Anchors

Tisel

According to help scroll, a budding Alchemist needs to touch an anchor to attune themselves to the powers. Since there are only 4 Anchors, I'm not sure which Anchor people should be attuned to if they are rogue or not from one of the 4 major cities. Adding to the confusion is the current newbie trials you get Educe Iron as your attack. Great, but this is done without ever attuning to any Anchor. I know the Anchors have great IC meaning, but it seems like the actual game mechanics don't match, that is, you can be an Alchemist, but never attune to an Anchor. 

Two questions about Anchors

1. Are there any actual game mechanics in touching (or not) an Anchor? That is, does it affect your abilities at all? Does touching more than 1 Anchor have any effect?

2. The other use for the Anchors is transportation. It makes sense that I could Etherchannel to the Anchor I am attuned to, but why can I travel to the other Anchors? It sort of seems like the purpose of attunement is lost.  I'm not certain how much of it is chance, but it almost seems like I can only successfully travel once per day. I can't find any help files on this.

Sena

You can't learn your class skills until you touch your city's anchor. Touching an anchor not attuned to your own city does nothing. This means that rogues can't learn alchemist skills, as far as I know (but you'll still retain them if you leave a city after learning them). If the newbie intro for alchemists involves learning alchemy, then that's a bit contradictory, but not too difficult to explain away.

Etherchannel is entirely unrelated to attunement. There's also no limit on how often you can use it, and no random failure chance. Etherchannel will always succeed if done properly (you have the required metals, you don't have any afflictions preventing it, and you don't enter any commands that will cancel the channeling).

Tecton

We actually took the mechanical side of touching an anchor to unlock your talents out for all new players when we put the new intro in.

Sena

So does touching an anchor have no mechanical effect now?

Tisel

I had no afflictions that I know of (You are in perfect health), had full hit points and mana, was not fatigued or hungry, had plenty of the needed metals in my hand, and I did not enter any other commands. I failed 9 times out of 10. Is there another command that show afflictions besides DIAG ME? 

If the Anchor has no game mechanics effect now, could something be added, like reduced Mana cost if you are attuned?

Rohai

I made a rogue alchemist for shiggles a week or so ago and couldn't learn past Iron because I hadn't touched an anchor.

Rohai

I think the message I got even said something along the lines of "join an appropriate city and attune to their anchor to learn more of this skill" when I tried to learn from Tyrandiel? Needless to say, not many shiggles were had.

Vayne

Before the intro change, going to the anchor, explaining it, and having them touch it was a big part of their initiation into Alchemy and produced some great RP moments. The new intro however bypasses this aspect as @Tecton said, but the anchors still have mechanical value. If you leave your city you are cut off from that cities anchor and when/if you join a new one you then have to touch their anchor to be once more reconnected.

I understand you want to give them their basic abilities right away, but I think cutting out touching the anchor has eliminated some great opportunities and in general just does not make sense given all the effort that went into bringing alchemy to the people of Sapience. Is there any way we can fix this where perhaps novice can have their basic skills in the intro but still need to touch an anchor afterword?

Sena

Tisel said:

I had no afflictions that I know of (You are in perfect health), had full hit points and mana, was not fatigued or hungry, had plenty of the needed metals in my hand, and I did not enter any other commands. I failed 9 times out of 10. Is there another command that show afflictions besides DIAG ME?

What message do you get when it fails? "Your attunement fails, interrupted." means you entered some command, maybe something done automatically by some trigger if you don't do anything manually. An autosipper trying to sip mana is the most likely cause.

Tecton

Vayne said:

Before the intro change, going to the anchor, explaining it, and having them touch it was a big part of their initiation into Alchemy and produced some great RP moments. The new intro however bypasses this aspect as @Tecton said, but the anchors still have mechanical value. If you leave your city you are cut off from that cities anchor and when/if you join a new one you then have to touch their anchor to be once more reconnected.

I understand you want to give them their basic abilities right away, but I think cutting out touching the anchor has eliminated some great opportunities and in general just does not make sense given all the effort that went into bringing alchemy to the people of Sapience. Is there any way we can fix this where perhaps novice can have their basic skills in the intro but still need to touch an anchor afterword?

As awesome as that RP interaction is (and definitely encouraged), it just led to a massive point of confusion for new players who didn't have that support structure in place (be it a city/house that didn't provide it, or just people playing during the slow times when there may or may not have been anyone around). 

