So we had a poll in which people were allowed to elect changes they would make to CF and vote on the most popular suggestions. Although we've not come up with actual solutions - here are the three most popular problems!

1.

Thieves - Revamping their point scheme and their skills.

Personally, I think the trapping path should be more easily duelled with another. And the poison path's ingredient related frustrations looked at. Neo-theives are awesome but there's tweaking aplenty to be done!

2.

Reduce the availability of Preps and their duration.

This one sort of surprised me. I've never been a prep whore myself but since haste disappeared I've not even noticed people being overly preppy except with ABS wands. I would guess people who don't have the time and/or knowledge to gather high quality/level preps are feeling the sting as we generally lose time to play. Can anyone add more to their reasons for this?

3.

Striking the Shadows Footfall

This was my personal vote. Imho, it's fine to have a legacy that rewards high mental stats. A little boost in combat to make up for their general lack of HP. But it just does too much. All the high int races already have high dex and were boosted immensely by Dex changes. Gnomes have autumn harvest if they want a racial advantage legacy. Now we have people with really good defenses building up charges to come out with insanely imbalanced combat ability. Soften, extra parry, parried less, parting block, total spell/skill/commune dodge, etc. These kind of advantages are unfun because they genuinely make you useless over time. Not just disadvantaged - often as good as dead. This is NEVER fun. At least with people like Cabdru, you had a variety of defensive options that would allow you to pick at him with some risk involved. An STSF warrior doesn't give you this opportunity without making your situation WORSE. Which with powers like soften, parting block and total-skill/spell/commune evade is unacceptable.

And there you have it, the top three.

Discuss away!

For many folks, yes, life does begin at hero. There are, however, 50 ranks prior to that where folks might rank, rp, look for prep sources, explore, pk and a number of other things. Because of the size of CF, much is not thoroughly explored, and even certain quests are hardly ever touched (odd that I found one that gives a stoneskin prep...in multiples).

All this being said, the complaints seem to revolve around the hero ranks, and the bragging rights to killing someone and/or having the gear that 'seemingly' makes it happen (easier).


eshval@carrionfields.com

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me. - Hunter S. Thompson

Their lack of purchasability makes them special too.

Thieves:

City Ties is weak sauce. But that's okay- some people get off on stealing instead of fighting, and so there's a niche for them.

Of the rest, traps is the only one I have zero desire to play. Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to have all the annoyance of a poisoner (having to gather ingredients and figure out the right recipes) without the big payoff.

Preps:

Not sure if people were talking about A/B/S or what, but preps are probably less prevalent now than they were back in the day when everybody was hoarding haste. If the goal is to level the playing field, then take aura and shield away from non-zap/recite/brandish-ers. Or, maybe get rid of aura/shield entirely, and just make barrier a little easier for mages to get as compensation.

STSF:

I'm fine with STSF making its owner super-buff if combat drags on. My only complaint is the flee prevention. Also, I might accelerate the rate at which the STSFer "forgets" what he learned during his last combat engatement.

I voted for preps since you didn't EVER put up the empire/bard problem.


But to my thoughts on preps. Your idea of removing aura and shield is quite good actually, and make barrier a bit easier for mages to obtain. This would do a lot.

Though as it is I feel like it's almost pointless to play a none-battle warrior if I don't have the time to hoard loads of preps. Only stone skin/prot align doesn't seem to cut it, at least I've gotten that feeling with my latest warriors.

Hoarding preps is just to time consuming so only the few with immense time on their hands or the knowledge of them gets them.


So, thats why I voted for the prepp thingy. (I would have voted for some kind of change on empire-bards if that had been an option as I suggested... :(

For mages at least. Most mages have to have full abs to even win fights... And that is if you can find your own set. Aside from that, full abs and protection on mages isn't even enough to kill ragers 70% of the time.. so there would have to be a rebalancing on their side as well.

It is not hard to find preps, and it adds a spice to the game that needs to stay there. STSF, thieves, and other things need to be a priority before preps would even be considered.

So town down deathblow a tad. Or maybe tone down resistance. Honestly, I'm okay if a random A/B/S mage can't kill a lone rager 70% of the time, as long as the odds of the lone rager killing the A/B/S mage are similarly low. For most classes, the odds of a given engagement resulting in a death are pretty low.

