rare count/players

Now, we ALL know that we do not have the player base size for all of these rares to be gone. So, what is the culprit? I believe it to be the fact that everyone has multiple characters in which all have rare equipment.

There still is in excess of useless rares in. What I mean by useless, are the rares that are always there but are NEVER sought after or attained.

What could we do to alleviate these problems?

We could work the lesser rares to where they would be useful in more everyday activities. They do not need to be great, or superior items, but something that could half way decently fill a slot if the higher tier rare is not in.

I've also thought for a long time that there should be a LIMIT to how many characters can be on a single IP address.

Idk.  I easily gear and regear 1 caster anf 1 melee character.

They would be considered decked too.  

There are a lot of alternative pieces nowadays.

Although I see where you're coming from in the respect of rares, I feel it's harder to pinpoint where it's at exactly. A few questions always comes to mind when I don't see any in quite a while.

"If someone is bountied and the items go into a bag for both the bountier and the collector of the bounty, is there an actual rare check/purge for items in those bags?"

"If the items are in the bag and aren't checked for the purge, how would they ever go back into circulation?"

"How are some characters purged, but few manage to slip through the cracks and not get purged?"

Obviously the first two questions I merely ponder if that's why rares seem to be out of circulation for a while. The last question I've actually come across a few times in the past where I'd log on to a character for 30 hours one month, but then stop playing them for 2+ months and find that they were never purged at all and I didn't know how. Having multiple characters probably doesn't help much, but usually in my case I'll have 3 to keep me occupied for varying reasons. Training character with very few to no rares so I can do homework while also relaxing to looking at the words flash across my screen in the background. Another usually is my main and they're decently equipped, but not decked. The last one is usually my discovery class so they're capable of identifying things I haven't seen before and I'm more apt to push the boundaries to see what I can kill with those classes.

There are some rares I haven't seen in months, but the other item that's decent they have once a week or twice a month. Sabatons? +4 hitroll, -2damroll, and refresh spell added bonus? I haven't seen it in in probably 3 months now. I make sure to check daily physically when I can, and when I can locate items, I still can't find the damned things on any player character at all. The Club though seems to be in twice a month at least, and I consider it garbage in most settings. Sure it can poison, but I'd rather just get the poison barbed gauntlets because of the saves and at -1 hitroll it's not a complete disaster making it hard for you to wreck your opponent. If you can solo most of the end game areas though you can usually find the really good items in. If you're like me though who gets bent over and taken easily because of the classes you play, it requires groups and often times we don't have those during the times I will be playing. I feel that the area we seem to lack the most in are 15-45 or so. The items in the Blissful Falls I feel are far too good for most people even at 50. Knock as a spell for classes who can't pick locks and the doors can't be passed? As long as I don't need the rare spot, I keep those things. Gurumba has one for sale and it's 750,000 gold which goes to show how useful it really is. Faerie Fog and +enhanced damage? To a lesser degree it's useful, but still good to have even at 50. Stone skin? That's amazing, no more consumables and pretty good armor rating is more than worthwhile to keep this well into being level 50.

The nonrare equivalents aren't bad per se, but I wouldn't want them either in some situations. A lot of EQ could be buffed up or removed entirely from the game if need be because most people wouldn't ever choose to use it even in 1.0. The question is, where do we start, and would there be a point in doing so? A lot will have to deal with who knows what EQ the best too. @Kyzarius may find it easy to dress both because he knows exactly what to get and does well in PK so he can get the items from people who wear them. In my case, I don't have locate object most of the time anymore so I don't know what is in without physically checking and I don't want to spend 40RP points on the spell even if it means I wont know for sure about the items being in or not. At 50 I feel it's slightly easier to find rares, but the Blissful Falls ones seem to always be out. Though I think the gauntlets within are probably the best in the game since it's not rare, you can get it up to +3 hitroll and +1damroll and if I recall correctly it's better armor rating than the rare equivalent. It has forced me to look for more alternative items, but I've also not been able to find some of the other items I used to find in abundance. I have had to rely mainly on Merchants because of it which isn't bad, but it would be nice to see an increase in those rares sometimes.

The bounty bags auto empty out fyi.

After how long though? I've come across bounty bags with items of crap rares inside them that had been sitting there for quite a while (I located it three times over the course of about an hour or two). If they empty on a timer though, wouldn't not playing that character again forgo the timer entirely?

It's not the overall rare amounts or multiple characters, it's that everyone is playing melee classes whom all want or need the exact same 6-8 pieces of eq to become competitive. 

To know if what your saying is a problem you want to see if anyone is actually wearing what your looking for, not that it's just never on the mob. Rings of accuracy for example I've only ever found on the baron once in my entire mud career BUT I keep seeing them on players so I know they are always around. Helm of spellturning is never in and I've only seen it on one persons head in the last entire year.

PK for your items and don't rely on them being on mobs, if everybody is your friend then you have too many friends  for a pbase this size.

I've seen the Helm of Spell Turning 15 different times in the last year. About 7 of those times it was on Valcor, 6 of those I couldn't even capitalize on it because he beat my ass too badly each time I tried, and the last time someone beat me to it. The sandals granting flight I have seen a good 8 times, but each time I managed to get through to him, he turned out to be quite the beast and destroyed me in my attempts to gain them. The one time I did get to them though, I was sadly put off by how little it does outside of flight. Because of the Hollowed Fingerbone, the Ring of Accuracy has lost much of its luster really. They both offer the same hitroll, the only difference is Accuracy I think gives +10 HP. The fingerbone is far easier to gain though which means I've seen it and owned it far less than the Ring of Accuracy.

I don't think it's because we have people playing a lot of melee characters, more so that because the people who play specific Melee characters already have those items and when they're also a qrace/class it makes it more difficult to bring them down due to the skills they have are amplified by such. The obvious thing to say is to kill them and take their EQ, but actually doing so is a lot harder since you're facing someone who is already decked making you hit like a 3 year old with a dick the size of a tic tac is far harder to actually accomplish. There are items out there though that are almost as good as the rare counterparts or better. For instance a diamond wristguard is +3 hitroll and it had better armor rating than a Titanium Bracer. The downside is it's rotdeath making it not very undesireable to say the cuffed bracer which is +3 hitroll and significantly lower armor rating than other bracers.