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Niki

This is a controversial thread about Tomes.

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So if you have been living under a rock or just simply new to the game, there exists a few magical items that can be used to give your character bonuses at the expense of another negative effect. I call them "tomes" a lot of people refer to them this way. It is known.

 

So let me just get right into it:

I'm not sure why people look the other way and assume it's fine when it comes to the rarity of these items. When these were first introduced to freedom/chaos coming from epic they had a increased drop rate off uniques. Later it was nerfed into oblivion for whatever reason. If I take a guess here, it was probably because of "they're to strong in pvp QQ" Why add them then? Back then you could get one for like 30s a charge. I sold a giant walnut for about that price. Right now you're lucky if you get a charge for 100s each. Recently one sold with 3 charges for approximately 545 silver. Yes that's right. Cringe.

 

Some will say, "oh just go kill uniques for them! Or, oh just go make alts and win the game and pray RNG for easy goals" Why should a game feature have such a pay wall? Why should I feel the need to premium alts and try my luck getting easy goals?

 

Why is the paywall bad you might ask:

Most people will say you don't need these for PvP or PvE and I agree, however the usefulness of these items still remains especially if you're competitive by nature. Some of the combinations of them are really strong. The paywall is already high enough, if you consider dragon and drake armour. Good luck getting Arch Mage. RIP.

 

Why are they so rare:

Why not give us other methods of obtaining them similar to how masks were handled through archaeology. People are paying out the nose because they want that advantage, it's broken and unjustifiable that any game item should be so highly sought out. I'm going to say it because it's relevant, but this system is as pay to win as it gets. It's gross.

 

How to fix this system:

I don't think removing them is possible, it would be nice as I stated if you could obtain them through other means. I really don't think it's fair to keep them on uniques alone.

 

 

Thoughts, comments, concerns, rants? I'd like to hear them, thank you for your time.

 

Thanks.

 

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Would be nice if some expirienced pvp player can make a post about explaining each one, howpowerfull they are, which combinations are good too use for what situation, etc. I belive many people myself included dodn't understand them at all.

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1 minute ago, kochinac said:

Would be nice if some expirienced pvp player can make a post about explaining each one, howpowerfull they are, which combinations are good too use for what situation, etc. I belive many people myself included dodn't understand them at all.

Yeah I was going to do more research besides stoneskin being worth it. However I figured someone would do this, so let's hope!

 

https://www.wurmpedia.com/index.php/Sorcery

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On 1/14/2018 at 0:37 AM, kochinac said:

Would be nice if some expirienced pvp player can make a post about explaining each one, howpowerfull they are, which combinations are good too use for what situation, etc. I belive many people myself included dodn't understand them at all.


So, I haven't been active in PVP for about a year or so. But I have had sorcery powers and fought those with them a good many times, so I'll do my best to relay what I remember. Incoming wall of text :D

About the damage Resistances/Weaknesses;
These benefits / drawbacks are extremely negligable in pvp, and from what I understand all sorcery items and their abilities are balanced out to the effect that if you had every single one, you would be 5% more resistant to all types of damage. Fairly useless. Most of these effects are useless, such as the changes to Water, Fire, and Acid damage type resistance. The ones that might be noticable would be the ones to Physical type damage (piercing, slashing, bite damage, etc) and maybe Disease as IIRC that affects Rotting Touch damage which is the most commonly used PVP weapon-damage enchantment.

That out of the way, onto the abilities themselves.

 

Magical Wall

Temporarily fabricates a magical wall on a tile border, preventing passage of that tile border or any interaction with it. This ability was probably deemed one of the most OP of all magical abilities since the cast was extremely fast (I believe it is less than 20 seconds, iirc) and the wall typically lasts for about 2+ minutes with a decent cast. This can glitch characters that are on that tile border, or even cut someone off from retreat in tight quarters.

 

Disease

Never seen it do a whole lot. I honestly was never really certain what the point of this spell is, I think it does damage? Very little, and possibly slowly over time or something. It never seemed to do much when used on me so the effect was negligible. I do however believe it inflicts poison wounds which if left to heal on their own do have a small chance to instantly kill a target on healing tick.

 

Lightning

One of the hardest spells to aim since it requires some ~30 seconds of concentration on a single tile, yet if this spell does hit someone wearing a metal helm, it will cause a significant head wound. On SOTG characters with Adamantine or Glimmersteel helms, I'm pretty sure the wounds were usually 8+ damage.

