Looting

Ashes of Creation intends to use traditional loot rules, selected by the party leader.

Lootmaster

A master looter (or lootmaster) is a player designated by the party leader to decide how loot is distributed in a dungeon or raid party.

Round-robin

With round-robin looting, party members take turns looting.

Need before greed

This is a traditional need before greed system based on dice rolls.

Bidding system

Intrepid are investigating a potential bidding system, which allows players to bid on items instead of rolling for them.

• The highest bidder wins the item.
• The gold then goes into a pool that is split among the rest of the party members.

AoE looting

AoE (Area of effect) looting is not included in the looting mechanics at the time of writing. It may be added based on feedback.

Loot tables

Mobs and Bosses will drop Gold, Items and crafting materials based on the type of mob or boss. For example, a wolf is not going to be carrying a sack of gold. It may instead drop "pelts" that can be traded for gold.

• Loot tables will favor dropping crafting materials as opposed to trash items.
• Loot tables are disabled for player controlled monsters.
• The developers intend to test dynamic loot tables during the test phases.

Resource quality

Resources will have differing levels of quality for the same resource type. This is somewhat similar to Star Wars Galaxies.

• Gatherers who are more advanced in their artisan tree will have a greater chance of collecting higher quality resources.

You will have an opportunity to proc certain qualities based on your progression in the Artisan tree. So if you are a gatherer; and as you advance in your gathering, you'll have a higher opportunity to collect better resources. – Steven Sharif

Mount and pet drops

Mounts and pets are dropped by world bosses on a very rare basis.

Temporary mounts

Temporary mounts that drop from bosses will age and eventually die.

Crafted items

Crafted items will be on par with best in slot items.

• Highest tier items will be a combo of both crafted and boss dropped.
• The rarity of the items will be commensurate with the effort required to gather, process and craft the items.
• It may be possible for crafters to determine what their crafted items will look like.
  • At the moment, harnessing corruption to warp items into demonic or decayed things is not on the cards.
• A crafter's name is embedded in the items they craft.

We believe that every item that exists in the world should in some way reflect its creator. As such, there will be extreme versatility in our crafting system – giving crafters the ability to create unique items that represent their strengths and weaknesses.

Crafting and World Bosses will be the main way to obtain high-level gear. There are some exceptions to this in the form of Legendary items (single server drops or discoveries), and other equipment that may drop wholesale, but we want Artisans and top tier raiding to produce the lion’s share of high level, high effectiveness equipment. – Sarah Flanagan

Loot tagging

Gatherers may have the ability to "spoil" a boss' loot.

If you want to be able to get those mats from the boss, they're just not going to drop for anybody. They will only drop for a master gatherer who is capable of extracting those resources from the creature itself... The reason why we say there's a lot of interdependencies between the crafters of the world and the raiders of the world and our PvPers of the world is because we don't want to house the capability to attain these things all within the adventuring class. We want there to be an influence necessary from the craftsmen's guild to come in to either come and participate and spoil the boss and gather the goods or something along those lines. – Steven Sharif

The dynamics of who has the authority to gather the loot will be decided based on testing.

• Party leader.
• First tagging raid.
• Most damage done.

With regards to the dynamics of authority, you know, who gathers those things, exactly what is that: The party leader of the first tagging raid. Is that the most damage dealing. Is that the you know whatever: Those are things we've got a test in testing and see how they turn out. – Steven Sharif

The loot tagging system is still being finalized.

Caravan looting

Caravans create an open PvP zone that flags players for combat (purple).

• Players will be able to state their intentions to attack, defend or ignore via a user interface.
• A group will be required to successfully attack a caravan.
• If a caravan is destroyed, it will drop a portion of the goods it is transporting.
• Caravans drop certificates for heavy goods that are redeemable at the origin node for a portion of the goods.

Player death

Cemetery concept art by Tad Ehrlich.

We don't have deleveling, instead what we have is experience debt. Now the more experience debt you accrue, the greater the detriment to your character; not to the point where you can not get out of the debt. There will always be a way forward to remove your debt. – Steven Sharif

• A non-combatant (green player) who dies suffers normal penalties, which include:
  • Experience debt (negative experience).
    • Skill and stat dampening.
    • Lower health and mana.
    • Lower gear proficiency.
  • Durability loss.
  • Dropping a percentage of carried raw materials.
    • This includes a percentage of items carried on the player's mule.
• A combatant (purple player) who dies suffers these same penalties, but at half the rate of a non-combatant.
• A corrupt (red player) suffers penalties at three or four times the rate of a non-combatant, and has a chance to drop any carried/equipped items based on their current corruption score. This includes:
  • Dropping weapons and gear.
  • These dropped items may be looted by other players.
  • Corrupt players respawn at random locations in the vicinity of their death, not at regular spawn points.
  • Dampening (due to corruption) only affects PvP combat.
• Death penalties do not differ between PvP and PvE, but this is subject to change.
• Death by drowning is possible.

Full loot

There will not be a full loot (full drop) system in Ashes of Creation.

There will not be a full drop and the reason for that is because you know our intention when it comes to progression within the world is we want it to be meaningful and you know take some investment on behalf of the player; and if even if from a design standpoint we're like yeah but they have to choose to go to the area; we don't want a choice that a player can make where they delete their character so to speak. – Steven Sharif

Currency

Currency concept art.

In-game currency is referred to as "gold". This may be a placeholder name.

• Game currency does not have weight.

Item rendering

In-game rendering of dropped items (such as Gear and Currency) is not a planned feature.

See also

• Economy
• Group dynamics
• Encounters
• Artisan classes