>Though as it is I feel like it's almost pointless to play a
>none-battle warrior if I don't have the time to hoard loads of
>preps.

Eh, not really. If you can come up with return/teleport potions and gold for the healer (Which I wouldn't really consider preps, but some might) you've got a powerful edge on a Battle warrior.

The last time I played a warrior I rarely ran with more than protection and occasionally stoneskin and it was no big deal.

As always with preps for any class, you'll probably want more if you want to try doing something stupid, such as trying to get your item back solo from a cabal that has 3-4 people in your range camped at the cabal. Equally, for any class, more and more prepping is often counterproductive, because most people aren't dumb enough to hang around and fight someone they can barely damage while taking a lot of damage themselves -- and thus clear out a long time before they're in danger of dying.

Doesn't count :P

You are mistaken. :)

To add to this, with every character you play, there will almost certainly be some other set of characters that you, as a non-battle warrior, will have almost zero chance of killing without heavy prep use.

That said, if there's someone you can kill with the help of "reasonable" preps, then piling on more damage reduction won't make you more likely to kill them.

My list of reasonable preps (at hero) would be:

flight (unless you're an arial, cloud giant, or maran, or you're pretty sure you can out-damage someone who spams trip on you)

enlarge/reduce (unless you don't plan on bashing and are relatively certain you can out-damage someone who spams bash on you)

protection vs. align (unless you're neutral, in which case the reduced chance of getting the right align might render it not worth the bother)

resist mental

resist heat/cold (especially if you're a giant or non-maran felar)

resist negative (but only if you're a cloud giant)

detect invis (unless you're a svirf)

return/teleport (multiple of each)

about 30 gold on hand at all times

about 6 to 8 speckled and silver pills (enough that, if you're hungry, eating all of either type would make you "full")

some means of curing blindness (either cancellation or actual cure blindness)

stone skin "when you can get it"

orb of travel "when you can get it"

Looking down this list, some of these look down right REQUIRED to fight certain classes.

Above all, resist mental for bards. They will rape your arse unless you have it.

I think it's unfair that preps have been worked in to be required as counters to major skills - even as part of their balance. But why ask someone to carry a crapload of gear just to prep against Rot? Same, but replace with SvP for Neuro. Bash has evolved over a long ass time like this and has STILL been nerfed in order to depower it. Flight for trip. Fairplay. But why aren't we seeing prep counters to STSF?

I think the power of the Edge has quickly risen as a 'quick fix' for problems and it's moving into Prep territory. If, as you have said, edge fixes are eventually going to be worked into skill balances - could we see this trend of fixing prep-holes with edges increase? An opportunity to spend edge points to decrease the requirements for certain constant preps, like flight, detect invis and great amounts of svp. I've not been a fan of edges in recent times, but I figure some ideas for a fix are better than none if I'm going to complain :)

Yhorian

The rot thing is mostly a non-issue unless your constitution is very low. Resist mental is usually needed if you're going to *beat* a bard, but if you just want to engage him and not die, then you can probably do without. Assuming you can survive an immediate fiend.

Cure blindness, teleport, and pills are needed to fight necros and live if you get slept. Neuro...is bad if there's a level difference and the guy is all wanded up, and optionally has pimp gear. Otherwise, if you pump out enough damage, you'll usually do alright. I remember fighting Enarn, though, and it was ridiculous. But he was highly skilled and had the aforentioned pimp gear.

>Resist mental is usually needed if you're going
>to *beat* a bard, but if you just want to engage him and not
>die, then you can probably do without.

I sort of go the opposite way on this. If I'm a bard, it's going to be pretty obvious to me that you have resist mental, and I'm probably going to just run for the hills.

Unless you can achieve complete command denial, in which case the resist mental was moot.

Man, my list is somewhat shorter than yours.

Flight (unless arial/cloud/Battle) - Buyable lots of places.

Protection vs. align - Basically for fights where someone of the opposite align might reasonably completely command deny me, or raids. One form is purchaseable in Galadon.

Enlarge/reduce - Possibly, depending on what I am. Both pretty easily purchaseable. If I'm a level 30 invoker trying to PK I'll probably want these. Lots of characters, I just don't care.

Returns/teleports - Again, purchaseable in towns.

Detect invis unless it's built into the character - Buyable lots of places.

Some gold for the healer.

