Could we loosen up item limits some, please?

At hero especially, it gets pretty silly attempting to regear only to find that even the semi-decent regear items are maxed out.

I understand that some items are unique, etc. and believe they should stay that way, but there are a lot of other items that are far from top tier that are constantly maxed out.

Disclaimer: I'm not an Imm, but I used to play one once upon a time.

My problem with the whole gear conundrum isn't that there is no available/decent gear out there. It is that there is a whole world out there that can literally take months or years to explore to find all of the niches that are useful to players. Carrionfields is vast, and it is not intuitive, well-documented, or easy to find all the little tidbits that you need to learn. It can be rewarding and fun though, which is why I think we all are still here.

I had a lot of time for exploration when I was in my failing out of my college years in the 90s. But all those areas I invested my life into are mostly gone or changed so I would need to start all over again. That can be an enormous time commitment for somebody who has a lot of other gaming options (and who also sometimes says he might have ADHD), when there are tons of other games with more immediate gratification at my fingertips.

Anything we can do to retain or empower casual players and give them a little bit more reason to keep playing is a win in my book, even if that means making rarer equipment more accessible without investing hundreds of hours across multiple characters to learn or relearn where everything is.

Can't say for sure, but I expect the process of discovering stuff is one thing that hooks people. Granted, it was somewhat frustrating when I was starting out, but it also made me want to keep playing in order to "unlock all the secrets". IMO someone starting out today has it considerably easier in terms of figuring out which gear is worthwhile and where it's located.

if you don't have clues and hints and help to start with.

nt

which requires you to acquire hints & tips first.

In which case no hints are needed. You are perfectly fine with getting ####ed up walking into a new place. And then taking IC friends with you to try and conquer the challenge.

I get that you're into PK and that is what your characters focus on, and that's cool. There are different and just as valid ways to play characters.

Hints and tips make ME explore (and I don't give a #### about exploration).

People who are into exploration already don't need incentives. Like I don't need PK edgepoints to pad my pk numbers obsessively.

Cracks me up how many people fall prey to thinking they are always in the majority.

Shame on you.

Also, exploration in a static world without hints and help from the interface is an incredibly large factor in why I play CF. There are plenty of hints and clues built into the game though.

My general method was:

1. Play a good-aligned character with identify (or max lore).
2. Look at other good/neutral characters who would plausibly be friendly with me.
3. For any gear I didn't recognize, ask to borrow it and identify. Log the results.
4. Ask if they know where's it's from.

Alternate steps #1 and #2 from the above:

1. Play an evil character with identify (or max lore).
2. Look at characters who would plausibly be willing to let me handle their gear, e.g. someone in the same Empire sect, another Rager if I'm in Battle, another Trib if I'm in Trib, etc.

Somewhat more recently:

1. Scan the "eq freeze" section of prominent characters' PBF posts. Note any gear I don't recognize.
2. Ask via OOC channels, e.g. forums, with the expectation that gear from exploration areas won't be divulged.

Also, in general, try to get taken along when your allies go on gear runs. Helps if you're a class that's useful in PvE. Healer, bard, transmuter, invoker, etc.

Also- if you're a hero, sometimes you can "buy" information from lower ranked characters in exchange for getting gear for them.

I'll preface this by saying that I don't think I have any way of analyzing who has what, or how many of everything there is.

There's some pretty decent gear out there, still. And if you compare some (Noteworthy) gear to some (Famous) or even (Legendary), you'll see that the differences in most cases are pretty minor.

That 50 hp coat might not be in, but there are NUMEROUS 30 hp on-body options, some of which aren't even limited at all. Can't get your hands on a super-rare 40-50 hp ring? You can make do with unlimited or fairly common 20-25 hp rings, some with added stats or saves.

Bracelets of Longevity, long seen as the holy grail of mage wristwear, offers only 15 hp more than exceedingly common alternatives. Can't find a granite ring? UNLIMITED OPAL RINGS have only 1 less dam a piece.

Sure, multiply these relatively minor differences by ~18 gear slots and that can make a substantial difference. But we're talking about ceilings at that point.

Once you learn how to regear at hero, the floor really isn't all that low. It's certainly high enough to exploit mistakes by players using higher-end gear so you can take it for yourself. Also, from what I've seen, most players in the hero range have a couple of pieces of really nice gear, and then a bunch of OK gear.

