Fri Apr 16 10:19:06 2010

At 12 o'clock AM, Day of the Bull, 22nd of the Month of the Sun
on the Theran calendar Irinam perished, never to return.

Race:	gnome
Class:	transmuter
Level:	51
Alignment:	Neutral
Ethos:	Orderly
Cabal:	TRIBUNAL, the Blood Tribunal
Age:	250
Hours:	209

Of barrier.

Well, that was fun, thanks for all the fish and what not.

I was pretty much going to stop playing anyone of 'importance' (I use the term very lightly to describe myself here, trust me.) But then the fifth age came, and everything was fresh and new and I had this great idea for a possibly insane, possibly not gnome tribunal.

In the end there was life. I went to PAX EAST in Boston for a week's vacation. I have 7 games sitting at home that have come out in the past 2 months to play. The new Dwarf Fortress version keeps me up til 3am. I'm trying to actually do work at work now. So alas, no time.

My second role contest winner which surprised me. I really dug the role but I didn't think I'd get recognized. Second leader (well I had leader con and could induct, which was all I cared about not having the title.)

I'll say thanks to the Immortals for their time. Thanks to all the tribunals for being good cabal mates. (You're a great Provost, Lamayinn). Thanks to all my enemies for not being ####s.

I'll probably pop back in at slow times now and then. Doubt I'll ever play anyone long term again, I just don't see much left for me to do in this game. The only real goal I have left is exploring Hell which I've been trying to do for, oh 7 years now?, and I never seem to get the right character rolled at the right time to meet the right people. Hell, I was on Ryu's list for a hell trip if anyone remembers him. :-)

Thanks to everyone.

d

First off, it was very ironic that I got castable barrier as a role contest reward.

I had quite possibly one of the easiest sleek black locations short of 'wander into a room and pick it up out of a hidden bag'. I found it on my third place I looked, and I could solo the guy who had it at level 44 with some slight difficulty.

I had it so easy getting black rods I was actually giving them out to cabal mates left and right.

I had it so easy getting black rods I would stand in the middle of Galadon and burn through 3 while doing an interview with an applicant, just because I could in case I got jumped.

So giving ME barrier, when other people in the cabal who I knew were much more knowledgeable about the game than me, and had spent tens, if not scores of hours searching and failing to find theirs was kind of a cosmic joke. In fact, I'm pretty sure I got barrier only because it was a very small upgrade for me relative to how easy my barrier source was to get. Plus I sucked at pk. :-)

I actually almost sent a note to the immortals who ran the contest and asked them to remove it and give me some edge points or something. Then I came to my senses and figured I'd milk it for a while. Then it got boring.

Really, castable barrier sounds great but it was just boring. 'Normal' stuff becomes dull. Gathering items to shift the veil, farming gold, gathering preps, exploring most zones all became trivial with barrier on demand. I stopped being afraid of most pk'ers (not that I was terribly afraid before) and I'd find myself sitting in the middle of Galadon, waiting for a criminal to recall, and I'd be alt tabbed out not even watching the screen anymore except to recast preps every 5 minutes.

My normal play times at the end were early-mid morning EST. Which meant I usually had 15 people online, 4 were usually tribunals. I'd often log in to find no one in my pk range, so I couldn't even use barrier to pk people with. Plus, Irinam's role was about protecting and defending so it never made sense to hunt with him.

All in all castable barrier made the game more dull for me, not more exciting.

My suggestion to the ABS sleek rod question by the way?

-Get rid of sleek rods
-Give every mage barrier, keep their shield spell as it is. Aura, I could take or leave.
-Make ABS dispellable. Make it difficult to dispel, but make it so no mage can just assume ABS on a stick is the end all.
-Probably give villagers some sort of dispel magic proc on deathblow or critical hit that has a chance to dispel one or two spells on their target, so ragers have a chance to get through ABS. All other classes can just use wands/talismans/scrolls of dispel magic to get through it.

Edited for spelling

Barrier on a stick just won't happen. And most would kill to have it, cause no matter how easy your rod location is, once someone knows you're going there to get it it becomes dangerous. I know where two scions had theres, and if people wanted to kill them those were ideal places to do it, especially since if you see them there they often don't have barrier. Shield is more than enough for mages in most fights, and barrier is not so hard to get once anyway you know enough sources of non-sleeks. I know at least one pick up barrier andtwo or three others that could be gotten with extreme ease for almost any mage. One or tweo are probably difficult, but solo still manageable.

Point is sleeks are nice because you know they will be there, but hardly necessary for most mages these days with the numbers of mages running around anyway being relatively small.

Well, the only reason I bring it up is because it really bothered me I had a trivial sleek black location and I know two people who spent dozens of hours searching at least 30-40 different places we pooled together and they never found theirs. The dumb luck component is annoying and needlessly frustrating. That's all I was saying.

I've never considered ABS to be that hard to gather either, but I've seen some smart, very knowledgable people have a tremendously hard time finding their barrier source for seemingly no good reason.