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Aariez

Re-evaluate Shattering?

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From what I am reading, one of the core reasons behind the enchant decay debate is the risk of items shattering.  Should perhaps this mechanic of the game be re-evaluated?


 


I imagine it was put in to give a high risk/reward balance for enchanting items, but it seems out of place in Wurm.  No other mechanic (as far as I have seen), even comes close.  When imping an item to increase its effectiveness, there is no risk of completely destroying the item; fights can end in a corpse run and some experience loss but not permadeath; failing on creation of an item will involve some damage but not destruction; and the list goes on.


 


Wurm is a game of moderation.  Skills improve at a snail's pace, fights can take minutes, decay is a very slow process, terraforming is done in very small increments ... yet, we have one exception that will destroy a 100 QL rare item with a bad RNG roll?  It just doesn't fit.


 


If risk needs to be added to enchanting, it would be much more in-line with this game's style to do something like: massive hits to QL on a fail, or a priest debuff that prevented favour gain for a couple hours/days, or a big decay hit to other enchantments already on the item.  I'm sure there's plenty of other "risks" that could be thought up and implemented and would align much more closely to how this game handles everything else.


 


Not to mention that if this shattering mechanic is completely removed, then very few would have a legitimate argument against enchantment decay on weapons (or at a minimum, if weapons are to be exempted then all things being equal tools could be as well).


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Shattering is a mess, item taking damages (like 90%) on a critical failure would be more interesting on a whole market argument (need to be repaired / reimp / yadda yadda).


 


But the whole enchant mechanism need to be looked at, why is it more interesting to dispell a cast and get a fresh one at a higher power than trying to improve it without success for hours ?


 


When the risks will be removed and the process more interesting and cheaper to do (tied to skill maybe), i think there will be less issues with any decays or reenchanting.


 


That is, if those decays are properly balanced. No real point in adding more tedium to the whole community to save an already dead market.

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all those priests that did the grueling channel grind just stared daggers at you.


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+1 to removing shatter entirely


 


also to increasing skillgains on ALL slower skills (WS, channel, meditation)


Edited by Elen
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Why point daggers? is %90 dmg worse than completely destroying the item? It still has the enchant on it. It could even be an easy way to make skiller tools


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There is a strong "I had to suffer so so should everyone else" mentality on this forum.


Its a shame really and holds back the game as a whole I think.


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hm. last item i lost through it was my sup s anvil. its kind of sad... but it seems that its the only way to get rid of too many rare items and keep the prices as they are now. but like ive said: its kind of sad to lose good items through casts, thus i would like to see shattering disappearing..


Edited by bangzuvelis

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hm. last item i lost through it was my sup s anvil. its kind of sad... but it seems that its the only way to get rid of too many rare items and keep the prices as they are now. but like ive said: its kind of sad to lose good items through casts, thus i would like to see shattering disappearing..

ouch

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so suggestion is to remove the bad rng but keep the good rng? Be careful what you wish for...


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Remove shattering completely.


Add: "You fail miseribly and lose all 'confidence'"


 


This hit to 'confidence' causes your chance of success/high cast to drop greatly for a few minutes/hours depending on how badly you failed and your Mind Logic/Speed would help you regain 'confidence' quicker. You could also regain 'confidence' even faster by praying at an altar.


*Replace 'confidence' if you wish with 'faith', however I didn't want to confuse the skill with the word.*


 


This 'confidence' could also be used to help solve the problem Odynn raised about increasing the cast power of an enchant. After casting a spell successfully, your 'confidence' is boosted temporarily, giving you increased chance at improving the cast on your next spell on that same item. Casting dispell resets your 'confidence'.


*Not much of a boost, maybe 5-10%. Point is, reward re-cast rather than dispelling...dispelling admits failure on the first attempt rather than the desire to improve*


Edited by Outlaw
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My 95ql drake jacket went to "shatter heaven" a couple of weeks ago. Still mourning that one.  :(


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all those priests that did the grueling channel grind just stared daggers at you.

 

Some of us couldn't care either way.

 

I relish the challenge.

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My 95ql drake jacket went to "shatter heaven" a couple of weeks ago. Still mourning that one.  :(

I mourn your loss Gumbo :(

Edited by Outlaw

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I would agree to look at the shattering again.


It could be made so that shattering should be prevented after taking some rather logical and also skill based precautions.


With all possible precautions taken, and past 90 channeling, high soul depth etc, it should not occur anymore.


I was rather puzzled when I shattered a 50 ql item, with 97 channeling, 61 soul depth and 100 alignment&faith.


Didn't even have armor on, all prayers for the day done etc.


 


I disagree though that shattering should be completely removed.


Could be a bonus to the grind at some point to be risk free.


