Exalted Cultural Augs on Phinny

On Phinigel today I finally finished the quest for the Exalted Book of Iksar Culture, used it to craft a set of exalted Symbol Patterns, and then tried to make a new type 11 aug:

[18:05:22] This seems correct but something is wrong. Perhaps you need to know something more in order to combine this

I got the same message when i tried both tailoring combines (flawless silk + flawless spinnaret fluid; flawless animal pelts + superb marrow) and with smithing (titanium ore + alkalai Loam). Allakhazam's recipes say that I need to scribe "Tailoring Exalted Cultural Symbols" or "Smithing Exalted Cultural Symbols", which are sold by "a cultural discoveries historian" in PoK, Crescent Reach, and Abysmal Sea, but he is not in any of those 3 cities on Phinny.

He should be in the game on Phinny. Exalted symbols are required level 70, recommended 74, and the cap was just raised to 75. The quest to get the book is in the game now, as is the recipe to turn the book into symbol patterns. But if the exalted symbols are not available during this expansion, cultural armor will have essentially no use.

Before TSS, the best set of leather dropped gear from Demi had an average of 352 hit points, and a set of Elaborate/Eminent/Last-Blood gear had an average of 383 hit points. Cultural also has more AC, but its focus effects are 1 tier lower than on the dropped gear, so there is a tradeoff, and the two are roughly comparable.

The new gear from Ashengate and Frostcrypt has an average of 460 hit point, 108 more than the Demi-set. The New Serpent's seals have 40 more hit points and last blood seals, so the new Elaborate/Eminent/Serpent gear has an average of 423 hit points - and they also have focus effects one tier behind the dropped gear in TSS. There is no reason to spend thousands of platinum on AGAAs to get gear with both stats and focus effects than the dropped armor. Therefore, cultural armor will have essentially no use.

It would be great if "Tailoring/Smithing/Tinkering Exalted Cultural Symbols" could be made available on the server.

Just to add, the quest to get the exalted symbol patterns is entirely based in TSS zones, so it's very likely meant to be in-era for us right now. Please support exciting itemization

I did the same thing. Spent a lot of time doing that quest too, the 40 darkroot shamans are a pain.

Apparently it's a new thing in SoF where you have to scribe the recipe before you can make the item. It's not like in the past where you can experiment and "find" the recipe yourself.

The recipe is sold by a vendor which isn't in the game until SoF. Smithing Exalted Cultural Symbols is the item you have to right click to put the recipes in your "book" so you can make them.

Which sucks cause at that point we'll all just skip exalted and go straight to sublime.

And why I do agree with your premise, it's still BiS AC for tanks for every piece except the BP. It would be nice to upgrade the type 11s though, they are level 75 augs and the quest is in a TSS zone. I was really hoping we would be able to make them, disappointed we cannot.

Would really like to see this looked in to. I am sure there are many others as well that have spent the time to do the exalted pattern quest. The exalted augs definitely seem to be in era.

yes, please add this before it becomes obsolete.

This is not a statement saying I will do nothing, or that I will do anything either. Simply Data.

These recipes were added in Secrets of Faydwer. So while the stats may be reasonable, the items themselves are NOT in era. (Also looks like the weapon parts were added in Seeds of Destruction)

I will do more research and some consultation with the team.

It would be most unfortunate to get the recipe for exalted symbols at the same time we get sublime symbols.

Maybe... But that doesn't change the fact of when it came into the game.

I do understand that many people are no longer caring about progression being "real" if it impinges on their "convenience."

Oh come on, it is more about whether it makes sense or not. It would be nice to have items, tradeskill etc available in the era where we will use them and or skill up on them, not when they were implemented.

It would seem to be a matter of coding when something appears, meaning instead of coding everything for one date, you might have to code different things for multiple dates. Im sure that would be a pile of work but I can assure you, the player base would much appreciate the work and it would go a long way to customer retention as opposed to what has been currently done, which is driving people away, myself included.

*edit and no Im not a programmer and am making assumptions here. I am also hoping that the path you guys take starts making sense instead of our current course.

The way cultural is done now, as compared to when DoN originally launched is completely different. I certainly don't expect that you would do all the work to reinstate the recipes etc to have it match "real" progression.

I think reason can be applied to these situations to determine if things added in newer expansions, that effect previous expansions, adversely impact the experience. In this case, it appears reasonable that exalted symbols would exist. For the most part, DBG has done well in this area.

There is no small amount of time invested in the quest to be able to make these, never mind raising the tradeskill in the first place. If it is deemed that these are out of era, then steps should be taken to ensure that we can not access the quest (and other similar quests) until the appropriate era.

I realize that would be a lot of work. I do appreciate the amount of work you all put in to make the game better.

Both sides are a lot of work. Research to see if the gear is "appropriate" for each expansion is a large amount of work, perhaps more, than finding the quest givers and restricting them to Later.

well cultural had a rework in SoF, and it was deemed one presume this is how it would be,
DoDh = Base Armor , symbol, raid symbol
Por - no change
TSS - Diety symbol + raid symbol
TBS - Raid symbol
SoF = Base Armor + Diety Symbol + raid symbol
Largest change i recall was the AC values, which dont change until SoF with new base armor anyway
Seems the stats are inline with the raid armor in each expansion, though 1 expansions behinds focus's

People care about progression, they use their knowledge of the game and/or 3rd party sites and find a progression path. Whether or not they raid, do tradeskills, have an abundance of plat, choose or are forced by a prog server to stop at specific levels, intend to de-level and/or play on FV/Brekt are the main factors in determining a progression path.

