Quick Questions

Talonia

Do magical collar artefacts increase damage against denizens and players, or only players?

Achilles

Talonia said:

Do magical collar artefacts increase damage against denizens and players, or only players?

both

Haldon

Iocun said:

Zii said:

How do I forums?  My brain hurts.

First, find out who is ranked highly in the forum hierarchy. You can see this by their phase level. Then, start stalking these people and click "like" on their posts before anyone else does. Doing it after others have already liked it makes you look like you're just jumping on a bandwagon, so make sure you're the first one. Also memorize what they're saying and the way they're saying it, so you can later emulate them. Next, do the same with often-disliked people and further dislike any new things they post. This is your foundation.

The next step is adding some content on your own. You can go either the "insightful" route, or the "funny" route, or both. The first requires more work and thought, the second requires a basic talent. If you attempt to go for the funny route and it doesn't work, stop immediately. Once people have marked you down as unfunny, there's no way you can still get out of that, so continued attempts at being funny will only make you the target of ridicule. Instead, drop the funny route and move on to being insightful.

Being insightful is based on 1) posting on the Golden Dais and 2) making brief clever statements in reply to what other people say. Success at 1) can be achieved by lurking in non-Dais threads and trying to filter out things that people want but haven't bothered making a Dais-thread about yet. Make yourself a list of these things and post them as ideas on the Dais. Not all at once though. You need to spread them out. One ideas thread every two weeks or so should be enough. Success at 2) is harder to guarantee, but generally works by first establishing what posts of others have been liked, then summarizing what they said in a brief and poignant fashion, or pointing out the flaws in what people who have received dislikes have said.

With these techniques, you can build yourself a basic reputation, but not enough to quite win the forums yet. Once you have these things down and got yourself a reputation to work with (but not before!), you can move on to the third stage: deliberately going against the flow and setting yourself apart from others. Just liking and disliking the same things as anyone else is a good novice technique, but doesn't get you all the way up to the forums Pantheon. To get there, you now need to start making others think of you as having your own mind, while still secretly going with the common flow. Start making brief dissenting statements about common opinion and question the status quo. Do it carefully. Never go into too much detail, as that offers more opportunities to attack your argument. Instead, keep your tone slightly tongue-in-cheek, so you can always pretend to just have been trolling if someone points out the flaws in your argument.

If you did the first two stages of forum-likedness right, you will by now have some people who usually agree with you. They will also agree with your dissenting views from time to time, which is where your road to forum victory truly begins, because it gives you an aura of rebelliousness and leadership. Keep up a careful game of mild dissenting and imaginative agreeing and occasionally do something unexpected-yet-still-socially-acceptable to keep you memorable and it's only a matter of time until you can phase or doublephase.

Or you can go the pedantic route.

Tael

Haldon said:

Iocun said:

Zii said:

How do I forums?  My brain hurts.

First, find out who is ranked highly in the forum hierarchy. You can see this by their phase level. Then, start stalking these people and click "like" on their posts before anyone else does. Doing it after others have already liked it makes you look like you're just jumping on a bandwagon, so make sure you're the first one. Also memorize what they're saying and the way they're saying it, so you can later emulate them. Next, do the same with often-disliked people and further dislike any new things they post. This is your foundation.

The next step is adding some content on your own. You can go either the "insightful" route, or the "funny" route, or both. The first requires more work and thought, the second requires a basic talent. If you attempt to go for the funny route and it doesn't work, stop immediately. Once people have marked you down as unfunny, there's no way you can still get out of that, so continued attempts at being funny will only make you the target of ridicule. Instead, drop the funny route and move on to being insightful.

Being insightful is based on 1) posting on the Golden Dais and 2) making brief clever statements in reply to what other people say. Success at 1) can be achieved by lurking in non-Dais threads and trying to filter out things that people want but haven't bothered making a Dais-thread about yet. Make yourself a list of these things and post them as ideas on the Dais. Not all at once though. You need to spread them out. One ideas thread every two weeks or so should be enough. Success at 2) is harder to guarantee, but generally works by first establishing what posts of others have been liked, then summarizing what they said in a brief and poignant fashion, or pointing out the flaws in what people who have received dislikes have said.

With these techniques, you can build yourself a basic reputation, but not enough to quite win the forums yet. Once you have these things down and got yourself a reputation to work with (but not before!), you can move on to the third stage: deliberately going against the flow and setting yourself apart from others. Just liking and disliking the same things as anyone else is a good novice technique, but doesn't get you all the way up to the forums Pantheon. To get there, you now need to start making others think of you as having your own mind, while still secretly going with the common flow. Start making brief dissenting statements about common opinion and question the status quo. Do it carefully. Never go into too much detail, as that offers more opportunities to attack your argument. Instead, keep your tone slightly tongue-in-cheek, so you can always pretend to just have been trolling if someone points out the flaws in your argument.

