Rare weapons and how to get them.
I believe that the rarest of rare items like Mjolnir, Infinite Light, The Eye of Rodgort, Volcanus and precursors should be obtainable without the use of:
1: RNG only
2: Incredible amounts of farming rare materials and monotonous tasks
3: Moneeeeeeh
Items like these should be EARNED, not farmed. Like imagine, plundering a harpy nest or even better a fleshreaver nest-like dungeon for the opportunity to grab one of their weapons, the prized Infinite Light. Or doing an insanely difficult but aesthetically awesome jumping puzzle all the way to the clouds where you somehow grab the fabled Mjolnir. Or even travelling deeper and deeper into the caverns of Mount Maelstrom to retrieve a fiery fang of Primordus, Volcanus. This concept has soooooo much potential. I also like the concept of a dungeon-esque sort of instance, where you can do multiple segments one by one or go through the whole complete run right up to the end. I think this would be PERFECT for rare loot and skins, even black lion exclusive weapons such as fused weapons.
Imagine this example: A massive dungeon in the Deeps, let’s call it the Fleshreaver catacombs, is discovered by Asuran explorers. They contract you to explore and plunder its depths for a reward. The Fleshreavers reproduce very quickly however, so clearing parts of the cavern would be great for them, but temporary, so your reward would be less but still there. Or you could clear the entire dungeon in one go, severely crippling the Fleshreaver’s ability to repopulate the cave, giving the Asurans more time to explore and catalogue their discoveries within. If you complete seperate parts of the dungeon one by one, you’d be rewarded with tokens that you can turn in for good rewards if you amass enough. However, if you complete the entire dungeon in one go (Maybe completing specific and difficult objectives as well), you will receive not a token, but a freshly retrieved Infinite Light from the depths of the Flesh-matriarch’s lair.
I mean, come on…
HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE?!
I’m torn between the guaranteed drops from achievements and the random drop concept. On one hand it would be cool to get a precursor from a challenge knowing I’m going to get it. On the other hand, these items would soon be very common as everyone and their grandmother finishes the achievement, thus taking away the cool factor. That being said, I wouldn’t want a guaranteed drop for any existing precursor, but perhaps an increased chance for it to drop from completing a more challenging feat. I’m not sure if that is something that is already there, or if I currently have the same chance of getting a precursor from a level 2 bandit as I would from Tequatl. I mean the chances should increase for doing something challenging over doing something really easy, and that increase should be at least somewhat noticeable. Not a 0.0001 over the already 0.001 chance of getting a precursor.
As a thought, maybe that increase could be incremented with each completion of a challenging achievement. For instance, if you complete the flesh matriarch’s lair, as suggested, your chance to get a precursor is +.5% over the normal drop rate. If you don’t get it, then the next time you complete the lair, or another of these major achievements, then your chances are now 1.0% above the normal rate, and so on up to at least a limit. Maybe up to 25% or 50% which are pretty good odds. Once you do get a precursor then your counter resets, and you start over. This way you have some control over getting the precursor without it being overly farmable. I’m sure this would increase the number of precursors out there to a degree, but it would at least not be as dramatic as if it were always a guaranteed drop.