Weekly Discussion Thread #3: Grinding And Lootrunning

Introduction
Howdy y'all, welcome to the third edition of the weekly discussion thread. Today we will be going over Grinding and Lootrunning as ways of obtaining items in the game. Last weeks discussion went great, just like the first one did, even tho it was a quite controversial topic. Today we have a somewhat lighter topic, where i'm sure more people will agree on. Let's get started!

Grinding and Lootrunning
Likely 2 activities you have done before. As a start for anyone who doesn't know what lootrunning is: it is a term used for taking a specific route with many chests on the way, with the intention of getting good items. I will be referring to grinding as killing mobs with the intent of leveling up, but also gaining items (and thus this does not include killing mobs that are required to be killed during quests and etc.).

I will mainly be looking at these activities with a vision on the gaining items aspect, as grinding is not even required to level up (quests and dungeons can skip a lot, if not all of the grinding). So, why am I choosing this topic? As someone that has both lootran and grinded a decent amount, i can say there is a very big imbalance between the two. With other words, if you compare grinding with lootrunning, lootrunning will stand out as the best way of gaining items, a lot.

Now, how come this feeling of imbalance is currently in the game? Well, 80% (if not more) of the community prefers lootrunning over grinding as a way of getting items, and rightfully so. Right now lootrunning just seems way better. There is a few reason as to why, which i will sum up now.

Lootrun Exclusive Items
This is for sure a reason why people prefer lootrunning. As of right now, there is items in the game that can only be obtained through chests, the biggest ones being accessories ofcourse, as these are only obtainable through Tier 3 and higher chests. Other then that you have certain weapons, armor and even mythic boots that can also only be obtained in chests (mythic boots are legit the only reason i would personally go for grinding instead of lootrunning, seriously screw warchief).

On the other side of the spectrum, grinding has absolutely nothing. No special kind of items to benefit the player for choosing grinding over lootrunning. If these kind of items were to be added, i think grinding will gain a huge boost in popularity, as there would be a reason to grind, rather than lootrun.

Item Identity
With other words, knowing what you get. As of right now (In the vanilla game, i know mods can help with this) there is no way of knowing the rarity of item a mob drops, except for picking it up and looking at it in your inventory, and if you have grinded before, you know you hardly have time for this, unless you wish to die. Lootrunning gives more security in this, most chests in a lootrun are chests where there is hardly any mobs around, if any. Sure there is some tricky chests, but the amount of time you get is clearly enough to check every item.

The Amount Of Loot
Perhaps the biggest reason of them all, lootrunning as of currently gives way more loot than grinding. Unless someone took the chests on that server and they just respawned, you will be guaranteed to have more items/minute than grinding.

Why Does This Need Change
First of all, i am aware that grinding gives you xp aswel, but i am currently talking about it in an end-game standpoint, a point where xp does not matter anymore, and you just wish to gain loot. But i feel like grinding vs lootrunning should be a fair decision, not one that is tilted way more to one option that the other, even in end-game.

Making grinding more viable will also be a good thing for both options, yes, even for lootrunning. As more people will be grinding, there will be less people lootrunning, which means chests will be better, and servers that have no chests because they got lootran already will become less common. Now you can make the argument that when people move to grinding more, there will be a similar problem with grinding spots, as they will be occupied more often, but this can easily be fixed by adding more end-game grind spots. I even feel that right now, there are enough end-game grinding spots to make this not happen.

Discussion Time
I can talk about this topic for so much longer, but this thread is already so long (congratz if you made it to this point btw, hehe). But now it's time to tell what you guys think. Is grinding vs lootrunning a fair decision? or does one of these options need more viability? Don't be shy and tell me, because everyone's opinion matters.

See you all next week!

RemRin Out

 

Right now players only bother to grind for xp, and not for loot. Perhaps a possible solution for this it to make mobs only drop uniques and above? It will possibly give more incentive to grind because you won't be getting tons of common items anymore.

