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The Goddess of Shopping...


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Ever wonder just how insanely high bargaining can go?

 

Welp... The thought did cross my mind - especially after I came across a certain Necklace of Greed. And with the Mutation Sets becoming available, and all those empty sockets just sitting there idle, the temptation to go nuts with bargaining was just too great.

 

So... I took one of Dragon Brother's level 200 blank characters (The High Elf) and the High Elf Mutation Set, as well as a bunch of Necklaces of Greed and some Urthak's Sparkles to see just how high I can get Bargaining to go. I threw in a spare Officer's Saber with 3 more sockets for grins and giggles. I also threw a couple of Necklaces of Greed into the Unyielding Wall that came with the save file. I also got some high end niobium bargaining relics to round everything out.

 

The result: Pretty bleepety bleeping incredible!

 

Check it out:

 

post-14586-0-52931100-1301566570_thumb.jpg

 

That's right. Bargaining is at level 875!

 

Now... I'm sure there may be a way to squeeze an extra bargaining point or two out of this somewhere.

 

Time to hit Rodeo Drive! :D

Edited by wolfie2kX
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And so shall the vicious circle of tweaking begin. :P

Outside of joking, that's really sweet. The vendors'll be fighting to bring her their top goodies. xD

Would be perfect for my shopper-elf too.

Mebbe I should be bug Daloriel & friends, to even see another glimpse of mutations.

Found the chestpiece for elf the other day.

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You would probably get a little more with a seraphim wouldnt you? They have the extra set piece and dual wielding officers sabers for the extra socket may be able to push you up to to 900. Also, do any of the Illuminated Skies provide enough of a bargaining/general skills bonus to beat the extra sockets from megalcarwens? And I wonder what you would be able to reach by socketing only items with stacked +all skills...from this thread +18 was max...was that any better than the necklaces of greed?

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You would probably get a little more with a seraphim wouldnt you? They have the extra set piece and dual wielding officers sabers for the extra socket may be able to push you up to to 900. Also, do any of the Illuminated Skies provide enough of a bargaining/general skills bonus to beat the extra sockets from megalcarwens? And I wonder what you would be able to reach by socketing only items with stacked +all skills...from this thread +18 was max...was that any better than the necklaces of greed?

 

Hmm.. Yah.. The Seraphim should have a few extra sockets. I may do up a Seraphim like this just for grins later on. Tho in all honesty, do you think it would make much, if any difference? Other than a Guinesss Book of World Records entry, I don't see it making too much of a difference. Might see a few lightsabers pop up though.

 

Illuminated Skies is an OK set, but no, it doesn't trump what you can socket using the Necklace of Greed and Urtak's Sparkles. At level 238, the Necklace of greed has +23 Bargaining. Since we're socketing that into a Gold socket, we get a bonus of 15% if I recall correctly. Either way, that +23 becomes +26. A similarly high Urtak's Sparkles gets +13 and that's what you get socketing those in silver. Since the Helm of Illuminated Skies at level 230 gets +30 Bargaining, the Mutation Set's helm with it's +52 (1 Gold, 2 Silver) beats it hands down.

 

The torso for Illuminated Skies gets +27 general skills. The mutation set's chest piece gets +65 or so with 2 gold and 1 silver socket.

 

The shoulders come in a bit weaker than the others, but still trump the Illuminated Skies +30. There's 1 Gold socket and 1 Silver socket on the shoulders - 26 + 13 = +39.

 

Since the Illuminated Skies legs are all about Divine Devotion (BIG snicker), the Mutation set trumps them easily with another 2 Gold and 1 silver sockets for +65...

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OK... I did the Seraphim up and while she's by no means complete, her pure shopping talent is at it's peak:

 

post-14586-0-87398700-1301580345_thumb.jpg

 

And indeed, it does bring her total up to - get this... +971!

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Chances are she still won't be able to get the highest tiers. Damn you, diminishing returns.

lol...probably...

