I suggest Stardock add 19+ items to the loot pack, including some unit design items, and rework Blood God armor.

  This is exactly what I've been saying in regards to my problems with the loot pack. 

Gag items or not, this is the first DLC I haven't purchased, simply because it doesn't match up to the scope and quality of the past 2 DLC's.  This one is just too bare bones.  But if StevenAus's suggestion was put into action, I would've purchased this DLC in a heartbeat.

Yes, it seemed to me from reading the forums that at least 50 useful/non-gag items (including some unit design items for various techs) and some optional gag items would fit the bill.  Of course, this would involve reworking the Blood God items so they are actually worth using, not selling.  If they still want health to be lost, then the damage done needs to be higher, I think say 5 times.  Basically, if you put any negative modifiers on items (apart from the standard initiative loss for heavier armor) you have to make the item have significantly more powerful positive modifiers so that people will still use the item despite the negative modifiers.

I already bought it, but the main reason was I to support the game, not because I thought 31 items, and 2 bad gag items, were worth it. The addition of 19 more items would bring it up to something worth buying on its own merits alone. 

Btw Victor5: I know you didn't mean to say "look" pack, but it is kinda appropriate "look, but don't touch... yet".

Agreed. While I appreciate the free games, if you're looking for me to continue buying DLC's, you'll have to provide a little more than 31 real items and two gag items. 

50 items for 5 bux does just feel.. right

@StevenAus

Aren't your concerns about the blood god armor and damage to the wearer obsoloete once you get this:

"Blood God Helmet- Negates all damage to the wearer from Blood God armor."

So once you get that you can equip whatever piece of blood god armor you may find

I have another thought about the loot pack (and DLCs in general)

In addition to more content...

First and foremost, a DLC that people pay for shouldn't never contain detrimental items (e.g. cursed items)

Second, a DLC should "reward" people who chose to buy it with a significant in-game advantage over those who didn't buy it.

IMO, this DLC didn't achieve that.

My additonal 2 cents... Now I'm up to 4 cents.

i agree with op +1.

Yes I can only add that I would really like an overhaul for the "Blood God Armor". It just feels bad compared to items like the "Spectral" sets and the "Sun Fire Gloves".

Also more items which are unlockable by techs not just randomly drop in the world would make this DLC worthwhile at that instant.

Item that are more early game oriented and worse than other ones in the same category should also be considered, especially bows and crossbows, because at this moment those categories are underwhelming. Well the bows not so much, but the crossbows most definately are.

I so much want to play the "finished" product, since the core works now, but I do believe the game doesn't have a "critical mass" of content right now. Especially spells. You want to play a mage, and you end up with literally a handful of spells that you have to cast over and over.

CONTENT. Cheap, expensive.. doesn't really matter, but MORE is needed. I'm also looking forward to the 1.4 and 1.5 updates. 

I agree that I want more future DLCs.

And come on guys, $5 is not much as it goes to a good game company. Compare that sum to other "not very necessary" purchases or expenditures you have had lately!?

I gave $74 to a thief the other day.   And spend about $30 on a replacement mouse and keyboard when my old ones died.

The cursed item's aren't "detrimental", you don't have to use them.  They are intended to provide more variety to the game and a wider range of options

And we may differ on the second point.  DLC (in my opinion) isn't intended to give buyers an advantage over those that didn't buy it (I'm not even really sure what that means in a single player game).  It's just supposed to be more fun.  The items are intended to be balanced.

As for maintaining the gritty realism of Elemental... well Elemental has always been more tongue and cheek for me, full of Monty Python references, funny descriptions and notes and weird objects.  I actually had the same issues with Fall from Heaven which has a much darker tone and still had Monty Python references throughout.  Some folks take their gaming very seriously, some like it a little more lighthearted.  Neither way is wrong or right.

But we can certainly support both.

For the bunny slippers.  I am going to change it so that they don't randomly drop.  That way the only units that will have it will be the sovereigns your create.  As for the Lollipop, its very rare, more rare than the pony.  So if you do happen across an AI with it, you will be one of the few.

Derek,

I do not think there using anything wrong with the loot pack.  It adds items to the game and yes it does add humor but that should not be an issue - if someone does not like those items they should not use them.  As you mention there is already humor in the game.

It's your call, but in my opinion the loot pack is good and does not need changes.

Thanks for listening.

