Suggestion: Alternative uses for Primordial Ashes

General Discussion
1

Neat idea to create fake primals and all. Very useful. And I am absolutely fine with only one fake being on a character. But because of this limitation and the rarity of (useable) true primals, this just leads to an overabundance of Ashes without any proper use. I’ve got a fake already. Until I get a true primal for that item, I have almost no reason to ever make another fake. So here I am, on my 50th unusable primal, salvaging it for even more Ashes I have nothing to do with.

The issue is not resolved by merely increasing the cost of making a primal or reducing the number of Ashes from salvaging primals. At some point, a player will get their fake and return to the same “Now what?” issue. We need some alternative method of spending Ashes.

1: Spend 1000 ashes to make a true primal. This makes every bit of ash valuable. However, given enough effort, I am fully aware this effectively “trivializes the entire game”. Maybe bump it up to 2k or 3k, whatever. Make it difficult so that people aren’t just completing a perfect build within a few weeks. However, again, I do undertand how this harms the loot hunt. Sooo…

2: A second “reforge” cube mechanic that includes Ashes as a material and increases the likelihood of a reforge being ancient/primal. Item, 20 souls, and 10 ashes and instead of a 10% chance of being ancient, it’s 50/50, and instead of a 0.25% of primal, it’s 2.5%. Salvaging a primal gives 55 ashes, so every found primal allots for five 2.5% chances.

3: It is common knowledge by now that the best way to conserve ashes when making a fake is to salvage the fake and use those ashes to make a new one, instead of just remaking the fake directly. Alternatively, reforging a fake from a fake has a small chance of turning up a true primal. So the player can either be efficient by salvaging it and retrying entirely from scratch, or sink the extra ashes in to reroll a fake and gamble for a true primal. Considering the cost of forging a fake is about two primal’s worth of ashes, maybe a 10% chance? On average, that would be 1000 ashes to create a real one, but it keeps the random chance element. …On second thought, make it 20%. Reforging has a 10% chance to turn up ancient and players know how comically unreliable it is. “1-in-10” is a joke. Make it 20% and it might ACTUALLY end up averaging 10%.

4: And if all that is just too darn complicated or players just don’t want their efforts rewarded (…Why?), then just have the cube capable of turning ashes into bunches of souls to help feed reforge attempts. Primals USED to be worth 15 souls before ashes were a thing. 50 ashes for 150 souls seems fair. That’s only 3 reforges, which isn’t even enough to safely get an ANCIENT, let alone a primal. Plus, at the going rate, primals are about 1-in-400, so the actual salvage rate is less than half the value, like how ancients (1-in-10) salvage for 3 souls, less than half the value. That should sate the masochists that prefer this method.

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Not really. Try to forge something hard to roll godly such as a perfect trifecta; Crit/AD% jewelry, CdR%/AD%/Dmg% weapon or AD%/CdR% shoulder piece, and you’ll have plenty sink for Primordial Ashes.

Besides, you can never balance this one right I think it widens the gap between dedicated and casual player profiles. Put the requirement too high and players will burn out from playing, put it too low and everyone will have access to it. Primals are valuable because they’re rare; and they would not be rare if you can make them in your Cube any time you want. You talk about a huge power leap here for no reason to demolish sense of progress by removing the crafted Primals’ limits.

This straight away widens the gap between dedicated and casual player profiles. When a dedicated player destined to find 2 more Primal items to smelt them into 110 ashes, they would have 11 or more attempts with this. The mere difference will be minuscule per attempt but Primordial Ashes is for creating a crafted Primal and nothing more. To add, Crafted Primals have the same whims as described here and rightfully so.

Are we going full Inception now, or is it Pimp my Primal? I can not take this one serious…

Just stop putting Primals on a pedestal. Ancients have better chance to roll better as they’re way more abundant in loot table. Primals have roughly 1/400 chance and that one Primal can end up being the item you don’t want or roll a terrible combination, and that’s fine. Game is all about loot hunt, and it will take time until you find a perfect piece to stop searching for that slot.

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3

I’ve dealt with you before and I know you’re the “All suggestions bad, game is how it is, you will not change my mind, change bad” kind of person. I know not to validate your points with a response to them. Which, naturally, means forum-goers will read this and interpret it as “He just doesn’t have a valid defense so he’s copping out.” You can interpret it that way if you want. I can’t change your mind. What I can do is notice and respond to patterns, and I’ve witnessed naksiloth’s pattern of never posting positively.

