Is Rare Stuff Too Rare?

My friend had two variants of some legendary bone mace before he left the second sector and I picked up a duplicate of it in threat level 30ish. I also found two purples fighting larger rare mobs that were duplicates of each other. I don't know what you mean by rare though honestly.

 

In my experience this far the only rare item I found was a energy backpack. Everything else is common and every now and then its uncommon. More rare items isn't exactly the fix either but instead less junk. A game called grimdawn uses this idea by basically making it so there are more unique items with a higher chance of being useful instead a a few rare uniques and a crap load of uselessness.

 

I agree with the OP. They are extremely hard to find, which, IMHO, is the definition of "rare." However, they're also pretty useless. The purples I've found so far were easily outclassed by weapons I crafted or greens I found from killing mobs. The bubble sword, for example. Rare crap is still crap

 

I snooped through the treasure tables a while ago, and while I dont recall weapon generation I remember seeing a lot of 2% chances for vanity items and specials in general. ALSO, that 2% chance is broken up for each vanity item possible, meaning that 2% instrument chance is a fraction chance for a specific one.

Also, when certain chests have specific vanity drops, it likes to go for 0.5%

http://imgur.com/a/lIa9f#0
these are some examples, also showing the mushroom sword having a 3% chance.

 

Okay. Maybe I should have rephrased it as "what you just said is completely irrelevant".

It's chance to occur to an individual. What is rare to a person in one country may be common for someone else in another country, and vice versa. The total quantity of an item in the entire universe is only relevant to a person who can/has explored the entire universe, which is exactly nobody. That's why I said "completely irrelevant". I'm not claiming that I'm smarter or anything, it's just that one fact-- that there are effectively infinite planets-- does not make all items common because there are effectively infinite amounts of every item. It doesn't change the truth that these items take a long time and a lot of effort to find due to their distribution, not due to how many there are total in the universe.

I sure hope so. As many others have mentioned, an equally large problem is how excessively common the normal junk is in this game. That's why I suggested a system where as you progress through tiers, the common items take one the rare and legendary properties of earlier tier's items. It wouldn't solve the problem 100%, but it would make the game feel less flat. As-is, progress is mainly just moving forward in numerical levels, not so much in different content.

This is what I expected from Starbound. I expected to find more awesome stuff that was functionally unique instead of just numerically or visually unique, and I didn't expect to have hundreds of useless cookie-cutter equipment tossed at my feet. I even remember a thread somebody made complaining about "The Problem with Randomly Generated Weapons" and how bad it was in Borderlands, and everyone dismissed the OP because they didn't think it would happen that way. Sure enough, it did. Poor OP, turned out was right and none of us believed.

 

I crafted the level 13 leather armor, then started planet jumping. I would land on a planet, circle the whole thing, looting any chests and killing any large mobs I found. In two or so hours I looted: 2 legendary maces that spit out bones and cracked down blocks. 2 legendary swords that spit out waves of matter. 2 rare back items (cloak for binoculars, and backpack that as far as I know didn't do anything).

I also landed on a planet that had three or four platformer dungeons with chests at the end containing the dash and jump tech. As well as countless blueprints, greens, unique items, placeholder items, items that still needed descriptions, and an amazing poop shield. These things were on every planet I jumped to, on a whim, in the alpha quadrant. If anything I think these items could be rarer, after I picked up my first legendary mace nothing survived a few ranged attacks from the flying bones.

 

Thats cool cos i found the mushroom shield

 

I like castlevania drop rates, I have no clue the stats on that but it's perfect to me. Also would like ranged weapons other than the hunting bow being more available.

 

My understanding has been that's the way to get legendary items, but that's also what I've been doing for quite some time. I've never gotten anything higher than green that way. Also, it seems as though there are far more incentives to planet circle instead of digging, since there aren't enough subterranean encounters with rewards worth noting compared to the time it takes to dig-- and that's after the patch that improved mining speed. I don't think faster digging is the answer, but maybe more underground dungeons with higher rewards?

 

This right there is a big problem they have to work on. The progression in the game goes way too fast.
You find all sorts of weapons but they become useless at a insane rate because you just keep jumping from planet level to planet level. Usually I don't even visit all planet levels.

Here's how the farming works for me:
1. Beat tier 1 boss
2. Go to planet lvl20 and drop some 24pen weapons
3. Beat tier 2 boss
4. Go to planet lvl30 and drop some 34pen weapons
etc.

And that's really not how it should go.
First of all you can just skip most of the difficulty levels easily and then access weapons much higher than what you should get.
All kinds of rare weapons are meaningless until you reach the max. tier because of the fast progression. The moment you get a rare weapon you might be using it for one planet at max. and then it becomes useless again.

 

I completely disagree. Don't make this into world of warcraft where "rare" items are thrown in your face as if they meant nothing.

I wouldn't mind challenging quests that reward said items, though. But the difficulty would have to reflect the quality of what you're getting.

 

Snap, there is your reply son!

Onto topic I agree with Luvdisc on the Borderlands comparison. Tons of junk items you have to get rid of are not fun, but at least in Borderlands you can sell them at vending machines. In this game you can't render the items down to pixels on your ship, can't scan them for future reference, so really all you can do is trash them. No reason to keep any weapons except the one or two you will use, the rest go to trash.

 

I think the problem is that the "quality" items are what I expected normal items to be like.

Starbound was advertised early on as having all this variety in the weapons, but it's all skin-deep-- only numbers and visuals. The actual function of almost all weapons is identical. These cookie-cutter weapons should be no more common than bouncing bullets, or ones that stick to walls, or change speed mid-flight, or travel in an arc like the bow. As-is, those are rare-only attributes that are way too hard to find. The normal content should be interesting.

I do think that super-rare content should be better than common content, but the common stuff needs to be cool. In that regard, the rare "interesting" items are far too rare. The rare "powerful" items are just commonly found items on higher level planets. It's not just a progression problem or a rarity problem, it's also a common drops problem.

 

i've found quite a bit of rare stuff just in my starter galaxy so idk if its just me having good luck or you having bad luck


i found:
cactus hammer
hero sword
bone hammer
blowgun
eyesword
randomly generated axe tier 3
five frickin dungeons
and thats just on my starter planet

 

you might want to look at the date of the post before you reply. this thread is from 2013, and things have changed since then, especially in the giraffe build where the chance for vanity and other things have skyrocketed.