So... buyable runes

[Logger_120]

I don't like it.

...Imagine every character using the highest lvl runewords as soon as they meet the level requirement...

Call me Crazy, but isn't that how rune words work?

I was really just thinking of the high level runewords that contain runes that are higher than Zod (ie; Victory, Gabriel, Atlantis, etc). You generally don't find a whole lot of these runes unless you character can run ubers in destruction (or fautzville in terror). No one playing untwinked will equip Atlantis at clvl 110 without some heavy farming of terror fautzville.

............

Having said that I would much rather see perfect gems buyabale. Those things are a pain to collect.

Good idea. This would also help with crafting, specifically the 600 AC crafts, and since Laz is trying to make crafted items more viable this would be a good way to allow players to craft more easily. No if there was only a way to get multiple copies of the base items you want. Idea; since gambling uniques will be out what about magic tier upgrades????

[pza]

I don't think it's possible to adjust gambling rates in any way that won't also affect price. Even if it is, you'd have to take into consideration that anyone gambling alot is going to have at least 65% reduced vendor prices (rvp), most likely 70-90% (depending on class)

As for buying runes, if you decide to go through with it I'd prefer an exponential price increase, or something like that.
Maybe something like cost(rune n)=mult*cost(rune n-1)+add, with mult and add chosen for a suitably flat curve early on but steep enough for the really high runes to be unavailable.
You'd still have a problem to get the low runes cheap enough and top runes expensive enough while keeping mid runes somewhat available early enough.
Just to put some perspective on things, a rune costing 4M is most likely out of reach for a lvl eightysomething (assuming we're untwinked), while a lvl120 could most likely afford 10-100 of them (with 90-99% rvp).

With the setup suggested in the open post, I (as a barb) could buy 12 Xar and still have 20k left if I fill up the stash and my pockets, 18 if I use the elixir, 36 if I find one of the belts, and 180 (!) with both the belt and the elixir.

In case it wasn't clear from the above: I say "no".

that's the hardest arguement and as far as i can see it correctly, unfixable.

i'm also against beeing able to buy pgems... that'd reduce the time you play the game, too. terror, maybe even hatred fauztinville grants you billions of pgems.

[rickcarson]

Well, I'll go against the general trend and say that I like it.

The most important reason being that it offsets the rune downgrade nerf (1->1 instead of 1->2) you were talking about.

I recently had a character that wanted a Nef to experiment with a runeword, but didn't have one. That would have cost, let me see, El, Eld, Tir, Nef... 200k.

At that stage in the game, he'd have not been able to afford it. Even if he could afford it, he still wouldn't have bought into it, because of saving up for the trial of greed.

But even if I wouldn't have done it, I still like that I would have had the option.

In Hatred he was only picking up about 10k gold between trips back to town, so 50k per level of runeword puts this out of reach of any (non gold twinked) early game character . And if they would twink gold, they could just as easily dump a few higher runes _anyway_. So I don't see people dumping gold on their other chars just for runes (maybe PlugY changes this if it has a combined gold stash). But if PlugY combines gold, then gold becomes worthless anyway.

As for whether it is expensive enough at the high end, I don't know. Some people seem to be suggesting that high end runes should cost 40-50 million, which seems... excessive? Can you even carry/stash that much? Or are they cheating somehow (e.g. PlugY)?

It would be interesting to me to see how many of the people QQing about this are also PlugY users?

-------

As for cheater mods, I do remember many years ago downloading a mod* where gold was very very hard to come by, and selling gear got you diddly/squat, but once I'd saved up enough I could buy Nef+Tir, slap them in a 2 socket helm, and sell the resulting runeword for about double the total cost of the ingredients.

I didn't play much of it after that, just _knowing_ that the economics were broken was enough to ruin it for me, plus I am badly allergic to all forms of grinding.

*Might have been Sir General's Rune Mod?