 

Rust Monster

Absolutely useless. Supposed to cause extra damage to the weapon of any attacker that hits you. The effect is so negligible that it's almost funny. So a regular 50ql weapon (longsword, that I tested) regularly takes about .005 damage per swing and .01 damage per successful hit. With rust monster active, these numbers are doubled! Yay! Such effect, many multiply, wow. Terrible spell, complete waste of karma. Noone's weapon is ever going to explode, or even take more than ~3 damage before they realize whats happening and stop to repair.

 

Summon Skeleton / Wraith

So skeletons are fairly worthless. It usually spawns 2 or 3 of them, and they (unlike wraiths) can have random traits such as Alert, Greenish, Sly, etc. However about half the time when spawned, they immediately start attacking each other. They are also extremely weak, barely able to fend off wolves by themselves.

Wraiths however are a little more interesting. You only get one of them, so they are a little bit stronger and have a lot more health. Wraith's though, unlike their skellie counterparts, are ghost-entities like templars and therefore can move through walls. Wraiths I have found, also have a bit of a temper, if you stop leading them for any reason they will kill everything hostile in sight! (or die trying, RIP hellhorse breeding program)

 

Both these types of summoned can be equipped with weapons in the left and/or right hands. So you get some pretty funny scenarios when equipping a wraith with a very powerful weapon and sending it off with orders to charge through a gatehouse to attack the defenders. It's not going to accomplish anything, obviously, but it might be able to kill a horse or two before anyone realizes what our ethereal 'friend' is up to. (Or where the hell he even IS)

 

Summon Worg

These are by far the most powerful (or at least tanky) of the summoned creatures. Like skeletons, they can spawn with random traits (Greenish, Alert, Raging, etc.). Greenish Worgs have absolutely insane health pools, and though they don't do much damage, they count as an attacker toward gank bonus and etc. They cannot be equipped with weapons afaik.

 

Stoneskin

Decently useful ability, the next three hits that would have hit you had your avatar not blocked, evaded, or otherwise, will miss anyways. It's only three swings, but sometimes that can make the difference. It's a fairly straightforward ability doesn't need much explaining.

 

Continuum

This is an active ability like Rust Monster which is cast on ones own body, reduces all damage taken by ~20%. I'm pretty sure it stacks with SOTG, and possibly even champ status DR. Fairly useful in the right circumstances, but it doesn't last very long at all iirc.

 

Karma Slow

This is a spell that is meant to slow down the attack speed of an enemy. Web Armor already does this, and it is the PVP standard. Also, if you are experienced with Wurms combat system enough you will know there are certain aimpoints which can be used to have more effect on hampering things like the enemy's Bstr, Bctrl, Aim/Attack Speed, and Blocking ability. (The spell is useless)

 

True Strike

The next hit is supposed to be a "100%" critical hit. This isn't really a great spell because crits in Wurm aren't that great unless you're doing it with an Artifact (no longer possible). A crit is simply a swing that cannot be blocked, evaded, or glance, and ignores a bit of the enemies armor DR. So basically, a crit means that if your enemy would normally dodge, and/or shield block your attack, they will still do so. But in that same second you will simply swing again, until you hit. A crit where you are vastly out-rolled looks like, "Evade, Block, Glance, Parry, Hit" All 5 lines of combat occurring in the same second.

 

Fireball

Never even seen it successfully casted in PVP though I've seen plenty people try. Don't know what the damage is like or anything, but I included it because it's the only other offensive karma spell I know of off the top of my head.

Edited by whereami
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Smoke, green cherry, walnut, blood, libram and slime are the more "popular" ones for pvp. Scroll of binding is more for someone wearing scale that wants the crush resistance to counter slimes crush penalty, whereas the other tomes are more universal. Scrolls spell is equivalent to  a minor wound on the legs and arms, which you could have already done in the time you spent casting it, and have done to you since you've got a penalty to defending when casting. The resistances are a decent amount of the value of the tome, smoke is used a lot while red cherry is laughed at, despite being pretty similar spells, just because of the resistances.

 

As for the paywall, they're not required for pvp. Numbers and knowledge win fights more than items and tomes. People think they're a lot more powerful than they are but that's because nearly everyone that pvp's with tomes has a strong account to back it up, and have been pvping for a while and know what they're doing.

 

Another thing about tomes is they're quite hard to cast while in armor, using soul strength or depth to cast, and mind speed reduces cast times by something stupid like 1s per 10 i've been told, i don't care enough to remember these things.
 

Overall they're just icing on a top-end pvp account, If there's anything else that you can buy for your pvp experience chances are that'll be a better purchase than a tome. 

