Thread: Armor/Weapons from vendors are at "Red" levels much higher than what I can craft?

I have a question about something that I have never noticed before. I am wondering if this is some type of change that I was not aware of.

I was in Bree today and just to see what type of weapons and armor were available at the vendors after I gained a couple of levels I stopped in and took a look. I was very surprised!

For example:

- Leather Gloves RED until level 29? With stats of 73 armor....
I can craft Leather Gloves for level 14 with stats of 86 armor +5 VIT

- Leather Shoes RED until level 29? With stats of 52 armor....
I can craft Leather Shoes for level 14 with stats of 68 armor +5 MIGHT

Is this supposed to be this way??

Why are the level requirements so high for purchased equipment? I went in to buy a new sword or other weapon and the level requirements for anything were unreasonable. I am not a weaponsmith so for me this is a problem because most of the loot drops and quest rewards are not much better sometimes.

Is this supposed to be this way?

As far as I know the vendor-items are the lowest in the food chain. The questdrops should already be way better and for even better weapons take a look at the auction house or ask around in the chat if a weaponsmith would make a weapon for you (for cold hard cash of course, but maybe a more reasonable price than sometimes in the auction house).

or ask in your kinship if a weaponsmith could make you a new weapon. Even easier and faster as in many kinships the members will produce items for the other members free of charge or for costs of the materials.

The vendors are each set up to sell a certain level range depending on their location. You were apparently looking at a vendor in the mid to high 20's range. Regardless, as stated above, the vendor items have the lowest and worse stats in the game and unless you are really desperate (although I couldn't for the life of me come up with a viable reason), they should NEVER be bought for actual use except maybe as a cosmetic if something catches your eye. Some dropped items and quest rewards are usable until you have the time or coin to replace them, but the AH or crafted items (by your own characters or someone else) will give you your best gear, at least until you get into raids.

It's simply a "tradition" in these sorts of games that NPC vendors sell vendor trash. In LOTRO there are a few exceptions: some sell items needed for crafting, some sell debuff reducing potions, some sell things like travel rations; but by and large what NPCs sell is trash. As Adder pointed out above, sometimes the armour can be used for cosmetic purposes, but that's pretty much the only real use.

It's meant to be a stab at realism. All the vendors exist to provide signs of life in the towns and to buy your trash. It would presumably be less realistic if the towns and wilderness camps etc. were instead full of rag and bone men who only bought your junk and didn't offer to sell anything.

In Turbine's first game, Asheron's Call, items that you sold to a vendor would go into that vendor's inventory for a period and could be purchased by other players at cheap vendor prices. This could sometimes lead to pretty nice deals if a higher level player had sold items your newbie could actually use. I suppose this went away when so much of what we get and sell became bound.

Originally Posted by Avarune

It's simply a "tradition" in these sorts of games that NPC vendors sell vendor trash. In LOTRO there are a few exceptions: some sell items needed for crafting, some sell debuff reducing potions, some sell things like travel rations; but by and large what NPCs sell is trash. As Adder pointed out above, sometimes the armour can be used for cosmetic purposes, but that's pretty much the only real use.

It's meant to be a stab at realism. All the vendors exist to provide signs of life in the towns and to buy your trash. It would presumably be less realistic if the towns and wilderness camps etc. were instead full of rag and bone men who only bought your junk and didn't offer to sell anything.

In Turbine's first game, Asheron's Call, items that you sold to a vendor would go into that vendor's inventory for a period and could be purchased by other players at cheap vendor prices. This could sometimes lead to pretty nice deals if a higher level player had sold items your newbie could actually use. I suppose this went away when so much of what we get and sell became bound.

Yup. I remember that. EQ was the same as were many of the older MMOs. In EQ, there were certain vendors who, due to their convenient location, would have a lot of traffic. If you checked them periodically you could find some REALLY nice items at great prices. They would reset once every 24 hours and the cycle would start again. I really miss that aspect of the vendors. They were much more a part of the game. Even some of their names would become well known because of the aforementioned convenient locations and high probability to have something good available.

