I decided to find out how many resources it takes to upgrade a weapon starting from zero mastery, using the Ogryn’s Cleaver as an example.
Raising mastery to level 20 by purchasing and sacrificing weapons cost me 331,200 coins and 3,653 plasteel.
Then, upgrading a specific weapon instance to the maximum level required an additional 79,500 coins, 3,350 plasteel, and 1,575 diamantine.
Total:410,700 coins and 7,003 plasteel.
And I consider this to be prohibitively expensive.
Considering that there are 59 weapon types that need to be upgraded to level 20, and that at least 129 individual weapons must be fully upgraded across six classes, the total cost comes to approximately 30 million coins, 650,000 plasteel, and 200,000 diamantine
Guy, I don’t even know what to do with all this plasteel and diamantine I have…
Ordos, I see.. Brunt’s is the money sinker. But plasteel and diamantine? And still, I collect all of them in matches. As I said by the past, collecting them make my run more fun. Even in solo, where collecting them give you nothing, I collect them
Well, seriously, with the end of the locks, I don’t see how we could complain about that. In fact, locks have killed any sense of “economy” in the game.
I won’t regret that, I do not think the game needs such mechanic. I would even prefer a system where we get maxed weapon and choose just blessings and perks… but complaining about plasteel and diamantine..
About upgrading them… I use to not even pay attention to that. I click empower, and I have a mod that empower the weapon to 500.
I use to create new weapons… so many times, that I have lot of identical weapons… sometimes the reason is the cosmetic applied on each of them, but sometimes it is just because I have not even paid attention that I had already crafted 2 of them…
Typically, IAG and CA on my zealot… so many with so many cosmetics and so many builds that sometimes I give up… and create a new weapon because I cannot find the one I was looking for (right perks + right blessing + right dumb stat (usually movement) + right cosmetic).
Maybe I’m biased because I have a huge stockpile of resources, but I don’t see it as too big a deal. Leveling mastery while using weapons actually happens pretty quickly if you’re willing to put in the time for a few, so early players are gonna tick off a few from that alone as just part of the natural progression.
I would not be against to be honest. All the “economy” in the game does not make really sense for me. But I suppose they absolutely want to impose us a progression system.
And on this, what we have actually is not too much. Getting the weapon you want is possible and not really extremely difficult… Even when starting with a fresh new game
I remember how it was when i was new player, getting my 1st 500 weapons with perfect stats was real pain. And that’s just weapons, curios is whole other problem i still have.
Total:410,700 coins and 7,003 plasteel.
And I consider this to be prohibitively expensive.
When you’ve been sitting at 25M ordo, 500k melk for over a year, getting to blow a few millions on Hive Scum weapons is refreshing, till you clear out crap from other characters and you’re back at 25M ordos and there is again nothing to spend resources on…
(Stopped playing till there is a event or something new to do… can’t be bothered to play till account level 3000 even if I’m only missing 10 levels for that)
i used to grab every weapon with a perfect stat distribution that showed up in the hourly shop, so i have them around whenever i want to craft a new one and don’t have to play the lottery, and we can’t just configure 5 sliders.
plus the top rated curios, because getting those is still such a pain in the
I only started playing around Q1-Q2 this year, didn’t even play all that much and getting all weapons on all builds fully maxed and perfected was a breeze. Between the ease of acquiring cash, ability to turn Melkbucks into resources and ease of getting modest rewards for very little effort by running a single sub-10 havoc every week, the game is generous enough with materials while not requiring all that many to get the perfect weapon. Compared to the hardship of getting red dust in Vermintide, Darktide is outright spoiling its players.
I started seven months ago, have played 440 hours, and still haven’t even finished half of the progression. I haven’t played a single match with two of the classes at all
Then I’m guessing you’re spending your time inefficiently, I’m at 650 hours and have been maxed for at least the last 150. I had enough resources on Hive Scum and Arbites release to immediately fully equip them. Have enough Diamantine to equip next three classes and now I’m just buying up the cosmetics for coins.
Because you’re not meant to do it this way. You’re meant to just learn to use the weapon. You can buy a few and sacrifice them to get a level for a blessing or power increase when you’re close, but it’s really not efficient. It’s just to incentivise actually learning the character’s kit.
Though this definitely still applies to curios. Having to gamble away several hundred thousand on curios you can’t see the result of because of bad UI/UX is just a pain in the nethers.
I didn’t know there was a cap cause I spent a bunch when I got to 17 mill
With an under-leveled weapon, you are forced to play on a lower difficulty, and the weapon does not deliver its full effectiveness. Because of this, it becomes hard to judge how a fully upgraded version of the weapon would perform on my usual difficulty level
The way i see it, you should break down the issues for pre-/post-scarcity players.
Most of the comments are from the latter group, typically players with some degree of mastery over the game and definitely level 30 characters. The priority is to get a new (to you) weapon to a comparable level of power so it can be compared on the player’s familiar difficulty. These players must either use an underpowered weapon, lower the difficulty to maintain balance, or spend an inordinate anount of time in a tedious UI buying then upping then dismantling weapons. Lose lose lose. Not the end of the world, but it definitely funnels players into wasting actual time for no good reason — these are not the gaming moments i boot up Darktide for, so for me at least there is significant friction.
It would be nicer to simply purchase the mastery progress outright since its effectively the same. Just mercifully without the time-wasting of the Brunt/Hadron merry-go-round.
For new players with resource constraints its a worse situation imo, because of the design conflict between mastering the game and progressing your character. Mastery makes players prioritise old weapons when this should the period of time to experiment the most. Unlocking new gear slowly with levels compounds the issue. For a player pushing T3, unlocking a new weapon could set you back a fair amount of power (and therefore performance in-game). Going down a difficulty nets you less XP, and T3 is where things start to get exciting anyway so its kinda poopy all round.
Sure you could get lucky with an Emperor’s Gift thats just the weapon you wanted to try, but why have RNG for this? Better to allow players to experiment freely and find their groove with a weapon of choice rather than punish them for trying. Simply stocking vendors with a more varied and guaranteed array of weaponry may be enough to mitigate this.
I’ve got a lot of hours in this game, but playing through the new player experience secondhand with a friend has been particularly eye-opening for this. Having to sadly explain how limiting the game simply ‘is’ has been a frequent occurrence unfortunately. Maybe this is grimdark tho
i said this when i leveled my arby and my scum. buy, consecrate, sacrifice, click boxes, it felt like a chore. i wished we have a mod that simply books the cost upfront and gives full mastery in 2 clicks.
