TOPIC: Fortune Lenses

There are very few usable lenses below UR:

• Lens of the Hawk +1 to hit with non-magical ranged weapons
• Goggles of Serpent Sight (immune to surprise - competes with Earcuff of the Wind of the same effect)
• Lenses of Alert +4 to AC vs. Ranged (A rare completion token)
• 7 or so more that grant conditional bonuses in situations that will probably never arise, and you have to remember anyway.

I think Lenses of Fortune are arguably best in slot for players with no URs - certainly I wouldn't trade them for any lense at rare or lower other than completion tokens lenses (and those won't matter after December 31st, 2016 when you can't make Ring of Heroism anymore).

I'd hang onto them until they are out of print and then start selling them on ebay.

I'll probably list one on an auction starting in a few weeks - you can tune in and see what they go for.

Matthew Hayward wrote: There are very few usable lenses below UR

Don't forget Goggles of Seeing. They were useful this year.

Matthew Hayward wrote: There are very few usable lenses below UR:

• Lens of the Hawk +1 to hit with non-magical ranged weapons
• Goggles of Serpent Sight (immune to surprise - competes with Earcuff of the Wind of the same effect)
• Lenses of Alert +4 to AC vs. Ranged (A rare completion token)
• 7 or so more that grant conditional bonuses in situations that will probably never arise, and you have to remember anyway.

I think Lenses of Fortune are arguably best in slot for players with no URs - certainly I wouldn't trade them for any lense at rare or lower other than completion tokens lenses (and those won't matter after December 31st, 2016 when you can't make Ring of Heroism anymore).

I'd hang onto them until they are out of print and then start selling them on ebay.

I'll probably list one on an auction starting in a few weeks - you can tune in and see what they go for.

I wouldn't be counting on these going up in value just because they are OoP; I expect there will be other new rare treasure enhancers which also do not stack. As such, unless the player specifically wants it in the eye slot, they will have a cheaper option available for the +1 treasure.

MasterED wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote: There are very few usable lenses below UR

Don't forget Goggles of Seeing. They were useful this year.

Where?

persolo wrote: That makes sense to me. I've got three extras that I'm trying to figure how to get rid of for GP. However, most people here on the forums will already have other better Treasure Enhancers (And I have Charm of Good Fortune and Ring of Riches), so I have them...but no way to get rid of them yet. Or even a decent idea of what a good GP asking price would be.

You probably can't get rid of them here - on the forums - for any decent GP; not unless you hang out until *just* before next year's GenCon when various new players come to the forums looking for their groups, and/or trying to gear up for their runs.

But if you take them with you to GenCon, and hang out in the Storyscape, I guarantee you can find new players who will buy them for just about any GP they have on them (which admittedly is relatively little). Many new/casual players don't use their gold for anything, so it just stacks up, until they find something they want.

I was selling Lenses of Fortune for 250gp in the Storyscape. Why? Because that's the highest GP token available at the rare level, and it was trading a "desirable rare for a desirable rare." I had several takers.

I also had a couple newbies offer to trade me ingredients for Lenses of Fortune. One of them outright stated, "I want to have another chance at drawing something good from the treasure box, instead of a monster part which does nothing."

Even when I suggested there were traders who are willing to buy or trade for Monster Trophies, they just shrugged it off, saying they've got better ways to spend their time at GenCon than haggling with merchants.

That perspective is so different from what we get on the forums - it's hard to believe that it's actually a very common perspective among the casual TD players.

Matthew Hayward wrote:

MasterED wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote: There are very few usable lenses below UR

Don't forget Goggles of Seeing. They were useful this year.

Where?

Grind. It was dark unless you could see in the dark, or someone was holding a torch near you.

I have the UR lenses for Rogue, but tend to wear these instead:

tokendb.com/token/lenses-of-accuracy/

Milambus (Jake) wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

MasterED wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote: There are very few usable lenses below UR

Don't forget Goggles of Seeing. They were useful this year.

Where?

Grind. It was dark unless you could see in the dark, or someone was holding a torch near you.

Yeah - everything is useful in grind.

jacob717 wrote: If you have a solid group of people buying 4 lenses is much cheaper than 1 amulet for the same amount treasure.

And you have discovered the great trick to power game for cheap!

You can often load yourself up with a ton of strong reds (rares) for the price of a single ultra-rare, and have a pretty solid build.

When $100 could upgrade your weapon by only +1, or upgrade your saving throw cloak by only +1, or it could fully load up your slots with reds... I think there's no comparison.

Ultra rares, relics, etc. are really cool, but by no means are they cost effective!

Garrison wrote:

jacob717 wrote: If you have a solid group of people buying 4 lenses is much cheaper than 1 amulet for the same amount treasure.

And you have discovered the great trick to power game for cheap!

You can often load yourself up with a ton of strong reds (rares) for the price of a single ultra-rare, and have a pretty solid build.

When $100 could upgrade your weapon by only +1, or upgrade your saving throw cloak by only +1, or it could fully load up your slots with reds... I think there's no comparison.

Ultra rares, relics, etc. are really cool, but by no means are they cost effective!

that is, until you are fully loaded with reds and the only upgrade you can make is to start getting URs.

Example: Say you decide to spend $100 on a good weapon

A UR +2 melee weapon is around $100, so that's your budget.
But, a +1 weapon plus Girdle of Ogre Strength plus Gauntlets of Ogre Strength = punch of a +3 weapon(!) for around $20(!!!). The bonus is, that UR might only be usable by a few classes. Get a couple of other rare weapons usable by other classes, and for maybe $30 or less you have +3 weapons all 12 classes. That leaves you a lot of money for other goodies.

Which is not to say URs aren't worth it. As others said, you want all your equipment slots filled with quality stuff, too, or it's not cost effective.

I kept 10 for the second set of characters I built for friends to run with while I am running, some of my friends are now running their own groups without me . The rest I mulched. We discussed before Gen Con. You sell/trade them to noobs for a couple bucks at Gen Con but I didn't feel it was worth our time.