Stone skin if it's not built into the character for tougher fights/raids, when available. Basically this is something I'll go look for if I don't have anything else to do at the moment.

Resist mental if I need to fight a bard and a bunch of other people at the same time. Solo, not really necessary. This is something else I may gather if I have nothing else going on.

>Man, my list is somewhat shorter than yours.

Here are the items from my list that you omitted from yours:

>> resist mental (as a given, not just "sometimes")
>> resist heat/cold (especially if you're a giant or non-maran felar)
>> resist negative (but only if you're a cloud giant)
>> about 6 to 8 speckled and silver pills (enough that, if you're hungry, eating all of either type would make you "full")
>> some means of curing blindness (either cancellation or actual cure blindness)
>> orb of travel "when you can get it"


Resist heat/cold are easy to buy. So if you're vuln to either one and don't have resist from gear, then it seems like a no brainer. Even if you're a storm giant, they're handy since a lot of people will use heat/cold to bypass resist_physical.

Resist negative I'd only keep on hand for a cloud giant, and even then, since it's not purchasable, I would only use it for fights where I know the guy's using a defilement weapon.

Resist mental is purchasable, but expensive in at least one form. It has such a significant effect on fighting bards, though, that I would be tempted to keep one use on-hand at all times, and maybe just go buy some more if I see an enemy bard online.

Pills are also easily purchased, and great for fights where neither person is close to a healer. They'll also save your ass if you teleported away from a necro after being slept. Though, in that case, only if you can cure the blindness. Which brings us to...

Some means of curing blindness. The effective ones aren't easily purchased, but you can pick them up off the ground without much effort, or request a high level one from a certain mob if you're good-aligned. For these, I'd probably only keep one on-hand at a time and just re-stock whenever I used it.

Orb of travel. Obviously there are tons of uses for these, plus some new ones that didn't used to exist. I've never been good at gambling, but I always seem to meet characters who do really, really well at it. So I just buy them off those guys. *Most* of the time I won't have one of these at my disposal, but you can be a lot more bold in some situations when you do.

These preps are what I TRY to carry around. Take Khurga for example, one session I lost 4 preps bags. It was a long session, 6 hours. I was in 6 PK fights, lost 4. (3 gangs...) All 4 I lost my bag with preps...


So, 6 PKs in 6 hours... 3 of the fights were even thanks to preps (would have been raped otherwise) and the other 3 was ganks so doesn't really matter. But each death I had to get a new bag, start to gather gold and preps and redo the whole thing.

I rather regear than regather preps, thats for sure.

That's just an example, all my none-rager warriors have had that problem. That is why I prefer battle-warriors, even though they get raped by any well prepped warrior since it's just more fun. I can get a few things done without spending 2 hours prepping first. I can loggon, run around and PK. A full loot just means reequip, witch is fairly fast compared to regathering preps...

Hrm, to sum it up... Gathering preps to become decently viable in PK takes TOO long time. :D

>I can get a few things done without spending 2
>hours prepping first.

I consider my basic list (flight if applicable, protection if applicable, enlarge/reduce for some characters -- basically stuff like lowbie invokers, returns/teleports, detect invis if necessary) to be doable in 10-15 minutes.

Granted, I'm also going to get gold from the bank instead of gathering it after a death. I'm going to want to do that anyway, because it's going to make getting a sack/food/water also fast, and leave me more of my ghost period for important things.

I'll cede that its nigh impossible to keep all that on hand when you're dying every hour and a half.

If you have gold in the bank, though, most of it can be purchased. So if you die, bang- withdraw 40 gold and go to town.

Flight, pills and protection are all located in approximately the same area. Along with a teleport potion if you're capable and willing to kill the mob.

Return you can buy almost anywhere.

Teleport you're looking at Udgaard or Seantryn (or others, but I use those two most). If Udgaard, then you can pick up some potions to cure blindness as well. Those never worked very well for me, but they have the advantage of being purchasable while the other one I'm thinking of has to be picked up off the ground, and is in a pseudo-out-of-the-way place. This one isn't urgent unless you expect to fight a necromancer/shaman soon.

Resist mental/heat/cold are all sold in the same place, and aren't super necessary unless you expect to fight a bard soon.

Being a ghost makes buying the (most useful) detect invis prep somewhat safer than it would be otherwise. Alternately you could buy flowers and just deal with the possible weaken.

