Inscriptions: Discussion Thread

i still dont get them...

does it mean that u can 'unlock' inherent mods to use for ur pvp chars?
or can u use them in pve aswel <like previously dreaded>

Hi,

Please use this thread to dicuss anything to do with the Inscriptions, which have been added ingame in the lastest patch.

Patch Notes:

Weapon Inscriptions

• New weapons found in Elona or created through the PvP Equipment panel can contain swappable inscriptions, which provide a variety of weapon bonuses and enhancements.
• Like armor insignias, weapon inscriptions allow you to swap bonuses between different items you acquire by playing through the roleplaying content, and they simplify the process of creating items with the PvP Equipment panel by enabling you to choose the base weapon and the weapon bonuses separately.
• You can only place an inscription in a weapon if that weapon has a blank inscription slot. Inscriptions and inscription slots are sometimes found on rare weapons dropped by monsters in Elona.
• Inscriptions must be unlocked on your account before you can use them in the PvP Equipment panel. Inscriptions that provide bonuses that were previously inherent bonuses of PvP weapons are already unlocked on your account.

Please discuss inscriptions calmly, and be polite. Moderating will take place to remove and flaming, and the thread can and will be closed if the discussion leads to flaming.

Thank you.

- RTS

I am hoping for an update on the previous 2 chapter's armor...

According to the reading, it means only Elona PvE items can have those features, while PvP come with them straight off the bat (with you customizing it urself of course). Older chapter PvE char are currently screwed. No, PvP equip can never go on PvE char.

2 new runes. +10 hp stackable (you can put it in 5 different parts and have 50 hp), or +2 energy stackable.

Warriors can now apply -20% hex duration on any piece of their armor.

All classes got the choice of: +10 armor while carrying item, +10 armor while enchanted, etc

15^50 wand is a first...

-5dmg 20% etc offhand focus...

+10 armor vs any single elemental or physical dmg for offhand or shield

basically... PvP made char > PvE made as of now. (aside for looks)

no more armor swap in mid battle

all the decent PvE collector equip are pretty much gone (ex: +5 armor while enchanted sword)

I really dig this information. Finally a good enough chunk to discuss, too!

So, it is my belief that this will work basically like the gems and runes in Diablo 2. For those who don't know (or don't remember), essentially you had to find a 'socketed' item, be it weapon/shield/(and after expansion) armor, and then you use a gem or rune that you found or purchased to further increase the benefits of the item.

So I guess you would find an 'inscriptable' item, probably a different color/rarity (speculation), and the item may or may not have modifiers already (like Fiery or Fortitude), which you can attach an inscription to. The only thing left to find out is how we salvage or otherwise find these inscriptions. Will they be salvageable off only said special (color/rarity) items? Salvageable off any item, despite color or rarity? Purchasable only? Possibly only available in the form of an upgrade from a crafter, like the armor insignias?

Who knows? I guess we'll have to wait and see, yet again, for the answers. Luckily we have less that 24 hours to wait this time.

well i hope we'll be able to salvage those inscriptions and update old shields with nice skins, +10AR vs elem on shield is great! mb we'll get green shields with +10AR vs elem we'll see, it'll be easier for pve chars to get the green shield than to salvage the right inscription, i can be wrong of cos

I guess its just too late in the evening for me to try to understand any of this.
I only pve, so will this help me or just pvp people? and since I have yet to get my copy of nightfall, I probably will only find out thru guru......so thanks in advance!

This is a step in the right direction in making building a customized weapon a lot more flexible. I do question why this is limited to only Elonian items. Unless inscription slots themselves are salvageable...which makes absolutely no sense.

sucks to be those clowns who spent all their cash on crystallines and dwarvens just to add 15>50 to them. I much prefer this way.

So I guess this means canthan and tyrian weapons (most of all the really rare ones) keep their value depending on the damage mods they have, because there is no way to mod them with other damage mods (so my req 8 skeleton 30 -5(20%) still rocks)

I understand it is you can only remove inscriptions off items that are special to allow you to do this. And then these may only be added to other items special enough to carry an inscription. And they must have a blank space for that inscription.

Fairly useless if you wanna make your gothic sword 15^50. and its currently 14% vs hexed

If this is true, I see it as a big limitation of the inscription system.

"Some" (and we currently don't know what this will mean) Elonians weapons will be fully moddable. So after some time Nightfall is out, we'll have on the market a good supply of those items, and probably for reasonable prices (depending on how "rare" they will be), but with the limitation that they will have an Elonian skin.
So, unless in Elona we'll have the possibility to drop also some typical Tyrian skins (fellblades, longswords, sephis, twin dragon staffs and so on) the only possibility to have in game one of those skins with the same stats as an Elonian is to prey the god of random stats that is some far away corner of the world one of this weapons magically drops.

I don't think that A.net has introduced the inscriptions only for Elonians items to "save the value" of the previous items.

