Eliatopia Early Game And Classes.

[Jakub34]

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
So I tried submitting this, but instead of ctrl + c what I wrote, I screenshotted what I had, so I didn't get the entirety of it. I'm just going to write a tl;dr with what I experienced with the early game.

The Problem
From starting a new character, it took me 36 minutes to reach the crabs. While this does not sound bad, there are 2 important things we need to note. I was the only person grinding enemies to get there, and I tried playing an "optimal' route.

Me being the only player means I potentially got the most kills I could get, which means I got all of that money + drops for myself. Add in other players, and I will have to compete for enemies, which means less money and drops overall. This makes it difficult to get some of the expensive items that cost around 1.2k-1.5k. These items are way too expensive for what enemies give, even with me being the only player.


This is me, a crazed lunatic in boxers and a purple hat carrying around a sledgehammer. There is a slightly more optimal route to take, but this is generally what you will get. While I could deal 4 damage to crabs, and 11 with rage, I die in 2 hits from them. The only class I can see having a problem is archer, because there next bow costs around 2.3k coins, unless I forgot one somewhere. All of the other classes at least have weapon equivalent or slightly stronger compared to sledgehammer, and do not cost as much.


Boo Price Formula!
I do not think there is going to be a change to the price formula, which I think should be removed entirely, and make prices based off of potential hourly gains from enemies within a certain area, ideally there being multiple players, and whatever a player needs to buy. (Main weapon and the 3 armor pieces)

Aside from removing or adjusting the price formula, the only other options I can think of is to either increase the money/drops from pre crab enemies, or decrease the defense of crabs and increase their health. At least with the latter, players hopefully won't have to spend around 1.5k for a weapon, so they can actually afford armor, plus a slightly weaker weapon. Armadillos are probably also in need of the same treatment (Don't want to know how long it will take to reach them)

The Skill Tree
I think the skill tree is really in need of a rework. It is boring, and it feels like random skills thrown everywhere, rather than there being a set group of skills. To say at the very least, this does exist, however, I think it can be improved upon. What I think the skill tree is missing, are options for the players to choose a specific play style.

For example, with the warrior, it will have the balanced, offensive, and defense paths. Balanced favors similar DPS, health, and defense. Offensive favors high DPS, but less health and defense. Defense favors low DPS, but high health and defense. At least in the case of the warrior currently, it's just balancing out every skill for the best defense/damage output. Having these different paths allows players to choose a role that fits their playstyle, and this helps makes players more unique from each other.

Hopefully in the next few weeks I will make a post detailing most of this. For now, I plan to have warrior, archer, and wizard having 3 different paths with 10 skills for each path. Gunman and whipmaster are going to take a little longer to think of, but I think I have a general idea what to do with them. There's also a little more I want to throw in here, which will hopefully make the game a lot more dynamic.

Edit* Maybe there could be a poll seeing how much of the community would like a revamped skill tree?


Other Info

A bow that Flashlight drew to fit the gap between long bow and red bow. Every other class has something to fill in that gap, so why does archer not have one? Also, something I've noticed with warrior is that every class at the start has some cheap item to buy that gives something towards their offensive stat. Warrior does not seem to have that.


Going back to the early game stuff, it is really bad around the Renegade's store. Made an alt, yaddie yaddie ya, and it takes forever to farm up the opal equipment and anything else in that store. After an hour of farming, I only had half! the amount of money needed to afford just one! piece of equipment. This was also with either 2-3 musket drops that hour (can't remember if I sold one prior to finding the other 2), so now imagine you go an hour without any musket drops. Anyways, this goes back to either the price formula needing a massive change, or enemies dropping more loot.

Yeah, the offensive stat is absolutely useless. Has a use for maybe the first 10 minutes of the game, and after that it does nothing, because it just gets outpaced by armor and weapon growth. Instead of adding it, the new formula should be: weapon damage * armor bonus * (offensive stat / 100 + 1) Basically, at 100 in your offensive stat, you would gain x2 more damage. Although, due to how quickly you level for the first few levels, and considering you get 4 stat points per skill, it could be changed to (offensive stat / 200 + 1), so that way you need 200 in your offensive stat to reach x2 damage.

[Flashlight237]

I dunno, early game is kinda fast in comparison to, say, trying to get a set beyond Lunatic/Paladin in a warrior's case. At that point, you'd be expecting the best drops to be a Protection Helmet from Beetles unless you feel like waiting for a group to open the Nature Factory gates, which sells for about $18k at shops without mugging someone with a gun. There are more valuable drops, like Teslas having Caliburns and Steel Blocks having Mechanical Wings(!!!), but... Good effing luck getting one!

I can kinda understand your complaint with weapons, I mean I'm a guy who wants wides gaps to be filled in. There's a huge-butt gap between the Pie Tin and Stop Sign, a huge gap between the Chivalry and Chaos sets, a huge gap between the Back Igneous Rack and Blue Shell, and a huge gap between the Forsaken-tier sets and the Cybo-tier sets to name a few. If both Robby and the Eliatopia community would allow me to do so, I would be more than happy to give you a bow between the Long Bow and the Red Bow (the $2.3k bow you've mentioned).