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30 minutes ago, whereami said:

Continuum

This is an active ability like Rust Monster which is cast on ones own body, reduces all damage taken by ~20%. I'm pretty sure it stacks with SOTG, and possibly even champ status DR. Fairly useful in the right circumstances, but it doesn't last very long at all iirc.

 

I don't PVP, but in PVE it's probably the most useful spell. Especially if you like to e.g. facetank dragons in aggro stance with a 2hander :P

 

It does stack with everything, and the duration is usually 15+ minutes (and you can recast it to stack up the duration).

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2 hours ago, Niki said:

So if you have been living under a rock or just simply new to the game, there exists a few magical items that can be used to give your character bonuses at the expense of another negative effect. I call them "tomes" a lot of people refer to them this way. It is known.

 

So let me just get right into it:

I'm not sure why people look the other way and assume it's fine when it comes to the rarity of these items. When these were first introduced to freedom/chaos coming from epic they had a increased drop rate off uniques. Later it was nerfed into oblivion for whatever reason. If I take a guess here, it was probably because of "they're to strong in pvp QQ" Why add them then? Back then you could get one for like 30s a charge. I sold a giant walnut for about that price. Right now you're lucky if you get a charge for 100s each. Recently one sold with 3 charges for approximately 545 silver. Yes that's right. Cringe.

 

Some will say, "oh just go kill uniques for them! Or, oh just go make alts and win the game and pray RNG for easy goals" Why should a game feature have such a pay wall? Why should I feel the need to premium alts and try my luck getting easy goals?

 

Why is the paywall bad you might ask:

Most people will say you don't need these for PvP or PvE and I agree, however the usefulness of these items still remains especially if you're competitive by nature. Some of the combinations of them are really strong. The paywall is already high enough, if you consider dragon and drake armour. Good luck getting Arch Mage. RIP.

 

Why are they so rare:

Why not give us other methods of obtaining them similar to how masks were handled through archaeology. People are paying out the nose because they want that advantage, it's broken and unjustifiable that any game item should be so highly sought out. I'm going to say it because it's relevant, but this system is as pay to win as it gets. It's gross.

 

How to fix this system:

I don't think removing them is possible, it would be nice as I stated if you could obtain them through other means. I really don't think it's fair to keep them on uniques alone.

 

 

Thoughts, comments, concerns, rants? I'd like to hear them, thank you for your time.

 

Thanks.

 

The world must be falling and I must be going through a feverish nightmare because... I agree with Niki.

 

This is something that should get looked at. The drop rate for such overpowered items should be higher or somehow made more available to even up the playfield. Good post Niki.

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Tomes need be reworked or deleted.

They also got expensive because people realized how handy some tomes got in pvp. Even back before tome drop nerf there wasn't really a ton of tomes. They sold cheap yes but after first wave of uniques being slayed they slowed down/increased in price fast.

 

Truestrike needs apply a resistance to person getting hit so 4 people don't truestrike/insta kill someone.

In trade truestrike as well need a rework on dispelling. Currently you can spam dispel second you see someone casting truestrike to remove the spell.

5 favor for 500 karma is quite unfair.

Either make truestrike not able be dispelled or Allow truestrike last up to 15 minutes easily and instead each dispel takes 5ish minutes off the timer.

Or change truestrike to instead just guarantee a hit on your next swing and thats it with no way of it getting dispeled.(resistance part as well if hit by truestrike)

 

The dispel part should also be added to continuum. If people find out you have that tome which they will. every time before engaging you just get mass dispeled.

 

Truestrike is the only tome that can be op or a failure.

The rest don't influence fights like truestrike does.

EDIT:that influence depends on how good you are at dispeling truestrike atm though.

Aslong you keep an eye on whos casting you can dispel before someone hits with it.

Edited by shankiest
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I don't remember them ever being nerfed drop rate wise, its not commonly known I guess that dragons have a very low chance to drop tomes(~2% I believe), but all other uniques have almost a 100% chance to drop them.

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1 hour ago, Darklords said:

I don't remember them ever being nerfed drop rate wise, its not commonly known I guess that dragons have a very low chance to drop tomes(~2% I believe), but all other uniques have almost a 100% chance to drop them.

its 50-50 on non dragon uniques..

 

also the tome that was recently bought for 545 euros was one of the non amazing ones. lol...

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^, kinda true but depends if you had a Slime or not as it was the counter of slimes weakness to Maul. It was essentially a Smoke Of Sol but against maul attacks, which are common.

Then the tome itself was a good utility tome. Not a great spell to cast or meta, but good to have.