[DemonicAngel]

How about I make runes buyable: 50K for El, +50K for each next rune? (Ath: 2M; Xar: 2M 350K)

I think the lower level runes are too high, the other end is good though. 50K for an el? Usually when you're low level is when you'll be needing low level runes, and you won't be able to spend 50K+50K(n), especially if you're trying the Black Road Challenge. (Unless, of course, you twink money over to the character. Or buy a rune, then dupe it a couple times, upgrade, dupe, upgrade... )

It would be interesting to me to see how many of the people QQing about this are also PlugY users?

I think that plugY users would be less opposed to this, due to the seemingly limitless amount of gold that can be stored in the shared stash.... They'd have much less problems.

Well, I'll go against the general trend and say that I like it.

I suppose I must do this too... only because even in Terror Fautzinville I've had little luck finding all runes... only a few that were higher than Zod, and not much higher at that. But then again, I'm a PlugY user, meaning these costs will be easier to meet for me than for a non-PlugY user.

[oneillz808]

who ACTUALLY USES runewords.

who actually uses uniques.

who actually uses jewels.

hmm...

[rickcarson]

who ACTUALLY USES runewords.

who actually uses uniques.

who actually uses jewels.

hmm...

Ah... people who don't use sets and uber rares? Or are you saying that the charms are so powerufl you can just run around naked? (Bad mental image! Attempting to scrub! Requires more bleach for the brain! Aaiieee!!!!)

It may be just me, but when I start a new character, they start at level one (I kid you not), and to my continual amazement don't come equipped with a complete set of uber items. Maybe I downloaded the wrong file, or my copy of median is broken?

//shakes box, hears rattling sound.

[oneillz808]

what i was trying to say is that the majority [and thats a lot of people!] here on this forum use UNIQUES especially, sometimes rares and crafted. because of their empty sockets to put jewels or runes in.

[emuzon]

ok i'm not going to say if i think that there should be buyable runes althougth the cost if fair and balanced but instead i'll offer to change the act5 q2 reward in higher diff to higher runes, i.e - lem pul um in terror and maybe 3 zod in destruction for the optionality.

[oneillz808]

i think thats hardcoded, meaning laz cant change it.

[Baerk Konnevala]

I would have to agree that selling runes would be a bad idea. A much better idea would be for rune cube downing you get the rune that is the next tier down and a 2nd rune that is 2 or more tiers down. If 2nd rune you get from cubing down is 2 tiers down then instead of doubling the number of runes you get for each tier of downgroading you are only multiplying by 1.5x instead. If 2nd rune is 3 tiers down then it becomes a 1.25x multiplier. In the case of the 1.25x multiplier by 3 tiers down for 2nd rune that would mean a zod would become about 1262 el runes instead of over 4 billion el runes from the current cube down recipe.

This allows for more runes from cubing down a high rune, but not absurdly so more runes from cubing down.

[quigonjinn]

I think the idea could work, but the initial suggestion is too imba.

Xar runes are too cheap (I don't have one yet, or many high runes > Zod, but I still wouldn't want to get them that easily.) El runes are way too expensive; you can find them in the Den of Evil at clvl 1, but you'll never be able to afford to buy them at any point in act 1 (even though you'll find plenty of El, Eld, Nef, Tir,, etc. so it would just be weird, not to mention that merchants will give you a lot of money for those low runes.)

Better solution is some sort of exponential curve.

El rune -> 50 gold.
Xar rune -> 10,000,000,000 gold.

(I've been playing this mod for several months and really don't spend gold that much, (some gambling cheese but not often since it's not all that enjoyable) and have 32 billion gold in shared stash, so that means I would be able to buy 3 Xar runes after spending 4-5 months of play time, which doesn't seem too imba, and it would still be faster to make Fauztinville runner to get runes, so there's less loss of incentive to try Fauz)

Problem there is that max gold in stash for level 120 character is 3,050,000, and I think you can carry about 1,000,000 more so max cost of Xar that is actually buyable would be 4,000,000 which is too cheap.

