Make friends with a locksmith or someone that knows 125. Paying for the NPC smith only makes sense if you're hunting in the richest hunting grounds the game has to offer and even then you're wasting silver.

Starchitin

A severed gnomish hand crawls in on its fingertips and makes a rude gesture before quickly decaying and rotting into dust. A gust of wind quickly scatters the dust.

It's not the silvers, it's the other stuff that you come out ahead on. Gems, pawnable items, any Enhancives or other items.

I just wrote a half-dozen messages about it last week.

>It's not the silvers, it's the other stuff that you come out ahead on. Gems, pawnable items, any Enhancives or other items.

If operating under trading penalties e.g. elf on Teras, you'll get charged like this.
Marginal cost for extra 1k silvers in a box - about 250
Marginal cost for extra 1k scroll in a box - about 1050

Pawnables are only worth having in a box if you hit the charge limit (or actually want to keep and use rather than pawn), otherwise you make minimal profit and possibly a loss from having it in the box.

There are a lot of boxes left for the janitor in Nelemar, and if you don't have someone waiting to open them for the experience, and aren't permanently lootboosted, its the sensible thing to do. Nelemar is trivially easy to hunt compared to other capped hunting grounds and you pay for that convenience with rock bottom loot.

I dont want to make light of an issue that someone is a bit peeved about enough to post it in the forums, but when i step back and look at the situation objectively i can only shake my head. My cleric is lvl 16 and has literally found a whopping 2, yes 2 boxes like this out of at least 100. So 2%. I have easily made half a million silvers on the others. Sorry, but your complaint isnt even close to being justified. Its like complaining about every other rsndom event that hapoens in game from artisian and guild failures to when armor decides to activate its hindrance and cause that critical spell to fail. Best advice i can give is face palm snd move on.

I got fired from the keyboard factory....turns out i was not putting in enough shifts

<My cleric is lvl 16 and has literally found a whopping 2, yes 2 boxes like this out of at least 100.>

Comparing level 16 hunting and near/post cap hunting in terms of loot is like comparing apples and oranges.

At low/mid levels there are so many options that just about any build should be able to find some place to hunt that has decent, if not good, loot. Starting in the 70's the choices narrow down significantly though, with only a few choices at some level ranges.

Unfortunately, much of the hunting grounds post level 75ish tend to be geared towards specific professions or build types, forcing others to just one or two over-hunted spots. In the late 90's this has somewhat lessened with the introduction of the Confluence and Red Forest, but I still advise folk to make as much silver as they can from levels 30-65ish cause it drops way off after that point. Near/post cap it can get really difficult to make mountains of silver just from hunting. My characters in their 40s and 50s have no problem bringing in a million silvers in the time it takes them to get through a Gift of Luminis, but the two I have in their 70's are lucky if they bring in 100k in the same amount of time.

Starchitin

A severed gnomish hand crawls in on its fingertips and makes a rude gesture before quickly decaying and rotting into dust. A gust of wind quickly scatters the dust.

> I dont want to make light of an issue that someone is a bit peeved about enough to post it in the forums, but when i step back and look at the situation objectively i can only shake my head. My cleric is lvl 16 and has literally found a whopping 2, yes 2 boxes like this out of at least 100. So 2%. Sorry, but your complaint isnt even close to being justified.

Spend a number of years post-cap hunting, then get back to me. I guarantee you your opinion will be different.


Avaia, player of

I know that treasure can come from Bounties, but the primary payoff of the Adventurer Guild is the Bounty Points and those benefits.

And I know that treasure can come from Grimswarm, but again the primary payoff there is Society standing and advancement.

But it sounds like there needs to be some 91st level creatures available <somewhere else> than just the one or two places they are now, that could pull the capped people away from the same ol' same ol' areas and be a hunting ground that they go to for treasure.
(I say 91st, so that they can still earn experience, rather than being some absurdly over-level person borking an area for those of an age for it.)

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Maybe some super-sized Illoke or elementals down in the Bowels, or something. <shrug>

(Or, yeah, since we're talking about greater vruul over in another thread right now.... :)

>> there needs to be

While it happens in the mid-reaches, too, there's a real future problem we keep bumping up against.

The game pretty much ensures upward pressure on the higher-level hunting areas. Why? That's the name of the game - to advance, gain fame and fortune (literally), and maximize one's abilities in the lands.

OTF and Nelemar are possibly the most frequently hunted cap hunting grounds. I wouldn't even really call them post-cap because of the range of NPC levels.

