[SP] Suggested changes to the shard?
sme...@icubed.com
from all npcs, not just escorts. Shard wipe likely? What the heck,
test shard right now, so lets get a discussion going about problems and
solutions we see on Siege Perilous.
1) Dundee's right, escorting is bad. While there is now a one escort
per person at a time rule, that's not enough. I get an average of 300gp
per escort. That is, one escort is worth more than any monster a single
established character can stand toe to toe against, with the sole
exception of an air elemental.
Possible fixes: Flat out remove escorting? Personally, I like the
concept, would rather not see it go.... How about reducing the pay? I
think around 100gp or 150gp as a maximum per escort would work, so
there's actually some minor profit to be had here with gating, but not
so much that it'd be better than hunting for warrior types.
2) Poison. The spell. That third circle spell, requiring no more than
30 magery to cast consistently, hits at the level of a greater poison if
not at least partially resisted. This is very bad. An assassin needs
considerably more skill, and will have to stand toe-to-toe with the
target for as long as it takes to poison it. I soloed a gargoyle and a
water elemental with the poison spell. Cast a couple times, leave, come
back and finish. A warrior at 30ish level skills would require many
bandages to kill a gargoyle. An archer at 30ish level skills would
require many arrows/bolts. A good deal of work, time, and resources
spent as well. The mage, does so with ease.
Consider this. With poison, and fireballs to finish, a mage can kill
anything. One mage in skara brae, after purchasing a greater heal
scroll off me, asked if I'd be interested in going to destard and kill
some drakes.
Then there's third level shame. Poison elementals carry a good number
of nightshade. Fire elementals for ash, water elementals for pearl.
All the reagents necessary for poison and fireball. A newbie mage
killing fire, water, and *poison* elementals. Too much cash too
quickly? I would not be surprised if somebody was doing this on SP
right now.
Possible fixes: Reduce the poison level. Reduce the duration for a
spell based poison to wear off. Hell, just disable the damn spell.
My 3 gold pieces. Who's next on the soapbox?
-Smedley, Daemon Summoner (I wish!)
Bob Roland
I agree with both your ideas. Here are a couple of mine.
Reduce monster loot. Cut it in half. I like the way it is now where
hides and ingots are the currency of the day. Let's keep that gold out
of circulation.
Double the rate of decay for items, and reduce the number of hitpoints
an item have in half. A person should replace their sword a few times a
week. Same for bows and armour.
Slow the rate of skill gain.
I mentioned this before, but have NPC vendors buy SOME things. A very
limited amount. Just enough to cover raw materials. It'll keep the
economy flowing.
Great Bob
Richard Cortese
> Rumor has it that at least one exploit exists concerning gaining gold
> from all npcs, not just escorts. Shard wipe likely? What the heck,
> test shard right now, so lets get a discussion going about problems and
> solutions we see on Siege Perilous.
>
> 1) Dundee's right, escorting is bad. While there is now a one escort
> per person at a time rule, that's not enough. I get an average of 300gp
> per escort. That is, one escort is worth more than any monster a single
> established character can stand toe to toe against, with the sole
> exception of an air elemental.
>
> Possible fixes: Flat out remove escorting? Personally, I like the
> concept, would rather not see it go.... How about reducing the pay? I
> think around 100gp or 150gp as a maximum per escort would work, so
> there's actually some minor profit to be had here with gating, but not
> so much that it'd be better than hunting for warrior types.
>
>
> 2) Poison. The spell. That third circle spell, requiring no more than
> 30 magery to cast consistently, hits at the level of a greater poison if
> not at least partially resisted. This is very bad. An assassin needs
> considerably more skill, and will have to stand toe-to-toe with the
> target for as long as it takes to poison it. I soloed a gargoyle and a
> water elemental with the poison spell. Cast a couple times, leave, come
> back and finish. A warrior at 30ish level skills would require many
> bandages to kill a gargoyle. An archer at 30ish level skills would
> require many arrows/bolts. A good deal of work, time, and resources
> spent as well. The mage, does so with ease.
