Question Triane - (summarized) How is raising the average armor level of "loot" armor by 60-100 points in one day a good thing?
Answer srand - Absolute armor levels have increased very little. Before yesterday, the highest AL item you could possibly find was AL 305. Today, it's AL 315. The maximum possible AL of some particular pieces has gone up more or less than that. For instance, previously the absolute best amuli you could find was AL 225. Now it's AL 255. On the other hand, the best plate armor is still limited to a maximum of AL 265. It didn't go up at all.*

So if maximum AL has barely changed, what did? Why is everyone up in arms about 'uber' armor? There are three interlaced reasons.

1) Distribution: One of our goals with tweaking the treasure system was to increase the utility of the treasure that you were finding while hunting level-appropriate monsters. Previously, the distribution of armor level across different levels of loot went something like this: suck, suck, suck, suck, good. We wanted it to go more like: suck, bad, okay, decent, good. So we smoothed the distribution out. This means that a number of mid-level creatures (in terms of loot levels, if not character levels) are dropping higher AL armor than they used to.

2) Workmanship: Because higher AL armors are coming off of monsters with lower treasure profiles, it is easier to find higher AL, lower workmanship armor. This armor is good for tinkering and therefore has been very much in demand. We support the goal of accessible tinkering. Having said that, however, we are not entirely satisfied with the available workmanships, and we may tweak that aspect of the system slightly.

3) Value: There is an issue with the way the value of armor is being calculated. This results in very cheap armor, which people like because it is less likely to drop on death. This does rather ruin the intended trade-offs, however. This issue will be fixed in January.

So, all together you have: monsters that used to drop bad AL, low workmanship, cheap armor are now dropping decent AL, low workmanship, cheap armor. And monsters that used to drop good AL, mid workmanship, expensive armor are now dropping slightly better AL, mid workmanship, cheap armor. Our primary goal -- making the treasure you actually find during normal hunting -- has been served. It's just unfortunate that this issue with armor value is causing problems.

(*A side note: You may be wondering why we bothered raising the maximum possible AL on different types of armor by 10 or 15 or 20. The short answer is that we had to in order to streamline the system to a point where we could tweak the distribution the way we wanted to. See, the old armor level assignment system was rather quirky with how it assigned armor levels. It was also extremely rigid and difficult to work with. We had available a system that could do almost the same thing much more flexibly, but required the data in a slightly different format. In reformatting the data we had to simplify it some, which required the armor level changes you see today. We were very careful not to lower any of the maximum possible armor levels, of course. That's the short answer -- the long answer would probably make a fascinating article, if you're into that sort of thing.)

Qusetion AriCat - Why is the loot dropped by monsters in dungeons better than that dropped outside?
Answer srand - For most creatures, there is no difference between the treasure profile of the creature on landscape and the treasure profile of the creature in a dungeon. (I say most because there are a very few cases where the dungeon creatures are actually different creatures than the landscape creatures, even though they look the same, and in those cases it is possible for them to have different treasure profiles, although I am not aware of any creatures where this is actually the case.) Now, it is true that you can often find different types of creatures in dungeons than you do on landscape, and so you might argue that landscape loot in general is not as good as dungeon loot in general. I think that rather depends on which areas of the landscape and which dungeons you are talking about. But regardless, we have some plans for the future to rearrange the distribution of creatures on the landscape, and at that time we will also analyze treasure drops of the creatures in question. There is no estimate yet of when you might see this, but we will let you know beforehand.

Question Silvurhawke - Why did you cave in to the whiners and severely lighten up the spawns on Alphus Lassal? It sucks now :(
Answer srand - To the best of my knowledge ee only changed the density on the high finger, and that was because of the graphical lag issues the area was causing.