I'd like to see something like the old D1 economy, where you have the option of either:

1. Be able to buy decent items from vendors as you go along, but they are expensive and you barely stay afloat financially, but they sell better stuff than what drops normally.

or

2. ignore the vendors, save, save, save, use item drops for your equipment and just go to vendors to repair them, but then you have a ton of gold at the endgame to purchase something like a book of skill or high rune or really, really good items.

However, even that won't work well with PlugY (sigh.)

If gold sharing can be disabled from the mod (like you did with skill and stat re-allocation) then I think it would be better (though still not great because of that 4 million max gold cap.) so the economy also needs to be scaled down quite a bit (i.e. no gold sharing and it takes quite a bit of playtime to accumulate 4,000,000 gold, and scale goes from El @ 50 to Xar @ 4 million) Oh, and you lose gold you carry if you die, so better not die after you accumulate 3 million ) Main problem now would be same reason why I never had level 99 character in D2 or 7 Lances or whatnot - it would just become endless cow runs to get gold so that you can buy the rune you want, but by then you're too tired of your char to make the cool runeword you were drooling over, so the rune becomes another twink item.

[Anthology]

for buyable runes, id have to say not to make all of them sell-able, but maybe el - zod, then leave the sky runes to be found by the player legitly or upgraded, but balance the pricing to make zod cost the max gold of a character, because TBH i went through lvl 1-120 and between el-zod i found nothing for runes 20and higher, thus i couldnt use any of the super helpful mid level runewords, but while helping a few people in tcp/ip game i found 3 skyrunes in kurast 3k so figure leave skyrunes to findable only would seem fair enough

Also i figure, making zod cost max gold would be unfair to players that want to buy it, maybe make the price flux based on characters level? ( i think adding a NV prices reduced by negative [on the runes themselves] (in otherwords prices increase) based on level could make this possible, but laz is the creator not me, so dont pay attention to my theory, cause it is in fact, just a theory )

-Edit- ~~ And i dont have plugy and i cant use plugy because my diablo disk shattered so yeah, prices based on plugy wouldnt seem cool, lol ~~

[xMeox]

i dont like the idea at all... im not shure if you are going to make this thing with the one-rune-downgrade (if you downgrade you get 2 lower in 1.56, but you said that youll replace this). If you make this, maby it is usefull to can by the lower runes (el-hel)... (high price, so low lvl chars cant by them)
or maby a rune+brilliant arcaneshards (crystals - whatever) = 2lower runes..
or a rune + 3 Gems = 2lower runes (<-- now people cant complain about the unusefullness of Gems..)

btw, what about replacing radiance with any other skill, extremly nerf the %more gold stats on all items and (anyone allready posted this, but i realy loved the idea so ill post it again) give the HMC alot of %more gold?

[JohnApricot]

Basically, something like what Anthology said. The problem is, with half of people running around with plugy and 10 billion gold shared stash (ie, price is meaningless) and half of people running around without plugy and at most ~3 mil, you could never balance a price. 4mil is too high for a xar w/o, 10mil is too low w/. If you make El-Zod buyable, the highest words are still going to be hard to obtain, and since half the characters made in this mod spend half their life spans ~lvl120, it would merely make leveling faster and remove the incredible annoyance of having to keep every low level rune in your small non-plugy stash so that you won't end up with all but the lowest rune you need.

[Skeleon]

Why is almost (added specifically for the convienience of oneillz) everybody talking about PlugY? If you want to abuse it, do it. But don't whine about it "being too easy" to give millions of gold to lowlevel chars (or items for that matter) by twinking. You're all acting like twinking is the way it's MEANT to be. It isn't.

Laz, please balance it for people who play untwinked.

[oneillz808]

EVERYBODY [we all know what that means, im sure ] SHOULD be for this idea because good god...

we all use runewords dont we. i mean, the runes fill up the sockets that we cant put our jewels in... darn...