I have only once bought a vendor item it was a shield for my very lowbie Gaurd when I had zero luck getting a drop or one from a quest reward. It was actually an upgrade. Everything else I have ever looked at though was useless.

Originally Posted by Avarune

In Turbine's first game, Asheron's Call, items that you sold to a vendor would go into that vendor's inventory for a period and could be purchased by other players at cheap vendor prices. This could sometimes lead to pretty nice deals if a higher level player had sold items your newbie could actually use. I suppose this went away when so much of what we get and sell became bound.

Turbine also have this in DDO currently, just not in LotRO for some reason.

Originally Posted by Avarune

In Turbine's first game, Asheron's Call, items that you sold to a vendor would go into that vendor's inventory for a period and could be purchased by other players at cheap vendor prices. This could sometimes lead to pretty nice deals if a higher level player had sold items your newbie could actually use. I suppose this went away when so much of what we get and sell became bound.

IMHO - It went away to improve game play and server performance. The game had to maintain these items until they decayed. The more extra items a vendor had the shorter the survival time for all items. Decay is a total clear.

In this game, there is not a lot of stuff you can sell. The game includes a Auction Hall for selling - something Asheron's Call never had. The best you could do was run a store bot plugin - leave your character logged in tying up your PC - hope you did not get disconnected from the game.

I believe this is a relic from times when money was harder to get and repairs more expensive. These items allowed you to have at least some equipment at a chap price when your normal gear was done for and you did not have enough money for repairs.

But even then certainly only a very rare help.

Thanks to all of you who posted back.

I see now that the Vendors don't have anything useful to sell really. I was very surprised at this but now I realise it is best to rely on the help of my Kin to trade and barter.

I haven't tried the Auction House yet because the prices there seem rather expensive. Of course I don't have all that much money right now so perhaps when I start to get some real wealth my viewpoint will change.

Thanks for the good advice.

Also notice that Turbine has made a design choice for the vendors to obsolete themselves across your play time. As far as I can tell there's been no new vendor armor/weapons added since the game launched. This means you only get served up to the original level cap, and afterwards you find no such vendors anywhere; nowhere in Moria or further will you find vendors peddling you trash-level equipment. I can't even remember if new zones leading to it had such any vendors present (Eregion, Forochel). If they did, they probably copypaste existing vendor wares from approproate level ranges.

And the reason why they're the worst is because they're the easiest items get. Just plonk down some copper and it's yours. All other means require more effort and will so serve you better.

The items are garbage (I had said something else but was edited, even though what I said was not swearing ????), but you might want to buy them to apply as cosmetics. I figure part of the reason for level requirements is to add incentive for levelling before you can get exactly the look you want (unless you unlock your wardrobe which is $$ for Turbine.

Originally Posted by Yula_the_Mighty

The best you could do was run a store bot plugin - leave your character logged in tying up your PC - hope you did not get disconnected from the game.

Wow, I remember doing this in Ragnarok Online. Server peak time was overnight for me, so I'd have to leave the PC running overnight with my shop open and just hope, in the morning, if I got a disconnect, it happened after something or other had sold. It could take weeks to sell something, as the only system was sitting vendors with a bubble over their heads, with no search function.

Oh, on the OP: yep, vendor trash is guff. This is because a) some people refuse to craft, so they need an option to not be naked, and b) in case someone 'accidentally' deletes all their gear and needs not to be naked, and c) brand new characters who haven't got their crafting up yet and don't know anyone who can make them some gear, and can't afford it off the AH.

However, quest rewards have been overhauled so they include yellow and purple armour now. Back on my first char, I got some jewellery rewards in Combe but my first two or three armour sets had to come from the trash vendors.

The really low damage throwing knives from Archet are fantastic for hitting the ranger in the Rift skirmish to start the green/blue CJ on him. His morale doesn't scale at all so at 75 he's very easy to one shot.

In the early days the AH, before the days of massive inflation that LI's brought, gear for levelling toons was kind of a primary way to make money. Now end-game stuff and crafting mats are the money makers. However, I do notice that lower level gear still gets posted, though with less frequency, and when it does it should be affordable because of the typical focus on end-game and crafting.