Or, add more options for the player to get loot. Dungeons are really underwhelming and merchants sell garbage. Dungeon drops could use a buff: either make all items rare+ and multiply the amount of items given by like 400%, or include a chance of the player getting one of the items in the dungeon shop upon completion of the respective dungeon (debatable). On the other hand, make weapon and armor merchants not sell trash and actually give them GOOD and USEFUL items to sell. Items that are on par with good legendaries and can only be bought from a merchant. Make the price/items required for the weapon/armor/accessory relatively expensive/hard to get too, to match the parity of time spent on grinding and lootrunning.

 

A. To be fair, dungeon merchants actually do sell some pretty decent stuff (Prognosticum, the Sanctuary pants, Vanguard, Gigabyte, Compiler)
B. They really need to add more dungeon drop exclusives. There's like two right now, and none for dungeons higher than level 40

 

There are actually like 10-20
I agree with your point though

 

I feel you man. I got 3 mythic boots recently, because my lootrun is nearly t3 and t4 chests only. Ithink, that the chance of a mythic in a t3 or t4 chest beeing boots should be reduced to at least the same chance it is to get weapons.
I also think, that wynncraft should change the chest locations from time to time, so that lootrunning takes effort, and isn't as profitable/abusable without putting some time into it. That would reduce the amount of players lootrunning and force more people into grinding again, and thereby rebalance those two, if executed correctly.

 

Making lootchest runs less crowded is the only reason why I would be inclined to make grinding as favorable as loot chest runs. I hate grinding so much. It’s not that it’s unrewarding; Wynncraft’s combat is so simple amd easy that it becomes boring and mind numbing after 5 minutes. Sure, loot chest runs are repetitive, but the combat shouldn’t be repetitive to begin with. I’m fine with buffing the rewards for grinding, but it should not have any advantage over lootrunning.

 

Seriously? I can only remember Ra and Witherhead's Bow off the top of my head

I somewhat agree with this, but to be fair, do you really want grinding to constantly force you to the brink of death?

 

Those are the popular ones, but here is the full list
Vertebra
Rat Skull
Witherhead's Bow
Silkwrap
Spiderweb String
Webstring
Spider Bracelet
Spider's Eye Pendant
Web Spitter
Arakadicus' Body
Ra
Scorpion Tail

 

Oh yeah god no. I can see why people think it’s unrewarding, but I’d just get rid of it entirely :-/

 

I would also say that mob grinding for loot will only work if you are at the same level as the mobs you are grinding; you won't drop a bluemask from a level 65mob if you are level 100; but you can get a bluemask by opening a chest near a lvl 65mob... i think this makes people more willing to lootrun instead of grinding, lootrunning the loot may vary based on the surrounding mobs, grinding you will always get the same items, boring.

Btw: writing this at 2am, hope its undestandable

 

are we all just forgetting that Heat Sink exists and is abused like hell in nearly every fire build for ls?
No?
Okay.

Anyway, perhaps lootrunning could be nerfed by borrowing an altered version of the Suspicious Crate mechanic where a specified tier of lootchest has a area that it can spawn in instead of a fixed spot.

Perhaps this area could get wider depending on the tier as well.

Here's an example:

A T1 chest could spawn anywhere in a 3x3 block area on a random flat isle in the Sky Islands.
A T2 chest could spawn randomly in a 7x7 block area encompassing a section of a house near Detlas (Set a height spawn limit to prevent chests floating on roofs though).
A T3 chest could spawn anywhere in a 15x15 block area in a more open part of the Nesaak Logging Area thingy (where the guy with the pufferfish bait was).
A T4 would be different and more rare by far. Its area could be something like anywhere in the entire Thanos Vaults place.

To compensate for such a nerf(ish), loot chance would need to be very slightly buffed, if only for T4s. Also, a system (one that doesn't exist for suspicious crates for some reason) would need to be implented to prevent multiple chests spawning in thr same are.

