I’m now level 41, and have completed the azurite halls chapter. So far, I’ve been unable to evolve any equipment. I had one common item that I got up to level 10, but when I tried evolving it, I found I needed 2 level 1 copies of the same item to get it to evolve. Long before that happened, I randomly discovered better equipment.
Between having to level up the equipment and have 2 more of the same equipment (of the same rarity, right?), I have not been able to do what seems like it’s intended to be a fairly common bit of gameplay.
Somewhere around level 5ish, I took on a daily quest to evolve 2 pieces of armor. The complexity of that massively eclipses “collect 500 blue gems”, which has the same payoff.
Am I missing something that makes evolving easier than I think?
Nope, the evolving system is currently just that bad.
I am around 300-500 hours with 0 evolves ever done. The main thing currently lacking from the upgrading system is the leveling shards. There have been multiple instances where I had 3 rares of the same type, the 4 colored epic runes to match, and the gold for the upgrade, but the main thing that tends to be missing are the leveling shards.
Ignoring all other resources, the amount of upgrading shards needed to get a rare piece of equipment to epic requires 64 minor, 210 lesser, and 310 greater shards. This is required JUST to find out if the equipment then needs to be SALVAGED because it rolls the wrong perk. Normally they are kept regardless due to how many resources went into them, but even through this process the perk is still completely randomized. This causes it to be a lot more efficient to just find the higher rarity randomly and hope it has the right perk rather than waste a bunch of resources just to roll the wrong perk.
There are currently only 3 evolves that are worth it:
1: Most follower evolves, since they only require the scrolls, gold, and food.
2: An uncommon weapon to rare, mostly because it can be used for pvp tournaments.
3: A legendary equipment to mythic, mostly because all 3 perks are already determined by then, so the equipment can’t RNG into an incorrect form.
I agree with everything @Tacet says. I have evolved 2 items so far from rare to epic mainly because I had already committed to investing equipment shards into increasing its level, not so much out of need but because they were items that I was using early on. They definitely do not have ideal perks but at this point I completely disregard that. However, I would have attempted to a number of additional evolves after finding multiple copies of gear from dungeons however I was limited by the lack principally of lesser and greater shards. I have bypassed about 6 or 7 potential evolves due to the lack of shards and due to the lack of vault space I have salvaged virtually all of the rares.
P.S. This is true of minions as well. I have salvaged dozens of rare pets that in theory I could evolve into epics because I cannot get sufficient resources to evolve them.
P.P.S. A potential remedy for this issue would be that when you salvage something, the shards that are produced are of the rarity of the equipment/minion/spell salvaged. As of right now all shards salvaged are minor and there are no ways to convert minor shards to a higher rarity. I currently have over 1k weapon and armor shards, and 500+ spell, minion, and accessory shards as there has been no reason to use them without some additional source of lessers/greaters.
I’m presuming that is the intended functionality of salvaging gear.
However, IMO, I believe that the devs are intentionally not allowing this functionality to exist until after the rebalancing occurs because being able to farm Difficulty X skirimishes/dungeons are not intended to be possible at the moment. If that function did exist currently, players who are enjoying farming these super-endgame encounters would be able to nearly trivially level up that gear, defeating the one of the cornerstone mechanisms of the game.
That makes sense. The runes/scrolls that have a miniscule change of being recovered are rarity aligned so the fact that the shards are not seemed a deliberate choice. Thanks!
We will be addressing balance issues in later updates. We are aware that there are some problems with the shard economy and gear levelling. (However, thank you for the feedback!)
Please think twice about the reward of salvage stuff (including the chest). This may help both players and devs greatly if handled well.
Also, please reconsider the drop rate of evolve material in high level chests, especially the medium tier(epic) mats. People need these most, not legendary and mythic.
The problem with high level chests isn’t that they don’t drop enough epics, as those eventually become useless, so it is good that they drop them minimally. The problem is they don’t drop enough glyphs.
After 1 month of mostly opening level 100 chests, still 0 glyphs. Only seen 3 instances of anyone getting one from a chest specifically.
