Larian Studios
Well one can assume that's the consensus. Was it really necessary? It can be hard to find any kind of usable gear decent enough to help you survive being hit once in a party possessing reasonable class composition.

I never once felt as I rummaged through 18-20 different containers finding only a single decent magical green item that 4 points in Lucky Charm had given me some kind of astounding advantage. Half the appeal of checking through the sometimes obnoxious amount of poorly highlighted containers and seachables in the game was the hope of finding something really worth while. The treasure hunting aspect in my opinion felt really good.

Did you consider what was being sacrificed by taking Lucky Charm over all the other valuable skills?

Who's immensely unwise decision was it to nerf? Put them to them to the cross and make them a shrieker.

By all means if you had some kind of wild experience where you found a blue every 4 or 5 things you searched feel free to disagree. I'm on my third play.
I don't really understand why they'd make itemization harder early on when LC doesn't have a huge impact and any item found is useful, and punish investment later on when LC is more and more needed to keep up with the increasingly draconian power curve.

It's also pretty much pointless as a change, seeing as players can stat into LC and swap over to Barter for shopping trips in town, free of charge at any point-- You'll just have capped Barter and LC regardless when it's convenient for a whole minute's effort. All this really accomplished was making itemization harder for the inexperienced without fixing the easily-busted economy or out of whack scaling, consideration of LC hasn't really been changed at all.
I'm not really sure why it was nerfed, to be honest. The item churn in this game is UNREAL, and lucky charm helped with making the item churn a little less awful, as it reduced the need to be attached to gear vendors 24/7 trying to find something your level with stats on it that didn't suck for your build. Still all RNG, as all the items you find with LC could still be worthless for your builds, but it is another source for potential upgrades.

I know that after I finish this playthrough, I am 100% going to try the zero scaling mod, as I am sick TO DEATH of scouring the vendors basically every reset trying to find upgrades. I wanna be able to use things like Lohar's hammer and Hanal Lechet for more than 20 minutes without missing out on some massive damage upgrade off of Random_Melee_35.
I believe they are targeting people like me with the change: 5-7 points in LC depending on gear(I do not bother swapping it out), find purples and magentas in every other box(mos hilarious find was two amazing belts in fish barrels next to one another in Driftwood).

The change is to growth, i.e. 1 point early is as good/bad as it was, massive stacking at later levels won't turn garbage bins into your primary source of loot.
It's best we wait and see first if it's a type of scaling that moves legendary and divine to level 6 and 7 (because getting them at level 5 is quite busted tbh) or the type that give you trash even at level 5-7.

If it's the former, the change is minimal at best because they haven't done anything about wearing updated gear = destroy 95% of the game.
I don't see the notes you are talking about here, but so far they've had a history of nerfing everything remotely fun and useful until the game is unplayable and bland. Exactly what happened with DivOS1 into EE, and it's already happening with the first patches to DivOS2. Personally, I'm never going to install any of the patches at this rate, and obviously I won't be getting into multiplayer either, because Larian is just insistent on stripping out all the fun they possibly can.
Quote
Hello everyone!

We issued a hotfix today, containing the following changes:
Cases that could cause the “Device lost” crash, are now better handled.
Fixed an eternal damage loop situation in combat.
Lucky Charm has been re-balanced: it now grows in power at a slower rate.
Tweaked Journal XP.
Several fixes and improvements for German, French and Russian languages.

Also, a big patch is on the horizon, and we are aiming to release it next week. The focus will be fixing the remaining issues we’ve seen pop up since release.

Thank you for unending support and as always, keep on sending us your amazing feedback!

The Larian Team


The good news is, if you honestly believe you have to camp vendors just to keep up to same level enemies (tip: you don't outside of Tactician at all), you can play four Intelligence based casters. They don't really scale with gear nearly as much as the physical builds and do just fine.
Originally Posted by Sanctuary
The good news is, if you honestly believe you have to camp vendors just to keep up to same level enemies (tip: you don't outside of Tactician at all), you can play four Intelligence based casters. They don't really scale with gear nearly as much as the physical builds and do just fine.


So the 'good news' is that you have to play a specific type of party makeup to even attempt to get away from the item scaling problem? Go white knight for terrible systems somewhere else, nobody's buying your bullshit here.
This are very strong opinions based on a relatively vague information by the devs. Do you know any more about how the balancing will work? If not, then let's wait and see.
Originally Posted by geala
This are very strong opinions based on a relatively vague information by the devs. Do you know any more about how the balancing will work? If not, then let's wait and see.