I don't see why everyone is supprised. I have consistantly posted that
poison is the answer to just about every question.
I even posted about killing a dragon on level 4 of Covetous with 2 poison
spells.
If people chose to ignore it, it was their loss. That was my standard dragon
taming method, cast 2 poison spells and the dragon was down to a sliver of
life, then tame it. While poison was working on SP, it gave everyone a leg
up.
Seems like in t2a where a lot of good loot is, poison lasts maybe 15
seconds.
>
> Consider this. With poison, and fireballs to finish, a mage can kill
> anything. One mage in skara brae, after purchasing a greater heal
> scroll off me, asked if I'd be interested in going to destard and kill
> some drakes.
Killed a Orphidian Avenger tonight, got lucky and a single blade spirit took
him out.
I won't use poison much anymore and here is why: Rate is too low, better off
blowing 200 on reagents to make 50 gold net every 5 minutes, then casting 2
poison spells that take 30 minutes to work and net 232.
If poison is still working in the old lands, there are 2-3 areas where it
will still be cost efficient. The corpser rooms mostly. You can juggle 6-7
corpsers at once, get 34 gold, some wood, and a few reagents.
>
> Then there's third level shame. Poison elementals carry a good number
> of nightshade. Fire elementals for ash, water elementals for pearl.
> All the reagents necessary for poison and fireball. A newbie mage
> killing fire, water, and *poison* elementals. Too much cash too
> quickly? I would not be surprised if somebody was doing this on SP
> right now.
Problem is getting out alive. AFAIK, no one has made it to the end of
Covetous 2 yet. Even if you can get to the fat lewt level 3, you still have
that run through level 2 before you can bank it.
>
> Possible fixes: Reduce the poison level. Reduce the duration for a
> spell based poison to wear off. Hell, just disable the damn spell.
Been really nerfed, now does maybe 10 points of damage before it wears off.
Lars Friedrich
> Possible fixes: Flat out remove escorting? Personally, I like the
> concept, would rather not see it go.... How about reducing the pay? I
> think around 100gp or 150gp as a maximum per escort would work, so
> there's actually some minor profit to be had here with gating, but not
> so much that it'd be better than hunting for warrior types.
c) The ability to identify the quality of a crafted weapon/armour with arms
lore..
No idea why we don't get this..
bebblebrox
*snip good ideas*
>
> I mentioned this before, but have NPC vendors buy SOME things. A very
> limited amount. Just enough to cover raw materials. It'll keep the
> economy flowing.
>
> Great Bob
Although I agree with where you are coming from on this, I have a
feeling that whatever the NPC's start buying will be the next thing
everyone will want to do, cause it will be an easy way to make some
money. I think there is a possibility your idea of having the vendors
only buy what they can sell will work; however, they would have to make
sure that the vendors bought for less than they sold for, unlike
regular shards where you can sell cheese for 10 and buy back for 3, for
instance.
Bebblebrox
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sme...@icubed.com
> > 2) Poison. The spell. That third circle spell, requiring no more than
> Fixed.
>
When did poison get fixed? Still worked as of sunday on the old
continent....
Oh, a couple other things to add.
3) 4th circle scrolls in stock with a mage npc in moonglow. Huh? Those
spells are where magery gets useful, with decent damage in lightning,
area damage with fire field, and of course the greater heal scroll. I
don't think they should be so easily accessible. At the very least I'd
like to see that npc moved to an island with no moongate, ideally that
npc won't exist at all.
4) Taming. This is ridiculous. On saturday anyway, I saw one person
with 8 various wolves and bears in tow. Not to mention a good number of
tamed animals walking around the wilds. How about some sort of limit on
the number of tamed creatures controlled by a single character? I did
notice that animals (most noticeably my horse) go wild a good deal
quicker if not fed. But still, all the ribs around for the carnivorous
pets.... no difficulty at all killing most things with near a dozen
pets.