In my opinion, they did so because it would have been absolutely impossible for the developers to change millions and millions of items currently in the game.
The change can be easy for greens and collector's ones (although this morning I checked that my Kyril has changed to 20% recharge on all and instead the Stonereaper is still with the old bonus, didn't have time to check with Rago's staff) but impossible for a number of gold items which is beyond our imagination.

That said, I'd like to emphasize some points:

1. It's very positive that finally we have a more flexible crafting system. We don't have to rely on the god of random stats to get an item with both the skin and the stats we like.
This will solve once for all the problem of the 100k+1000ecto sellers created by the previous system.

2. It's not fair (but understandable considering the effort required to the developers) that the flexible crafting is limited to some skins (Elonians). This means that for the majority of the skins we'll still see the 100k+1000ecto requests.

For the point 2, I see two possible solutions:

A. Make Tyrian and Canthan skins drop also in Elona.

B. Give the possibility to change a non-Elonian weapon from un-inscriptable to inscriptable. For example, crafter NPCs could do this, charging a certain amount of gold.
This would solve the problem for the developers, who will not have to change the billions of gold items currently in game, but only those specifically requested by players.

Anyway, we are just at the start for this new system, it's a bit limited so far but A.net has refined many things so far (material storage for everyone for instance) so I hope they will improve in the future.

I think having the new system apply only to Elona drops is a good compromise. It isn't fair to destroy the value of stuff people already have that they worked hard for. But moving forward, we'll have maximum flexibility in choosing the skin and the stats we like.

No...you wont. You have to find the skin you want, and it has to be rare and has to have a FREE VACANT inscription slot, or else the salvaged inscription will not go on it.

You cant overwrite a 14% while hexed Elonian blade with a 15^50 mod. You must find a blank one with an empty inscription slot and then do it.

From what I can infer this means more messing around and paying out more for a skin/stat combo.

As you'll need the rare rare skin and the rare rare components.

But I could be wrong, and I'd like to be.

IMO they should allow all weapons to be inscribed however I would be fine if ONLY Nightfall weapons could be salvaged for their mods. What happens if a core skin drops in Nightfall? Will you not be able to salvage that inherent mod?

Edit: I just hope that ANet didn't read that absurdly moronic thread on here with all the richest guru members complaining and get scared and change it to Elonian weapons only to save a handful of sales.

Wait a second. Where did you get that information? I have not read that anywhere.

I still want to see exactly how it works, but it looks like I was right, all the cries of doom and gloom were for naught. I doubted very much that the developers were going to "ruin" the economy as speculated

I like the direction this has taken, not only did no one predict it but it also ought to make everyone happy in the end, depending on the rarity of clean max damage inscription slot bearing weapons...

What I wonder is if the items in the UW will be able to be inscribed if you go from Elona, that could be interesting.

You see that's just it. I would argue that the economy was already ruined with 100k + 1000+ ecto Crystallines and such floating around. By allowing all weapons to be inscribeable they would have fixed this exploitation and artificial inflation of weapon prices. With the new +5 Energy Tyrian skins starting to pop up I wouldn't doubt for a second that +5 Energy Crystallines and Dwarvens are on the way. I still think that all weapons should be able to upgrade their inherent mod however to keep the market from being flooded initially with perfect inherent mods I would suggest only allowing Elonian weapons to be salvaged for the inherent mod. Later down the road making it available to everyone.

Unfortunately it's possible, too many morons complained and A.net is well known adapt to the requests in order to keep potential customers ...

Anyway I think that the main reason is the work required to modify the huge number of gold weapons currently in game, dropped in the pre-inscription period.

The solution could be found giving the crafter NPC the ability to modify an old weapon on request of the player, with an enough high charge for this (let's say 5-10k) to prevent over usage of the feature and make it convenient only for worthy items.

I would like it if the Weaponsmith NPC's would sell inherent mods for a set price and only add it to your weapon and only if it is customized. That way the market will not be effected and all the rich players "looking out the common good" of the new players won't /wrists cause their uber gold req 8 15^50 crystallines are no longer so elite.

When you harvest an inscription from an item and don't destroy it, does it leave the weapon with an inscription slot? That will be the question I'm after an answer to...

Well, each continent has in time received the updates that other continents had first, such as material storage exclusive to Cantha now available in Tyria as well. Eventually, weapons with inscriptions might start dropping in Tyria and Cantha.

From the patch notes:

If you haven’t already checked out the Priest of Balthazar then I would suggest that you make a quick stop and check out what you have unlocked so far for inscriptions to see what they have so far, they also have wands, offhand, shields and shied handles. It will also show you what it looks like.


Pretty much sums it up, only Elona based weapons. But that’s not to say that it could change by adding a customize inscription slot to the weapon smith of course that would customized for the player so it can’t be sold.