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I picture going to a wizards tower in the wilderness. Where you can get a quest to obtain a tome. Probably an expensive quest. :)

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The only way that I found "fair" to distribute tomes was through the epic missions. I wish Chaos would do this aswell, it would give the perk chaos needs to get people over.
But even then if the right missions spawned on freedom, then PVE would enjoy certain aspects and also get the chance of a tome reward.

Epics mission system is LITT

Relying on uniques to drop more tomes when people already complain that uniques get controlled by a few groups, doesn't sound like a good idea.

Edited by Mclavin
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They need to be rare. but yes the paywall is high. But clearly people are willing to pay for it.

 

But thats said. There should an other way to get it... Like in pvp. kill a guy/gal, and steal it like affinity is now. lol.  

 

Only other way can see it is through lore, archaeology, digging. 

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13 hours ago, Niki said:

When these were first introduced to freedom/chaos coming from epic they had a increased drop rate off uniques. Later it was nerfed into oblivion for whatever reason.

 

People keep forgetting that the nerf was because the drop rate was bugged.  The original intention was only non-dragons, as per patch notes "There are also small chances of Sorcery items on non-dragon uniques", but it was bugged dropping all the time and the fix was "Sorcery/Epic ability items no longer drop all the time in unique corpses. 50% for non-dragon and only occasionally for dragons."  So again as stated in the past, tome drops on uniques was actually buffed from the original intention.

 

12 hours ago, whereami said:

maybe Disease as IIRC that affects Rotting Touch damage which is the most commonly used PVP weapon-damage enchantment.

 

Not even close considering you're just hurting yourself.  You damage your weapon more, you do less damage, you get more aosp, and you're making wounds that are easier to heal with spells

 

12 hours ago, whereami said:

Disease

Never seen it do a whole lot. I honestly was never really certain what the point of this spell is, I think it does damage? Very little, and possibly slowly over time or something. It never seemed to do much when used on me so the effect was negligible. I do however believe it inflicts poison wounds which if left to heal on their own do have a small chance to instantly kill a target on healing tick.

 

It does an infection wound to a player, and just gives disease status to mobs.  To non-sotg players it commonly does around 9 dmg so pre-everyone-is-sotg days it was super op

 

12 hours ago, whereami said:

Karma Bolt (Lightning)

 

Karma bolt and lightning are two different spells.

 

12 hours ago, whereami said:

So skeletons are fairly worthless. It usually spawns 2 or 3 of them

 

I've commonly seen 5-10, still useless though and still buggy

 

12 hours ago, whereami said:

Wraiths however are a little more interesting. You only get one of them, so they are a little bit stronger and have a lot more health.

 

They also flat out just die if in sunlight

 

12 hours ago, whereami said:

Summon Worg

These are by far the most powerful (or at least tanky) of the summoned creatures.

 

They were great, except a "fix" to not get bugged situations with multiple pets was to make summoning a worg untame your horse, so it became pretty useless unless you want an untamed horse for something

 

12 hours ago, whereami said:

Continuum

This is an active ability like Rust Monster which is cast on ones own body, reduces all damage taken by ~20%. I'm pretty sure it stacks with SOTG, and possibly even champ status DR. Fairly useful in the right circumstances, but it doesn't last very long at all iirc.

 

It stacks, and normal cast powers will last anywhere from 20-30 minutes

 

12 hours ago, whereami said:

This isn't really a great spell because crits in Wurm aren't that great

 

Crits do 1.5x dmg after being nerfed from 2x dmg...

 

12 hours ago, whereami said:

Fireball

Never even seen it successfully casted in PVP though I've seen plenty people try. Don't know what the damage is like or anything

 

It used to do 8-12 dmg to non-sotg players which was very strong, as you could cast it in a boat fight against one person in the middle of the knarr and suddenly their entire knarr had 8-12 dmg.  It was nerfed to not ignore armor, so now the damage is very insignificant. 

 

In todays pvp and my opinion, the only useful spells are true strike, continuum, stoneskin, and karma slow.  Except that continuum and stoneskin will get automatically dispelled.  Rome dispelled me so much I stopped bothering to cast it anymore... and they still spammed me with dispel.  True strike has already been nerfed to not automatically do your max damage and crits nerfed from 2x to 1.5x, dunno how to fix it more without just making it useless.  A crit resistance on the victim would be nice though, and has been suggested long ago.  Karma slow is really good if you know the right situations to use it

 

Edit:  One pretty huge reason that most spells suck other than insignificant damage is the severe distance limitation on casting.  It's much shorter than normal spells and Erikn was supposed to fix it but instead worked on other things until he was no longer working with ccab.  Pic below

 

Spoiler

tTDog73.jpg

 

Edited by MrGARY

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40 minutes ago, Quicktor said:

lmao

 

truestrike not a great spell he said

 

okay okay

Can you try reading instead of basic trolling?