It takes me forever to gather gold. I know a few places where I can get gold rather safe. But getting 100 gold would take me 2 hours maybe. And killing dragons, well thats something I'll do at hero. And ain't very safe since it's a place many go and look for you.

So, if I die 4 times in what? 2 hours? And I need to withdraw 40 gold each time, thats 160 gold. I NEVER have that much in the bank pre-hero. At hero, well depending on class, I do.

I still think it's to much of a requirement to have preps...

Well, two things.

First, if you're dying that much, probably you don't need to buy 40 gold worth of preps. Probably 10 gold is enough to get you rolling. No sense in keeping a spare 20 gold on hand or buying 100 flight potions when you're only going to quaff two before you die and possibly lose them.

Of course, if you're a high strength race that doesn't care about dodge, one legitimate solution is to make sure your prep bag weighs like 300 pounds. That won't stop everyone from looting it, but...

Second, the idea is mostly that you'll go get gold when there's nothing else you can do. Sure, it's good to develop constant scavenging/selling habits, but putting in the time to intentionally build up a gold cushion is something you do when you can't get a group or don't want to fight anyone in your range or whatever.

'Resist mental if I need to fight a bard and a bunch of other people at the same time. Solo, not really necessary. This is something else I may gather if I have nothing else going on.'

Wow, really? Sometimes I feel like I've been playing a different game than some of you guys.

I'm more likely to use resist mental when fighting only a bard than fighting a bard + others. The thought being, the bard can not flee, sleep me if I'm fighting someone else. Everytime I fight a bard, it's flee, lullaby. Next thing I know, I'm out for 12 hours. This is even with resist mental. The only thing I ever thought about changing was the success rate for when a bard flees from a fight and then runs back in to sing lullaby. Maybe it already is reduced, but I'll be damned if I have noticed it.

As far as lullaby is concerned, your (conventional) saves and general ability to make saves are a much, much bigger factor than resist mental.

If you neglect those, yeah, a bard can have their way with you, but A-P/necromancer can much more have their way with you.

Didn't you just fight Kornuel? It's possible that a bard with 1) a vuln, 2) no Warmaster powers, would be an easier fight. Seyriannia doesn't really count, since last time I saw her she was decked out in a bunch of unique gear. Also, Kornuel was at least average to above average player skill, so the class may have looked a little better than it would in the hands of a truly "average" player.

I also fought the other empire non-warmaster bard, his evil twin though his name is escaping me. It was pretty funny when he and Kornuel would come raid against at least one (sometimes two when Acvilar was on) and another defender with good gear and just near perma lag us with vibrato and outmeelee us with ease, this usually being at the inner to boot. Throw in one or two fiends and it's absolute insta-death to a non elf class and this would be with sanc, shield, stoneskin, the rest of the paladin sups - one of them being a resist mental sup - and resist mental which is a pain in the ass to get. It made zero difference and was always just constant ownage. Just makes you never want to log in again, and was the main reason I deleted both Laernoch and Narclarn. I enjoyed CF when I had the illusion that I had a fighting chance (if I changed tactics, learned new preps or new areas with better gear etc. This was the crux of the fun for me, trying to get better at the game.)

Is it insulting if I say I think those fights were winnable for you with a much lower standard of prepping?

Heh no it's not an insult (and you are probably right since you have forgotten more CF knowledge than I will ever have, but I obviously disagree about having a chance against Kornuel and his twin). I have quickly lost any 'CF ego' that I once had after a few successfull characters. I think i suck, although I don't think it's entirely my fault except that I hate to play classes that are in vogue (i would never play an elf or drow stsf or an empire bard) so i usually end up playing stuff like my last character, a felar a-p which was actually a bit of fun since most people underestimated me until I got to hero range. I think if I continue playing I will continue to try to play underplayed combos because at least then I won't have the expectations I have when I have a decked out dwarf warrior or 2 virtued Storm pally and am left at a loss when people just run through me over and over again.

I don't think the situation is as dire as Grysh makes it out to be, but I'm with him that defending against two prepped empire bards is pretty tough. Once you get distorted and additionally can't see your hp...it's pretty dang dicey. Slap on 2x fiend, and them spamming alternating vibrato...and it's even more gross.

If, as a warrior, you really really hate bards, consider picking Fortress of the Spirit. It's good for a lot of things, but it's *extremely* good for that.