I'll be honest, there is probably nothing more important to CoA at the moment than a quest and loot revamp. This should really be priority number 1 for most of us. Every single time there's a reboot of the server's setting people leave because there's a content drought and invariably it's due to a lack of interesting quests.

It's probably really boring work, I suppose, but it's vital.

Right, but it's not like the themes of the quest loot are the problem, it's that a lot of them are just... useless.

On that note, it would free up some design space if you were willing to upgrade some of the craftable gear as well because a lot of the craftable gear is equally useless. Craftable armor that isn't made of adamantium or mithril is basically pointless.

This is kinda why I think a small bump in the loot level overall isn't a bad thing. Even gear that's supposed to be desirable (like craftable gear) has very little design space to work with, and that bleeds over into quest loot as well due to the "can't be better than craftable gear" thing.

Given the overbearing workload as-is, I'm more in favor of option 1 rather than 2, especially if the caravan drops you off somewhere in Griffon Hill (makes sense as there's a small outpost there anyway).

I think reusing existing assets in a way that makes sense is always a plus.

It just seems like a lot of work to create and remove the more useless loot if we could just edit the ones that exist and fill in the blanks (if any) afterwards instead.

I've been fiddling with the toolset recently, frankly I think it'd be better if we could adjust the existing loot rather than create entirely new ones whenever possible. It's not like there's a lack of loot so much as a lack of worthwhile loot.

@Lord_Acererak I like quest chains a lot. Be it in the form of multiple linked quests or a single super long quest with multiple stopping points.

On an unrelated note, with the addition of +1 AC to Mithril (and you might as well add it to Adamantine as well, to be honest), there should probably be something equivalent to this for leathers. Maybe Malar Panther leather?

Since there's been talk of designing new quest loot, thought I'd bring this up here:

I think craftable gear (especially armor) could use a slight bump in power level. In lieu of this, I'm also of the opinion that 7 - 10 quests should be quite a bit harder than they are now, so that the quest loot you find in them can be on par with better craftable gear (anything under mithril, for instance).

Likewise, 6 - 9 quests should drop gear that's roughly on par with non-top tier craftable gear. 4 - 6 quests should really focus more on useful consumables.

+1, as mentioned before a lot of this is just common sentiments held by a lot of active and no longer active players. At this point, I think the content drought is the biggest thing, especially quests. Updating the crafting system can probably sit on the backburner until this is dealt with because the crafting system as-is works perfectly fine, even if some of the items are somewhat lackluster.

@Echo Yes, that's the point. The signs are already the only real indication of distance anyway since two transitions are nowhere near 30 actual miles even in NWN. Therefore, it's okay if areas are a little smaller for the sake of reducing sprawl. True to scale realism will never be achievable without it being an utter pain in the ass (or adding mounts, which is... fraught with peril and I do not recommend this in the slightest).

@Zool Storm. Horns. Ascent. Stonecliffs is the Eveningstar area I would personally shrink a bit. Two transitions isn't a big deal, really, it's just the size of each.