Overall, I like the idea. I'm even a fan of most of the rewards, as you seem to be keeping other skills and items relevant.
However, the one reward that seems to ignore this philosophy is the Esoteric Legs. These legs require 56 artisan, a relatively easy goal at less than 300,000 xp, and boost your rc lvl by two for purposes of crafting multiple runes. While for lower leveled players this may be a helpful tool to help make a bit more money, it would serve a much bigger purpose in the game.
In the runecrafting skill, the ultimate goal is to achieve level 91 for double nature runes. This is where the real money is, and at the xp rates that runecrafting provides, it is nearly as difficult to achieve level 91 rc as it is to achieve most other 99s. However, by adding the Esoteric Legs, this level sudenly becomes 89, over 1,000,000 xp less than 91. This amounts to over 40 hours of hard rcing that is suddenly no longer needed.
This obviously devalues the effort and work put in by people who currently have 91 rc or higher. However, this would also increase the number of people who are able to create double nats. This would undoubtedly cause nature runes to drop, further devaluing the work of rcers.
While I am strongly opposed to the addition of such an item into the game, if it is destined to be added, it would be nice if it could requirements "slightly" higher than 56. Perhaps it could require the same artisan level as the original runecrafting requirement. To use the double nature rune example, these robes would only allow someone with 89 runecrafting to craft double nats if they were level 91 in artisan. This would allow the robes to prove useful to lower levels right away, but not shift the balance of the runecrafting skill as a whole.
15-Jul-2014 18:19:48
