.

 

With your idea, yes, I understand you want to keep the armor seperate. However, what if you modify your idea thusly: Bosses drop untradable fragments that players with high enough smithing (and other skills to increase difficulty) can smith the fragments onto the already existing armor. Doing such makes the armor untradeable (can be reversed back to tradeable), but have life boosting and maybe other properties added.

 

This way, older armor keeps it's value because it's needed to make the better untradeable armor. With the fragments being untradeable, only those that fought the bosses can make the armor (prestige value). With it further being tied to Smithing (I recommend 87 smithing for the helm, 96 for legs, 98 for chest) and other skills (firemaking, crafting, woodcutting, etc.) , you make it more unobtainable without non-gp based effort.

 

I like that suggestion.

 

The new LP Boost armor could have a slight change to its look, so you can see the difference of it.

[JacTise69]

It's not a new idea, but it's still good. There are some balance issues, but hear me out:

 

Imagine if to get a Dragon Full-helm one needed to smith one or two fragments WITH a dragon med helm. Imagine if to get Dragon Plate you needed to smith 3 or 4 fragments WITH a dragon chain. In either case, what would have happened to the cost of Dragon Med and Dragon Chain? I'd easily argue that the costs would not have plummented like they did when Jagex released D Full Helm and D Plate as individual drops.

 

With your idea, yes, I understand you want to keep the armor seperate. However, what if you modify your idea thusly: Bosses drop untradable fragments that players with high enough smithing (and other skills to increase difficulty) can smith the fragments onto the already existing armor. Doing such makes the armor untradeable (can be reversed back to tradeable), but have life boosting and maybe other properties added.

 

This way, older armor keeps it's value because it's needed to make the better untradeable armor. With the fragments being untradeable, only those that fought the bosses can make the armor (prestige value). With it further being tied to Smithing (I recommend 87 smithing for the helm, 96 for legs, 98 for chest) and other skills (firemaking, crafting, woodcutting, etc.) , you make it more unobtainable without non-gp based effort.

 

Except for it makes no sense in light of you can't smith a platebody from a chainbody without melting down the chainbody and resmelting it. Also those items didn't plummet just because Jagex released new drops. It was much more that cheaper better alternatives came out, new monsters that also dropped said items came out (fire giants drop d meds for petes sake) and with power creep for weapons said monsters that dropped them became significantly easier to kill.

 

That being said I don't like the addition to what I've outlined. Mostly I don't see the need for it at all.

 

Not that any of this matters with Jagex announcing their smithing update (which will of course be lame) coming this month. :(