This may actually be the worst title for a suggestion out there.
Proposal
The main proposal consists of the following:
Make all Relic Drops a guaranteed chance.
For Relic Minibosses that have multiple drops (Dusk, The Crone, and Delamere), have the Relic Drop be treated as a sort of “Bonus Item,” akin to obtaining Shovel Enchantment Scrolls, Rusty Armor, or Lost Envoy/Diplomat pieces from Treasure Spots.
When the player is hunting a Relic Miniboss, give them a temporary Hunter’s Compass (Level 5 Reward from the Bounty Hunting Profession) that continues to appear until they obtain their respective Relic for the first time.
If there ever ends up being a Miniboss with multiple Relic drops, the temporary Hunter’s Compass should stop appearing after claiming one of their Relics.
When checking the Bounty Board or Assassination Contracts, Relic Minibosses should have a unique poster design and color to make them stand out.
If the player has the poster for a Relic Miniboss they have not defeated before and the Miniboss is hunted, the player should be notified that the Miniboss has been defeated and be told where they’ll spawn next.
Details/background
So, with Full Release comes the Second Coming of the Greek Pantheon Full Spirit (Oracle) build now being playable. Since Oracles rely entirely on Relics, which are currently exclusive to Miniboss drops, their progression is naturally the slowest out of all other builds. However, nothing in-game ever attempts to rectify this, and therefore, players making their first Spirit Files have to deal with the following:
There is nothing directly indicating what Bounty Posters or Assassination Contracts belong to Minibosses that drop a Relic, on top of Miniboss Posters not being differentiated from those of randomly-generated NPCs.
Even if the player knows who the Minibosses are within the Sea they’re in, Minibosses can spawn in every spot that randomly-generated NPCs can appear at. This does encourage exploration and meeting the recommended level for certain story parts, such as being at Level 40 before starting Chapter 3, but going anywhere outside of the intended location feels incredibly slow, as the player, at best, only has access to Flax Sailcloth with the Swift enchantment by the time they meet the level requirements for the first two additional Relics.
Even if the player is more than willing to sail to a Miniboss’ suggested location for a lengthy period of time, the Miniboss can still be defeated by other players, which might make them spawn somewhere else. Depending on the island, the new player will have no idea why they aren’t spawning unless they give up and sail to an island with a Bounty/Assassination Board; they also do not get notified of when their target has been hunted. This only gets changed if the player owns a Brig, which is generally priced outside of the player’s reach when progressing through the story.
Even if the Miniboss is still there (and does not get bugged into not spawning at all), the only Relic Miniboss that has their Relic drop guaranteed is Laelus. The rest have either one extra drop that contends with the Relic, or an entire armor set that heavily decreases the chance of obtaining the Relic.
If the player is trying to get a Relic that isn’t a guaranteed drop, they can and will likely spend countless attempts trying to obtain their wanted drop. I WOULD KNOW.
All of this makes progressing Spirit Files both sound and feel miserable at the very best, especially for Oracle builds, as they cannot reasonably make-do with any other form of combat. Every other Spirit build at least has one other reliable method of attacking, even if its effectiveness is limited due to their required stat point distributions; Oracle simply doesn’t, so whether the player likes it or not, they’re going to have to play the lottery that is Relic Miniboss RNG until they hit a jackpot; they could hit it right away, or they could take so many attempts that they may as well make a Staff of Night IRL and beat themselves over the head with it.
Reason to add/change
These changes would fix the core problems with obtaining Relics that are currently in AO. No other Build Stat has to work against an insane amount of luck in order to fight properly, and they don’t have to sail away from the storyline just to be better-equipped for it. Progressing Spirit Files feels awful because of those two factors, so guaranteeing that a player gets a Miniboss’ Relic as soon as they defeat one for the first time and helping them look for said Minibosses would make it feel significantly less irritating.
I feel like relic obtainment could also be tied to quests and not just minibosses, or maybe just incorporate the minibosses into the quest, like The One Beyond Reach (with the relic being a guaranteed first drop or quest reward).
What they could also do is make some future relics a sort of unique collectable in islands, similar to how you can loot the entire Visgoth set off some skeleton in Makrinaos.
On a side note, I sort of feel like relics were made to be primarily tied to new minibosses as Vetex couldn’t really just go back and insert oracle bosses into the previous main story parts to make them more easily obtained, as well as considering how they are all one of a kind in lore.
I agree with other forms of relic obtainment, like in the FR trailer we see laelus find the tidestone band in a chest, so maybe some can be rare chest drops, some from bosses/minibosses like we have now, some from questlines, some found just by exploration like the ruined sifenya or rusty zweihander (i forgot who made this idea first but its a good one), some from enemies that aren’t really bosses like the satyrs we’re getting, etc
This will get so bad in the future— genuinely, Oracle isn’t viable to have be your first account, it needs to be your second… or you suffer the endless grind. Especially the new player thing— the Logbook says that some bosses drop Relics “Good luck budy! hope you figure out which ones are important mini-bosses, and after you do that, good luck figuring out which drop Relics!”.
Hell, make Spirit Sensing have a special effect when it’s peering into somebody who can manipulate spirit, then you’d have a cool lore reason or something— PLEASE.
Finding Spirit Bosses sucks ass for the uninformed.
Grinding RNG could leave with “I’ve got 50 Delamere kills and IT’S ALL SWORDS”
“I’ve got an entire stat and have less moves than Pre-FR strength hybrids did”.
“Man that was a rough grind; Sure hope my awakening won’t incentivise me to do more grinding—!
I swapped what WAS gonna be a spirit character to another damn conjurer because 150 levels into spirit and i was just like “this feels like shit to interact with” so anything that makes it better is ideal
what if we had it so that the player gets a popup saying that they sense the presence of a spirit relic whenever they open the bounty board, and then highlight the wanted posters, but only do that for spirit weapons that they have a high enough spirit level to utilize
and also do that when you’re near their ship or on the island they’re on
Honestly should happen for all wandering minibosses to get atleast one of their drops. (please i don’t wanna have to search 80% of the sea just to find this 1 dude that decided to sail around on a world tour who then gives me NOTHING)
here’s a fairly easy warlord boss that has a set spawn in a far-off area so that people don’t really go to him often, he’s going to be guaranteed to give you a drop!
here’s a much harder, much rarer boss that will be sailing a majority of the time and you have to sink their ship first before fighting them so its effectively 2 battles, and they’ll always be size demons that force you into the water less you take an unavoidable 500 damage. He’s also going to have 7 drops and the best part is his drop rate is 1/10!
Perfectly fair, reasonable, and balanced. There are WAY too few relics with way too low of a chance of being obtained right now making all spirit builds suffer, which is an issue when it takes like bare minimum 15 minutes to find and kill these minibosses only to inevitably get nothing at all or duplicate garbage.
Another cool thing that could be done in the future instead of an endless slog of roaming minibosses is like temples and other holy places filled with monsters or traps with treasure and a relic at the end. Both in the sea and maybe dark sea. Or you know, actual quest lines, the thing a sane dev would do to tie such important items to progression?
I just know it’s gonna be miserable when I decide to make an oracle. PLEASE MAKE THIS A REALITY, MY FRIEND HAS GIVEN ONE OF MY OTHER FILES A STAFF OF NIGHT AND FOR FUCK’S SAKE I CAN’T RETURN THE FAVOR.