If someone wants to disagree, that’s fine. A conversation can be had when there’s constructive criticism. However, “Never change the game. Period.” is not constructive criticism and I will not engage with it.

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4

Don’t worry you’ll get many replies. People just love Primals more than playing the game and reaching it. Double Primal drops will be a permanent addition with Altar, but it seems you can not change people’s luck or their habits of how often they play this game.

And that’s fine too. :popcorn: Still I rather let the game stay as a loot hunt where I can showcase a good item whether it be a Primal or Ancient.

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Adding more ways to get desirable primals only does more to ruin the rarity of getting a useful one, and does more to spoil the game. It lessens the time needed to play the game to find that highly sought after primal/mod combination.

Also, setting the ways to get the desirable primals too high out of reach of the average player will only contribute to players seeking ways to automate their playtime.

Deep down inside, every member of the Diablo community craves the item hunt. Take away the item hunt, they’ll get bored with power and stop playing.

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Let me be the “Bringer” of the news that the final patch is about to be implemented and thus there will be no more development of the game.

… one never knows what the future will bring of course. But the subject of primordials and ashes has been brought up many times in this forum. Don’t expect anything to happen.

7

That might be true if you only play one build or perhaps one char or play 500+ hours in a season. No season as of yet have I ended the season with a crafted primal with the stats I want for all the builds I played.

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8

The upcoming patch doesn’t fix these issues and I doubt that we’ll ever see some changes again afterwards

9

Those ideas cater to botters and the last thing we need is more of those.

10

It’s because most of the ideas brought up in this forum are just stupid, impossible to implement due to resource allocations, or both.

In this case, it’s already a solved “problem”. The altar alone consumes 6 primals. Between that and the ashes needed rolling for the “fake primal”, this isn’t an actual issue for the vast, vast number of players in any given season. It’s a set of solutions in disguise as a problem.

11

Like reforging. Yet nobody complains about that. That’s why I included option #4. How does converting ashes into souls trivialize the loot hunt? Also, since seasons start fresh, even if your non-seasonal character has a full set of perfect primals, each new season starts with nothing. That’s literally the entire point of seasons - to start fresh from nothing and benefit from seasonal perks. It doesn’t matter how much a non-seasonal character gets geared up. The game is most active during early seasonal for a reason.

Which is a shame. One would hope that the failure of D4 would keep D3 going, but oh well.

I play four builds, typically - two builds per two classes. And I’ve never had an issue getting a fake with perfect stats on each build. Even if it takes a few tries, I still end up with 1k+ ashes at the end of each season. Besides, if someone does play 500+ hours in a season, how does that diminish my point? If a casual player never amasses enough ashes that they have any need for a way to spend the excess, then they just don’t interact with the mechanic. If someone does play enough to end up with an excess, then they use the mechanic to put the excess to use.

As said above, it’s a shame. Don’t want to repeat myself, so just read above lol

What? The suggestions don’t affect botters any more than any other player. Botters cheat. Of course cheaters have some form of advantage. That isn’t affected by this.

Again, how is this any different from the reforging mechanic? Prior to the cube, people had an overwhelming amount of soul mats because the only thing to ever use them on was rerolling stats, and that was one soul at a time. Half the reason reforging was implemented was to give souls another way to be spent. At the time, the casual player did not have thousands of soul mats. The reforge mechanic was billed as a way for dedicated players to put their soul mats to use for an easier way to get the rolls they wanted on a specific item, or even farm a specific ancient. That’s why the cost of reforging is so high. It was for players to use their vast resources that had no other use to “speed up the hunt”, and to give the ever-building pool of resources another outlet.

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12

Guess you haven’t experienced 5k ashes still not getting the essential stats on harder rolled items.

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And here I routinely have 30+ crafts on a single item and no luck.

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14

but why they made primordial ashes to give everyone a easy way to get a primal.

It don’t need to be anymore than that if you don’t need it there’s no need to worry it don’t take up stash space.

15

Yup. It’s kind of hard to get a dozen of variables to line up perfectly when you have no control over the outcome.

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