This would essentially be an complete rework for the loot chest system, but I personally feel that it'd be more balanced of a system, plus it'd actually embrace the realistic randomness of finding loot (I say realistic, but it's not like we go outside every day and scour our neighbor's houses for cool shit to snag. That's called robbery and.. Well, it's /probably/ illegal. Ah whatever).

Just my ten cents though.

 

The problem with grinding and lootruns is that either or gets wildy famous for being good to use, which makes them worse due to the over population of players using it. This namely impacts chest runs moreso than grinding locations, however having someone else grinding in the same area as you makes exp gain painful unless you party and most will say “Hey i was here first so be gone.”

Rn i think we need items tied to grinding locations and mob types. Like for example Frozen heights mobs can have a few exclusive drops based on water or water/fire and the Demon Cave would have a few exclusive items based on fire or thunder/fire. Naturealy out and about mobs could have one exclusive item for each mob, like Magma Entities would have one exclusive possible drop (both lower to the ground and higher above the ground share this drop). This way you can get some interesting (and useful stuff too maybe) from grinding.

And as for making grinding interesting i offer a random mini-boss spawning in certain areas at a semi-random basis, more powerful as the area’s “boss” and would pose an active threat to a player that they will need to engage with to kill for a guarantteed reward, and they would have a few types of spells to use and will even not use one or two.

 

Grinding will always be worse than lootrunning for farming items as the former also comes with the benefit of receiving experience (grinding is completely overshadowed by CSST atm for experience but that's another issue). I've had this idea running in the back of my head for a while about mob-specific item drops. These already exist in the form of set items but what I'm referring to is giving little groups of enemies an item that would be exclusively obtainable by defeating them. This would reward exploration and combat at once.

On the other hand, I feel that dungeons overshadowing grinding in terms of experience is also unavoidable, if not for dungeon bombs and dungeon-exclusive items why else would you do them? Making grinding worthwhile appears to be a delicate balancing act, it shouldn't be better than lootrunning for items since lootruns don't give experience, and it shouldn't be better than dungeons for experience as that would invalidate them.

 

I feel like having items specific to groups of mobs would be incredibly tedious depending on how many mob specific items were made. Maybe just area specific items? Like items for Rodoroc could mostly be built around fire and items for Ahm's could be air based. This could still make people grind in different areas depending on what items they want and encourage exploring without being overly tedious for GM's.

 

There’s already set items

 

Yes but there's only about a dozen set items in the game that are mob based and not a lot of them are high level. I'm talking about Legend/Rare/Unique items locked to mobs in certain areas.

 

I’d be against that. Grinding should not have any advantage over loot chest running,

 

I mean these items could be found in loot chests in that area I guess, I just like the idea of area exclusive items.

 

this should be in feedback section but you put it here so it gets more exposure but that wont help because its been said a 100 times before and nothing has been done

 

Web Spitter is actually a dungeon merchant item, but wynndata has it listed under a dungeon drop item for some reason

Heat Sink is balanced, it has pretty high requirements, and it’s obtained by doing a long dungeon 6 or so times.

In response to the actual thread, I think Wynn has improved massively with the concept of obtaining loot in the past few updates. Dungeon merchants and boss altars are the main ones, but there’s also stuff like the mask merchant in Pigman’s Ravine, the glassblowing merchant in Almuj, and set items that can only be obtained at certain places, like the ultramarine set, the visceral set, etc.

However, it’s no secret that grinding is unrewarding, and town merchants sell trash, which are two of the points brought up in this thread. As for town merchants, there’s only like 2 items that I remember that are decent, which are Ornamental Plate and The Modulator, and probably a few more I’m forgetting. Oh and the Thanos stuff which I’ll get to.

First of all, what makes Thanos special from the other cities? Thanos is the only town that has legendary gear in their shops.

I’d say that more merchants should be given stuff that is actually useable in builds, and maybe some items should be mob-drop exclusive, just like some (actually, a lot) of items are loot chest exclusive. And don’t tell me “set items exist” because most set items are obtained by killing a specific mob, and not randomly dropped like any lootchest can have any loot-exclusive item (as long as it’s in your level range of course)