How about making it so that maxed out wands/staves pop with 0 min and max charges instead of not appearing at all?

Right now it's easy to go through an area and find no wands because the supply is maxed out. This makes exploring for wands very difficult because it means you have to constantly re-explore every area just in case a wand that was previously maxed goes under max and is findable.

People have suggested placeholders before, but the problem with that was that nobody seemed to know of a sensible way to put placeholder items in. By simply setting the capacity to 0 you still have the same level of limitation, but it becomes possible to learn the location of wands that are maxed out.

This is a lot of work (because of the way limited items work... and the implementation of them works great for all real purposes, so there's really no incentive to change this) for something that isn't that important.

I sat down and crunched some numbers on wand-maxed-out-edness. Barrier wands are the most tapped out, and roughly 85% of barrier locations currently have their wand in.

>I sat down and crunched some numbers on wand-maxed-out-edness.
> Barrier wands are the most tapped out, and roughly 85% of
>barrier locations currently have their wand in.

I mean we are not in a court and these numbers don't reflect the whole situation because the most accessible wands are often maxed. If many badass high level mobs have them in their inventory or somewhere in the Hell twenty more barrier wands lie it doesn't really help. Generally, a player is not going to gather a group to obtain them.
I know many wand locations but when I check them with every new character, much less of them have wands in. It may be argued that is how it is supposed to be, but my point is that a "newbie" explorer will not find those wands during exploration.

PS. Actually, the original idea about zero charges isn't that bad.

>I mean we are not in a court and these numbers don't reflect
>the whole situation because the most accessible wands are
>often maxed. If many badass high level mobs have them in their
>inventory or somewhere in the Hell twenty more barrier wands
>lie it doesn't really help.

I don't think those numbers include any explore areas, FYI.

>Generally, a player is not going
>to gather a group to obtain them.

In some cases you need to gather a group. This isn't a game where every character can do everything solo.

Equally you can say: I won't wear any gear that I can't get by killing the mob solo. Fine, but people that are out there cooperating may have better gear, and that doesn't strike me as something that's wrong with the game.

>PS. Actually, the original idea about zero charges isn't that
>bad.

It's not a stupid idea; it's just an idea that (if I implemented it) would take more of my time than I'm willing to give it.

>
>>I mean we are not in a court and these numbers don't reflect
>>the whole situation because the most accessible wands are
>>often maxed. If many badass high level mobs have them in
>their
>>inventory or somewhere in the Hell twenty more barrier wands
>>lie it doesn't really help.
>
>I don't think those numbers include any explore areas, FYI.

I took that to mean we should delete the most accessible ones
to balance things out.

Qaledus, Trapped in the Hell of Work

In the creation screen, there is a warning that players new to CF shouldn't play mages.

On most muds, such caveats can be ignored by experienced mudders. At worst, experience might be defined by a few months or so of mudding. Carrion Fields throws the average player a curveball, for the world is so large and depending on the class and cabal, preparatory materials are so important, that the term "experienced" takes on a whole new meaning: if you haven't been playing for years or have friends willing to share their years of experience with you, depending upon your playing habits, you will be "new to CF" for a very long time.

I don't think it's as dramatic as all that.

I'm sure you could rattle off the name of a newb who created a kick-ass-and-take-names mage within six months without utilizing a wand list, but in my newbishness I was still looking for a reliable gold supply then. ABSS? What are those? I have to EAT--who has time to look for wand locations!

He didn't say a newb can kick ass and take names with a mage after 6 months of playing. But I can see it more than reasonable that a newb can play a mage after 6 months and be perfectly competent or even above average.

Obviously someone like that isn't going to be the upper-tier on the PK scale. But how many people who've been playing for 5-10 years even are?

