As some professions recipes are gated behind the currencies related to the bartering system in Loam Niffen, I’ve been farming Bartering Bricks daily since the patch launched. Same with reputation.
I just hit renown level 12 tonight and unlocked the ‘Loam Bartering Bettered’ perk, which unlocks the Barter Boulders which are supposed to be ‘more effective for bartering’ per the tooltip.
The unintended consequence of that unlock is to make Barter Bricks mostly irrelevant and effectively revert some of the progress I had made farming. Boulders can be bought for 3 bricks, and Ponzo will now only accept boulders.
As a result of that system, the prices of the items I was targeting has got up significantly. In practice:
Ponzo’s Cream used to cost 25 bricks and is now 10 boulders (=30 bricks)
Glimmerogg Timeshare used to cost 80 bricks and is now 40 boulders (=120 bricks), which amounts to a 50% increase in prices!
Same goes for most of the other items Ponzo sells.
I really hope this uptick in prices is unintended because it may once again give players the impression their time playing is not being respected – an impression the development team has made all but disappear with Dragonflight so far.
Worse still, such a counterintuitive system may be extremely confusing for newer players and might discourage them in their efforts to acquire certain items.
I do hope prices are adjusted at some point down the line to account for the increase in renown level, which should in turn entail a sense of progression and not of regression.
I agree, feeling like gaining renown is punishing rather than rewarding.
My 82 bricks farm to buy the voucher that cost 80 became 28 boulder and the voucher now cost 40! So I was able to buy the item before renown 12 and now I can’t anymore.
This doesn’t feel right and there is no way back…
We should be able to spend either bricks or boulders if prices stay like that or prices should change in a way that we don’t lose currency…
Oh, what?! I’m on like 60 bricks, was thinking I’ll possibly get the 85 recipe this week as I previously bought the cheaper one, however I’m 1/4 ish towards renown12! Hope this is unintended
Just don’t turn in the quest to change from bricks to boulders, if it worries you. Getting renown 12 does not mean your bricks will automatically be swapped for boulders. You get asked to talk to Ponzo and hand in a quest. Just ignore it.
Keep in mind that if you reach reknown 12 before you turn in the weekly quest you get 5 boulders per quest.
So instead of 10 brick worth you get 30.
I was around 70 bricks when I reached reknown 12. I went ahead and delayed doing the weeklies until I got to 12, and with the weeklies and drops from offerings I managed to buy the 40 boulder voucher.
It could be more intuitive, yes, because if you do not watch out for this you set yourself back by a week.
I feel scammed at this moment. I don’t know who is responsible for this and who thought it would be funny when a player loses 1/3 of the currency he has been collecting for the last month because he talked to an npc at the wrong time. Something like this shows how much the game developer does not respect the time that the player puts into this game.