As for the price formula, it had been changed minorly since the last time you've played (which I think was like a year ago..?); for armors, Defense's share in pricing was changed from (x+1)³ to (x+1)^2.97, which for a set with 99 defense (a bit past the point where price differences start being noticeable, which is like 50 defense or something) is 13% lower. We'd ask for more, but we kinda gave up on that.

To respond to your thing about crabs and dillos... Dillos aren't actually too much further from crabs; they're only 42% more durable. Looking at your gear, just upgrading from near nudity to the Ninja set should allow you to fight with dillos just as well as you do with crabs already, and Ninja set is effing cheap. Drop-wise... After seeing how Robby's tossing in super-expensive drops into things like the Steel Block, Azulong, and Blizzer, I personally don't see any reason why Dillo Hides couldn't be a super-rare drop for Dillos, but not too rare; probably like... 1 in 10000 or something, maybe a bit more often than that. Weirdly enough, Agents are the most valuable mob at that point in the game, with a loot value over 100 across all drops, though that could be because you only can get like one Agent at a time as opposed to a smorgasbord of crabs or dillos.

Though a common complaint that's starting to rear its ugly head here is how armors aren't being given decent offensive upgrades from the last tier of set, which I think is especially true for warriors past Lunatic gear. If there had been a consistent 10% or more increase in offensive stats each tier, the Paladin set would be rocking a nice +10 strength, and Forsaken and Cybo +16 strength and +18 strength respectively.

I personally shared the same complaints about the branches as you did with how skill paths don't get greyed-out or blocked out if a specific path is chosen, but at this point, I've a bad feeling that isn't gonna be changed anytime soon.

[CrazyVanilla]

I've also recently experienced how difficult it is to get very early game gear and weapons doing a little experiment on an alt, but this also applies to higher levels as well. I think in general drop rates should be significantly increased for a couple reasons.

1) Would make grinding much more enjoyable. Right now, you can literally grind for like 15-20 minutes without getting a single drop, or at least a single drop even worthwhile to pick up in many areas. I think stalagmites have a good drop rate and item worth, but aside from that, most enemies drop rates suck, so much so that most of the money I make while grinding is from coins, not the items.

2) The extremely high-exponential pricing formula. As you mentioned it, stuff is just really expensive, and on the higher-level standpoint, this can definitely be seen from this recent update. While I support things being somewhat expensive because money doesn't really have any other use, the exponential increase in pricing is just getting absurd at this point.

Just to give some background, I spent roughly $60,000,000 coins on my new Saw set, guns, and accessory. That does not include buying any of the runes needed for the set, and it's not even maxed out yet. $60,000,000 is an insane amount of money when the most you can make on average is about 300-400k per hour, and that's with optimal grinding conditions, which are hardly ever present. Thats 200 hours of grinding in optimal conditions for my set, which isn't even maxed. Plus, since it's so expensive, it's also basically impossible to sell now, because so few players can even afford it.

[Flashlight237]

1) Would make grinding much more enjoyable. Right now, you can literally grind for like 15-20 minutes without getting a single drop, or at least a single drop even worthwhile to pick up in many areas. I think stalagmites have a good drop rate and item worth, but aside from that, most enemies drop rates suck, so much so that most of the money I make while grinding is from coins, not the items.

2) The extremely high-exponential pricing formula. As you mentioned it, stuff is just really expensive, and on the higher-level standpoint, this can definitely be seen from this recent update. While I support things being somewhat expensive because money doesn't really have any other use, the exponential increase in pricing is just getting absurd at this point.

Just to give some background, I spent roughly $60,000,000 coins on my new Saw set, guns, and accessory. That does not include buying any of the runes needed for the set, and it's not even maxed out yet. $60,000,000 is an insane amount of money when the most you can make on average is about 300-400k per hour, and that's with optimal grinding conditions, which are hardly ever present. Thats 200 hours of grinding in optimal conditions for my set, which isn't even maxed. Plus, since it's so expensive, it's also basically impossible to sell now, because so few players can even afford it.

Yeah, I personally think higher drop rates would be nice as well. Perhaps both with items and runes even, though people would be like "Muh market!!" if rune drop rates get bumped up (though with emeralds having deflated hard, Robby really shouldn't have any worries about keeping money out of the economy).

Specifically for #1, Stalagmites have a loot value of $127 and Grunts $160 last time Robby gave them to me, which was September last year. This was calculated over literally every single drop they have. They have fairly decent drop rates, partially because their drops have fairly low resale value (at best they drop Glocks). Rafflesias are also a pretty good contender for being the most generous in terms of drops, with them following the same pattern Stalagmites did with low-resale drops given at relatively-high drop rates.

Really, the reason why I collect literally every drop an enemy has, ranging from Gal Roach stillettos to that one Taiko Drum drop I got hanging out with Auroch Beetles is because, with such ick drop rates, we're in a "literally every drop counts" game.