I'm a prime example of the 5-year newbie. The only reason I can't even begin compete at this game is because my playing style is way too casual. When I do make serious efforts, yeah, I learn a lot. But I have a really hard time believing that my playing style is unique, and that every newbie comes into CF expecting to make it their 3-hour a night hobby for the next 5 years.

nt

>In some cases you need to gather a group. This isn't a game
>where every character can do everything solo.

But having to gather a group makes it useless for general-purpose fights, unless there are dozens of charges in it or you have a bunch of lackies who have nothing better to do with their characters than be your wand supply..

>Equally you can say: I won't wear any gear that I can't get
>by killing the mob solo. Fine, but people that are out there
>cooperating may have better gear, and that doesn't strike me
>as something that's wrong with the game.

This is apples and oranges, man. Gear doesn't dissapear after you use it a few times. A better comparison is regearing. You wouldn't put anything on your regearing list that you can't get alone in a reasonable amount of time. Well maybe you would, since you can choose to virtually never die if you want, but for most people it would be a bad idea to rely on group-only gear every time they get looted.

While I'm not particularly in favor of the original idea and my ideas are generally frowned upon... it's a lot different coming from the perspective of a person who knows little to no wand locations and coming from a person such as yourself who can query the item database for barrier wands.

Also percentages aren't very helpful. If 85% of 20 barrier locations are 'in', that's not very much considering that in order to find a wand location I have to kill every single unique mob in a given area out of the billion or so areas in CF. If it's more like 85% of 200 barrier locations, that's a lot of wands.

Anyways, I'm reading this post again and it sounds like it's a dig against you but it's not intended to be. I wanted to find a polite way of suggesting that the cards are stacked heavily in your favor. *shrug*

There are so many wands, even if every mage in the game carried 10 of them you would still be able to find more.

If you are not good at killing tough mobs, there are wands of all types you can obtain by not fighting.

How much real effort are you putting in? Sure everyone knows the basic five or six spots from the last few years. Well guess what things changed when people posted wand lists.

The only problem with the wand system is the time lapse on certain wands. You can use them up, head to the place they 'spawn' and it not be there. Kill the mob four of five times, and then they start returning. Sleeks seem to be better...but I would code it so all of them replenish just as fast.

Type area....start at the top. Run to that area, where mage, where wizard, where sorcerer, where arch, nothing yet...run around quickly. Oh there is a NPC that just cast a spell on himself. Lets check him out. There is a mage in a tower....look around...does he have chests, desks, tables, lab benches....Nothing around...alright move on. Head to the next area...Wow I found a hidden drawer inside a desk with the archmage...nothing inside though...maybe I should check back later...move on.

Sooner or later, you will start piling them up. It does suck to have to be in a constant gathering cycle at times. That is the price you pay when you have villagers as enemies. Most mage classes need ABS to even stand toe-to-toe...which means long boring sessions of gathering and regathering.

The system of finding wands is not broken though. The balancing of classes and cabal powers given to enemies of mages is somewhat skewed however. Id like to see any mage fight a giant sword spec berserker, with ABS. Vershelt level of strength.

I can agree it is frustrating for newbie mages. They check a few places, figure this searching business is too much like work and give up. Then they get tooled by villagers that call a few powers and two round them. Or the scion warrior who spends 10 hours preping for that one fight.

Keep looking and you will soon have more wands than you can even carry.

Dashing all over the world gathering wands is tedious enough as it is. The random time it takes for some to come back when burned up though is just a little too irritating for me to even deal with. With things the way they are, I just check the locations I know when I happen to be nearby and, if one is actually in, yay! I don't even try to regather used up ones though since I'm not willing to kill the same monster over and over, hoping that maybe this time she'll have it. If there were just some consistency, like they return in twenty minutes or something, the whole process would be way less painful.

>If there
>were just some consistency, like they return in twenty minutes
>or something, the whole process would be way less painful.

There's consistency. No randomness involved. :)

And herein is a perfect example of vague answers to leave the playerbase guessing about something that infuriates them. Might I ask why not just say how these things spawn?