All I know is that they have a history of VERY unfun "balancing" changes. I honestly don't think they've ever made a change in a patch in any of their games that made it more fun. It doesn't really matter how they go about it with a history like that, it's all but guaranteed to be wrong.

The proper response to getting "too much loot" via lucky charm (and pickpocket) is to add more and better non-lucky loot to the game, so that those skills no longer feel necessary.
Originally Posted by Kierlak
Originally Posted by Sanctuary
The good news is, if you honestly believe you have to camp vendors just to keep up to same level enemies (tip: you don't outside of Tactician at all), you can play four Intelligence based casters. They don't really scale with gear nearly as much as the physical builds and do just fine.


So the 'good news' is that you have to play a specific type of party makeup to even attempt to get away from the item scaling problem? Go white knight for terrible systems somewhere else, nobody's buying your bullshit here.


Pretty much every merchant NPC starting at Act 2 will sell all type of gears covered. Just in Act 2, the town area and the paladin camp that can be accessed without any fighting will cover every type of gear you need.

Like the Lute girl can be persuaded to sell the best bow and the paladins sitting at the bridge will sell the best 2H weapon pretty much every time they restock so you never face the issues always updating your gears every 1 to 2 levels.

The nerfs pretty much force you to at least interact with the npc with even maxed out lucky charm + lucky gears. You just need to know who sells what on Act 2 and Act 3 if you really want to have 100% update gear.

The real issue is the gears scaling though, mainly Legendary gear and Divine gear having too much stat on them. They should have nerfed those instead of targeting lucky charm.
Originally Posted by Naqel
I believe they are targeting people like me with the change: 5-7 points in LC depending on gear(I do not bother swapping it out), find purples and magentas in every other box(mos hilarious find was two amazing belts in fish barrels next to one another in Driftwood).

This. With a high Lucky Charm stat, nearly every container contains at least two Rare+ items. By the time I finished Bloodmoon Island, more than half of my inventory was just unidentified items. Lucky Charm 6+ definitely needs to be nerfed.
As someone who beat the game on Tactician and am now beating it on Honour mode, I don't see the difficulty in gearing up. I ended the game with 150k gold, none of the vendors stocked decent gear, but I still beat it just fine.

Was using a common rarity 2-handed sword, actually. It was level 21 and had no stats, but wow that base damage was juicy!
I'm pretty sure luck 1-5 are exactly the same as they were. Previously, you had about a 5% chance to find items up to level 6, when suddenly you'd have a 10% chance (or possibly more) on looting a container to likely find an epic/rare, etc. Now it slowly scales up from level 6 to level 10, increasing by .5% per point or so. So it actually made luck 7-10 a factor (whereas before level 6 was the highest), and ultimately the nerf was fairly minor, at the level of luck that probably was somewhat silly. An epic/rare in every 10 containers is a bit much.

I do hope they address the horrible scaling, though, so people don't feel like luck is needed for constant upgrades.
Act 3 is much worse. There aren't very many vendors on the nameless isle, they don't sell much variety and there are a lot of gaps in what they cover, plus most of them end up going hostile at some point. Arx is better with many more vendors, but all the vendors there are still very low stock so it can be really hard to find anything good for certain slots

I wish it were more like act 2. Mostly I just think there should be a vendor like the Raucus One in every act/area, maybe on the ship?
Originally Posted by Ellezard
Originally Posted by Kierlak
Originally Posted by Sanctuary
The good news is, if you honestly believe you have to camp vendors just to keep up to same level enemies (tip: you don't outside of Tactician at all), you can play four Intelligence based casters. They don't really scale with gear nearly as much as the physical builds and do just fine.


So the 'good news' is that you have to play a specific type of party makeup to even attempt to get away from the item scaling problem? Go white knight for terrible systems somewhere else, nobody's buying your bullshit here.


Pretty much every merchant NPC starting at Act 2 will sell all type of gears covered. Just in Act 2, the town area and the paladin camp that can be accessed without any fighting will cover every type of gear you need.

Like the Lute girl can be persuaded to sell the best bow


Whoa whoa, what lute girl?! D:
Originally Posted by fireundubh
This. With a high Lucky Charm stat, nearly every container contains at least two Rare+ items. By the time I finished Bloodmoon Island, more than half of my inventory was just unidentified items. Lucky Charm 6+ definitely needs to be nerfed.


