Looting

Alpha-1 preview need before greed looting UI.

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

Free-for-all

Whoever is first to loot gets the loot.

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.

Since there is very little gear binding in Ashes of Creation, it's left to the party to deal with players who excessively roll Need on loot.

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.

Loot tagging

Looting rights (also known as Loot tagging) is based on a tag and DPS (damage) system.

• The first party to obtain a tag (on a mob or boss) will require approximately 40% or more of the total DPS to be granted looting rights.
• Parties who do not have the first tag will be required to do more than approximately 60% of the total DPS to quality for looting rights.

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

Loot tables

Alpha-1 dungeon concept by Michael Bacon.

Loot tables of world bosses or dungeon bosses have a small RNG chance of dropping gear (completed items). Monsters drop hunting certificates, Items and crafting materials rather than gold.

• There is a much higher chance that materials and unique recipes are dropped that can be used to craft items of equitable value.
• There is a small RNG chance of looting rare and legendary items or crafting materials from mobs based on the level, status and type of mob. This also applies to harvesting resources with a gathering profession.
• Legendary equipment is only dropped by Legendary world bosses.
• Stats on dropped items will vary based on the rarity of the item.
• Loot tables are disabled for player controlled monsters.
• Experience debt decreases the drop rate percentages from monsters.

Hunting certificates

Hunting certificates is a term that covers items, such as Pelts that house the value of a mob's death. These certificates are specific to an economic region. These are intended as an alternative mechanic to acquire gold.

A wolf is not going to be carrying a sack of gold. It may instead drop "pelts" that can be traded for gold.

• Hunting certificates will also drop on a character's death.
• Hunting certificates can be traded with hunter NPCs within nodes.
  • The level of the node and the distance of the node from the drop will determine the value of the certificate. Certificates redeemed from distant economic regions via the caravan system will provide higher returns (4 to 5 times greater in some cases) than certificates collected from the same region.
  • The value of the certificates are also calculated (by the world manager algorithm) based on the volume of certificates being redeemed in each region.
• Hunting certificates may also be used to pay housing taxes and citizen dues.
• Hunting certificates can also be stored within node warehouses.
• Hunting certificates are not intended as crafting materials.

Players drop hunting certificates and other items upon death, based on their applicable death penalties.

Resource quality

Flanggler (Flower angler or Mimic flower).

Resources will have differing tiers 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 unlock higher level harvesting tools that have a greater chance of collecting higher quality resources or proccing a greater quantity.

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

In Alpha-1 testing there are 4 tiers of gatherable resources across all gathering professions:^{[ citation needed ]}

• Tier 1 (Common)
• Tier 2 (Uncommon)
• Tier 3 (Rare)
• Tier 4 (Epic)

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.

Caravan looting

If a caravan is destroyed (becomes a wreckage) it will drop a portion of the goods it was transporting. The remainder of the caravan's goods are sunk (lost) when the caravan is destroyed.

• Anyone may loot the caravan's wreckage.

• Caravan components may also drop when a caravan is destroyed. These components may be salvageable by the caravan owner or by other players, in the case of high grade components.
• Caravans drop certificates for heavy goods that are redeemable at the origin node for a portion of the goods.

The caravan becomes a wreckage upon destruction and that wreckage is an interfaceable item that players can come up to and they can receive certificates for a portion of the goods inside the caravan. Now the idea with that certificate is that it must be taken back to the point of origin, or at least a region within that point of origin. We'll see about that last part because there's a few things I want to test in the Alpha from a gameability standpoint. The reason why for this is because what might happen is you may have some type of collaboration within a guild to kind of game that system. Hey I'm gonna reach this caravan just to the border of the region and then we're all destroy it, collect the goods and take it to you know that region's warehouse; and have to skip out on the last half of the way. So it must successfully reach its destination before the goods can be considered a part of that region. – Steven Sharif

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.

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.
• Crafters will be able to assign different skills/abilities and stats on gear.
  • Master crafters will be able to influence several (but not all) stats on their crafted items.
• The rarity of the items will be commensurate with the effort required to gather, process and craft the items.
  • Stats on crafted items will vary based on the item's rarity.

That plays into our crafting system in and of itself right. The idea is for those stats to be variables that can be kind of dictated based on the mastery level of the particular crafter; and the higher they become a master of those professions, whether it be for armor or for weapons or for accessories, they're going to have some agency and put their mark on essentially what items they're introducing into the economy. – Steven Sharif

Crafters are able to influence 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

Player death

Player death in an open world dungeon in Alpha-1.

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

When a player dies they disintegrate into ash. The ashes contain any items lost by the player due to applicable death penalties. These ash piles are immediately lootable by any player. Player flagging is not triggered by looting.

• 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.
    • Reduction in drop rates from monsters.
  • Durability loss.

  When players die and they take durability loss, our durability loss isn't like other games where it's a gold sink so to speak. It's a combination of both a gold sink and a material sink. So in a sense, even if you only have completed items, when you take that durability loss you are losing out on materials. It's just a debt to the materials that you are losing instead of the active loss of that material in your inventory. So now you are accruing a material debt if you want to repair and increase again the performance of those particular items that take that durability loss. – Steven Sharif

  • Dropping a percentage of carried gatherables and processed goods.
    • This also includes a percentage of the certificates a player is carrying.
    • If a player dies there will be a period of time before their mule despawns. Other players must kill that player's mule to be able to loot it.
    • If a player's mule dies its corpse will contain the same percentage of lootable items as the player.

• 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 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.
    • Non-corrupt players always respawn at the closest active respawn point (to their death).
  • Dampening (due to corruption) only affects PvP combat.

Experience debt will scale to approximately 2 or 3 percent of the total XP for a max level player. These numbers are subject to change based on testing.

• As of May 28, 2021, the experience debt in Alpha-1 testing is "completely off mark" and will either be changed or disabled prior to the next spot test.

Death penalties do not apply to objective-based events (such as caravans, guild wars, and node sieges).

There will not be death penalties applied to event-based deaths. The penalties are in the outcome of the event. So your number of deaths is likely going to impact your ability to win that particular event and that's going to be the penalty. This is it to encourage players to opt in to the events right because the more participation we have the more fun it can be; and we understand that the community at large- there's already a risk versus reward component to these events. We don't need to stack on additional risk versus reward to inhibit kind of- to increase the barrier to entry for players who may not be as interested. – Steven Sharif

• 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

Gold concept art.

Money will play a big part in the in-game. However, with that being said, there are organizational specific currencies that can't be traded. So there is like a general gold that will be very important end-game, but then there's also your progression within certain religions, societies, or nodes will also have... there will be progression-based currencies as well. – Steven Sharif

The general in-game currency is referred to as gold.

• There are also specific progression-based currencies that cannot be traded.
  • Religions.
  • Social organizations.
  • Nodes.
  • Tavern games (potentially).
• Monsters don't drop gold, they instead drop hunting certificates.
• Game currency does not have weight.
• There is no cap on how much currency a player can hold.

Item rendering

Items that are dragged out of a player's inventory are destroyed.

• Allowing player-dropped items (such as Gear and Currency) to exist in the world is likely not going to be allowed.

See also

• Economy
• Group dynamics
• Encounters
• Artisan classes