Collections

There are several distinct item types to collect for extra rewards, including Bounty Writs, Heroic Collection items, and Puzzle boxes.

Puzzle Boxes
Collection is a unique skill that involves harvesting collectible items such as coins, medals, or wine bottles, which are sought after by NPC collectors.

Your Collection skill starts at 0 and can be improved with practice. You will come across puzzle boxes in a number of locations around the Depths. When you click on the box a check is made against your Collecting skill: if you succeed you will harvest a collectible item, or occasionally some other item of value such as a precious gem, and have a chance to improve your Collection skill. The higher the rank of the puzzle box, the the higher the skill required to collect items from it.

At a certain skill level, each rank of box becomes trivial and will no longer increase your skill:
 * Puzzle box type 1 requires a minimum skill of 0 and becomes trivial at 30
 * Puzzle box type 2 requires a minimum skill of 30 and becomes trivial at 60
 * Puzzle box type 3 requires a minimum skill of 60 and becomes trivial at 90

You can use the collectible items you find to complete quests for collectors who will commission your services in game.

Certain combinations of collectibles form sets: for example there is a set of 5 differently named Corroded Coins. When you complete a set you can redeem them with a collector.

You can complete collection quests by buying the items from other player characters or from stores, if available. You will gain the normal quest rewards but your Collection skill will not improve this way. Excess collectible items you harvest can be bartered or sold.

Heroic Collectible Items
Some monsters in The Depths have the title “Heroic” in front of their name. These creatures are tougher than normal creatures of that type. Generally they have increased hps (+25%), AC (+2) and ability scores (+2). At the higher levels they also have damage shields and can see invisible player characters. Their chance of dropping loot is trebled, with a chance of dropping an heroic collectible item.

Unlike the items found in puzzle boxes, there are no skill requirements associated with heroic collectible items, although the better grades of item are dropped by higher level heroic creatures. If an heroic creature possesses a collectible item, then (unlike the normal treasure generated off loot tables) it is also possible to pickpocket that item by using the conventional Sleight of Hand mechanic on the creature: theoretically all heroic collectible quests could be completed without combat, purely by Sleight of Hand.

Activating an heroic collectible item will automatically either create a quest, or add that collectible to a quest you already have open.

The list of heroic collections is kept in the quest journal which records the data as a short string of “Y” and “N” characters there are several different types.
 * A set of four differently colored heroic collectibles is recorded as a string of 4 characters in the order blue, red, green, yellow (for example, the string YYNY means that you have all the heroic collectibles in the set except the green one).
 * A set of three different types of heroic collectibles is recorded as a string of three characters in the order ring, medal, seal
 * A set of each type is also available and recorded in the order tarnished, polished and shining.

You can redeem your heroic collections with the Collector, although they will not accept repeat collections.

Any heroic collectibles you do not need can be bartered or sold.

See Heroic Items Collection Quests for a list of all in game quests.

Bounty Writs
Bounty Writs randomly drop from monsters: they can be activated to add a bounty quest to your journal which, once finished, can be redeemed with the Bounty Hunter. The monster type that drops the bounty correlates with its bounty target; tougher monsters will drop bounties for more challenging foes.