Patch 1.3 looks beyond awesome.  However, in my little corner of the universe, I’m freaking out…

Augment Kits

Presuming everyone already has augmented weapon(s), chest, head, and legs, we will still need to augment 10 more pieces: boots, gloves, bracers, belt, earpiece, implants x 2, relics x 2, and off-hand.

Each augment kit takes 10 reverse engineered doodads, each of which comes from a crafted item.  That means each person will need 100 items crafted for those kits.  100. Items. Granted, you can get SOME of the mats back through reverse engineering, but still, 100 items that take level 6 materials.  When each mission to get level 6 mats takes 30 minutes, and then each minion comes back with 4 units (give or take), the flow of materials is severely limited.

But wait!  You’ll have to fill those new augment slots with augments (duh).  Each augment takes 4 purple augment parts from slicing missions.  That means each person will need 40 purple augment parts.  Holy geez, do you know how long it takes to accumulate those damn things?  I have all my companions at 10k affection, and T7 has a 2% crit bonus, and I probably have 80 of them.  Which would just about cover myself and 1 other guildie.  That’s not a lot of people coverage for months of gathering.

Needless to say, I’m looking at how the fuck we are going to augment all the things in a reasonable amount of time, and I’m seriously panicking.  I comfort myself with the thought that people will not want to augment a non-orange item unless it’s close to best in slot, so all 10 augment kits might not be needed right away.

New Recipes

New orange recipes for boots, bracers, gloves, and belts – woot.  However, how many will there be, exactly?  I’ve just finished gathering all the recipes for armormech and synthweaving.  Right now with chest, hat, and pants there are about 120 synthweaving and 90 armormech recipes that I have (give or take).  I’m only missing 4 (armormech hats).

Now, suppose they add recipes for belt, bracers, gloves, and boots to each existing orange set.  That would mean 160 new synthweaving recipes and 120 new armormech recipes.  After gathering the aforementioned existing recipes, the thought of collecting an even larger number of recipes makes me want to hide under my desk.  For the last few months, I’ve been checking the auction houses religiously to make sure to complete my sets.  I’m nearing the end of that journey just to be tossed back onto the trading treadmill.  Fail.  At least they’re combining the auction houses so I don’t have to check in multiple places.

We will have to see what they add… and I dearly hope they increase the underworld trading drop rate because, holy hell!

And that’s what’s making me run for cover.  Your thoughts on Patch 1.3?