So in other words you would have to first remove the inscription that you do not want and replace it with the one you do want? Ok that is fine. You could then just sell the replaced inscription or trash it. I really would like to hear ANet's justification for why it is Elona only. This is one of those big changes and an explanation is in order if you ask me. The only reason I can imagine is cause they bent to the will of the rich who threatened to quit and not buy Nightfall. If it was some other reason I would love to hear it cause I know everyone would like to know. If that is infact the reason I am VERY disappointed in them. It is almost as if ANet is rewarding those rich players even though they exploited the game to get so rich in the first place.

Edit: And further more if ANet did make this change in favor of those rich players then those who exploited to get rich has yet again exploited the game and they got away with it.

I agree that there really is no reason to limit it to Elonian weapons other than to appease the people who were crying about their weapon prices dropping.

The new inscription system is great but still has some annoying limits. Instead of waiting for a weapon with the skin and perfect inherant mod to drop, now we wait for a weapon with the skin and inscription slot to drop. Hopefully that's an improvement depending on how common inscription slots are.

Hopefully they'll change their mind and let old skins be fitted with slots and inscribed. Otherwise, I see a great system being limited needlessly.

I am thinking that you can salvage the inscriptions to make a free upgrade slot. I do not believe that ANet would go as far as to make you wait for a drop with no inherent modifier at all.

Ah, I didnt think of that. But there's still a 50% chance of destroying the weapon while salvaging it, but it's still far better than waiting for a skin with the perfect mod on it.

Still see no reason to exclude Tyrian and Canthan weapons though.

Still hard to say, but I'd have to agree with all the above posters that said it would likely take a ton of time to change all the prophecy and factions weapons. Throw in a weapon customization/inscription blanking thing at the weaponsmith and you could change up your old weapons is a good idea. Doubt it'll be implemented anytime soon tho...

I wonder if there'll be any greens with blank inscription slots?

I think this is the problem of having 'stand alone chapters' If we have NF, and we also have one or both of the other chapters, i think that these inscribable weapons should drop in tyria and cantha as well, ONLY for those people who also have NF

This is the part I'm mainly disappointed about. I have several weapons, including a Mursaat Bow and a Celestial Bow, which I was hoping to change the mods on, and I wanted to play with the mods on some of my 15k armors as well. Now it looks like I'll have to either use Elonian item skins or deal with having inferior equipment.

Heck, I wouldn't even mind if they applied it only to new versions of Tyrian/Canthan equipment, while still leaving the stuff already in existence alone.

The other thing you have to watch out for now is scammers selling their tyrian/core weapons and saying they are inscribable elonian skins. This will open the flood gates to scamming people from all chapters. Mark my words: If ANet does not make the inscriptions available to everyone from all chapters there will be scammers taking advantage of people left and right. I like the idea of these inscribable items, but being Elonian only is just nuts.

That's exactly what I think they did...

It seems needless to restrict both inscriptions and armor insignia like that.

And what about weapons that drop on more than one continent? I found Bramble Long and Short bows during the preview event, for example...

ill say it again. i warned everyone here about how if it wasnt done right. look what happened. well no someones even beginning to see what i said about scammers on the inscriptions. but hey i was called a whiner in my thread and looky whos whinning now on them remebr i posted a week ago how bad this could be. now i have to say it.




I TOLD U SO


ofcourse the mods prolly delete this , but im asking them not to. cause it is relavent as i tried to warn everyone last week. but only a few listened.

Umm what are you ranting on about now? No one has scammed anyone yet. Dont get all riled up. Besides, the only reason that there's even a potential for scamming is because of the implementation of inscriptions being Elonian only to appease people like you who were opposed to the idea of inscriptions at all. So really, it's the anti-inscriptionists' fault for creating any potential scamming. But as I said before, NOTHING has happend yet. You're still ranting about something that hasnt even happend yet.

actually ppl have alrdy begun to try to scam ppl. even reported in the scribe. i wasnt agaisnt the inscriptions idea i gave a great way for it to be implemented for everyone. yes im ranting cause its bad implementation on a good idea

lol, right.... I'm sure your way would have been so much better... and it would have been so much easier to code too (which people rarely take into consideration... programming can be very very complex... especially with MMO's).

Oh, and it's hard to be taken seriously when you can't use proper grammar or elaborate on anything at all.


Anyways, it will be very interesting to see if they keep the inscriptions system exactly how it is or if they will decide to change a few things on it.

Just one question: the description says that the inscription of 15>50 can be applied to a generic "inscribable weapon": nowadays a sword pommel for instance can be applied only to a sword.

Does this mean that it will be possible to find an axe, salvage the inscription, and apply it to a bow?
This would be something really new (I really didn't expect it) and a really high degree of flexibility.

That's exactly how it looks. If so, sweet!

What about upgrades for shields and focuses (like +30 hp or so)?

Will they be salvageable from gold drops in Elona and put onto existing items?

I can just see it now stuff with the 'empty' slot and rare skin will be 100k+ectos