To get every follower to mythic requires around 45 glyphs. To get one set of 13 equipment pieces from epic to mythic requires around 78 glyphs.
The current rate of glyphs per month via chests is around 0-1. Current rate would take around 3 years to mythic every follower, while not being able to upgrade any equipment to mythic during that duration.
All these epic, legendary, and mythic scrolls been to be reduced a bit in drop rate to have things like glyphs and flux in its place. The game already drops way more than enough of every scroll and rune, but not enough of everything else needed to actually use them.
Is it possible that the devs actually plan glyphs and fluxes to be tied to events?
Based on Battle pass text, there is still this one element in the game called “events” which has not been released yet.
I’m just wondering whether they plan to give glyphs and fluxes as events’ rewards.
But I agree that if they plan so that glyphs and fluxes can be obtained via chests, then the drop rate should be higher.
IMO, Glyphs they are this game’s version of Imperial Deeds and are going to be treated the same way as timegates. Those super-rare glyphs that appear in the Daily Deal shop serve the same functional purpose as Imperial Deeds showing up in GoW’S Adventure Board and Daily Deal offers.
Glyphs - Currently publicly unknown if they will be offered in-game through events or other sources outside of the Daily Deal board.
Fluxes - Distribution sources for these are already in-game (all of which require cash purchases):
One Rare Flux is rewarded for reaching Premium Tier 29 in a Campaign Pass
One Legendary Flux is rewarded for reaching Premium Tier 30 in a Campaign Pass
Fluxes are awarded to the player every 50th day of an active VIP subscription (quantity and quality of fluxes dependent on player’s VIP level)
Also, on the topic of leveling/evolving equipment,
Yes, the shard economy is going to be rebalanced sooner or later after all of the stability issues have been addressed. Salty has said this a bunch of times already.
But in the meantime,
Why are accessory shards (of any level) disproportionately rare compared to shards of any other type?
Why do Tier 2 (Lesser) shards drop more rarely than other tiers of shards in their level-appropriate ranges (Lesser 10-19, Greater, 20-29, etc.)? Side Note: The Guild Bazaar Ore Deals does help mitigate this observation somewhat.
Why, in higher tiers of treasure chests, do shards drop in very small quantities (often 2-3), when gear at their appropriate levels that require those shards need 30, 40, and even 50 shards of the same type for a single level up?
Again, the shard economy is going to be rebalanced, so hopefully all of these frustrations will be eventually moot. Just wanted to vent a little.
The problem is that glyphs are tied to followers, equipment, spells, and pets.
If comparing it to Gems of War imperials, it is basically the equivalence of not being able to upgrade anything in Gems of War to Mythic until every kingdom is level 20, which 0 people currently have a single one done. No troops, no pets, no anything.
Mythic followers in PQ3 are much higher value than mythic anything else in PQ3, meaning all/most glyphs for years will be used exclusively on followers. Unless mythic stuff can drop naturally (which I have yet to hear any reports of), it would be years before players have anything that isn’t a follower to mythic in the current economy.
If you have not noticed yet, PQ3 is rather good at presenting players chicken and egg situations, where achieving the goal often requires the prize that the player is striving to reach (the daily global chat spam about food limits and clearing Chapter 5 is a great example of this in action).
After all, if there was not such situations, how else would the game be able to create compelling offers for players to buy? Keep in mind the game is there to try to sell the player things as a priority.
I would be surprised if anything dropped at Mythic rarity at all, ever, because that would circumvent the Flux and Glyph system entirely.
PQ3 is not going to be hindered by the early-days baggage that GoW has to contend with these days in terms of monetization. The devs are free and clear to create multi-year goals that can only be shortened with monetization straight from Day 1 of hard launch. Also, keep in mind that new armor and weapons sets will surely be released over time, acting similar to the role of new troops in GoW regarding power creep. There will always be new and shiny followers and gear to chase to keep the grind going perpetually for as long as the game stays in service.