If you did the first two stages of forum-likedness right, you will by now have some people who usually agree with you. They will also agree with your dissenting views from time to time, which is where your road to forum victory truly begins, because it gives you an aura of rebelliousness and leadership. Keep up a careful game of mild dissenting and imaginative agreeing and occasionally do something unexpected-yet-still-socially-acceptable to keep you memorable and it's only a matter of time until you can phase or doublephase.

Or you can go the pedantic route.

You mean the best route?

Lang

Pondering between whether to pick Aim to Kill or Lucky as a trait. The issue is I'm a little confused as to what they do. Lucky says it gives you a higher chance of critical hits...but does it just give you a higher chance of getting a basic critical hit, or does it increase the chance of getting any critical hit? Because "aim to kill" states it increases damage from "all" critical hits, but I'm really confused as to whether that means you have a higher chance of getting a better-than-normal critical hit (e.g. crushing critical, obliterating critical, etc.) or if it just means that all your critical hits deal some kind of extra damage, like (to throw out completely random numbers) a regular critical hit deals 2.5x damage instead of 2x, a crushing critical deals 4.5x damage instead of 4x, stuff like that. Anyone happen to know in more detail what the traits do?

Rispok

Lang said:

Pondering between whether to pick Aim to Kill or Lucky as a trait. The issue is I'm a little confused as to what they do. Lucky says it gives you a higher chance of critical hits...but does it just give you a higher chance of getting a basic critical hit, or does it increase the chance of getting any critical hit? Because "aim to kill" states it increases damage from "all" critical hits, but I'm really confused as to whether that means you have a higher chance of getting a better-than-normal critical hit (e.g. crushing critical, obliterating critical, etc.) or if it just means that all your critical hits deal some kind of extra damage, like (to throw out completely random numbers) a regular critical hit deals 2.5x damage instead of 2x, a crushing critical deals 4.5x damage instead of 4x, stuff like that. Anyone happen to know in more detail what the traits do?

I do not know answers as well as some, although I think the general consensus is that we don't know what Aim to Kill does. Lucky is the better choice, it will increase your critical chance as well as the potency, by about 1%. My guess for AtK is that it will add a larger multiplier to criticals. Your critical hit might do 3x damage instead of 2x, for example.

Eld

Lang said:

Pondering between whether to pick Aim to Kill or Lucky as a trait. The issue is I'm a little confused as to what they do. Lucky says it gives you a higher chance of critical hits...but does it just give you a higher chance of getting a basic critical hit, or does it increase the chance of getting any critical hit? Because "aim to kill" states it increases damage from "all" critical hits, but I'm really confused as to whether that means you have a higher chance of getting a better-than-normal critical hit (e.g. crushing critical, obliterating critical, etc.) or if it just means that all your critical hits deal some kind of extra damage, like (to throw out completely random numbers) a regular critical hit deals 2.5x damage instead of 2x, a crushing critical deals 4.5x damage instead of 4x, stuff like that. Anyone happen to know in more detail what the traits do?

The way critical hits works is you have some base percentage chance to get a critical hit. So x% of your hits are criticals of some sort. Of those criticals, x% will be crushing or better. Of the ones that are crushing or better, x% will be obliterating or better. And so on.
So if your base rate is 20%, 80% will be non-critical, 16% will be critical, 3.2% crushing, .64% obliterating, .128% annihilating, and .0256% world-shattering.
Lucky increases that base rate by, iirc, 1%.
As @Rispok said, Aim to Kill is hard to test, so we don't really know exactly how it works. You'll find various people who are pretty convinced about which is better, but as far as I know it's pretty much all guesswork.

Jacen

And its been confirmed that neither are as effective as being human or having a lvl 1 pendant right?

Eld

Jacen said:

And its been confirmed that neither are as effective as being human or having a lvl 1 pendant right?

The human bonus and the pendant bonus are both modifiers to the base crit rate. Lvl 1 pendant is 2%, so more of a bonus than Lucky or human. IIRC, human is .5% and Lucky is 1%, but I may have those backward; my 5 second forum search was insufficient to find the numbers. Since we don't really know how Aim to Kill works, I don't think we can really compare it to the human racial bonus or Lucky in terms of increase in damage per second, but I think it's safe to say that it's probably less than the pendant.

Sena

It's the other way around, human is 1% and Lucky is 0.5%.

I'm fairly certain that Aim to Kill is a simple damage bonus on all criticals, but I have no idea how much it increases damage. The only thing I've confirmed is that a normal critical (normally 2x damage) is still less than 3x, and a crushing critical (normally 4x damage) is still less than 5x. So it's less than a +1 multiplier and less than a 25% damage boost.