 

Wolfie, did you get a chance to look at exactly what sort of stuff the seraphim could shop? How many rares would show up compared to blues/whites? I wonder if you could get lightsabers...

 

What sorts of items do the merchants sell for a level 971 Bargainer? Also, is this Ice and Blood with CM?

 

Yes, fully patched Ice and Blood with the most recent cm patch.

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What sorts of items do the merchants sell for a level 971 Bargainer? Also, is this Ice and Blood with CM?

 

OK.. I haven't had much of a chance to visit a lot of merchants yet. But, I did vist the one in Twainbrook - where the pic was taken. And as such I wouldn't quantify that visit as being typical or representative of what's out there.

 

So here's the results of one shopping trip:

 

Weapons/Shields:

Gray: 0

White: 3

Blue: 11

Yellow: 9

Green: 0

Gold: 0

Orange: 0

 

Armor:

Gray: 0

White: 7

Blue: 16

Yellow: 10

Green: 0

Gold: 0

Orange: 0

 

Jewelry:

Gray: 0

White: 2

Blue: 3

Yellow: 6

Green: 0

Gold: 0

Orange: 0

 

I'm including the possibility of Set, Unique and Legendary items as I have seen some Uniques up for grabs previously.

 

As far as prices go - they're about what you'd expect in a Niobium shop. Even with the discount you get for Bargaining Mastery, the prices for good stuff ain't cheap.

 

If I recall correctly, before the CM Patch came along and made it rain lightsabers, the only way to get one was shop till you dropped with extremely high bargaining - a minimum of 2x your current level. Now, whether or not that dynamic was changed somewhere along the line, I don't know. But it might be worth checking it out.

 

@ Ysne58 - Actually ANY character - except the poor Dragon Mage and Shadow Warrior can be uber shoppers like these. The Dragon Mage - mainly because he didn't get any Mutation Set love from the developers. Most likely because he was late to the party. The Shadow Warrior - mainly because he can't get the Bargaining skill to save his life.

 

All you need is the complete Mutation Set for your character and a bunch of Necklace of Greed and Urtak's Sparkles. There's, of course, going to be some variation as to how high they can go with the bargaining level - depending on how many set pieces and how many sockets they get with their set.

 

Now... There is an open ticket on Mantis - the CM Patch bug tracker - for the Dragon Mage's lack of a Mutation Set. So that oversight may be addressed in a future release. The Shadow Warrior is still pretty much S.O.L...

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So I figured I should upgrade my TG's bargaining suit. I did the Mutation Set deal and here's how it turned out:

 

post-14586-0-97092900-1301642864_thumb.jpg

 

Here's my TG, mugging for a photo with Sophia, queen of the Seraphim herself in the Crystal Cottage area of the Crystal Plane.

 

Now, this isn't by any means an ultimate shopper. He's at level 131, has 75 hard points into bargaining - and look at how much of a boost that suit gave him: all the way up to +498... My previous bargaining gear only boosted Bargaining by maybe all of 40 points.

 

The mutation set is quite incredibly flexible. For those who want to use a Buff Suit, your character's mutation set is the perfect choice. Just socket up a ton of your favorite buff's runes, wear it and enable your buffs...

 

In case anyone's wondering...

 

Weapons/Shields:

Gray: 0

White: 3

Blue: 17

Yellow: 7

Green: 0

Gold: 0

Orange: 0

 

Armor:

Gray: 0

White: 4

Blue: 13

Yellow: 13

Green: 0

Gold: 0

Orange: 0

 

Jewelry:

Gray: 0

White: 2

Blue: 7

Yellow: 5

Green: 0

Gold: 0

Orange: 0

 

Prices are about par for the course for Gold. No Lightsabers - yet.

Edited by wolfie2kX
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Still looks pretty danged amazing. Does Bargaining impact blacksmithing fees or would I be better off rolling a Smith-y type person?

