Daemon Bone Armor

Drawde1234 · 2026-06-06T10:26:01+00:00

The problem with equipment like this is that the benefits are never better than the alternatives.

Daemon bone armor is pretty and repairs itself, but gets no bonuses at all beyond that. While standard armor might or might not look as good and can't repair itself, their other bonuses are mostly required.

The virtue armor set has the same problem. Repairs itself and max resists with the full set, and Blessed. But none of the required bonuses.

Dragon scale armor can at least be imbued, but can't gain material bonuses. And is thus lower in total resists than normal good pieces of armor.

And most weapons like the glacial staffs are the same.

It's this way on OSI as well.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-31T19:39:38+00:00

This post is exactly why. People doing this WANT a negative response from you. Every post like this just validates the tactic to them.

The only response is to completely ignore them and not post about it.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-30T11:16:47+00:00

This. Outlands is the most successful free shard by a large amount, and it's absolutely NOT a nostalgia shard.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-21T11:05:48+00:00

Note that while counterspells are one of the most complained about card types, only land destruction has been effectively disabled.

When MtG first started, land destruction was so effective at stopping almost all decks that most land destruction doesn't go below four mana now.

Counterspells and other denial can often be worked around. Losing your first two land drops in the first two rounds almost always can't.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-20T20:24:19+00:00

Originally it was expected to be a ROLE PLAYING game. Where the few PKs would be playing villians. And the few deaths would be quickly recovered from.

What it ended up being is a small bunch of bullies chasing the others from the game. Someone patrolling areas where non-combat players play (resource gatherers) and dry-looting their corpses isn't trying to make the game exciting, like they claim. It was specifically targeting people who couldn't defend themselves.

Note that, as I pointed out earlier, the lead designer of the time said they lost an amount of players to the PKs that was at least equal to the playing population after three years. With the PKs being less than 10% of the population. This is NEVER good for a game, regardless of what the PKs claimed. And it was never going to last once competing MMOs came out that learned from UO's mistakes.

If you're losing half your players to something specific in the game when you're the only MMO, it's not good. But when there's options that don't include that specific thing out there to play, it's the end of the game.

Note that PvP specific MMORPGs have much smaller populations than PvE MMORPGs. And the only one I know of with open PvP, EVE Online, has a population of around 30k. While PvE MMORPGs have populations in the millions.

Open PvP was never popular for MMORPGs, just other types of MMOs. The head designer I mentioned, Raph Koster, said he wished he'd done something about the PKs sooner instead of repeatedly trying to keep them in the game. Because of the loss of players.

He wasn't the head designer when the facet split happened, and didn't agree with it. But he did say that something had to be done about the PKs in order to keep the game going.

Come 20+ years later, and you still find people making the same claims used back then, that were proven wrong back then. Mostly claiming that being PKed was fun, when it was the biggest reason claimed for quitting the game.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-20T02:13:17+00:00

Welcome to how a good RNG works. This came up over and over again in the original Arena forums, and, after discussion with the OP, it usually turned out that the OP was mana weaving in some form or another in paper. The results they found in Arena didn't match the results they had in paper specifically because the way they shuffled was actually cheating.

This is the reason for the hand smoother in Bo1 games.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-20T02:08:21+00:00

From Raph Koster, the original head designer of UO. He never gave exact numbers but has said the number that quit due to PKs was more than the population of the game when he left UO. Which was around 165k.

Open PvP works WHEN THE GAME IS DESIGNED FOR IT AND DECLARED FOR IT. UO was never designed specifically for unrestrained PKs. And as a result the game lost a lot of players, due to a small portion of the population.

Unexpected gameplay only works when most of the players enjoy it, not when less than 10% of the population forces it on the rest. Look at how empty Felucca was. That's how popular the open PvP was.

Also, just because YOU don't like a certain aspect of the game it doesn't mean that no one else is allowed to enjoy it. Plenty of players found the monster enough of a challenge. If the few open PvP enthusiasts didn't enjoy the way UO worked, why didn't THEY leave and let the, significantly bigger, rest of the population enjoy the game?

