Items can show up as rewards in your PHR once you got 50 of them, overall. Meaning there is a hidden item mastery that unlocks those items, even if there is no mastery associated with it.
Now to the part i want to talk about: The amount of items is determined by the amount of item you have CURRENTLY in your inventory. You get 20(40 with t130 perk) if there are 0 to 54 of those items currently in your inventory. You get a maximum of 90(180 wit t130 perk) if you got more than 245. And there is a linear progression in between.
If you know about this and want to use those PHR to the maximum you should always keep at least 245 of your important items. At the moment i am working at COI. Copper Spools are kinda the limiting factor there. You need lots and lots of them over the course of the quest chain. Now i cant just craft my batteries once i got enough for 1k and finish one quest. I have to always craft just enough to still have 245+ copper wires, 245+ copper spools and finish one quest only once i got 1245+ batteries....
There is so much friction and additional upkeep, that takes away from the main part of the game. Crafting and finishing quests. A part of the game is knowing what and how much to craft and that you dont take ressources away from other important items. But to play optimally you always have to keep this threshold in mind. Everytime while crafting. This kinda hidden information doesnt offer much challenge but just addinonal upkeep without really improving the gameplay loop. Newer players dont know this and dont get the "reward", endgame player have more than 245 of each item anyway. This system just punishes newer and mid level player that didn't find this library page by accident. While starting out i often wondered how those numbers were generated but didn't bother to ask in help chat. Just thought they were random. I guess i am not the only one.
My suggestion: Just give items based on the hidden mastery. Maybe with an multiplikator. e.g.: for the maximum of 80 you should have had 500 or 1k of those items over your life time. This makes it more intuitive and reasonable without additional friction. And people dont miss out without the knowledge of this hidden information.
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Another recent example. While doing starmap i opened several corn price bags. now i received 60 of them in a PHR because i opend so many that i went below those limits. now i just feel bad. i didnt know that hey could show up in phr. if i had know that, i would have kept 245 in my inventory. opening them earlier or later wouldnt have made a difference in my progress as i have to fish for them now anyway.
but getting 120 less of them overall makes a huge difference. and now i can wait till i have 245 again until i can/want to open them again. dont know when this will happen, as phr are compeletly random.
As i can't edit my posts: Except from later in PSA there is no other way of getting prize bags right now. while catching up on 245 bags through PHR i get serveral times less than the maximum. so i miss out on over 200 of those bags over a longer timespan. that feels even worse... . This is just one of those examples where i think that the current solution is not a good(player friendly) one.
Submitted on Jun 11th 2024 by Headput