A note on your forge run: I don’t have numbers, so cant give the answers you’d like, but i believe i can help with what you need.
Firstly welcome and good on you for trying!
Now to your questions. gums. It sounds like all the boons you got were from the special category. More gums mean lower chance of other categories, but don’t report or seem to affect which boon from that category gets picked.
targeting change boon. As you noted you dont need a full deck of ingredients to target one boon if nothing else matters.
Targeting a single boon is easier when there are fewer boons in that category. Glow boon is pretty much 100% (only one targeted by glow gum). Shotgun on a slingbow is 1 of about 4 or 5 under special gum - much harder.
The secret of making quick and easy change chisels lies in those 2 untouched gums - trait reduction and expansion since you have space for them on your deck. In your examples, you were getting special traits but not the one you wanted. Slap on a trait expansion gum and subsequent boon points are more likely to pick a new boon from the specials you dont yet have!
Conversely, if you get what you want on your first roll, dropping a trait reduction compound makes points more likely to go to the boon you already have than a new one. Fewer boons mean more points in the one you want, less compounds wasted on levelling pointless other boons.
Sorry if this is off topic maybe i should start a forgers guide lol
I Would like to see this please, its annoying to remove a boon i dont want and getting it back 4 times in a row, while i try to roll something with a certain gum.
I watch video but to be honest, pretty much every video no matter how hard it tries simply misses the stuff a newb actually needs to know. I think because the person doing the video knows a lot about it, they forget what causes issues to new arrivals to the machine and they tend to baffle on about all sorts of stuff that really makes no sense or hasn’t been explained completely - sorry Jivita - that icludes yours
I managed to work out that adding the special gum produces that boon icon and each time I added another special gum, the number increased in the boon icon. I figured that adding more would help me to skip the magnet and light as it was starting to look like I had to get those [or others] before the change boon would arrive.
I think I put 25 special gums on one f them which made no difference.
I want really aware of trait expansion so I will try this after the new changes are applied in game
I appreciate your response in highlighting how I can get the chisel
of the 10 I had, I got the change option once so 1 in 10 the way I was doing it was a very expensive attempt hence I did not return
@Urbanmongrel If you’re online in a bit i can maybe give you temp permissions and take you through a “hunt for the change chisel” lol, have you watch a forge or 2
Starting a forgers guide though is something you should definately do.
When I opened the machine , I had 4 or 5 compounds sat there , I was honestly thinking , at what point can I use the compounds!
Never ever ocured to me they were only ever going to be used to craft other liquids
Why solvent,gum,paste etc. Why not just one compound - appears to be done simply to confuse and although I keep strapping on coils, absolutely no idea what bonus they are giving except making the machine look cooler perhaps.
These are all obvious things to everyone except me it seems and totally missed by guides
I’d really like to bring your attention back to this:
any thoughts on fixing the AOE 5 boon? I fear that if it does not get fixed here that it wont be fixed for a very long time. Upgrading a boon should not be considered an item-bricking failure.
Would it be a better suggestion to make 3x3 aoe the level 5? And make the random level 1 and lowering damage of the random? That would make it target able but take more boon points for a full aoe tool.
Or is the suggestion to remove level 5 completely? Make the boon max at 4.
Or are we going for a route when level 5 is just an upgrade to the 3x3? If we could have it up the % of damage it does from max then frankly it would make those t6 tools everyone seems polarized on even easier.
This is difficult to balance by keeping level 5… I suggest @rossstephens that of these balances, removing the 5th level would be much safer of a bet than trying to balance the 5th level in line.
Just my 2coins though suggestions and reminders always help!
Personally I think the Adjacent boon should be applied in a similar fashion to the heal / regen bomb boons. It should just be a random one shot to apply it, so you could end up with any of them. You then just apply other boons to vary the strength at which it hits etc.
as far as how the different levels, from my perspective I think the following would be upgrades:
lvl1 -> random other block (currently lvl5)
lvl2 -> block directly below (currently lvl2)
lvl3 -> 3-wide (currently lvl1)
lvl4 -> plus sign (currently lvl3)
lvl5 -> 3x3 (currently lvl4)
honestly I dont really care about anything than the 3x3. I can work with the order of anything below it. My problem is that the current lvl5 boon is NOT an upgrade to the current lvl4 boon.
3x1 is nice for tearing up roads or tearing down walls where you don’t want the stuff beside… but really it’s easy enough to just work with a 3x3 instead. I’d be happy with the AOE boon level just improving damage instead =D
3x1 is useful for grass/soil farming. Especially when you’re looking for somethin like clay and its only 2 layers of it above peaty soil. Though i wouldnt be mad at getting peaty soil and clay at the same time. Free spark
I like AOE and tunneling. I do wish that the dmg penalty was less though esp on 2x1, 3x1 and +.
It would take them from niche tools to something that might one day be useful… especially on higher tier worlds. Maybe 3x3 will not do enough dmg, but you can still use a + shape or something on T7, and then on T8 you could only make a 2x1 work.
This is opposed to as things exist today, and as the previous poster mentioned, I only use them in those 1% corner cases like building.
In order to do that the dmg deduction modifiers would need to be reworked (lessened) on the lower AOE boons.
I reckon I’ve forged 60 odd hammers, maybe more, and hit L5 once. So for me, no this wouldn’t be welcome. It’d mean I’d be stuck with the duff random blocks one more than now.
I’ll put here the thought i had over another thread.
I think every shapes should be on the different boons. And the more you level it up the less dmg reduction on it like you are proposing. but i’ll stay at 60% for that lvl 5.
So this way if someone wants the 1x3, or 1x2 or can even add more shapes, they can do it and use them.
So it would be easier to target your needs.
And definitely remove the current lvl 5 Aoe, there is no purpose for this.
I like it that they said, that it will still require some luck, and practice. The fact that we can get even better tools, but that there is still some random luck and expertise involved, means there will be uniqueness, and shops with elite items. that’s what we all want. To not have 4k shops of the EXACT same thing.
I still 100% these changes because of, not inspite of all the changes. And with all the quirks, it will be much more fun, and will have more tools for different occasions. Genius.