 

Not having rolled a smith as yet, I'm not quite 100% sure how the fees for that compare. But yes, you do get a discount. In fact, when I rolled this armor through the blacksmith, I did a bit of checking to see which one was the least expensive to do and worked my way up the list. As I finished each piece, I took the existing crappy bargaining suit piece off, substituted the new shiny mutation bargaining set item in it's place. I figured I managed to save a few quid doing that.

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Very interesting testing and results, Wolfie. Thanks for the hard work. (And hopefully you're having some fun with it, too. ;) )

 

For me, I don't think it would be worth it to build Bargaining this high unless set items, uniques, and legendaries would start showing up in shops.

 

I already know from my own experimenting that lightsabers get next to impossible to find in shops starting at about level 70 - With character at 65-70 and Bargaining at 190, I found one green in about 100 shop visits. I suspect the odds are significantly less than 100:1, but I didn't feel like continuing to visit shops over and over.

 

You know the famous definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. I think visiting shops and raising Bargaining skill can also assume some of the same symptoms as a gambling addiction.

 

Anyway, thanks again for the new data. I wonder what kind of drops would happen with a character who got Enhanced Perception up this high?

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For me, I don't think it would be worth it to build Bargaining this high unless set items, uniques, and legendaries would start showing up in shops.

 

I already know from my own experimenting that lightsabers get next to impossible to find in shops starting at about level 70 - With character at 65-70 and Bargaining at 190, I found one green in about 100 shop visits. I suspect the odds are significantly less than 100:1, but I didn't feel like continuing to visit shops over and over.

Well, in a fully patched Ice and Blood you are unable to find sets, uniques or legendaries while shopping. It seems that the cm team may have inadvertently mixed up an items tier somewhere (or the game randomly glitched) as wolfie shopped some uniques with the cm patch installed recently.

 

Lightsabers...yeah, look cool, but trying to find them in higher levels while shopping...insanely difficult.

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Very interesting testing and results, Wolfie. Thanks for the hard work. (And hopefully you're having some fun with it, too. ;) )

 

For me, I don't think it would be worth it to build Bargaining this high unless set items, uniques, and legendaries would start showing up in shops.

 

I already know from my own experimenting that lightsabers get next to impossible to find in shops starting at about level 70 - With character at 65-70 and Bargaining at 190, I found one green in about 100 shop visits. I suspect the odds are significantly less than 100:1, but I didn't feel like continuing to visit shops over and over.

 

You know the famous definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. I think visiting shops and raising Bargaining skill can also assume some of the same symptoms as a gambling addiction.

 

Anyway, thanks again for the new data. I wonder what kind of drops would happen with a character who got Enhanced Perception up this high?

 

I can give you some info on EP... The nice thing about Urtak's Sparkles - it has a high dose of EP built in on top of the Bargaining.

 

I went out on a quick run using the bargaining suit and I can tell you the result wasn't quite as impressive as I would have liked to have seen. I did compromise ONE (5 actually) thing. I kept my regular battle sword, amulet and rings. EP was still jacked up by 132 points to +188. The Officer's Saber I have, while it's great for bargaining since it's got those 3 gold sockets, positively sucks in battle at this point for two reasons.

 

1.) Even though it's says it's level 238, it's still nothing more than level 80 from Silver.

2.) It's like a dull butter knife - Damaging enemies is insanely difficult.

 

I kept my regular battle ammy and rings for similar reasons. I need my damage mitigation, RpH and plus skills stuff to make the battle worthwhile. Today is NOT a good day to die.

 

So anyhow... I'm still in the Crystal Cottages area so, I figured I'd take a spin around the 'hood and clean up on some of the baddies hanging around. On average, I'm getting something like around 8,500 to 12,500 XP per kill. The enemies are a bit weaker (level 126 or so) to my level 131

 

So after spending 20 odd minutes running around and killing everything I could, I checked my inventory and found the following:

 

Gray: 7

White: 8

Blue: 5

Yellow: 0

Green: 0

Gold: 0

Orange: 0

 

My survival bonus is at 91.4%. Overall impression: It's not doing all that much to improve the quality. The stuff that's dropping is about par with the stuff that was dropping previously with my regular armor.