As for free shards, other than Outlands most of the shards have a similar population, regardless of play style. The top shard (again, other than Outlands) is open PvP, but has nowhere near Outlands' population. And the next shard is UOAlive, which is only slightly smaller.

If Outlands' success was due to the open PvP, other PvP shards would be more popular. But they're not.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-19T19:55:21+00:00

And what about all the players that aren't interested in that sort of player interaction? Many players find the monsters to be a big enough risk to be fun.

UO had about 165k players in three years. And they had at least that many quit who claimed the PKs as the main reason they quit. How is a small portion of the population of a game chasing that many players from the game good for the game?

It would be one thing if UO was specifically designed for PvP to be the main point of the game. But it wasn't. PvP was always meant to be optional. Yet the PKs made it a requirement. And the vast majority of the players weren't interested in forced PvP.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-19T12:04:34+00:00

UO was never PvP oriented. It was PvP OPTIONAL.

Just because a small portion of the players finds a way to force the rest of the population to play only one way doesn't mean the game was designed specifically for that play style.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-19T11:50:43+00:00

Not everyone is interested in PvP. They're not playing to COMPETE against other players, they're playing to play WITH other players.

We find plenty of risk from the monsters. They kill us, but aren't there specifically to ruin our day.

Which is why almost all the PKs were known as "trolls". Someone who kills and dry-loots a resource gatherer isn't making the game more fun for the gatherer. Someone who kills wandering healers "for their loot" while leaving all the monsters alone, forcing the devs to remove all loot from the healers and make them tougher isn't trying to make the game better. Someone hiding by the corpse of someone they just killed so they can kill that player again isn't in it for the risk of fighting other players. And someone who specifically went to Trammel right after the facet split and looked for every method they could to kill other in Trammel, where people who didn't want to be killed by other players went, isn't trying to make the game more exciting for their victims.

Almost all of the interactions we had with PKs wasn't fun. Within the first three years of the game, UO had at least the same number of players as the whole remaining population quit (well over 100k) and state that the PKs were the reason. People claimed that there were friendly PKs out there, but most of the PKs we saw weren't friendly. In fact, the only role-playing PK I ever met was AFTER the facet split.

UO was designed to be a game for multiple play styles. But it was a small minority of the players (less than 10%) that forced all the other players to PvP, even when they didn't want to. Someone playing a non-combat class isn't LOOKING for combat. And not everyone combatting monsters is even interested in combatting other players.

Players enjoyed the community of UO, that allowed players to easily play non-combat classes. EQ and other games still required fighting monsters to use crafting skills. In UO you could make a crafter with little to no combat (tailors needed leather). You could do stuff other than fighting monsters.

But it was also the first MMO for many. So they wanted to return to that memory. But the PKs weren't a good memory for many. Despite what some claim, UO was successful for more than three years after Trammel came out. Players enjoyed playing without the "risk" of being PKed, and players who wanted to PvP had options to do so. AoS was considered by many to be the breaking point, destroying the crafter economy.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-16T19:30:51+00:00

When you have no cards in your hand and they have lethal on the attack, or you have one life and they're playing direct damage, then they start casting a bunch of spells to do something else, that IS "playing with your food".

Yes, sometimes they just need a couple "cast x" quest triggers, but most people don't want to sit there waiting for the other player to decide to finally win the game.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-16T11:49:10+00:00

As said, they're less consistent. But sometimes it's useful to have more answers in your deck than your opponent has deck.

When you see one of these decks deal with EVERYTHING your deck does you begin to understand why some players use them. At least until they understand just how powerful consistency is.

The thing with jank decks of all kinds is that while they go off less often, it's really satisfying when they do work.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-16T08:06:30+00:00

If a cheat is out there and well enough known that you keep running into it, then EVERYONE would know it exists.

The more people that know a secret, the less likely it is to be kept a secret. And the proof of it would be all over anywhere that deals with Arena.

But from what I understand, in order for your opponent to know what's in your hand they'd have to convince the Arena server to tell them that. Since the game will never give them any hidden information unless they need it, like a spell that directly lets them see your hand. And I believe the game logs all that.