Then that path is attempted within the parameters of the game and you end up discovering things like you can only obtain Hero's Journey Hero Visible Armor, Rings, Weapons and Shield at Level 70 and if you level to 75 which is the only way to obtain the remaining HJ Hero gear you're likely going to want TBM Vendor gear or HJ Paragon Gear unless you intend to de-level.

From a playing the game perspective this removes the items from most progression paths, this comes across as an error, gear that is impossible to obtain until it's obsolete. From a historical recreation perspective having gear that requires very specific preferences, most commonly someone on Zek de-leveling to 69 after obtaining the best possible gear usable at that level, is canon and that you can't do many SoF quests until you've out leveled the content and quite possibly also out-geared the content is working as intended.

Players then report these issues, cultural gear in the case of this thread and get a reply from an employee implying they are playing the game "wrong" because they want to obtain cultural gear when they would actually use it. If you haven't learned anything about the game in the 11 years since Secrets of Faydwer launched it likely seems appropriate to simply do things based on what happened around the time that Twitter was in an obscure corner of the internet. If you didn't learn anything in those 11 years it does explain so much.

So I think that was their issue with the cultural armor, which is evident by their change to later versions of it.

Basically a player can farm or buy a few components and upgrade the stats on their armor to near or above raid quality armor almost immediately after expansion launch. Within a few weeks. While getting a full set of normal raid gear among a guild of 54 competitions takes much longer.

Naturally... the focuses are lagging behind, but for the tanks who primarily care about this, or just for someone who doesn't need a huge number of focuses, this is a nonissue.

Later on Live they fixed it by making the Augs only fit inside the correct armor. IE you couldnt put a last blood in the SoF visible.

Because there's no visible armor set to go with these Augs it's a bit weird. I can see why they wouldn't include it, for the reasons listed above. I can also see why they would include it, if not included now those items will never get used.

Elegant Defiant gear is available on the marketplace right now, which also did not exist during TSS, so it's not a matter of "convenience". Nothing is convenient about all the steps to make full cultural instead of going after raid armor.

"Convenience" was a word I used to describe use of out-of-era, yet balanced distillates. However, I don't think the word properly captures the tradeskiller's perspective, Ngreth. Rather, that's just why other players use the crafted items.

EQ has been developing over a staggering period in excess of twenty years (including time prior to release). In addition to new content, tweaks and fixes to original content have also taken place. The line gets pretty blurry at times; some game updates that replaced older content were clearly implemented to fix something that wasn't as fun or useful (or perhaps was too useful). A doctrine of uncritically restoring EQ to its original form will, by its nature, remove this type of fix.

The best way to decide about this itemization is to compare it to quested or dropped content in the era under consideration, much as the various threads are doing. Please keep in mind that removing content without restoring earlier recipes that they replace is probably the worst of your options. Unless a severe balance issue exists, you're simply removing player options and frustrating your player base with no rational cause.

Thanks for looking into Ngreth. I get that its not an easy question and you dont have an answer right away. I just ask that you keep us up to speed if you make a decision one way or another, instead of having us wait for the next set of petch notes.
I know many players in my guild had planned out their tss gear on the assumption that this would be available, and how this plays out will have a pretty dramatic effect on how we choose to spend our dkp over the next few few months.
Also, almost the entire tradeskill economy was driven by the various components for this armor in Dodh and PoR. It takes an investment if many thousands of platinum and several hours of farming to get mats together for single piece of this armor, and that whole little cottage industry that developed will basically be on hold for now. I have at least several hundred thousand platinum tied up in this stuff at the moment, and i know that the same is true of all the other major tradeskillers on the server. This feels sort of like having my assets frozen or something

For the past three years of TLP servers, individuals from DBG have stated that this is TLP and not Classic. This has been the excuse for numerous things not being the same in TLP as in Classic including corpse runs, maps, find feature, etc.

Yall are the ones that coined the "this is TLP; not Classic", so I find it highly hypocritical that you now try to make it sound like the customers are being irrational for expecting you to keep that vision of "this is TLP; not Classic".

Making fun of your customer base for expecting you to follow the vision that you set forth years ago is ridiculous.

Choose a vision for TLP, and stick to it. This flip flop back and forth is painfully exasperating.

This is always an issue when dealing with TLP's, especially when "revamps" happen during EQ's life cycle. they retroactively change aspects of older expansions which doesnt matter for live but can have profound issues for TLP's
Again many thanks Ngreth for looking into this, alot of people were excited about this, especially as the quests is in TSS zones.

Perhaps its time for the devs to give us an updated idea on what their view of these servers is then, rather than taking potshots at the player base.

These servers have never been about a strict recreation of the EQ timeline, or even a loose one. Nor should they be unless you can address the fact that the very characters we play and the spells we use aren't anywhere close to how they were "in era" due to various rebalancings done over the years