Whereas someone like me who doesn't have any points into Lucky Charm is impoverished in terms of loot and is at level 11 wearing gear several levels lower because I haven't found much decent stuff, and can't afford to replace much of it each level.
Originally Posted by Kierlak
Originally Posted by Sanctuary
The good news is, if you honestly believe you have to camp vendors just to keep up to same level enemies (tip: you don't outside of Tactician at all), you can play four Intelligence based casters. They don't really scale with gear nearly as much as the physical builds and do just fine.


So the 'good news' is that you have to play a specific type of party makeup to even attempt to get away from the item scaling problem? Go white knight for terrible systems somewhere else, nobody's buying your bullshit here.


White Knight? I'm not apologizing for anything in the game. You can be salty, but you don't need to be so hostile because I listed an alternative, and because I mentioned that vendor camping isn't necessary, because it's not.

As for Lucky Charm, I'm not sure it honestly matters either way. It's obviously "luck" based, but all that I ever end up getting with Lucky Charm over a playthrough is sellable trash the majority of the time. So all I get is more gold, when being able to get the items from a vendor I want has never been an issue to begin with.

Originally Posted by Stabbey
Originally Posted by fireundubh
This. With a high Lucky Charm stat, nearly every container contains at least two Rare+ items. By the time I finished Bloodmoon Island, more than half of my inventory was just unidentified items. Lucky Charm 6+ definitely needs to be nerfed.


Whereas someone like me who doesn't have any points into Lucky Charm is impoverished in terms of loot and is at level 11 wearing gear several levels lower because I haven't found much decent stuff, and can't afford to replace much of it each level.


Impoverished? I guess stealing isn't something you want to lower yourself into doing then? You only need to regear every 2-3 levels (sometimes much later if you're wearing rings and an amulet that have needed or good bonuses for your build, and a socket) until level 17+ and even then it's almost exclusively going to be a weapon for physical classes. You can also simply hold off until you're a bit through an Act before stealing, since it can only be done once with a single character per vendor, or simply respec two non thieving characters and go on a stealing spree, while you save your fourth for when an act is about finished and the vendors that you'll never access again have higher stocked gear and books.

Lucky Charm is obviously going to net you a bit more gold over a playthrough, but enough that you can't still get everything you want without it? I'm just now leaving Act 2 on my current playthrough and sitting at 172K gold on an all physical team, and I've only ever respecced two of my characters to steal aside from my primary thief two times and have never wanted for gear. Levels go by too quickly in Act 2 initially for worrying about upgrades to matter all that much aside from weapons and runes. Currently at 7 Lucky Charm, and I still don't get the "non stop epic chain from containers" that people talk about either. On my previous playthroughs it seemed like I might get an item every 5-10 containers at most and usually it was some blue garbage that didn't sell for much anyway. With my current playthrough, occasionally I'll see a purple within two containers, but that's ultra rare. This was before the patch BTW.
Originally Posted by UnderworldHades
Whoa whoa, what lute girl?! D:

By the windmill just to the east of Driftwood.
Originally Posted by Stabbey
Whereas someone like me who doesn't have any points into Lucky Charm is impoverished in terms of loot and is at level 11 wearing gear several levels lower because I haven't found much decent stuff, and can't afford to replace much of it each level.

I actually restarted my playthrough and intentionally didn't add points to Lucky Charm, because the amount of loot that was dropping was getting ridiculous. One point should be enough if you're tired of empty containers though.

If you're lucky (har har), you can find gear that gives you +Lucky Charm.

In my opinion, I think the base Luck stat should be Lucky Charm 1.
Originally Posted by vometia
Originally Posted by UnderworldHades
Whoa whoa, what lute girl?! D:

By the windmill just to the east of Driftwood.


I'll have to look for her the next time Im there, thanks! ^^
Originally Posted by UnderworldHades


Whoa whoa, what lute girl?! D:


As Vometia mentioned, the girl on the way to paladins camp from town (past the hanging area). She can be persuaded to start selling crap ton of arrow and legendaries/divine bow/crossbow every time she restocks.

Go past her to the paladins camp and the one sitting around will sell you warfare weapon.

The one you rescued from the hanging as part of the main quest will sell accessories.

Tarquin will sell a bunch of stuffs.

Fletcher you can rescue from the top part of the map will sell bow and arrows as well before turning into generic gear npc.

The npc at messed up caravan area to the top right of the map, past the lumbermill/paradise down also sell a crap ton of gears, mainly accessories.

Uncle Thrasher (Tavern) is for Fin gear.

The merchant in the inn at the top floor sells a bunch of stuff.