For #2, I had created my own pricing formula hoping to speed things along, which would drop the exponential part hard (from x³ to 5*x^2.5), which resulted in pricing patterns similar to HH's. That was back in 2020 when I was more actively involved with the game as opposed to now where I get on the game just to look around. At least the pricing formula I had would be better than the current one where you'd might as well go "fvck it! I'm selling my max-runed gear to Cheapo's!"

[TheWood]

Support

[GeraltOfRivia]

There is one thing that all of you just forget-RUNES. Starting from lowest to current best mobs they drop different runes. On low ones like crabc etc. player can get few different runes which for a low lvl players means a lot of cash. F.e getting H1 from ground spitters which you can easily sell for 10k, S1 from crabs- 20k+, also F1 and E1 which goes for even more than 100k each, I1 from ice blocks that sells for 500k+. Getting even one rune gives big income in cash, making it easy to buy low lvl set. Therefore drop rate cannot be counted only by items. Another thing that makes you think sets are way too expensive in fact isn't the price of it but the cost of each upgrade. Here we don't need to change its price but the price of implementing most of the runes. F.e putting I1, I2 and I3 on mush bow cost almost 1M, sharpening or hardening is even more expensive. All it takes to lower total money to max set/weapons is to lower the price of runes implementation(eccept for Poison, which is realy cheap for set/weapon/backpack/shield).

[TheWood]

Reducing the price of sharpening weapons and equipment would be useful, now if you put in all runes the full price of the weapon increases by 3-4 times. I think it would be a 5-6 times increase in weapon price if stage 5 existed.

[Flashlight237]

There is one thing that all of you just forget-RUNES. Starting from lowest to current best mobs they drop different runes. On low ones like crabc etc. player can get few different runes which for a low lvl players means a lot of cash. F.e getting H1 from ground spitters which you can easily sell for 10k, S1 from crabs- 20k+, also F1 and E1 which goes for even more than 100k each, I1 from ice blocks that sells for 500k+. Getting even one rune gives big income in cash, making it easy to buy low lvl set. Therefore drop rate cannot be counted only by items. Another thing that makes you think sets are way too expensive in fact isn't the price of it but the cost of each upgrade. Here we don't need to change its price but the price of implementing most of the runes. F.e putting I1, I2 and I3 on mush bow cost almost 1M, sharpening or hardening is even more expensive. All it takes to lower total money to max set/weapons is to lower the price of runes implementation(eccept for Poison, which is realy cheap for set/weapon/backpack/shield).

I ain't forgetting the runes; I left them out on purpose. The money you get from runes does not count as "new money," that is the money you actually get from the game itself. The money you make selling runes in the vendor come from other players, and I'm pretty sure everyone had to get money either selling stuff at the store or at a bargain bin before they could even remotely participate in the vendor "stock market."

And yes, we're aware of how dastardly enchanting gear is; it's all the more reason why drop rates should be increased or the exponential part in the price formula should be dampened to, like, x^2.5 as opposed to its current x³, I don't care which. Why x^2.5? Because the price formula I came up with, which matched HH pricing sequences according to an online graphing calculator, went as follows:

Weapons: 5x^2.5*h*(25/r); h=handedness, r=rate of fire for guns
Armor: 5*Defense^2.5+5*Strength^2.5+5*Magic^2.5+5*Archery^2.5+5*Artillery^2.5+5*Finesse^2.5

But in any case, increased drop rates or new price formula, I don't care which as long as something's done to make grinding less tedious.

[TheWood]

There is one thing that all of you just forget-RUNES. Starting from lowest to current best mobs they drop different runes. On low ones like crabc etc. player can get few different runes which for a low lvl players means a lot of cash. F.e getting H1 from ground spitters which you can easily sell for 10k, S1 from crabs- 20k+, also F1 and E1 which goes for even more than 100k each, I1 from ice blocks that sells for 500k+. Getting even one rune gives big income in cash, making it easy to buy low lvl set. Therefore drop rate cannot be counted only by items. Another thing that makes you think sets are way too expensive in fact isn't the price of it but the cost of each upgrade. Here we don't need to change its price but the price of implementing most of the runes. F.e putting I1, I2 and I3 on mush bow cost almost 1M, sharpening or hardening is even more expensive. All it takes to lower total money to max set/weapons is to lower the price of runes implementation(eccept for Poison, which is realy cheap for set/weapon/backpack/shield).

But in any case, increased drop rates or new price formula, I don't care which as long as something's done to make grinding less tedious.

It would be good to have both of them in the game.

[cinos]

Bro, how are you finding the EARLY game hard? It's really not, I left templar for good in like a day or two, while I was already very lazy.

Also, skill trees offering different playstyles...yeah aight, I guess you could add more skills for wizards or cowboys or whatever to make it differ, but it's really more a case of that being less easy to do. Warriors only get sacrificial skills, losing speed for power and defense mainly, eye for an eye, while other classes need a new, unique way to add customizable builds, because somehting like that is useless for the rest.