[xMeox]

@t skeleon:
this is a part of the human being... everybody wants to be bether than the others.. and if they use pluggy, they are "bether" (faster) so it is "impossible" to be so good like them without...

i use it too, not for gold sharing (in fact it isnt possible for me to share, cant give money in the shared stash, dont know why but i dont need it..) i enjoy it because of the much free space for items, but i dont complain about how easy it is with plugy..

[Dakilleux]

I think you should make a spot with one El rune in the gamble shops... And when you buy it, it has a 1/3 chance of being an El rune, a 1/4 chance of being eld, and the chances are smaller every higher rune.

The cost would be 100k..

[xMeox]

I think you should make a spot with one El rune in the gamble shops... And when you buy it, it has a 1/3 chance of being an El rune, a 1/4 chance of being eld, and the chances are smaller every higher rune.

The cost would be 100k..

for people who farm gold the normal way this is a senseless idea..
this is only usefull for player who share/dupe gold..
btw the chance to get a rune about zod is realy realy smal.. (dont know how smal, but i guess its around 100inventories full of useless runes)

[Skivverus]

A note - any set selling of a particular rune pretty much has to be on a linear curve, because otherwise you could go for the most cost-efficient kind and then cube up to get the rest - although that said, it would take someone ridiculously obsessed with powergaming to cube a Zod from Els.

[Delreich]

A note - any set selling of a particular rune pretty much has to be on a linear curve, because otherwise you could go for the most cost-efficient kind and then cube up to get the rest

As long as the price isn't more than doubled per rune step, exponential should work as well.
If 2 el's cost you 20k and an eld costs 19k, you'd buy the eld. If 2 eld's cost you 38k and a tir costs 36k, you'd buy the tir. And so on.

it would take someone ridiculously obsessed with powergaming to cube a Zod from Els.

It's impossible to cube a zod from els within the limits of the game. Even if you could (aquire and) cube one rune pair every second, it'd take you 136 years of play time.
In fact, it's unlikely that anyone would want to cube even ten steps up, as that is already a thousand transmutations.

[Xeraan]

- I agree with the need for a gold sink. My paladin drops gold regularly to get rid of it... he needs to pick it up because it obstructs the view on the other drops.
- I like the idea of only being able to buy runes up to a certain level, Zod for example, as it was mentioned.
- IIRC you can't use the shared gold to buy stuff, you have to put it into your normal stash/inventory first, limits apply there.
- Reduced vendor prices are the biggest reason for not being able to buy every rune.
- You need 3 runes to get the next higher rune, at least in 1.56.
- Getting rid of the Radiance bonus would only mean a slight annoyance to paladin players, I've seen sorcs and the like with more extra gold just from equipment.
- Existing items can't be fixed (ie. removing vendor prices or lowering extra gold), the only class changeable are runewords, I think.
- Exponential prices would be better than linear ones.

[Logger_120]

THe main reason runes should not be buyable is REDUCES VENDOR PRICES.

Most players can fairly easily get 50% RVP and with some dedication you cna get 95%. This would mean that you could buy Xars for 117,500 gold (you can get that from killing 3 champions with a pally with 1 point Radiance). More than a little imba.

Now this is where people say that playing untwinked it hard to get 95% RVP. Well, its NOT. My tourney pally (untwinked) has about 80% RVP and if I want to spend some more time I could get that last 15%.

Ok so now you say get rid of RVP mod. That good and all but there will still be old items that have this mod and there's nothing that can fix that short of an uncompatible patch. And we all know how much people like those.

[PopizzdioJazz]

my two cents:
1c we need money sink
2c gambling would be better than buying; price should be insane, selling price should be low.

[enkephalin07]

Seems like most the noise over runes is from players who believe they should be treated with more respect because of their specialness. I don't necessarily, but I also wouldn't spend for runes because I don't find them particularly special. There may be more agreeable and appreciated money sinks, such as multiple random mod recipes, and other crafting recipes with ingredients along a scale of cost and level.