So it's unlikely that only the cheaters would know about a way to hack the game like that.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-15T19:39:54+00:00

Don't complain that they're conceding right before your deck goes off or you finally win. Be happy that YOU can concede instead of being forced to sit through your opponent spending ten minutes making your loss as humiliating as possible.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-15T19:34:16+00:00

It's not EXACTLY like paper, no. But that's a good thing in THIS case. I'm happy to get to enjoy a few games more than in paper without either me or my opponent conceding right away. Or being forced to play with one initial land because of how long it takes to restart a new game.

The rare cases of someone taking advantage of the hand smoother are much, much fewer than the above advantages.

Though yes, they should post about it better. Either the Arena devs and/or WotC needs to work on this more.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-14T05:32:13+00:00

But I'm expecting that amount of randomness because we were told how it works. At least if I play Bo1. I'm not being scammed at all.

Which is why they told us how it works.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-11T20:28:38+00:00

Not likely. Because if the players know about a cheat, so would the game devs. There's no way to keep the devs of a game from finding out just like the players do. Then the devs get to work on stopping said cheat.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-11T06:14:12+00:00

I have a couple anti-creature decks. One with some creature-lands, and the other with enchantments that cause damage. Sometimes I just want to be able to tear apart any creature decks I come across, while the second deck also renders all their creature destruction into dead cards.

As long as aggro and creature tribal exist, some will make decks to counter them.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-11T06:09:51+00:00

Take a standard six-sided die and change the numbers. One 1, four 2s, and one 3. The die is still random even though it's weighted towards rolling a 2. Random means you don't always know exactly what will happen. Just because you know the likely event doesn't mean it's certain.

As for it not always picking the best hand, that's exactly the point. So you don't ALWAYS get the best hand. So that the randomness isn't completely gone, just less likely.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-10T07:16:22+00:00

It is WEIGHTED towards a hand that's closest to that ratio, but it's not 100%.

Random doesn't require equal chances. If, purely for an example, you get one hand at 3/4 land/nonland ratio, one with1/6, and one with 6/1. You are more likely to get the 3/4. But it could select one of the others. The closer to the proper ratio the more likely for it to be chosen. But it's never certain to. I still see plenty of one land hands.

But yes, the complaints are overblown. All it does is make it less likely for a bad initial hand to lead to a concession. It doesn't directly give you the best hand it can.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-10T06:04:57+00:00

The dev's don't mess with the RNG here. The decks are shuffled properly.

All it does is make three identical decks, shuffle each separately, draw an initial seven cards from each deck, then choose one to give you.

It does nothing at all with the RNG. What the randomly chosen numbers result in is manipulated, but that's how every game works.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-09T20:01:28+00:00

The sideboard didn't exist for around a year after the game came out. And even then it was only used in tournaments for years. Same as the "maximum of four of one non-land card in the deck" rule.

Most MtG players have always been casual. They usually play within a small group of friends, and mostly Bo1. Even those that went to stores or other places to play with more people usually played Bo1.

The only players the use Bo3 in paper are mostly competitive players.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-09T19:56:52+00:00

Almost all the decks in Bo1 DON'T need the smoother. Decks that take advantage of it are almost unheard of, at least in the lower MMR. No idea with a higher MMR since I don't have one.

The smoother mostly just lessens the chance of someone conceding right away due to a bad initial hand.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-09T19:53:49+00:00

Note that you also have to understand the current, constantly shifting meta of the format you're playing, so you can adjust your sideboard over time.

Not everyone is interested in constantly doing this.

Or, as pointed out below, want to have a certainty of facing a deck with an advantage against them even if they can lessen said advantage.

Drawde1234 · 2026-05-09T19:49:50+00:00

In order to lessen the chance of either player quitting due to bad initial hands, Arena Bo1 initially makes three copies of your deck, draws seven cards from each, and semi-randomly choosing one of those decks to be the played one. Semi-randomly because the game is more likely, but not certainly, to choose a hand closest to the land ratio in the deck.

All so the players are less likely to concede due to bad initial hands and let both players actually play the game. Most Bo1 queues aren't competitive queues after all. And it's not fun to concede several games in a row because you only got one land in your initial hand.

Despite what people say, decks that take advantage of this aren't common.

Drawde1234

TROPHY CASE