Lustmord's Custom Dyes Review.

For years, Darkfall players have been asking for armor dyes to set themselves apart in the world of Agon and customize appearance. In line with their vision of shaping Darkfall: Unholy Wars into the greatest sandbox game on the market, Aventerine has released an the armor dye system in the April 29th patch.

Photo by Candy Flip

For those who are not familiar with it, the custom armor dyes consist of 30 individual colors pigments. Each pigment drops from a specific mob in the world, and a stack of 5 pigments can be crafted into a dye using Alchemy, and Alchemy Mastery. You can then apply the dye to an individual piece of armor's primary or secondary color scheme. I was never very good at math, and I have no idea how to begin calculating the total combinations possible on a 10 piece armor set, but it's ALOT!

When the patch released, players rejoiced and set out into the world to discover these pigments, and create their dyes, compiling lists of mobs that drop them, and sharing pics on the forums.

Photo by Luxferro

Photo by Licam

Players discovered that many of these pigments were assigned to mobs that were relatively untouched prior to the patch. Gooey Violet pigments, for example, drop from Matayins while Rotting Gray pigments will drop from Grave Shots. Mob spawns that previously had little value in the world became locations of interest for many players. This was definitely a good move, in my opinion, to increase individual value on unused mobs.



Within 24 hours players also started reporting grind associated with dying an armor set. At 5 pigments per dye, and 2 dyes per item piece on a 10 piece set, it requires 100 pigments to dye one full set of gear. Many people feel it is excessive to farm so many pigments for a gear set that could be lost in a 5 minute fight.


To this, Game Designer Wild Sage quickly replied:

"Dye drop rates are easily adjustable. We will monitor your feedback and the amounts present on each server and adjust accordingly. Thank you."- Wild Sage

This response is also very smart. If they immediately opened the floodgates on these pigments, everyone could have potentially stocked up a large surplus of dyes within a week, and those mob spawns would go back to be being largely ignored.

Also, pigments have a chance to drop from Levy Collectors if pigments were farmed in that area, so players have the opportunity to accumulate dyes over time without any focused farming. A quick count in my bank shows I have accumulated 77 pigments this week, without actively grinding them.

That said, I do believe the grind to getting a full dye set is just a little too much. My opinion is that the drop rate on pigments themselves is fine, but maybe the crafting process needs to provide more than 1 dye per 5 pigments for common dyes, while keeping the Mastery dyes rare.

Photo by Luxferro

Overall, I think this custom dye system is a great addition to the game. The pigment loot tables have added value to under-valued spawns, and some extra fluff was added just for the fun of it. Once there is enough pigments in the system to color-code a siege force, it will truly be a sight to behold.

Glorious days are ahead of us in Agon!