Fractal weapons are frustrating to acquire and create situations where some players that have run hundreds of 30 or 40 dailies will still not receieve the skin they want, while someone who ran one 20 has the skin they want.
This is an idea to make weapons attainable while keeping them difficult to get while giving you the task of recreating a broken and shattered weapon into one you can use.
The Recipe
In the mystic forge, you should be able to combine 4 items to get the skin you want.
- Weapon Handle Piece – this is an item you should be able to buy from the vendor for Fractal Relics at an expensive cost (2000). This is a universal piece used in all recipes.
- Specific Weapon Piece – this piece determines what weapon comes out of the recipe and can be bought from the vendor for Pristine Fractal Relics for an expensive cost (20). Examples would be something like “Shortbow Arm Fragments” and “Sword Blade Fragments”.
- Shards of Mists Essence – to ensure either 20+ rank or significant runs of <20. Use 3 or (5) shards. (Edit: Instead of Shards, Cores can drop at even higher levels and/or be created with manu shards)
- Globs of Ectoplasm – (10) or 25 or 50
Reasoning
This provides a use for the enormous amount of relics people have accumulated while still keeping the cost very high, requiring many daily runs to complete. The use of shards gives players doing high levels an advantage over lower levels. The globs of ectoplasm are another itemsink for ectos, and adds some cost to the weapon.
With all of the cost in materials, this will lets very determined players get the weapons the want over a few weeks, or be rewarded for already have run hundreds of runs. Less determined players can still work towards this over the course of months.
Other Things That Would Make Us Hate RNG Less
Give salvage results to rings and untransmuted weapon skins.
- Regular rings can salvage into 0-5 ectos and 1-2 Vials of Mists Essence.
- Infused Rings can salvage into 0-5 ectos and 1-2 Globs of Mists Essence.
- Untransmuted Weapon Skins can salvage into 0-5 ectos, 1-2 Shards of Mists Essence, and 1 Weapon Handle Piece.
These things aren’t farmable enough for good ecto farming. Even those with 50 rings won’t result in many ectos being created, likely less than 100 with how RNG works on salvaging. This also helps people get around some RNG by giving them an alternate way to get the mats they need, use unwanted rewards,, and again are not an effective farm that would result in a flood of materials.
(i guess you dont have to give us ectos either, but it would be nice and give unwanted rings greater value)
Even with all this, the difficulty of obtaining a weapon is retained while removing the frustrations that currently exist with the way it is handled right now.
Super Late Edit: As someone on reddit suggested, instead of shards, create Cores of Mist Essence, which can be created with 5 shards or dropped from levels 40+. This encourages doing higher level fractals instead of staying on 20.
