Shrine Phase 3/Crusades - Final Form!

Nicola

It would not be Achaean Christmas without a few surprises (sometimes pleasant, sometimes not), and 2016 is no exception. We're very pleased to bring you the final phase of the shrine system, which we very much think shall fall into the former category!

Though you'll be able to read all about it in HELP CRUSADES, here is the breakdown of what you can expect.

Once an order has collected enough essence (this must be order essence, personal will not suffice), a sufficiently ranked member of said order can stand at the master shrine on the Prime Material Plane, and BESEECH <god> FOR CRUSADE. This will drain that order of the essence (4000000, to be exact) and initiate a crusade. Crusade initiation is seen worldwide and area wide, so there's no real chance of missing it. However, CRUSADE STATUS shall also note any ongoing crusade and the status of said crusade. Only one crusade can be underway at a time.

So, what exactly is a crusade?

Initiating a crusade will start a countdown of three hours. After that three hour timer expires, the crusade begins. After that point, an order member may TOUCH their Master Shrine on the Prime Material Plane which will initiate a channel. Once the channel completes, they will be moved to a random room in the area on the Plane of Nishnatoba where their God's True Master Shrine is located.

Once upon Nishnatoba, the crusading order may locate the Master Shrine for the god they wish to attack and a member with sufficient rank may BESEECH <their god> FOR DEGRADATION, severely damaging the targeted shrine. Over the next hour, 100 splinters of divine essence shall fall in sets of ten all across Nishnatoba. At this point anyone in a Divine Order may collect said essence (though, do note, you will not become an avatar when upon Nishnatoba: such a thing is only achievable on the Prime Plane). Members of the order which is being attacked may GATHER ESSENCE: everyone else must SUBVERT ESSENCE. Gathering is twice as fast as subverting.

Once you have essence you may RELINQUISH ESSENCE at any True Master Shrine. If relinquishing to the order being attacked, this will strengthen the shrine. If relinquished to anyone else, that essence will now belong to the order. ORDER ESSENCE will show all of the essence that your order has stolen, broken down by the god it was claimed from.

A crusade will end either after three hours or once all essence is relinquished. Everyone will be moved off the Plane of Nishnatoba at conclusion, and for those that log out there (though you should not be doing this, it is a lawless plane) you will be moved off of the Plane on logging back in, assuming a crusade is not active. There is also a portal located in the circle of black columns in the centre of Nishnatoba that will take you back to the Prime Plane, if you decide it is time to beat a hasty retreat.

So, what can you use stolen essence for, and why should you try to restore a shrine that has been degraded?

If your patron's True Master Shrine is damaged, you will find that certain things become limited. If it is below 10% empowerment, you will be unable to raise shrines at all. Below 50%, you will be unable to perform greater miracles. Shrines do fix themselves on their own after a crusade resolves (a small amount each Achaean day), but it is very possible to find yourselves lacking some of your greatest weapons at a critical moment.

As for stolen essence, you can use this to perform some new Greater Miracles. These miracles drain exclusively stolen essence, and are:

Benediction: resurrect a fallen order member. That order member's soul must stand at the shrine. There is an internal cooldown on this miracle.

Fervour: This miracle increases the potency of all other offensive shrine powers, and grants a custom order-themed deathsight to all members of the order.

Veneration: This order miracle empowers all members of the order that are dragons, granting them:

* A custom dragon description, themed for the order.

* A critical hit bonus in areas your order holds sovereignty over.

Elevation: the greatest of the order miracles (and incredibly expensive to match!), raise a member of your order as a Divine Avatar. This requires a gathered 500000 stolen essence minimum, but will consume the entire stolen essence reserve of the order. The more essence that is available, the longer this status will last. These avatars are a little different to the ones you're familiar with from the event:

- Avatars are not open pk.

- Avatar's have high base stats.

- They may wear things, including artefacts.

- They may utilise fast travel.

- They do not have access to avatar miracles.

- They may enact lesser order miracles from anywhere, without the use of the shrine. Greater miracles (such as worldburn) still require a shrine.

- Their status is not stripped upon dying.

- Their essence reserves will naturally decay over time, and once they are expended the Avatar shall lose their status.

As a final note, custom dragon messages and deathsights are disabled by default. In order to gain them, you must CONFIG ORDERMESSAGES ON. This is to allow people to hide membership in a given order for cases where this may be desired.

And there you have it! We'll be closely monitoring this in the coming days to ensure everything is working in a desirable fashion.

Enjoy!

Ahmet

Sounds like an amazing concept, and totally not what I expected for Nishnatoba. @Makarios and @Nicola with the amazing ideas out of left field as always. Did have a few questions though.

About how long (at base stolen essence) would one remain an avatar? Is this affected by time in the realms?

Can people who are not members of an order access Nishnatoba? Perhaps at shrines for their house/city patrons?

