In a recent dev blog, Jagex outlined development in the works to improve and enhance Dungeoneering in a number of ways. Many of these look very promising. Unfortunately, they did not mention any plans to correct the problems with binding in Daemonheim.
As I was writing my extensive guide to Dungeoneering, I experienced first hand just how limited the current system is. You get one bind slot to start, another at level 50, a third at level 100 and a fourth at 120. Most players are never going to get to level 100 in this skill, which effectively means that they will never be able to get more than two bind slots.
In my view, this is a problem. It’s not because I think this makes Dungeoneering too difficult—in fact, I think the skill is pretty well balanced difficulty-wise in most respects. What I dislike about it is that it makes binding very one-dimensional. (Well, since there’s two slots, I guess I should say two-dimensional…)
Whenever you severely restrict something, people react by concentrating on the basics. And so most players, realizing they have only two slots to play with, naturally fill them with items that will be of the most general benefit, and help them the most overall as they go through the dungeons. For the vast majority, this means binding a high-level melee weapon for their first slot, and a high-level melee platebody for their second. Not everyone does this, but nearly everyone does.
As a consequence, nearly all of the other items in Daemonheim are never bound, because it simply doesn’t make sense to do so. I mean, I like to mage sometimes, and having a high level staff bound would be great, but I won’t use it as much as my spear. I also like having a leather body with high magic defence, but I find when I bind that I am often a liability in a team setting, so I go back to melee. I have never encountered a player with magic robes bound, for example.
This also means most of the “cool” drops from bosses have a lifespan measured in seconds: from when the item is received until the players hit the ladder to move on to the next dungeon. This includes even obviously useful items. I once got a primal plateskirt and would have liked to have kept it, but its stats weren’t as good as my promethium platebody, so why would I? And off it went, like nearly everything else I get from bosses.
The same applies to all of the nifty Slayer items, nearly all of which go to waste. Even cool items like the seeker’s charm or guardian’s ward are virtually never going to be bound, because doing so means giving up a good weapon or the only piece of real armor that can be bound.
The obvious solution to this would seem to be to increase the number of binding slots, but there are two problems with this. First, there are valid concerns about this making Dungeoneering too easy due to players having “everything they need” as soon as they enter the floor. And second, it doesn’t really resolve the “bind the most generally useful items” problem—most players would just do the same thing with their third and fourth slots that they did with the first two.
My idea is to keep the existing bind slots the same and add a new system of temporary binding. The idea here is to expand binding by building upon the existing prestige system. As you progress through the dungeon floors, you’d be able to bind additional items, which would last only until you reset. A scaling XP penalty would apply to balance out the advantage this would give to players using it.
The exact details would need to be adjusted based on gameplay testing, which obviously I cannot do, but here’s how I roughly envisioned it working.
You’d be able to temporarily bind one item for every 10 levels of current progress. So, that would be one item after you do 10 floors on a prestige run, two items at 20 floors, and so on, up to five items at level 50. These would be separate from permanently bound items, and would disappear whenever you reset your progress. An XP penalty would be applied on each floor equal to the square of the number of items temporarily bound: -1% for one item, -4% for two items and so forth.
This system has the following specific advantages:
- Players get more bind slots without becoming permanent walking powerhouses.
- The penalty scales up with the number of items bound: each additional bind costs more than the one before it. This means the first couple of binds are pretty cheap, but as you go beyond that, it becomes a trade-off that players have to consider seriously.
- Players can “tinker with” rare drops and special items without having to give up their permanent binds.
- Interesting items will get much more use and the skill will become more dynamic.
- There will be more variety in playing style; because items will disappear on each reset, runs through the dungeon will change in another way beyond just the randomness of the floors themselves.
- Players who use the prestige system as intended get an intrinsic reward (rather than just the threat of a penalty if they repeat floors).
I think this is a win-win for all concerned and hope Jagex will consider it!