Must forge items Options

[Mongerman]

Thought I'd start a thread discussing must forge items introduced by IA, so new players can decide where to spend their precious gold on.

Must forge items

1. Boots of impr haste - With belm in off hand, and gauntlets of extraordinary spec, its like having permanent GWW activated! Whats not to like? With these boots, you are free to take multiple critical strikes.

2. Memory of the Apprenti - 3 extra spells per level. With specialist class, thats 4 extra spells per level. You could stand forever in the midst of the most powerfull melee monsters and emerge without a stratch.

3. Holy avenger - When multiple RoR still dont work, never fret, holy avenger is here! Combine with time trap and a WW for extra effectiveness.

4. Improved Cat Figurine - Greater restoration on steriods, without exhausting the user. Enough said.

I havent gotten around to forging more weapons yet,so no opinions there for now.

[GotWangi]

Can't say I like these changes either. It feels like a cheesy way to force players to play certain class, and IMHO an ineffective one at that.

I dare say that not many people will play the same protagonist for a second time, so your comment about making other class more attractive seems rather moot. In fact, as I read through this forum, not too many people are using f/m or r/c as their protagonist either. I would say that applying more of your excellent extended stronghold quests to other class would prove to be more lucrative, no matter how underpowered that class may be.

I fail to see how making f/m unable to use those 2 swords will significantly help to bridge the power-gap either. Hence, I really doubt it will sway people away from people who hasn't really played f/m before.

Carsomyr, in my experience is not really useful even with time-trap. But part of this is perhaps because I upgraded it very late in SoA and by that time timestopping is not always a good idea, nor were there too many mages encounter left. Still though, I like the idea of UAI staying as it is, nerfing it just doesn't seem right considering how underpowered they already are compared to other classes.All in all, a change I don't really mind too much.

Now, the boots. I'm really against this change. IIRC unlike v3, you can only forge a pair in the entire game, and as others stated this is more like a convenience item rather than anything else. In the early level, this is a great jump in allowing your party to finally experience a "fun" epic encounters, rather than getting frustrated watching your whole party swing at that last stripped-of-all-protection monster, and yet unable to beat its regeneration rate. Also, forcing the upgrade to boots of agility really mess up with the way you play the npcs. Almost all of them require the gauntlet to be even remotely acceptable as a tank in IA, and there's only one pair in the game IIRC. To be frank, again this feels like a really desperate attempt to force players to use ranger, which most people already use anyway for the new contents.

Most of all though, I'm just really worried if this is any sign of the direction this great mod is heading. I really would prefer to see more new encounters, using different tactics, rather than more nerfing. Just my 2 cents.

PS : Off topic, but was the druid spell progression changed ? In my game Jaheira just hit that elusive level 15 druid and she didnt receive any additional lvl 7 spell?? IIRC druid received a huuuge power jump upon finally going over that 1.5mil exp wall. She's 16 now and still no sign of more lvl 7 slots =\