Quick Questions

Wilhelmina

So, how fun is Forging?

Sena

It's like whack-a-mole, but there's only one mole, and it just stays popped up the whole time, and then once you've hit it enough you get a completely random score that's usually crappy.

Katzchen

Sena said:

It's like whack-a-mole, but there's only one mole, and it just stays popped up the whole time, and then once you've hit it enough you get a completely random score that's usually crappy.

In other words: It's fucking boring.

Antonius

If you enjoy standing in the same place, entering the same command every few seconds and getting the same response, then I imagine it's fantastic fun. However, if you're normal, it's absolutely awful.

Wilhelmina

Antonius said:

If you enjoy standing in the same place, entering the same command every few seconds and getting the same response, then I imagine it's fantastic fun. However, if you're normal, it's absolutely awful.

I see. That was the reason why I hated Transmutation, actually.

Sylvance

Sounds... just like bashing.

Shunsui

Wilhelmina said:

Antonius said:

If you enjoy standing in the same place, entering the same command every few seconds and getting the same response, then I imagine it's fantastic fun. However, if you're normal, it's absolutely awful.

I see. That was the reason why I hated Transmutation, actually.

The difference with transmutation is that while it's boring as sin, you're getting a guaranteed useful end product/potential profit (assuming you have customers), whereas forging you mostly just get crap and waste all your gold.

Kazu

Forging is such a huge waste of gold honestly. It's better to just go out and buy the weapons from someone else. I think I've forged around 700-800 rapiers and I might have gotten one over 215 speed. The only real reason to Trans forging is for fullplate.

Kyrra

Forging is that one thing I will do if asked, but I loathe it.

I have a hammer, I have every crafting trait, and I can still spend an hour or two producing absolute crap.

And for anyone about to say anything, it's nothing like toteming. Toteming is fun. Toteming lets you move around. Toteming gives you reasons to impale someone in the stomach with your sword.

Forging is standing around for hours, getting sweaty, and wasting time. Though to be fair, I didn't mind it while forging 40 fullplate a day trying for awesome stats, but having to forge for others really is a huge time waster, not only for you, but for them. I was quite insulted to be recently asked to forge for someone, and agreed while I had the time to spare, only to be kept waiting for half an hour while they were in another city getting crap forged for them by someone else.

Echald

Forging simply cannot provide the diversity and sense of accomplishment that fishing does.

Zorander

What are good or great stats for leather armour, and how much would "amazing" leather armour cost?

Wilhelmina

Is it better to have more CON or more INT for mages, PvE and PvP?

Namven

Does anyone know if blackjacks can be augmented? 

Haldon

Namven said:

Does anyone know if blackjacks can be augmented? 

I know Moneo augments his...

Celiana

Between Sylvan and Serpent, what are the pros and cons with respect to hunting and PvP?

Sena

Celiana said:

Between Sylvan and Serpent, what are the pros and cons with respect to hunting and PvP?

I don't have any experience with sylvan or PvP, but I can answer about serpent bashing.

Overall: How effective serpent is at bashing varies a lot depending on your level/skill. For newbies, it's horrible. Low damage, high endurance drain. For high levels (nearing dragon), it's also pretty bad, because garrote gets fairly inaccurate against high-level denizens, and camus just isn't effective enough in a lot of cases. Between those points though, when you have trans subterfuge and aren't yet bashing things on the level of deathknights, serpent is pretty good, and rather underrated.

Defensively: Serpent has good damage resistance with scales, which is basically the same as an algiz rune, giving 10% resistance to damage of any type. No other resistances or active healing/curing abilities though. Weaving does not reduce physical damage (I've heard a lot of people claim it does, even serpent houses teaching it), it's purely a dodging bonus.

Offensively: Garrote with a good whip is a good bashing attack, as long as it isn't missing. As I said above, it's inaccurate against high-level denizens, but before that it will rarely, if ever, miss at trans subterfuge. Also, weapon stats are very important, just as much as they are for knights. I think part of the reason people consider serpent a poor bashing class (even before garrote starts missing a lot) is because the belief that whip stats don't matter is so widespread, so a lot of serpents use crappy whips. With a level 3 lash, garrote is better than most attacks. Sumac is horrible, and camus is mediocre, although it does have its uses since it can't miss.

Utility: Warp is very useful for bashing, letting you move quickly between different bashing areas and more easily reaching hard-to-reach locations, which reduces your downtime a lot (although any class can warp, if you can afford it). And phase lets you bypass aggressive denizens or other dangers that are too difficult to handle, though that only matters in a few places.

Trevize

Celiana said:

Between Sylvan and Serpent, what are the pros and cons with respect to hunting and PvP?

Sylvan: tanky as hell.
Serpent: fun as hell.

Sidonia

Sylvan is easier for both. Reflect/barrier make previously inaccessible bashing areas (LHG comes to mind) fairly simple. Bloodboil + panacea + vigour + viridian + reflect = you should really never die in PvP if you're careful.