Derek, Thank you for explaining your point of view. Unfortunately you have not addressed the "not enough content" in the loot pack critique that many (me included) have expressed. What is your take on that?

As for the cursed items: the only redeeming quality of the blood items is the artifact that negates the large negatives. Without it, the blood items are just useless, and indeed will be detrimental to the player because they may be spawned instead of more useful artefacts.
Note that If there was a large enough number of items, I wouldn't really mind this as much.

I don't think there is a magic number that makes it worthwhile, be that 20, 33 or 50.  I could quote other things that cost $5 and the relative time that is needed by designers, producers, artists, QA, marketing, etc to put a DLC out.  There is DLC that adds a single new weapon to a game, there is DLC that adds much more.  But at the end of the day value is a personal decision, all that really matter is if it is worth it to you or not.

I can say that the conversion rate is 34% and its outselling all the other DLC we've made for LH.  So from a general public and sales perspective the value seems right on.  But, as I mentioned its a personal call, I don't begrudge anyone their own opinion.

Hi Derek, thanks for your reply. What I meant by an advantage is something that provides a benefit to the player that the vanilla game doesn't contain. For example in Tropico 4, they sold a "junta" DLC that came with a building that allowed you to produce more soldiers than the military structures available in the base game.

For the loot DLC, maybe a few more OP items would be a good equivalent.

As for the cursed items, IMO, if people don't use them, then they don't really provide variety or more options. They just end up being equipment that gets sold right away.

I don't mind the pop culture references, or the bunny slippers. Although since 95% of your customers are male, you should have at least made them blue instead of pink. 

I agree with OP in that it would be nice to have more items.

But I also agree with many others that I bought the loot pack (and the other DLC) primarily because I could afford to and wanted to support Stardock. Particularly as I got the last two games for free - I think WoM deserved giving us FE for free but giving LH as well was a bonus.

If I was buying purely on value I would have definitely bought the Quest pack (because I really felt the game needed more quests to play well, still does actually ), probably the map pack too (some interesting things in there including the big map) but would have had to think about the loot pack mainly because it seemed quite a small amount of content for the money.

Yeah, that's fair.  I see what you mean.

@Derek

Perhaps you could hold a once a month contest where we can submit our own ideas for real and gag items.

Each month 2 items (1 gag and 1 real) would be chosen and added to the item DLC.

In this way you would be out sourcing most of the work and we would get to take part in the process by submitting our own ideas or voting on items created by other people.

You could also use the same idea for the other DLC packs as well. 

I think that's a great idea.

askjosh has a fun, engaging, solution right there!  Certain to keep folks coming back for more!

Who has ever heard of blue bunny slippers? That's one ridiculous exception to make especially when using gender as a reason.. they're always pink when used as a gag, and especially when targeting a male audience because of the humorous reversal

In my opinion the amount of complaints over these gag items is also ridiculous, like Derek says there's plenty of similar stuff in the game already.

I'm not happy with the item pack, I don't think 33 items is really worth my interest or $5 so I haven't purchased it yet, but complaining that two are not absolutely serious is kinda petty

Cursed items are weird though.. this game isn't like Baldur's Gate were you can find 'unidentified' items and equip them to get a nasty cursed surprise, here you can read the stats as soon as you get stuff right? What's the point of having any cursed items when you can determine risk/reward as easily as taking a look?

In conclusion, +1. more loot plz

Interesting point you have there Necaradan

I remember in the game Arcanum you could also equip "cursed" unidentified items and recieve only a partial of their power maybe even with a negative like -10 hitpoints. It would be an interesting concept having items in this game that would have to be identified to recieve full power. One could easily recreate this using Quests (and maybe Parrotmaths Questmaker for the modders) when you would recieve the item possibly as reward from a quest battle you would get a worse item than the original one and start a quest where you would have to seek out a "seer", "oracle" or "enchantress". Visiting those woul for maybe 100 gold or something unveil the items real values (in fact removing the worse item from your inventory and adding a new one much like in the quest for the "assassins blade".

Really cool idea!

this idea sounds really really good. It provides an easy way to add value to DLCs even years after their release and certainly rewards good community work.

The only really problem that comes with it is updating the DLC and sourcing 2 items into the game for which one would need pictures and a few lines of code that would hold the items stats and ability to randomly drop in the game or even be a sovereign equipable item from the start.

I want to support these two ideas!