-Smedley, Daemon Summoner
Yuri Gorlinski
>
>Removal off the moongates...
Never! It wouldn't be an Ultima without the moongates...
>c) The ability to identify the quality of a crafted weapon/armour with arms
>lore..
>No idea why we don't get this..
Yeah, that should definitely be in there.
Icculus al'Ibn, SP
sme...@icubed.com
>
> I agree with both your ideas. Here are a couple of mine.
>
> Reduce monster loot. Cut it in half. I like the way it is now where
> hides and ingots are the currency of the day. Let's keep that gold out
> of circulation.
5) Talking about monster loot.... An orc mage gives third circle
scrolls. A wraith, similar difficulty to the orc mage, gives 7th circle
scrolls. Why? 7th circle scrolls should be hard to find! Going along
with no npcs selling 4th circle scrolls, how about orc mages and wraiths
with 4th circle, 5th and 6th circle scrolls on the harder solo-able
monsters like gargoyles, air elementals, and lichs, and 7th up there in
lich lords, blood/poison eles, drakes, daemons and other monsters
against which one would bring a partner or would otherwise need a rather
large amount of time to kill (with EVs, blades, and poison nerfed).
Talking about air elementals, 400+ gold per, in addition to a reasonable
chance at a magic item, in addition to scrolls? Isn't this a
bit...much?
Talking about poison nerfing, how does the nerf work? Is it across the
board, or just the spell? If across the board, the assassin is no
longer a viable character, especially with reagent prices at 3x.
-Smedley, Daemon Summoner
Richard Cortese
> Bob Roland wrote:
> >
> > I agree with both your ideas. Here are a couple of mine.
> >
> > Reduce monster loot. Cut it in half. I like the way it is now where
> > hides and ingots are the currency of the day. Let's keep that gold out
> > of circulation.
>
> 5) Talking about monster loot.... An orc mage gives third circle
> scrolls. A wraith, similar difficulty to the orc mage, gives 7th circle
> scrolls. Why? 7th circle scrolls should be hard to find! Going along
> with no npcs selling 4th circle scrolls, how about orc mages and wraiths
> with 4th circle, 5th and 6th circle scrolls on the harder solo-able
> monsters like gargoyles, air elementals, and lichs, and 7th up there in
> lich lords, blood/poison eles, drakes, daemons and other monsters
> against which one would bring a partner or would otherwise need a rather
> large amount of time to kill (with EVs, blades, and poison nerfed).
Once people figure out that they may never become GM mages, INT will take on
the same negative connotations that DEX used to have for bards and tailors.
I don't think anyone will want to have 35 int and 50 magery just so they can
cast polymorph and energy field unless they are commited to magery.
>
> Talking about air elementals, 400+ gold per, in addition to a reasonable
> chance at a magic item, in addition to scrolls? Isn't this a
> bit...much?
Efreets are in there too, but all of these cast poison which still works
against PCs, so you are talking 18 gold hit for every cure you have to cast.
Kind of depressing when you get poisoned 3-4 times in a fight that gets you
less then 100 gold and a page 3 scroll.
>
> Talking about poison nerfing, how does the nerf work? Is it across the
> board, or just the spell? If across the board, the assassin is no
> longer a viable character, especially with reagent prices at 3x.
Just tried poison field night before last, completely useless. Does like 3
points of damage total against NPCs. I hate it, but it had to be done to
balance the game.
There are a few other things that would help, I 'almost actually really for
sure' talked to another PC/tinker about making me some hatchets, and I did
talk to another PC who said they would make me a full set of chain for 500
gold.
Then I came to my senses and killed skeletons so I now have ~10 battle axes
in my bank box for bowyering, a set of bone, and more gold in my bank box.
Eventually, I would guess tinkers making scissors and lockpicks will be big.
But you actually get paid while collecting bone so...
I am still making foolish plays, I will actually BS a giant serpent that is
annoying me, but the smart play is to just use it on Avengers.