106-110 Bonuses (for those that missed it the first time)

There have been many posts asking what the 106+ boons were. This latest one came from Leah, asking what specific bonuses they are. GM Siyone responded to her thread with the original announcement, making it at least worthwhile to take note of.

GM Siyone posted in Devs question-extra 105 and above skills:

This is the original announcement:

quote:
The upcoming Sands of Creation expansion will allow players to advance to level 110. From level 106 through 110, players will be able to pick character specialization skills to further customize their characters. The following is the tentative list of skill choices.

Level 106
A) Health of the Ogre (Increases Max Base Hit Points)
B) Stamina of the Bull (Increases Max Base Stamina Pool)
C) Capacity of a Packmule (Increases Max Base Carrying Capacity)

Level 107
A) Speed of the Viper (Increases Base Attack Speed)
B) Wizard's Haste (Reduces Spell Cast Time)
C) Crafter's Precision (Lowers Crafting Failure Rate)

Level 108
A) Giant's Hammer (Increases Melee/Ranged Damage)
B) Mana of the Arch Wizard (Spell Stamina Cost Reduced)
C) Resistance of the Diseased Snake (Increases Resistance to Disease and Poison)

Level 109
A) Magic Shield (Increased Resistance to Spells)
B) ManaStorm (Increases Spell Damage)
C) Arch Crafter's Precision (Lowers Crafting Failure Rate, stacks with level 107C)

Level 110
A) Health of the Dragon (Increases Max Base Hit Points, stacks with level 106A)
B) Criminal's Folly (Increases Alignment Gain Recovery)
C) BackPack of the Packmule (Increases Backpack Size to 32 Slots)

Characters will not receive orb (stat) increases past level 105.

With this in mind, you have to look at the bonuses as a whole, not just on a per-level basis. If you take Health of the Ogre and Health of the Dragon together, then you're going to get a pretty substantial boost to your max base hit points overall--something bigger than what someone who didn't take those bonuses will have. However, you're not going to get the big bonus at the lower level. If you did, what would be the point of obtaining the bonus at the higher level?

The same goes with stacking Crafter's Precision with Arch Crafter's Precision. Combined, your fail rate will* be noticeably lesser than those with just one or neither bonus. But you can't expect getting a 0% fail rate for just taking the bonus at 107. Even so, if you were to stack them both, you might have a small, minute chance of failing. But it would be so small that others would have failed a few times where you didn't.

Realize that these things can be tweaked and have been since they were introduced. That's why specific timings, bonuses, percentages, and intervals aren't provided. While achieving these bonuses is definitely an achievement unto itself, things like game balance and challenge do have to come into play. Your feedback helps to determine whether or not the devs feel that these bonuses are where they want them to be. So please keep that coming. However, they do reserve the right to disagree. After all, it is their game.

Remember, you don't have to use your level bonus right away. Take some time to think about it. If you have problems with your bonus, or you want to leave feedback, by all means post here or file a bug report.

That last bit was in response to Leah, asking why the bonuses blow. I think I have to agree with Tempester's response, though. The crafting bonuses were made before the changes to crafting came in--changes that made failure near impossible. Maybe the DEVs will look into changing the crafter bonuses. But in reality, I doubt many people who would take advantage of those bonuses have hit 106 yet, much less 107.

So what do you think the DEVs should replace those crafter bonuses with anyway?