The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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6:57pm on Wednesday, 22nd January, 2014:
Anecdote
In The Secret World, my main character has pretty good gear — probably in the top 1% of what players have. Nevertheless, in nightmare scenarios (ie. the hardest mode) I get squished far more often than my peers. I correctly identified the problem as being that I don't have enough block rating, meaning that I get hit more often with penetrating hits that do spike damage. I therefore spent some time acquiring the necessary kit to give me higher block. The main component was a glyph, which you attach to an item of your gear. I'd just bought a sword to use in nightmare scenarios, so I put it on that.
Worriedly, I was just as squishy as before. I thought that maybe I didn't have the right balance of gear or something, but when I checked out other high-end characters my stuff was no different to anyone else's. I also have a very nice defensive build (TSW lets you construct skill combinations on the fly; these are called "builds" by the players). I suffered with this squishiness for the past month.
Hmm. It turns out that if you attach a glyph to something then its value contributes to your overall stats. Unfortunately, for weapons it only does so when you use that weapon. You can equip two weapons, but if you use the other one in combat then the glyph on the first one is irrelevant.
I somehow missed that when I was reading the description. That's if there was a description, of course; in TSW, it's entirely possible there isn't and y0u have to find out by word of mouth from other players or work it out for yourself. Now, I have to create a new glyph for my block and stick it on another piece of gear, replacing the one on my sword with a different glyph. No, in TSW you can't remove glyphs from gear (not even if you pay, which probably means they couldn't think of a way to implement it or they knew I wasn't ever going to pay so did it to spite me). Creating glyphs is easy; upgrading them to the highest quality is rather more tiresome.
Hmm. Well that was an embarrassing discovery.
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Copyright © 2014 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).