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@Wolfie, thanks for the further info. It sounds like Enhanced Perception suffers from the same diminishing-returns-to-the-point-of-uselessness as Bargaining.

 

I like to spend one point in Enhanced Perception in order to unlock "+% to find valuables" on items. Other than that and the extra points from relics, to get a slightly better probability of blue potions and yellow-green-orange-gold items dropping, I doubt that it's worth it to ever spend more than one point.

 

Bargaining used to be worth it for the +all skills jewelry, but now that +all skills is nerfed, that doesn't seem to be worth it either.

 

You're eventually going to get anything you could get through maxed out Bargaining or Enhanced Perception through regular drops.

 

Based on your data, my conclusion would be that one point in Bargaining in order to open up a chance for yellows at merchants, and/or one point in Enhanced Perception in order to unlock "+% to find valuables" on items, would be the way to go.

 

Your last post implies this conclusion, that giving priority to maxing either of these skills is costing you way too much in offensive and defensive ability, the net effect being to make the game less fun.

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Very interesting testing and results, Wolfie. Thanks for the hard work. (And hopefully you're having some fun with it, too. ;) )

 

For me, I don't think it would be worth it to build Bargaining this high unless set items, uniques, and legendaries would start showing up in shops.

 

I already know from my own experimenting that lightsabers get next to impossible to find in shops starting at about level 70 - With character at 65-70 and Bargaining at 190, I found one green in about 100 shop visits. I suspect the odds are significantly less than 100:1, but I didn't feel like continuing to visit shops over and over.

 

You know the famous definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. I think visiting shops and raising Bargaining skill can also assume some of the same symptoms as a gambling addiction.

 

Anyway, thanks again for the new data. I wonder what kind of drops would happen with a character who got Enhanced Perception up this high?

 

I can give you some info on EP... The nice thing about Urtak's Sparkles - it has a high dose of EP built in on top of the Bargaining.

 

I went out on a quick run using the bargaining suit and I can tell you the result wasn't quite as impressive as I would have liked to have seen. I did compromise ONE (5 actually) thing. I kept my regular battle sword, amulet and rings. EP was still jacked up by 132 points to +188. The Officer's Saber I have, while it's great for bargaining since it's got those 3 gold sockets, positively sucks in battle at this point for two reasons.

 

1.) Even though it's says it's level 238, it's still nothing more than level 80 from Silver.

2.) It's like a dull butter knife - Damaging enemies is insanely difficult.

 

I kept my regular battle ammy and rings for similar reasons. I need my damage mitigation, RpH and plus skills stuff to make the battle worthwhile. Today is NOT a good day to die.

 

So anyhow... I'm still in the Crystal Cottages area so, I figured I'd take a spin around the 'hood and clean up on some of the baddies hanging around. On average, I'm getting something like around 8,500 to 12,500 XP per kill. The enemies are a bit weaker (level 126 or so) to my level 131

 

So after spending 20 odd minutes running around and killing everything I could, I checked my inventory and found the following:

 

Gray: 7

White: 8

Blue: 5

Yellow: 0

Green: 0

Gold: 0

Orange: 0

 

My survival bonus is at 91.4%. Overall impression: It's not doing all that much to improve the quality. The stuff that's dropping is about par with the stuff that was dropping previously with my regular armor.