Also, are Lay members able to access Nish via their Patron's shrine?

Nicola

Answering your questions here, @Ahmet

About how long (at base stolen essence) would one remain an avatar? Is this affected by time in the realms?

Just over 48 hours, the rate of decay decreases if you are offline, but it still does decay.

Can people who are not members of an order access Nishnatoba? Perhaps at shrines for their house/city patrons?

From HELP CRUSADES:
Once the crusade begins any order member may TOUCH their Master Shrine on the Prime Material Plane in order to access the Plane of Nishnatoba. All followers will be taken along for the ride.

ETA: Also, are Lay members able to access Nish via their Patron's shrine?

Not at this time. We might add more ways for Laymembers to participate in the future.

Kayeil

How long does the dragon description and deathsight message last?

Ahmet

Would also be nice for crusades to be announced on the gamefeed, if they're not already.

Nicola

@Kayeil

Fervour and Veneration each last 2 RL days.

Antidas

@Nicola @Makarios with the added importance of master shrines, can we revisit their location restrictions? It seems to me that it would be relatively easy for a group to camp someone's master shrine while others join in a Crusade against that order, thus preventing them from ever being able to defend their shrine. However, for those orders lucky enough to have their shrines in private areas that do not require channeled abilities to access, they have a distinct advantage in that if they can reach their master shrine safely, then they should be able to enter Nishnatoba unhindered.

The only two I can think of that fit this currently are Babel and Deucalion, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were others!

Nicola

@Antidas We'll keep an eye on this, but you might find that the more hidden master shrines are actually a detriment. I.E in the case that you want to take a cannon fodder force of non-order folks to Nishnatoba to help defend you (attack everyone else) when you go crusading.

Kayeil

I have a concern about the smallest Orders being the biggest targets due to an inability to properly defend ourselves against the bigger orders or combat heavy orders. I feel like perhaps they would be seen as easy targets, and the miracles don't last very long so certain Orders will always be looking to keep up their advantages. We'll have to wait and see how it plays out, but I do suggest considering altering it to where you gain less from Orders with smaller numbers of active members, whereas you have more to potentially gain from the bigger ones. It might even the playing field more where the smaller Orders won't be under (possibly) constant attack because there is much less to gain from them. It should be based on active members only, though. Some Orders like mine will have people who have been dormant for real life years that we can't remove, especially with an inactive God.

Sobriquet

I read this and only see the same few top tier fighters gaining yet even more power by becoming avatars. Maybe I'm reading that wrong, but I don't like the sound of that at all. 

Kayeil

Sobriquet said:

I read this and only see the same few top tier fighters gaining yet even more power by becoming avatars. Maybe I'm reading that wrong, but I don't like the sound of that at all. 

I feel the same way, and I'm hoping it doesn't result in further nerfs to hunting just because certain people have extra advantages on top of everything else. Hunting has been nerfed quite enough.

Sobriquet

The game is PvP focused and being run by one of the best PvP'ers the game has seen. It's obvious where the focus lies. That's not a complaint though, at all, it is what's draws people to the game. What worries me is the best fighters out there will now be even stronger and will find a way to have it as much as humanly possible. Like we need Jhui et al being even stronger in raids. 

Nicola

Should the world notice Babel's order (or any other of the antagonist Gods') enacting a crusade (and you will notice, it's hard to miss) there will be a three hour period before the crusade begins during which you can rally all of your friends and prepare to head up to Nishnatoba to play spoiler, if you wish to. You'll only need an order member to follow to get there at which point Achaean's can fight, help, hinder, as they please.

Kayeil

Sobriquet said:

The game is PvP focused and being run by one of the best PvP'ers the game has seen. It's obvious where the focus lies. That's not a complaint though, at all, it is what's draws people to the game. What worries me is the best fighters out there will now be even stronger and will find a way to have it as much as humanly possible. Like we need Jhui et al being even stronger in raids. 

Very true. I expect combat to exist in Order relations to some degree, but this is potentially pretty extreme for Orders who can't handle it or are just not pvp focused at all. I'll definitely wait and see what happens before getting too stressed over it. Just concerned at this point.

Kayeil

Nicola said:

Should the world notice Babel's order (or any other of the antagonist Gods') enacting a crusade (and you will notice, it's hard to miss) there will be a three hour period before the crusade begins during which you can rally all of your friends and prepare to head up to Nishnatoba to play spoiler, if you wish to. You'll only need an order member to follow to get there at which point Achaean's can fight, help, hinder, as they please.

I understand your point. I'm hoping an Ashtan based Order won't attack another Ashtan based Order, but if that is the case it'd be hard to request Ashtani help when they can't fight each other by choosing Pandora vs Babel, Vastar vs Babel and so on. This was already an issue during the tsol'teth event where the Nihilists were fighting the Orders of other Ashtan divine citizens. It's an interesting situation, for sure.

