NPC – A change to ‘View Goods’
AS you may be aware I’m over on the development server hacking away at the New Player missions and also the way we ‘educate’ new players when they come to Core-Exiles. Its a Big game and it does not take much to get lost or distracted.
For the most part I cant roll these changes to live until we are ready for a whole sale change, but some of the smaller ‘Development Improvement’ changes I can roll over to Live. This update is one such change I can share.
Eleven Years ago we added the very first NPC’s and thought wouldn’t it be fun if we added a ‘random list of goodies’ that the NPC might have for sale as well. Back then we had about 30+ misc items and a loot table of 50 resources 
The code that was initially generated, and left running for those ‘View XYZ’s Goods’ has never been touched in all that time. Therefore it was pretty naff to say the least and really only helped those looking for a really small list of items.
These days…. The Misc table on live holds 2,188 items that players can own and store in their ‘Gigantor Holds’
So whilst I’ve been updating new player code I figured lets give this a real upgrade.
View an NPC’s Goods
First off the View Goods Button has been removed from those NPC’s that are Not Mission based. You will need to open up their trust by completing missions for them, some you will need to complete their entire mission chain, others less.
For many of the old timers here this will mean a vast majority of the Mission based NPC’s will now have ‘View Goods’ buttons which actually HAVE some interesting items.
I spent an afternoon and created a new list that the NPC’s could use to populate their Stock Rooms. This includes 779 items which I thought you might like to ‘keep an eye out for’. This list is fairly diverse, not just your usual ‘salvage’
12 Hour Population
Each NPC that deigns to display their goods to you will do so for 12 Hours. After that they will generate a new stock list. The lists of stocks are UNIQUE to you. No more shared stock lists where you get gazumped before you get a chance to review what they might have. The NPC’s may be a little cagey on how many items they have in stock, but you will have to purchase them to find out exactly how many.
So – it’s now very much worth ‘completing’ an NPC’s mission chain, if only to add him or her to your shopping list of NPC’s to visit for possible ‘surprise’ bargains.
Have fun with this change
Coops
P.S I have edited the Starter missions on Live that refer to ‘Purchasing EBK’s’ etc from the NPC’s store. These are no longer available. But will be readily handed out as mission rewards for the Gunny mission line etc. Plus we have plans to add starter Crafting missions to get them crafting their own fairly early on. Mean time between Gunny and the Emporium there will be no shortage for new players.
Before, I’d hardly bother looking at what npcs were selling, with this change though, I visit most each day to see what each has for me,every day. 😀
A really good change and this should help people do those hard npc missions in a reasonable time.
Although it would be kinda neet if the NPC goods reset at a fix time, or maybe within 20 hours or so.
This is a prime example of how CE keeps changing and growing.
For a long time, those NPCs were interesting if you wanted to to a few missions (or right at the start when you were doing the “tutorial mission chains” to get an introduction into the basics) but not even worth a footnote once you were done with a given NPC’s quest chain. Now it actually pays to revisit old haunts – that NPC you worked for last year just might have some items you could really use to craft some shiny new equipment.
Neat addition. Body needs to be edited to show new 24 hour Population instead of 12 hour population.