The thing with chance is that you need a huge sample size to make any firm decisions about its effectiveness. In the long run you would expect to see increased drops, but from 20 items its too small a sample space. Plus, them being lower level than you may have had an effect on it and if you were killing too slowly because of your lowered gear that may have had an effect (if there is any validity to the kill speed hypothesis). Way too many factors in this game... :)

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The thing with chance is that you need a huge sample size to make any firm decisions about its effectiveness. In the long run you would expect to see increased drops, but from 20 items its too small a sample space. Plus, them being lower level than you may have had an effect on it and if you were killing too slowly because of your lowered gear that may have had an effect (if there is any validity to the kill speed hypothesis). Way too many factors in this game... :)

True enough. Though I wouldn't say that the speed kill thing was much of an issue. Not for this character at any rate. My TG is able to knock the living *bleep* out of most regular mobs with one shot using Dedicated Blow. You just can't get much faster than that. Just walk up and BLAM! - they're toast. Champions, OTOH, are usually dealt with in 2 - 3 shots on average. The big problem I'm having with the bargaining suit - all my sockets that can take RpH, damage and Leech runes are now occupied with Bargaining stuff. The Blacksmith arts I've socketed just aren't quite up to the same level damage-wise. That and the way I have my regular armor set up - I get a +7 All Skills twice - which I don't get with the bargaining suit.

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The thing with chance is that you need a huge sample size to make any firm decisions about its effectiveness. In the long run you would expect to see increased drops, but from 20 items its too small a sample space. Plus, them being lower level than you may have had an effect on it and if you were killing too slowly because of your lowered gear that may have had an effect (if there is any validity to the kill speed hypothesis). Way too many factors in this game... :)

True enough. Though I wouldn't say that the speed kill thing was much of an issue. Not for this character at any rate. My TG is able to knock the living *bleep* out of most regular mobs with one shot using Dedicated Blow. You just can't get much faster than that. Just walk up and BLAM! - they're toast. Champions, OTOH, are usually dealt with in 2 - 3 shots on average. The big problem I'm having with the bargaining suit - all my sockets that can take RpH, damage and Leech runes are now occupied with Bargaining stuff. The Blacksmith arts I've socketed just aren't quite up to the same level damage-wise. That and the way I have my regular armor set up - I get a +7 All Skills twice - which I don't get with the bargaining suit.

Ahh...I thought when you said you were forced to use a low level officers saber your damage was sucking or something.

 

@Wolfie, thanks for the further info. It sounds like Enhanced Perception suffers from the same diminishing-returns-to-the-point-of-uselessness as Bargaining.

 

I like to spend one point in Enhanced Perception in order to unlock "+% to find valuables" on items. Other than that and the extra points from relics, to get a slightly better probability of blue potions and yellow-green-orange-gold items dropping, I doubt that it's worth it to ever spend more than one point.

 

Bargaining used to be worth it for the +all skills jewelry, but now that +all skills is nerfed, that doesn't seem to be worth it either.

 

You're eventually going to get anything you could get through maxed out Bargaining or Enhanced Perception through regular drops.

 

Based on your data, my conclusion would be that one point in Bargaining in order to open up a chance for yellows at merchants, and/or one point in Enhanced Perception in order to unlock "+% to find valuables" on items, would be the way to go.

 

Your last post implies this conclusion, that giving priority to maxing either of these skills is costing you way too much in offensive and defensive ability, the net effect being to make the game less fun.

Well, you're better of putting points in both of them, up til mastery. One point in bargaining especially will have very little effect. For it to be any use at high levels it has to be many times your chatacter level and without the boost provided by mastery it will be nowhere as effective, nor will it reach the necessary heights. If you pick either of these skills, my strong suggestion is master it otherwise its a waste of a skill slot.