Daklore

Imma ... Imma just leave this here...

[spoiler][/spoiler]

Farrah

This came just in time for us to use it to ruin Christmas. Thanks!

(It looks pretty awesome)

Does Benediction require a living order member or can you soul rezz yourself? Plz soul rezz self. #SupportSmallOrders

Nicola

Farrah said:

This came just in time for us to use it to ruin Christmas. Thanks!

(It looks pretty awesome)

Does Benediction require a living order member or can you soul rezz yourself? Plz soul rezz self. #SupportSmallOrders

It requires a living order member, I'm afraid. No self-rezz.

Mathilda

Aaaaahhh I wanna be a duskflight dragon!

Kayeil

Speaking of Christmas, can we have the dragon description as a Christmas present? I just want to see it one time. 

Tahquil

Skeptical on how this will pan out. Will crusade status give a count down until the next crusade begins like upcoming? 3 hours is a pretty long time to keep everyone alert and excited (unless of course when you say organise a defence you meant start calling in your Skype/discord groups).

What stops a Order X choosing to crusade against the weak and tiny Order Y over and over so they can get the buffs to take on the actual strong target of Order Z?

Can you degrade a True Master Shrine that is already damaged?

I think there should be a lower buffer somewhere that protects the smaller shrines. Something like a minimum essence count an order must have to generate splinters. Something low, so that orders who don't want to be in this conflict can opt out but in exchange they can't build up a reserve of essence to use in other conflicts.
 (Or say they wanted to use a shrine power they could hunt the essence, offer, use the power straight away so it still requires some planning)

Aegoth

Small orders just need to buckle up and enjoy the ride. Or they can be smart and hire the services of a larger order to protect them in exchange for a favor or something. Order politics!

Kafziel

I see this leading to coalitions: i.e. Order X starts a crusade, all enemies of Order X mobilise because they don't want to get fucked up.

Not saying that's good or bad, just what I foresee

Milabar

I like it,  let the death begin 

Kenway

If nerai dragons are cool i might actually get dragon

Tahquil

Aegoth unbuckles his belt. It's a familiar sound now, the soft sound of metal on metal as his fat fingers fumble with the simple task. He's been into the holocaust schnapps again, the sick sweet smell weighs heavily in the air. The Order of Scarlatti begins to writhe, irritating the blue bruises from the day before, the purple bruises from the day before that and the yellow from the week before. A mottled rainbow of the Mhaldorian's impotent anger and self-hate that not even the most emo of the Bard's poets could match.

As the footsteps get closer she bounces her efforts to escape her bonds. She screams prays to the air, beseeching her Lord to let them break. The bonds, the banister, her arms. Anything so she may slip free of the chains, run up the stairs and then be free of this hell-hole basement.

But the saliva crusted rag in her mouth tends them moot. Almost as if taunting her, Aegoth's voice is strong and unfettered even through the haze of drunkness.

"Just buckle up and enjoy the ride, sweetheart."


Merry Christmas everyone!

Farrah

Tahquil said:

Skeptical on how this will pan out. Will crusade status give a count down until the next crusade begins like upcoming? 3 hours is a pretty long time to keep everyone alert and excited (unless of course when you say organise a defence you meant start calling in your Skype/discord groups).

What stops a Order X choosing to crusade against the weak and tiny Order Y over and over so they can get the buffs to take on the actual strong target of Order Z?

Can you degrade a True Master Shrine that is already damaged?

I think there should be a lower buffer somewhere that protects the smaller shrines. Something like a minimum essence count an order must have to generate splinters. Something low, so that orders who don't want to be in this conflict can opt out but in exchange they can't build up a reserve of essence to use in other conflicts.
 (Or say they wanted to use a shrine power they could hunt the essence, offer, use the power straight away so it still requires some planning)

You can't really pick on Order Y to get buffs without Order Z stepping in, unless Order Z is really lazy and wants to deal with a super buffed enemy later on. All orders can join in once a crusade is started, so realistically, everyone will be fighting everyone each time.

Marisella

They just have to initiate a crusade with the 3hr waiting period as well or follow someone in an order who initiated it, right? So technically, not everyone can join in. Only people who have the reason to follow and join either side of the Orders will be up in Nish.

Ahmet

No. Order members from ANY order can enter Nish during a crusade (unless I read it wrong).

Sarathai

How expensive is Veneration?

Also, it's an interesting way to potentially put brakes on shrine wars. Since you need well over the three million max to initiate a crusade, people might wind up needing to choose between re-raising shrines on the main plane, or holding off to build crusade essence.

Bann

Looks pretty cool so far. Not sure why Ashtani wouldn't fight Ashtani, though. Maybe it's against the law or something, not sure. We're usually pretty chill, though. Would have to see what @Ryldagh has to say about it/ask him IC.