If you ever want be a good troll learn read the post and try twist it so well it looks like you are serious.

 

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Here is a fun thought:

 

Add tome fragments as randomised loot from killing hostile mobs; rather like the rare roll for burying them (have the item appear directly in the player's inventory on rare occasionas).  Make each tome take about 10 fragments.

 

The more you hunt, the more fragments you get.  Anyone can get them, they are still rare.  A lot of fragments to choose from so the odds of getting those 10 "rare" rolls giving the same type of tome fragment is pretty much 0, but players can trade between themselves (as they are doing for statue fragments).

 

Sweeten the pot a bit; killing hostile mobs in PvP has double the chance of giving fragment drops (more risk, more reward).

Edited by Etherdrifter
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Anything that gives you a tome for grinding (like Archeology) would just ruin the tomes market. Tomes are inherently PVP items (I can't really see much use for them outside of Chaos/Epic) and thus should be tied to PVP. Uniques? Sure. They are rare enough for it not be an issue. But allowing Joe Schmuck to just go collecting fragments to make ther own tomes is a bit iffy. The risk factor should always be there for such items as they are considered "endgame" stuff.

 

Since they are more readily available on Epic, the focus should be Chaos. Stuff related to the altars could be a start. Or make them somehow available from missions as Epic does. This would balance out the different pvp sides, while still keeping them inherent to the PVP servers, as intended.

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Just give every player a full set of tomes already!

 

Oh wait, this would just make them no longer special.

 

I do think the drop rates on dragons and drakes should be inline with the other uniques rather than the current chance of getting a fantastic roll.

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2 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

Here is a fun thought:

 

Add tome fragments as randomised loot from killing hostile mobs; rather like the rare roll for burying them (have the item appear directly in the player's inventory on rare occasionas).  Make each tome take about 10 fragments.

 

The more you hunt, the more fragments you get.  Anyone can get them, they are still rare.  A lot of fragments to choose from so the odds of getting those 10 "rare" rolls giving the same type of tome fragment is pretty much 0, but players can trade between themselves (as they are doing for statue fragments).

 

Sweeten the pot a bit; killing hostile mobs in PvP has double the chance of giving fragment drops (more risk, more reward).

 

1 hour ago, Angelklaine said:

Anything that gives you a tome for grinding (like Archeology) would just ruin the tomes market. Tomes are inherently PVP items (I can't really see much use for them outside of Chaos/Epic) and thus should be tied to PVP. Uniques? Sure. They are rare enough for it not be an issue. But allowing Joe Schmuck to just go collecting fragments to make ther own tomes is a bit iffy. The risk factor should always be there for such items as they are considered "endgame" stuff.

 

Since they are more readily available on Epic, the focus should be Chaos. Stuff related to the altars could be a start. Or make them somehow available from missions as Epic does. This would balance out the different pvp sides, while still keeping them inherent to the PVP servers, as intended.

 

11 minutes ago, JakeRivers said:

Just give every player a full set of tomes already!

 

Oh wait, this would just make them no longer special.

 

I do think the drop rates on dragons and drakes should be inline with the other uniques rather than the current chance of getting a fantastic roll.

Let's face it, this is a pvp system. If you get tome fragments from player kills that would be fine but I'd stop it there. Definitely agree with increasing the drop rate, they need to be increased regardless so prices stabilize. 

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I'm involved in usually at least one unique slaying a month and have been for....years basically. I still don't have a single tome charge. They're just so stupidly rare and then when you get one you gotta roll off 3 in a slaying group of usually 20+

 

So yeah....i think the system is bad atm, there's too many things in wurm that require utterly ridiculous amounts of time or money to have a hope of achieving imo. At a minimum the 1% dragon drop rate should go away....tbh i dunno what was so wrong with the original "every unique slaying drops a tome" but i guess 50% isn't bad.

Edited by Nadroj

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imo most of em are pretty meh and won't swing a fight

 

But then you have true strike, literally cancer and should have never been added, id say disable its use on pvp servers

 

Continuum is really good, but you can dispel it(and true strike but gl dispelling the 4 guys swinging at you with it), which means a group can at least dispel and focus

 

still really stupid and should have never been enabled on pvp servers

 

Edited by WhyThatPost
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I'm going to look at it a little different.

 

Why not take them right off unique loot table.

 

Just added to archaeology table as fragments. Drop rate set to what ever fits keep market value. The locations  could also be set. (high pvp areas.)

 

Players would be out in the open more and longer. meaning more chance of pvp.

 

 

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