Sylvan is such a defensive juggernaut.

Iocun

Just not dying in PvP isn't enough to be successful in PvP though. Typically, not dying tends to be easier than killing, once you reach a certain number of transcendent abilities and a decent level as pretty much any class. Sylvans aren't a bad class for PvP by any means, but if they can't simply outdamage an opponent (which requires a low-level opponent or plenty of arties) they have to rely on heartseed. Heartseed is a powerful instakill, but can be very hard to pull off on opponents who know all the tricks behind it.

That makes sylvan PvP easier to get into, but you can hit a brick wall eventually against more skilled opponents.

Serpents have a much higher initial barrier to PvP, but once you crossed that you are in a position of being potentially able to kill almost anyone given enough patience and creativity. The patience part is important though, since there are a lot of things that can hinder serpent offence, so you may have to try for quite a long time until there's a gap in your opponent's defence/hindering that you can push through. In group combat, serpents are very easy to get into though, due to the power of archery. Sniping can get you lots of kills and isn't very hard to use, so if you like group combat, serpents are quite a nice class for getting into it.

As Sena said, Serpent bashing isn't as bad as some people make it out to be, but it isn't particularly exciting either. Granted, bashing isn't exactly "exciting" for most classes, but some classes have fast attacks or combos that allow for many critical hits and a faster pace or other abilities that have an effect on hunting in some way (e.g. healing abilities like hands or transmute, defences like numbness, stances, vibes, harmonics, rites, multiple-target attacks, shield-breaking attacks, etc.). That makes classes like monks or magi more fun for hunting, to me. Serpents on the other hand get their one garrote line over and over, which is neither exciting nor particularly fast. I guess sylvan hunting isn't all that exciting either though.

Sidonia

Iocun said:

Just not dying in PvP isn't enough to be successful in PvP though. Typically, not dying tends to be easier than killing, once you reach a certain number of transcendent abilities and a decent level as pretty much any class. Sylvans aren't a bad class for PvP by any means, but if they can't simply outdamage an opponent (which requires a low-level opponent or plenty of arties) they have to rely on heartseed. Heartseed is a powerful instakill, but can be very hard to pull off on opponents who know all the tricks behind it.

That makes sylvan PvP easier to get into, but you can hit a brick wall eventually against more skilled opponents.

I don't disagree with any of this, but I think sylvan is a great entry-level PvP class. You can learn it quite easily, and once you're 1-2 trans you can quite easily beat mid-tier people with heartseed setups. Almost nobody top tier is going to die to an unartied sylvan, but you don't need to be killing top tier to learn or have fun.

As a true newbie, my first combat experience was serpent (granted it was in the days when dstab missed, couldn't flay rebounding/shield, and systems were generally worse or people manualled) and the learning curve was extremely steep. I had a lot more fun as a sylvan because it required less coding, less time required for theorising and more time actually fighting, while still giving you enough wiggle room with illusion/blackout/heartseed. Sylvan can also contribute a lot to group/raids with lightning/reflect/rezz/holocaust/suppression/grove dampening etc etc.

tl;dr: IMO, sylvan great for starting out, less punishing for the unartied/low might, better bashing.

Iocun

Definitely agree with the steep learning curve for serpent 1v1 melee, but there are quite a few serpents who concentrate solely on archery and do well enough. That too won't be sufficient for winning high tier 1v1 fights, but it's good enough in quite a few situations.

Nakari

as a sylvan, you get to be a giant lighting shooting, thorn flaying plant monster.

as a serpent, you don't get to be a giant lighting shooting, thorn flaying plant monster.

case closed

Trevize

Nakari said:

as a sylvan, you get to be an overgrown weed in a thunderstorm.

as a serpent, you get to be invisible.

case closed

ftfy

Katzchen

I seem to recall someone mentioning the customisation costs for stationary kits/letters, and it being something obscenely expensive, can anyone recall what?

Kyrra

Not off the top of my head but I think it was brought up in the Shop of Wonders thread early on?

There was a short discussion on stationery kits, perfume bottles and customising them.

Anaidiana

stationary kits are something ridiculous like, 500cr+ to customise, iirc. 

Katzchen

Anaidiana said:

stationary kits are something ridiculous like, 500cr+ to customise, iirc. 

Thought so. Why is it so much? Does that include letter + kit customisation?

Anaidiana

Katzchen said:

Anaidiana said:

stationary kits are something ridiculous like, 500cr+ to customise, iirc. 

Thought so. Why is it so much? Does that include letter + kit customisation?

I believe so. It's been a long while since I inquired. I remember being really put off by the price and figured I'd wait until I had nothing else to spend credits on (which will likely never happen).

Jurixe

I was quoted 700cr, and I'm pretty sure that was just the letters.

Melodie

That's a shame. I'd really love to make my letters in a bottle thing.