Confluence, Sanctum and war camps are better - and the treasure's probably better. Not farm-worthy, no doubt, but likely better than OTF / Nelemar.

Scatter is a true post-cap area. But it is small, singular as a region, and therefore probably fairly susceptible to hunting pressure. So it's not idea to generate wealth from, either.

And who knows which areas are tied to which other areas where the 'nearly capped' are creating additional pressures?

Given that everyone (hopefully!) ultimately ends up in one of these hunting areas, there's no really good way to provide relief. Even just upping the treasure floor has its problems. . .

Doug

"there's no other place to hunt at your level in that part of the world." -- Luxelle

Like everyone, you have your choice: you can stay there (and be limited in your hunting), or you can move to where there is hunting as an option (and not be in <whichever area that was where you were parked>).

It's a living world (simulacrum). Not everything of every type will be every where.

Hell, we haven't even gotten to migratory animals or effects.... :)

"Comparing level 16 hunting and near/post cap hunting in terms of loot is like comparing apples and oranges."

Fair point, however you're talking about loot in general, what's the % of boxes that cost more to open than is in them at (x) level? I'm willing to bet it's under 5%.

Keep in mind here, the original post was complaining about a loss of less than 2k in silver out of one box. 2k is not going to break you in this game, especially since (I'll go out on a limb here and say) they made well over that their next trip out.

One or two boxes out of a 100 is not a justifiable complaint and that is all there is to it.

I got fired from the keyboard factory....turns out i was not putting in enough shifts

>You ring the chime, and ask Tisanoff if he can open your modwir box.
He looks over the modwir box, frowns, and tells you, "Havin' some trouble, eh? Of course I could open this, but it'll cost ya. Gimme 3181 silvers, and I'll have it open before you know it."
>pay 3181
Tisanoff accepts your silvers.
Having paid, you place an enruned modwir box on the table. Then, Tisanoff turns his attention to the modwir box and deftly disarms a small trap, and then picks the lock with ease. "There you go," he says matter-of-factly as he hands your box back to you.
>open box
You open an enruned modwir box.
>get coins
You gather the remaining 1609 coins from inside your modwir box.
Roundtime: 1 sec.
>l in box
In the modwir box you see a clear sapphire.


Avaia, player of

This is nothing new; some times you get stiffed.

On the other hand, this morning I had one box that cost ~1700 to open, but had >6k inside. And a different one cost ~5k to open, but had some imflass hauberk that sang as >1M value (temp padding, and +2TD).

<shrug>

They're called 'random' die rolls, for a reason.

.

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Also, I don't know if the mechanics differ from town to town--for the life of me I cannot think why they would be done that way...--but if they work the same as the Landing, you can just use the verb 'pay' by itself (no numeric value) and the correct number of silvers will be taken out of your pockets, OR you will be told that you don't have enough.
Saves a half-doze keystrokes, and a LOT of reading & comprehension/not mis-typing. :)

This is what makes the NPC locksmith inferior to other methods of opening boxes... at least if you hunt something that doesn't drop decent loot. I only make use of it when hunting things that are rich compared to other critters and can't get into the boxes myself.

If there aren't any locksmiths at the spot they normally hang out at in your town, check the SERVICE verb or ask on the amunet/lich if there are any around. If you can't find a locksmith, 125 or 707/708 can get you into any that aren't mithril/enruned/glyph trapped (use 125 outside town and exercise caution with 707/708). If you don't know these spells or can't find someone that does, some warriors can BASH boxes open for you via a guild skill they can learn.

<Also, I don't know if the mechanics differ from town to town--for the life of me I cannot think why they would be done that way...--but if they work the same as the Landing, you can just use the verb 'pay' by itself (no numeric value) and the correct number of silvers will be taken out of your pockets, OR you will be told that you don't have enough.>

All locksmiths work like this. Also, what the NPC locksmith charges isn't purely random, it's based on the trap, lock, contents, as well as a random component. Most of the time they charge more then 4k there will be a nice magic item, armor, or much more silver then normal.... and every time I've been charged more then 5k (that I can recall), the box had an enhansive or really nice armor. This is also why boxes from kobolds generally cost less to open then those from minotaurs.


Starchitin, the OG

A severed gnomish hand crawls in on its fingertips and makes a rude gesture before quickly decaying and rotting into dust. A gust of wind quickly scatters the dust.