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The thing with chance is that you need a huge sample size to make any firm decisions about its effectiveness. In the long run you would expect to see increased drops, but from 20 items its too small a sample space. Plus, them being lower level than you may have had an effect on it and if you were killing too slowly because of your lowered gear that may have had an effect (if there is any validity to the kill speed hypothesis). Way too many factors in this game... :)

True enough. Though I wouldn't say that the speed kill thing was much of an issue. Not for this character at any rate. My TG is able to knock the living *bleep* out of most regular mobs with one shot using Dedicated Blow. You just can't get much faster than that. Just walk up and BLAM! - they're toast. Champions, OTOH, are usually dealt with in 2 - 3 shots on average. The big problem I'm having with the bargaining suit - all my sockets that can take RpH, damage and Leech runes are now occupied with Bargaining stuff. The Blacksmith arts I've socketed just aren't quite up to the same level damage-wise. That and the way I have my regular armor set up - I get a +7 All Skills twice - which I don't get with the bargaining suit.

Ahh...I thought when you said you were forced to use a low level officers saber your damage was sucking or something.

 

Ah.. Actually said the opposite: I used the entire bargaining suit (which would normally include the sword as well as the rings and ammy) except the sword and the ammy and rings. I said I was keeping my regular blade - a Deathblade which had 2 leech runes embedded in it. The Deathblad is also roughly double the level the Officer's Saber is with easily 2x the base damage. My bad for any confusion.

 

Edit: I am finding that my Bargaining suit - complete with Officer's Saber is still more than adequate to slice and dice Kobolds and other low level mobs in the Sloeford area that are 45 to 50 levels below my own.

 

@Wolfie, thanks for the further info. It sounds like Enhanced Perception suffers from the same diminishing-returns-to-the-point-of-uselessness as Bargaining.

 

I like to spend one point in Enhanced Perception in order to unlock "+% to find valuables" on items. Other than that and the extra points from relics, to get a slightly better probability of blue potions and yellow-green-orange-gold items dropping, I doubt that it's worth it to ever spend more than one point.

 

Bargaining used to be worth it for the +all skills jewelry, but now that +all skills is nerfed, that doesn't seem to be worth it either.

 

You're eventually going to get anything you could get through maxed out Bargaining or Enhanced Perception through regular drops.

 

Based on your data, my conclusion would be that one point in Bargaining in order to open up a chance for yellows at merchants, and/or one point in Enhanced Perception in order to unlock "+% to find valuables" on items, would be the way to go.

 

Your last post implies this conclusion, that giving priority to maxing either of these skills is costing you way too much in offensive and defensive ability, the net effect being to make the game less fun.

Well, you're better of putting points in both of them, up til mastery. One point in bargaining especially will have very little effect. For it to be any use at high levels it has to be many times your chatacter level and without the boost provided by mastery it will be nowhere as effective, nor will it reach the necessary heights. If you pick either of these skills, my strong suggestion is master it otherwise its a waste of a skill slot.

 

Exactly what DB said. Having Bargaining at insane levels hasn't really yielded anything you won't already see at level 75 - so far. There IS, however, method to my madness with this. I'm planning on going on a bit of a shopping spree - visiting merchants far and wide to see if I can duplicate my previous experience with finding uniques at merchants that I didn't sell them. There is one thing about cranking the Bargaining up as high as I have... The Chance for Special Offers on my TG is up to 25.2%. And I've got most of the merchants open to me. Me thinks it's time to get to the bottom of this mystery...

Edited by wolfie2kX
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Exactly what DB said. Having Bargaining at insane levels hasn't really yielded anything you won't already see at level 75 - so far. There IS, however, method to my madness with this. I'm planning on going on a bit of a shopping spree - visiting merchants far and wide to see if I can duplicate my previous experience with finding uniques at merchants that I didn't sell them. There is one thing about cranking the Bargaining up as high as I have... The Chance for Special Offers on my TG is up to 25.2%. And I've got most of the merchants open to me. Me thinks it's time to get to the bottom of this mystery...

 

I would be very interested to see what you find out too, wolfie. :)

 

Even if it turns out, that only some vendors have the ability to sell set and unique items I could check on them to see what is different there. Could be a nice addition to CM patch, if the polls turn that direction (there might be people who think that uniques and sets should not be sold by merchants).

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