Yue

edit: why did I mistake this thread for rants?

Tvistor

That is not a question.

Cynlael

Pft, the sentence ended with a question mark. Quite clearly a question.

Tesha

Do you have to wield a hammer of forging for it to benefit you?

Eld

Tesha said:

Do you have to wield a hammer of forging for it to benefit you?

Hammer of Forging: 400 credits
   - A hammer that cuts forging time in half and makes the results of your
     forging substantially more likely to be at the extremes, high or low.
     The average of all forging results is the same as without a Hammer.
     The hammer does not have to be wielded to be effective.

Tesha

Phew! Thank you.

Darroth

The approach to Ashtan (road).

Small flakes of white float through your field of vision here and there. Dark shadows enshroud a 

pair of giant emerald serpent heads as they writhe, entwined atop an obsidian altar. The glint of a 

bar of gold draws your eye downwards. Resting on the ground is a cube-shaped silver sigil. A runic 

totem is planted solidly in the ground.

You see exits leading north and southwest.

Your blindness is cured by a wunjo rune on a totem.

Your attention is grabbed and held by a fascinating butterfly-like rune.

You spy a fehu rune on a totem.

Your insomnia has cleared up.

You spy a fehu rune on a totem.

You feel incredibly tired, and fall asleep immediately.

8534h, 6937m, 37963e, 30788w excdk- 21:49:28.377(wake up)(-138 Mana) 

You open your eyes and yawn mightily. (0.111s)

8534h, 6937m, 37963e, 30788w excdk- 21:49:28.487(writhe|insomnia)

You begin trying to wrest your mind free of that which has transfixed it.

8534h, 6937m, 37963e, 30788w ecdk- 21:49:28.579

You clench your fists, grit your teeth, and banish all possibility of sleep.

8534h, 6837m, 37963e, 30788w ecdk- 21:49:28.826(-100 Mana) 

You may drink another health or mana elixir or tonic.

8534h, 6837m, 37963e, 30788w ecdk- 21:49:28.832

You may eat another plant or mineral. (1.294s)

8534h, 6837m, 37963e, 30788w ecdk- 21:49:29.187

 ------------------------------------- 

|     BALANCE BACK | BALANCE BACK     |

 -------------------------------------  (0.908s)

8534h, 6837m, 37963e, 30788w excdk- 21:49:29.487p totem

Expertly formed from carefully carved wood and thick leather, this runic totem protrudes almost five 

feet from the ground, although it is not particularly thick in diameter. Largely unadorned, its 

smooth surface is interrupted only by the delicate silver inlay that defines spaces for six runes.

A rune like an open eye is sketched in slot 1.               (wunjo: cure blind)

A rune like an open eye is sketched in slot 2.               (wunjo: cure blind)

A rune shaped like a butterfly is sketched in slot 3.        (nairat: transfix)

A rune like a closed eye is sketched in slot 4.              (fehu: strip insomnia)

A rune like a closed eye is sketched in slot 5.              (fehu: sleep)

A rune like a closed eye is sketched in slot 6.              (fehu: strip kola)

It is tuned against enemies of the City of Ashtan.

It weighs about 30 pounds.

It bears the distinctive mark of Kyrra.

You may use this item to parry with.

This totem is the property of The City of Ashtan.

Didn't know where to ask this. But essentially this is a 2nd defendable room? It's two rooms out and hits all Ashtani enemies. I issued myself about it and got a reply back saying take ic resolution to fix it. This seems more like a broken mechanic then it is a ic conflict. You can essentially tune every totem outside your city to enemies of your city. 

Vaehl

Yeah, but eh, it'd only be a dick move on their part if they totem the entire area. Hint.

Cooper

No it's cool bro, Ashtan only has one defendable and hasn't totemed every room north of NoT.

Vaehl

You really ought to know what you're talking about first.

They had one south of it too.

Tirac

Darroth said:

Didn't know where to ask this. But essentially this is a 2nd defendable room? It's two rooms out and hits all Ashtani enemies. I issued myself about it and got a reply back saying take ic resolution to fix it. This seems more like a broken mechanic then it is a ic conflict. You can essentially tune every totem outside your city to enemies of your city. 

Ask Laorir to issue the totemer and don't try IC resolution. Very good results. Will result in threats of punishment for the totemer.

Kyrra

Two south of the gates has been defendable for as long as I can remember. Probably because it's direct LoS of the city for several rooms. A city totem was uprooted, it got replaced. That room has always had a city totem.