(Obviously, a few stand out as just plain old stacked with gear that I've never even seen, but I can tell you that none of that crazy gear makes them unkillable.)

In sum: Gear up the best you can, get creative, murder, and loot. And once you're stacked, enjoy the 1400 hp or 80 dam or whatever you have - but don't get too attached to it. You're going to have to remember how to be deadly with far less, because you're gonna lose it all, sucka!

Would someone mind breaking down the item limits attached to:
Legendary
Famous
Infamous
Noteworthy

I don't know exact numbers, or how it's calculated, or how limits fluctuate with player numbers or whatever. So don't take this to the bank. Here are my guesstimates that could be completely wrong:

Legendary is unique. Famous/Infamous are pretty rare but not unique, so maybe 2-4? Noteworthy is technically limited but there can be kind of a lot of them.

Honestly, that the impression I've gone by with my mortals ever since legendary awareness was added (long before I IMMed). And it's enough detail to work with.

I believe Legendary means that something has a "Constant Limit" (which is usually 1, sometimes 2 or more). Something with a constant limit will never expand in quantity available even if there are enough pfiles that they normally would.

I was sure I've seen an item I was wearing fluctuate from legendary to famous and back as weeks went by.

See my reply to Bemused. Thanks for your input.

***edit*** First I said see my reply to Murphy which was dumb.

doh

.

Legendary means that at that moment in time there is only one in the game. Some items are strictly one and independent of total player count (like strange bracers) and others fluctuate with the player count (like wide coppers). Watch out when a drop in total player count readjusts an item from famous to legendary, don’t be the first one to die :)

Yeah I wasn't sure if Legendary meant Const or if it meant limit of 1 regardless of Const. Thanks for sharing your insight.

infamous = famous but with "evil aura"

I jave several decked chars simultaneously no probs.

P.S. Yes that's where the shinies have gone.

I'm a huge advocate of playing only one character at a time, and this is one of the reasons.

Other reasons:

- More investment in and better roleplay from the single character. I have the most fun when I really get into that character's head. If you have multiple characters with different roles and personalities going, you can't really get to that point with all of them.
- No possibility of conflicts with cabalwars, "sensitive" IC info, etc.
- Players with multiple characters are often to blame for dramatic power swings.

There's no rule against multiple characters (so long as they are in different cabals). But I'd argue it's more fun for you and better for the game if you stick to one at a time.

at least for cabal leaders multiple characters should be banned.
If you want to play a leader, you should be focused and invested on that character
alone. The temptation and potential for multichar abuse is also enormous for leaders.

One can start with multiple characters, I guess, but at the point of being made leader
should give them all up (stop playing them until leader death/delete).

I multi char a lot. I also auto a lot. If there was any kind of rule to limit multicharring I would likely end up just not playing while a char autos.

Then again, it's not like I'm ever a leader or even in a cabal :D

...we do watch this sort of thing though, as much as we can. If someone is a leader and their hours drop heavily and it seems like it is due to an alt, we often ask them to step up playtime or step down as leader. Most of the time when this happens (it's fairly rare) the player chooses to finally pull the trigger on deleting the leader char that they had lost interest in.

multichar abuse greater for leaders? Also, what kind of multichar abuse are you talking about?

I only ever play one character at a time, because of the RP constraints.

I'd advise you to check out some of the newer areas if you haven't. There are a lot of solid pieces of gear in them that haven't really been fully explored or utilized. I was really surprised recently as I took some time to give them a good hard look.

I personally think the problem is not that limits are too tight - there's a ridiculous plethora of respectable gear out there.

I think the problem is that the perception of what is "semi-decent" has gotten out of hand. Part of that is likely due to the sprinkling of gear added over the years. I think another portion is the (seemingly) more prominent pillaging of a few key gear-obtaining areas, and finally compounded by a smaller playerbase concentrating this elite gear on fewer players. No-one cares when random paladin ends up with Defiance, because if that's all he's got, you kill him and take it. Paladin with that, shield of pure light, stoneform amulet, full set of that (I assume pretty nice?) diamond gear, hummingbirds, etc? Dude becomes much more obnoxious to kill (AND that dude's already probably super hard to kill to have managed to slowly acquire it all).

But hey, maybe this is where Jor's personality and I agree. Murder fields, spread the mayhem and wealth!