I mean is CF really going to shut down if the people who got a wand actually know when it will come back in?

I am lost as to the logic of vagueness. Could someone enlighten me?

>How much real effort are you putting in?

A lot. At the very least 100 hours of just searching over the past few years. The actual hours on those characters obviously are higher and I think 100 is probably an underestimate. Obviously I've been doing it wrong.


What is it you don't like about this change anyway? Will it make it too easy for other people to find wands that you know?

>Type area....start at the top. ...

This is basically what I do, though instead of killing just the mage mobs I try to kill every single unique mob in the area. Unless it's an extremely low-level area, then I only kill mobs that look promising somehow.

I also look at pretty every word (except articles, pronouns, etc) in the room's description, and also north, south, east, west, up and down. I'm not sure how to be more thorough than this. I suppose I should just spam-kill every mob and write a script to go through a dictionary searching in every room.

Anyway, I already posted a thread about how generally difficult it is for me to find wands, I wasn't trying to rehash the whole issue, just suggest one specific change.

>Wow I found a hidden drawer inside a desk with the
>archmage...nothing inside though...maybe I should check back
>later...move on.

This is what my suggestion is aimed at. What is it you like about making people write down every empty container they find and then check back repeatedly? Does this seem like fun to you, or is it just that you had to do it to get your infinite wand supplies and now you don't want it to be easier for anyone else?

>I can agree it is frustrating for newbie mages. They check a
>few places, figure this searching business is too much like
>work and give up.

I actually really like exploring an area for the first time in a reasonable manner. I will admit that I hate dumbly examining every possible word in the description and killing every mob just in case. And re-exploring an area is amazingly tedius.

>Keep looking and you will soon have more wands than you can
>even carry.

In my expeience this is simply false.

It would make things easier.

But I dont personally think its a broken system. There are just so many wands out there that I find it hard to believe you cant find any. What could be a good idea is more wands for sale. At least aura and shield. Aura and shield could be pretty highly priced, and maybe coded so you can only buy one at a time or something like that. Gathering 50 gold to buy one wand would be time consuming as well though for some. I dont think aura or shield would 'overpower' a mage anyhow. Might make things easier for newer mages.

I would still suggest rolling up a fast movement class.

Utility shifter with a fast movement form, Air form. Goodie Conjurer with Tesseract. Make this char your 'wand bitch'. Get a fresh piece of paper, start in Galadon. Write down each wand no mater what type, then move on. Yeh I know this is lame..I know searching for vague descriptions or drawers, or whatever is not fun. It sucks. Totally sucks. But, its what you need to do just to get over the hump. Speak to hero mages. Offer them aid with your Defensive type char in return for a wand information. They might throw you some shield source they never use, in returnin for you help with something. Trade information with other mages...

I am really trying to help.

As for hoarding wands, any mage that I interact with, I will go out of my way to show them wands, give them wands, get them their own 'private' place to gather them. Unless I am playing an evil bastard that might not want to be friendly like that.

*roll*

Anyway, how many mages walk with barrier at 30+ ( or even at 40 ) except Cabdru ?
If we assume that at hero range mages vs. fighters is balanced and mages "often" use barrier wands, then at 30-40 it will not be balanced.
Not only mages usually don't have barrier wands at those levels, but in general, fighters are somewhat stronger than mages at low-middle ranks.

Still, the original point remains valid. Newbie mages have hard times to find wands if they atcually want to play ( not to explore ). They will miss a lot of accessible locations because wands are often maxed out and they will not be very successful to gather a group to kill badass mobs just to check if they have any wands with them, nobody wants to accompany them anyway :) ( especially if it is an evil cabal like Empire or Scion )

A few other fast movement mages.

It is much easier to fly to area to area, quick-run, or tesseract...Scan a few places and move on.

Shifters are not PK machines but they do have good perks like this. Exploration is one of them.

Give me a fox and Ill explore ten areas before an invoker has moved through one.

n/t

nt