The male human merchant in the center of the town sells a bunch of stuff. (The only one that really mattered)

There really are too many of them but the guy in the middle of the town + Thrasher + Lute girl + Paladins already cover all your warfare and ranger weapon + all kind of armor issue. The rest of the npcs just make it easy to restock everything every level up.
I'm not saying there's no wiggle room at all for balancing, but they really need to be careful. The line the between Lucky charm being appealing and lucky charm being not worth taking at all is very thin.

It was mostly worthless in the first game, and now that it actually has some value people think it should be be nerfed. The problem is, even as good as it is, it's not necessary. Barter alone gets you enough money to get the things you need in the game and if you add thievery to that, which most people do for other practical reasons, money and gear is mostly a non-issue.

Factor in that Lucky Charm and Persuasion, another valuable skill, are both competing for space on your party leader in an optimal setup (at least in single player). Both are skills generally preferred on the party leader, because you never know when a persuasion check dialogue is going to trigger, and having to switch to another party member every time you want to open a container is going to be tedious for most players. Frankly, people willing to micromanage the game that way deserve whatever benefit they derive from it. I'm certainly not.

So in a quality of life setup, people are generally choosing Lucky charm over efficient placement of persuasion. It *needs* to have an equivalent value with that other skill, that also makes the game considerably easier when you invest in it.
i have like two points in it and am running around in the last arc opening every container i see (including stuff like rows of books). i've had it proc several times, sometimes a few in the same building or area

i agree with the above post in that it's competing with persuasion on your party leader. i may find myself picking it up earlier than i did on this run in future runs because it seems really good, and i like the style of play (searching every corner) it promotes. i now look through barrels in crates in the off chance i'll find something that i can at least sell for a good amount when i wouldn't have before, and especially earlier on in the game when money is much more difficult to come by and min/maxing becomes more and more necessary on higher difficulties. you certainly don't need it, but it's helpful and adds a little flavour to the duller parts of the game
Originally Posted by Sanctuary

Impoverished? I guess stealing isn't something you want to lower yourself into doing then? You only need to regear every 2-3 levels (sometimes much later if you're wearing rings and an amulet that have needed or good bonuses for your build, and a socket) until level 17+ and even then it's almost exclusively going to be a weapon for physical classes. You can also simply hold off until you're a bit through an Act before stealing, since it can only be done once with a single character per vendor, or simply respec two non thieving characters and go on a stealing spree, while you save your fourth for when an act is about finished and the vendors that you'll never access again have higher stocked gear and books.


Yes, I could steal, but I have one thief, and I do not wish to use the exploit where I hire a bunch of disposable mercenaries and have them do the stealing. That's not something which I should have to do.

So without that it's not a long term solution.


Originally Posted by Leafy Kale
I'm not saying there's no wiggle room at all for balancing, but they really need to be careful. The line the between Lucky charm being appealing and lucky charm being not worth taking at all is very thin.


Yes, I agree with this.

Quote
Factor in that Lucky Charm and Persuasion, another valuable skill, are both competing for space on your party leader in an optimal setup (at least in single player). Both are skills generally preferred on the party leader, because you never know when a persuasion check dialogue is going to trigger, and having to switch to another party member every time you want to open a container is going to be tedious for most players. Frankly, people willing to micromanage the game that way deserve whatever benefit they derive from it. I'm certainly not.


Yeah, this is probably another one of my issues because my party leader/Avatar is also my Thief, so they have Thievery and no Persuasion or Lucky Charm.
Seems like the TC is the ignorant one here, given that ranks 1-5 of lucky charm had received no changes. Its 6 and above that got a nerf.
I dunno about you but during solo play by about hour 40 into the game play almost all of my characters were in legendary gear. I was pretty much one shotting guys and I'm not on explorer mode. I got so sick of that, I restarted my game because it became boring.. I dreaded combat because it felt like a waste of time, there was no challenge. I didn't even get off the second island and all I had was +2 into LC and my group all had at least +1 I think.

I can see why this was needed.
Originally Posted by SacredDark
Seems like the TC is the ignorant one here, given that ranks 1-5 of lucky charm had received no changes. Its 6 and above that got a nerf.


Really? So my restarted game is going to end up like the game I quit because there was no challenge I was finding so much upgraded gear. I also had 35,000+ gold by just collecting garbage I found.. Great.
Lucky charm isn't to strong, because it gives so much extra loot, it's to strong because it gives loot on your level, and not from the area level. From halfway act2 till the end, (Driftwood part) I was 1 to 2 levels above the enemies in every zone, as I did all the available quests possible in that act.

The loot I got from lucky charm was because of this, always better then the loot from drops. Even random epic/legendaries where better then most divine/unique items dropped, because of the insane stat scaling in the later levels.