Call it investment protection ;-)


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Less shattering? We need more of it... with shrapnel and/or exploding horses.

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Less shattering? We need more of it... with shrapnel and/or exploding horses.

LOL, that would be interesting: instead of the item being destroyed, a failed cast "rebounds" and either severely hurts or kills the priest!  Would be crafting-combat  :P

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Love the idea of casting-combat..


 


You cast all day while at work ?  rip


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If I give a QL99 knife to a newbie smith and ask him to improve it, the most he can do is drag its quality down from repeated failures; at no point is he at risk of turning the item into scrap metal.  If you try to assemble a difficult item, the only thing at risk of permanent loss is damaging a component to 100 and destroying it, or shaving off some of the resource item's weight.  If I give a high-quality rare to a grandmaster enchanter, bad luck can completely destroy my item.  One of these things is not like the other.


 


In every other area of the game, incompetence and bad luck are only setbacks.  Only with enchanting can the item very much blow up in your face and be totally lost, and there is no way to protect against this.  Gambling like that is out of character with the rest of Wurm's crafting systems, especially in a game where items can be unique and irreplaceable.


 


Either shattering should exist but enchants should never decay on anything, or shattering should be out of the equation and everything should decay.  Of the two, the second better fits with the rest of the game.


 


If nothing else, it should be possible to proof an item against shattering with a combination of QL and enchanter's skill.  Something like "the caster's channeling + the item's QL must add up to 160 to remove all risk of shattering" comes to mind.


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Just be like the cool kids and make everything from Seryll, no worrying about shattering there ;)


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Just replace that shattering with something else so we can get our items enchanted without the horror... The 90 damage idea is pretty good. If that is not enough, how about the 'shatter' critical failure also remove all enchants as well. If 90 damage is not enough due mend, just make it lose huge ql percent instead (if possible) or just decent ql loss so if the thing is already medium ql it will indeed get destroyed. Just replace that shatter with something else, something that won't ruin the balance and will make sense 


 


I am not a veteran so when I lose a rare or supreme item, it is a huge loss for me. I can't take the risk of paying to get my rare or supreme enchanted, even by a very high channel priest. How is this fun? Who are the few making huge profit out of this 'shatter' being able to cast a trillion times and easily replace the items lost so that 'shatter' stays in the game in order to keep that monopoly running on full speed?


Edited by Simyaci

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I never liked the idea of items being destroyed (outside of decay).  I rather have items get a "broken" status where you have to add some mats to restore them back to functional (1QL) level.


 


Frustrating when using a low QL tool and it pops.  This also includes shattered items as well.


 


To keep down on clutter, items that reach 100 damage from decay should be destroyed as normal and not receive the "broken" status.  That or "broken" items should decay like a mofo (like 2 days out in the open).


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Just be like the cool kids and make everything from Seryll, no worrying about shattering there ;)

 

Sure buddy just let me mine some Seryll on my backyard mine and i shall flood the market with seryll tools.

 

Errr... this is weird, seems like there is no seryll veins in my mines.

 

:(

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shattering is just another bad feature that adds even more tedium to this game; tedium adds nothing and is not fun because there is nothing to overcome, just time to pass - difficulty is a different story, but tedium is flat out bad


 


it seems that the mechanic was supposed to keep good items rare, but at this point shattering is obsolete, annoying, and can potentially have real life financial effect (ie. shattering drake / scale)


 


it's really sad to see a 90+ channeling priest with mid-high SD shatter - that just shouldn't ever happen, period; it didn't used to, then Rolf "fixed" it at the same time he "fixed" shatter rate on flaming aura by normalizing all spells at a higher rate than they previously were


 


if Rolf wants to keep certain items rare (rares, moon metal, dragon armor, etc.) he needs to implement a system specific to new item types when he adds those new items to the game, not add or maintain broken systems later or rely on the small amount introduced at a time to keep them rare (it doesn't because those small amounts all add up to huge amounts - see dragon armor proliferation on Chaos or numbers of rare / supreme and moon metal items in game)


 


it's about time shattering just gets removed and casting fixed so it isn't a dice roll to get a usable (70+) cast with high stats


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I have shattered only a few items with my 94 chan/76 soul depth priest however the most memorable one was a 81 ql rare small anvil.


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I never liked the idea of items being destroyed (outside of decay).  I rather have items get a "broken" status where you have to add some mats to restore them back to functional (1QL) level.

 

Frustrating when using a low QL tool and it pops.  This also includes shattered items as well.

 

To keep down on clutter, items that reach 100 damage from decay should be destroyed as normal and not receive the "broken" status.  That or "broken" items should decay like a mofo (like 2 days out in the open).

I like this idea.

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