We'd still like to reenforce the bonds between Alchemists and the anchors, so I'm definitely in favour or some further development in that area.

Vayne

I understand how it doesn't fit into the intro itself, and that is fine, and perhaps other places are not as developed to support alchemists in that fashion as Hashan is, but the anchors are a major part of the lore of the class and really the source of their powers. Leaving it out indefinitely will really be a disservice to the class and its further integration into the world. I really look forward to and would be eager to assist an any developments in this area that might come.

Sena

My suggestion is to make touching the anchor a requirement to advance from fledgling to journeyman in the class (so you can learn to skilled without it), so it doesn't have to be done immediately. In addition to that, have a short quest or task (if there can be class-specific tasks) that guides them to their anchor if they haven't already touched it by a certain point. Maybe the quest would be initiated by trying to learn past skilled from a denizen tutor. That should lessen the confusion and let everyone advance without relying on other players, and still give a chance for the RP/ceremony/whatever that orgs want to have for it.

Tisel

I started 3 other Alchemist, in three different cities, and it was hard to track down real people in my time zone. Twice, it was follow person, told to touch the anchor, brief overview which was verbatim from the help file, and then back to the city. No real RP because there just wasn't time. I was actually in Hashan for a while, before anyone even asked if I had touched the anchor. This time, I just did it on my own, because I thought there was a game mechanic to it. Maybe the message you get is just a vision, like you get touching the stone on top of Great Rock.

Vayne

There is only an effect if you are not already attuned to the Ether and since newbies are auto-attuned touching the anchor does not do anything unless you leave the city and lose your connection. Bringing people to touch it has kind of been abandoned because there is no effect nor necessity to it now, unfortunately.

Tisel

Just got back from shiggling? a newb alchemist.

@rohai You need to learn from an alchemist. The normal training denizens can't help at all.

Right out of Minia, I could go to an alchemist, and learn Tin, and rise to Skilled, with just the novice 155 lessons. There was no indication at all on restrictions. From my other tests, there is no restrictions on what can be learned or used. Touching an Anchor, the first time or any other time, just gives the message "You reach out and touch a massive anchor of swirling tin and the tingle of electricity runs through your body."

Being from Cyrene and touching the tin anchor, then leave the city and going rogue, and I could still use my abilities. You have to retain the attenuation, or else there could be no rogue alchemists

Still working on my problems with ether channel, but at least I know that the Anchors are just RP at the moment

Shara

Tisel said:

Just got back from shiggling? a newb alchemist.

@rohai You need to learn from an alchemist. The normal training denizens can't help at all.

Right out of Minia, I could go to an alchemist, and learn Tin, and rise to Skilled, with just the novice 155 lessons. There was no indication at all on restrictions. From my other tests, there is no restrictions on what can be learned or used. Touching an Anchor, the first time or any other time, just gives the message "You reach out and touch a massive anchor of swirling tin and the tingle of electricity runs through your body."

Being from Cyrene and touching the tin anchor, then leave the city and going rogue, and I could still use my abilities. You have to retain the attenuation, or else there could be no rogue alchemists

Still working on my problems with ether channel, but at least I know that the Anchors are just RP at the moment

Firstly, yes you can be a rogue Alchemist and use the skills you learn from another Alchemist. However, you cannot access a lab. This means, no transmutation (outside what you can do with an alembic and materials you can source from non-lab synthesising) and no homunculus or clones.

As for your ether channel not working, you have to alias turning off auto-sipping/eating and stay completely still for the length of the travel. Ether channeling has nothing to do with touching anchors or citizenship. It's akin to getting a tattoo/making a homunculus.

Anchors are not RP-only. They are used with the etherchannel ability. They are waypoints basically in terms of mechanics for quick travel.

allthingsyoucouldhavelearnedatheHashaniInstituteincharacter

Tisel

Ah, yes, I had forgotten about a lab. Citizenship is important to an Alchemist then, unless the Merchants have a lab?

With my channeling problems, it was likely being blind that did it. Reading over my logs, I had been hunting oysters right before that and used mindseye, but was otherwise blind. It worked just fine today.

#wishtherewasagamewidealchemyguild

Shara

Tisel said:

Ah, yes, I had forgotten about a lab. Citizenship is important to an Alchemist then, unless the Merchants have a lab?

With my channeling problems, it was likely being blind that did it. Reading over my logs, I had been hunting oysters right before that and used mindseye, but was otherwise blind. It worked just fine today.