They should have just fixed that; Lucky charm (and maybe even vendor) items aren't based on your level but on the zone level. Makes drops matter again, if you are overleveled (which is very easy if you explore everything and do almost every quest).
Originally Posted by Synx
Lucky charm isn't to strong, because it gives so much extra loot, it's to strong because it gives loot on your level, and not from the area level. From halfway act2 till the end, (Driftwood part) I was 1 to 2 levels above the enemies in every zone, as I did all the available quests possible in that act.

The loot I got from lucky charm was because of this, always better then the loot from drops. Even random epic/legendaries where better then most divine/unique items dropped, because of the insane stat scaling in the later levels.

They should have just fixed that; Lucky charm (and maybe even vendor) items aren't based on your level but on the zone level. Makes drops matter again, if you are overleveled (which is very easy if you explore everything and do almost every quest).


LC items ARE based on zone level, or rather, container level. I'm getting lvl 18 items at lvl 20 in Arx.
Originally Posted by Kierlak

LC items ARE based on zone level, or rather, container level. I'm getting lvl 18 items at lvl 20 in Arx.


They weren't in my game. I was getting lvl 20 items at level 20 in Arx. Might be changed in some patch later on, I had to reroll the last couple updates as my save-game wouldn't work on the newer updates anymore.
I like Lucky Charm and I like a lot of loot to shuffle through.

What is most damaging is the over the top quality of items.

To me I'd like lots of Lucky Finds of loot reasonable to where I am at. High lucky charm chance on standard and next tier up items and much much lower chances for legendary. To me that makes a funner game, lots to ponder building and nothing too game breaking, keeps the excitement of finding every last barrel etc.

DOS1, I played with a lot of numbers to make that work and not be crazy rich. It's a lot of re-balancing. But a ARPG loot (ok not quit that crazy) in a CRPG world that doesn't break it.
Originally Posted by Horrorscope
I like Lucky Charm and I like a lot of loot to shuffle through.

You enjoy right-click-identify-ing a million times in a row? You're a very different person. laugh
Lucky Charm + Thievery = ridiculousness.

I am in Arx on Tactician now, second playthrough with 7 LC you still get a shitton of highest quality stuff. Whatever nerf was there is not a big deal to begin with and honestly it's kinda silly that you can fish divine gear out of bloody random barrels in the middle of Arx to begin with.
Originally Posted by Synx
Originally Posted by Kierlak

LC items ARE based on zone level, or rather, container level. I'm getting lvl 18 items at lvl 20 in Arx.


They weren't in my game. I was getting lvl 20 items at level 20 in Arx. Might be changed in some patch later on, I had to reroll the last couple updates as my save-game wouldn't work on the newer updates anymore.


Were you running around in level zone? Level 18 Arx only covers up to market or something.
Originally Posted by fireundubh
Originally Posted by Horrorscope
I like Lucky Charm and I like a lot of loot to shuffle through.

You enjoy right-click-identify-ing a million times in a row? You're a very different person. laugh


Not really ARPG's are quite a bit more popular and they have bucket loads more product to identify. I'm not asking for an amount that gives carpal-tunnel or the like. smile Identifying loot is like a scratcher, or loot boxes except free, many find a mini-thrill in it. I don't think that is any kind of revelation. I'd like to see more loot, but not as strong as-is on avg. Yeah I don't steal reds or pickpocket, to me too easy and too phony overall (some whites are bad enough). AI's anywhere, have they ever got the whole post-steal mechanic right?
Double post, deleted.
Lucky Charm's impact seems to have remained undeterred; it's still a very powerful moneymaker and a great way to supplement gear cycling on the power curve. You're still able to gloss over the dead crafting system, ugly economy, and exponential gear replacement with it even by just equipping your LC items for only the larger looting sprees.

Having beaten the game once and just reached Act 3 on Honor Mode with excessive ease, I have to say that Lucky Charm would be better, solely in my opinion, as a much more common occurrence with no gear drops attached; though this would require a sane form of scaling in the game.
They should just remove Lucky Charm and add better chance to get loots from chests and containers, but not by much (at least not as Lucky Charm).

Thievery should also be nerfed.
Originally Posted by Darkhain
They should just remove Lucky Charm and add better chance to get loots from chests and containers, but not by much (at least not as Lucky Charm).

Thievery should also be nerfed.


Or just don't use them. Instead of fucking the game up for everyone, exercise some personal restraint and put your civil points in something else if you're allergic to loot.
© Larian Studios forums