Cooper

"Defendable" has been, since it was put into the rules, one room outside of a city. "Approaching Ashtan' has never, ever been defendable. Whether it has always had a totem there is irrelevant - it is not defendable and never has been.

It's even more hilarious that the leader of Ashtan has totems implanted in all of C. Wilderness enemied to him, which is basically enemied to Ashtan.

Did I say hilarious? I meant pathetic and ridiculous, sorry.

Orklanishkal

Kind of hilarious

Kyrra

And if said Overseer joined Mhaldor, Hashan or Cyrene (sorry!) those totems would still hit anyone in his enemy list.

Maybe people ought to seek to resolve their personal enemy status.

Mishgul

Silly Darroth, expecting achaean's to be reasonable

Bonko

It's a good thing they didn't introduce those new relaxed pk rules because heaven forbid something unpleasant happens to your character when they're two rooms outside a city they're enemied to.

Oh wait.

By the way, does anyone else remember when *shallam did the same thing in Southern Wilderness/Pash except with fewer totems and before the new relaxed pk rules? I do.

(Thanks for the reassurance that no harm will come to my character when he's two rooms outside of Teargossas.)

Blujixapug

This thread is quick questions not passive-aggressive rhetorical questions, you chode-unloaders.

Hhaos

Darroth said:

The approach to Ashtan (road).

Small flakes of white float through your field of vision here and there. Dark shadows enshroud a 

pair of giant emerald serpent heads as they writhe, entwined atop an obsidian altar. The glint of a 

bar of gold draws your eye downwards. Resting on the ground is a cube-shaped silver sigil. A runic 

totem is planted solidly in the ground.

You see exits leading north and southwest.

Your blindness is cured by a wunjo rune on a totem.

Your attention is grabbed and held by a fascinating butterfly-like rune.

You spy a fehu rune on a totem.

Your insomnia has cleared up.

You spy a fehu rune on a totem.

You feel incredibly tired, and fall asleep immediately.

8534h, 6937m, 37963e, 30788w excdk- 21:49:28.377(wake up)(-138 Mana) 

You open your eyes and yawn mightily. (0.111s)

8534h, 6937m, 37963e, 30788w excdk- 21:49:28.487(writhe|insomnia)

You begin trying to wrest your mind free of that which has transfixed it.

8534h, 6937m, 37963e, 30788w ecdk- 21:49:28.579

You clench your fists, grit your teeth, and banish all possibility of sleep.

8534h, 6837m, 37963e, 30788w ecdk- 21:49:28.826(-100 Mana) 

You may drink another health or mana elixir or tonic.

8534h, 6837m, 37963e, 30788w ecdk- 21:49:28.832

You may eat another plant or mineral. (1.294s)

8534h, 6837m, 37963e, 30788w ecdk- 21:49:29.187

 ------------------------------------- 

|     BALANCE BACK | BALANCE BACK     |

 -------------------------------------  (0.908s)

8534h, 6837m, 37963e, 30788w excdk- 21:49:29.487p totem

Expertly formed from carefully carved wood and thick leather, this runic totem protrudes almost five 

feet from the ground, although it is not particularly thick in diameter. Largely unadorned, its 

smooth surface is interrupted only by the delicate silver inlay that defines spaces for six runes.

A rune like an open eye is sketched in slot 1.               (wunjo: cure blind)

A rune like an open eye is sketched in slot 2.               (wunjo: cure blind)

A rune shaped like a butterfly is sketched in slot 3.        (nairat: transfix)

A rune like a closed eye is sketched in slot 4.              (fehu: strip insomnia)

A rune like a closed eye is sketched in slot 5.              (fehu: sleep)

A rune like a closed eye is sketched in slot 6.              (fehu: strip kola)

It is tuned against enemies of the City of Ashtan.

It weighs about 30 pounds.

It bears the distinctive mark of Kyrra.

You may use this item to parry with.

This totem is the property of The City of Ashtan.

Didn't know where to ask this. But essentially this is a 2nd defendable room? It's two rooms out and hits all Ashtani enemies. I issued myself about it and got a reply back saying take ic resolution to fix it. This seems more like a broken mechanic then it is a ic conflict. You can essentially tune every totem outside your city to enemies of your city. 

Says the guy from the org with no city that STILL has totems on New Hope

Kyrra

Here's a question. Why has nobody contacted me ICly to discuss my totems if it's such an issue?

You guys are happy to jump me, are happy to deliver all sorts of lovely threats against my life, but not a single person has actually approached me in any fashion to resolve anything. No messages, no letters, no tells, interaction whatsoever. Just a whole bunch of whining.

Another question: Does Aurora's temple encompass all of New Hope? Because that would totally explain all those totems tuned to the Order still being up despite having all that new land to occupy.

These are legit questions!