#wishtherewasagamewidealchemyguild

Merchants do not accept Alchemists. Believe you me... I've tried.

Being blind shouldn't have been an issue. I keep blind and deaf up constantly. Unless it was just a glitch that worked itself out.

Klendathu

I've met a few massive anchors in my time...

Hellen

Maybe the intro should lead an alchemist to be attuned to an anchor? Or as Sena suggests.

Hellen

Tisel said:

I had no afflictions that I know of (You are in perfect health), had full hit points and mana, was not fatigued or hungry, had plenty of the needed metals in my hand, and I did not enter any other commands. I failed 9 times out of 10. Is there another command that show afflictions besides DIAG ME? 

If the Anchor has no game mechanics effect now, could something be added, like reduced Mana cost if you are attuned?

I must have skimmed over this earlier. Do you have a system of any kind? Like Omnipave or something? Sometimes, those systems have gagged commands that will disrupt you. Try pausing your system(s). As an example, omnipave gags refilling pipes.

Tisel

If it wasn't blind, I'm not sure what it was. I use the HTML client and server side curing. I'm blaming it on gremlins.

Nikodemus

Is there an IC reason why Anchors are necessarily linked to a city?

The idea of an Anchor available for rogues sounds great to me, perhaps even a lab.

Shara

There are IG reasons why Alchemy has ties to citylife. Rogues didn't come work to aid the Cauda Pavonis build the anchors and sort out that instability in the Ether business. You can learn about the history of Alchemy in character if you want to know more details.

There is an IG reason why labs are in the cities, and it is in the same breath of why milking rooms are in Houses- grossly expensive to build/maintain. In that same fashion, without a city you miss out on the orrery's empowerment ability. Would you want to pay fees per IG year to some rogue (denizen?) institution to maintain a lab and orerry for your use when you could otherwise use them for free? Being a rogue isn't easy...

Have you seen the per enchant cost to use a public ouroboros (Magi enchantment device-version of a lab)? 250 gold PER cycle. No one could afford to buy Rogue minerals at profit- even with a Philosopher's Stone. In fact, at that price, a Rogue Alchemist would eat herbs. At 250 gold per cycle, that's 300 gold per mineral (50 gold for the mineral making cycle, I assume you can extract primes for free, and 250 gold for two pieces of metal; that you also had to pay per cycle in this rogue lab). Why would you want to do that to yourself? I can't imagine what they would charge to incubate and store your clones per day or per month. Incubating takes six IG days, so I'd imagine storage would cost by the day too. At 250 gold per IG day, that would be 6250 gold per IG month and 75000 gold per IG year.

As was stated before, you don't need an anchor to learn your lessons in Alchemy and the other two class skills. You can do that through other fellow Alchemists. As per my cityless days in transition with citizenship, you can utilise the anchors to travel. You don't need the anchors to use symbolism.

Blujixapug

Also rogues suuuuuuuck.

Bukariin

Etherchannel is a brutally useful skill that you get relatively early.  Yeah, it doesn't let you travel to the center of a city or Azdun, but it lets you get close enough.

Antreus

The Alchemist class is weird in that it doesn't say when you make one, "there are heavy restrictions placed on this class for how they must act in the game, because of the allegorical story of the little red hen", like there is for say Necromancy or Devotion, and yet, so it is. 

I don't see why a group of Rogue Alchemists couldn't get together, make a public announcement, and work with city alchemists to raise another anchor after consulting the alchemists at the Cauda Pavonis. I thought that's what they made the society clan for, but seems to have floundered in recent years.

I'll admit, I thought being an alchemist was just want I wanted, until I figured out after embracing that I can't be a rogue (had a lot of events to catch up on). I thought you'd still be able to join a House, like in the serpentlords, figuring there had to be at least one house out there with a lab.

It's just an oddity in that other trade professions don't require such a huge obstacle. The example given of rogue Magi for example - there could just as well be a House that doesn't require citizenship, as is the case with the Serpent Lords.. for the moment at least.

I don't see or know if those who use Concoctions lose their ability to pick herbs simply because they overharvested, at most they are fined. Not charged for every use or enslaved by an Anchor that Jack built. Guess there needs to be some heavy RPing to make it less austere, most likely a High Clan for Alchemists who don't fit the mold. Ahh, the life of a forestal, so complete and unfettered.