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CreZ

Provide followers a use for vesseled gems: (wind speed)

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I had this idea while having my weekly sleep and kicked it around with a few people in GL-Freedom to see how it would be received. As these things do it evolved and there has been some scope creep so I will first outline my initial idea and then provide details on some of the discussion/expansion.

 

Initial Idea:

How many times have you loaded up your boat with supplies, made sure the animals were fed, topped up your food and water and waited for dawn to hop into your trusty boat to travel somewhere only to quickly discover that the wind had instantly forsaken you. There you are cruising along at sub 10km/h speeds realizing you're about to spend your entire wurm day (and likely part of the night) sitting on a slow boat to Chaos. What can a pious wurmian do in this situation but turn to their deity and beseech them to put a bit of wind in your sails?

Well you certainly can't sacrifice anything out on the sea, and unless you happen to be vynora or a lib carrying a corpse you aren't even able to pray. What you might be able to have though is the favor of the gods vesseled in a pure gem by your friendly neighborhood priest. Chances are you've even come across these gems while digging or mining and later discovered they weren't of much use other than to give or sell to a priest. Now what if, and hear me out here, what if you could get a gem filled with favor and as a full faith follower you could call on your deity to provide a bonus to the wind speed on your vehicle similar to a scaled down and localized version of the effect from Rite of Spring (or perhaps think of it as more like a timed rune as it would be only on the one ship). Already the gods are known to increase the winds both in this sense and when you pray you sometimes feel a stirring of the wind announcing their attention so it seems perfectly reasonably from a lore standpoint.

 

As for how it would work there was a bit of disagreement on the specfics and I think it would be largely at the discretion of the dev team to find the right balance. Some of the keypoints were that it should not provide an advantage to PvP, it should not be overpowered (I envision a cap to max speed it would boost to), but it should also respect the "street value" of a gem and the associated favor to not make it entirely unappealing and wasteful.

Some possible ways this could work:

  • work on PvE only (even though wind speed is already less important to ship speed on PvP)
  • gem QL/stored favor amount would decide the duration of the effect.
    • (36 seconds per ql has been mentioned as a 100favor gem would then give 1hour of increased speed)
  • gem would need to be vesseled
    • gem could potentially need to be restricted to the follower's deity with a blessing?
  • follower would need to be at full faith
  • speed would be:
    • a) a flat increase in km/h
    • b) a static %age of the current wind speed
    • c) a progression or %age of progression to the next tier of windspeed
    • d) a super speed gale
    • (I'm personally partial to one of the first 3 but others have felt the value of a gem should entitle the user to a hearty bonus)
  • speed could have a maximum cap of say 20km/h at which point there would be no value in using the gem. 
    • (I believe in this because it makes the idea situational to those times of bad winds when one is already praying to the RNG to change the wind rather than causing it to be a necessity for all travel)

 

Scope Creep:

As we disucssed this an idea was put forth that different types of gems could allow for different bonuses to add more variety. For example diamonds (or opals) might provide windspeed, sapphires allow a follower to fill a container with fresh water (1kg per favor/ql), emeralds provide some nature or farming bonus, and rubies to provide a CR buff or max the burn timer on nearby furnaces. None of these ideas have been fully fleshed out so if you can think of a really great use for another gem type please share it. If not this could allow the devs to provide their own flavor to the idea should it ever be implemented. Or it could simply be that all gems provide the same bonus and if its later expanded to other objects it would be context sensitive.

 

I'm not really dead set on this nor do I see it as a major priority but it would give non priests a bit more reason to care about those gems we find and I think we've all been stuck out on a boat praying for better wind so being able to activate a vesseled gem, right click our boat, and speed things along (even a little) has a certain appeal. What do you all think?

Edited by CreZ
Clarification around the scope of the effect being a single vehicle and not the actual global wind on the server.
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Okay, so, you are set to sail from A to B, wind is bad for you. Another bloke is set to sail B to A, wind is good for him.. Third bloke is sailing C to D, that is across A to B path, so the wind is neither good nor bad for him. Since the wind is bad for you, you change it with a gem.. Little do you know now the wind for another bloke is bad. So he changes it so its good for him again. Then you change it again, another bloke does the same. Then you realise you have no more gems to use and the wind is bad to you.. then you come again to forums saying its a bug and doesnt work as intended just cus you dont know that the other bloke was changing wind for himself too lol? 

 

The wind speed and direction is server wide same to everyone, not personal to each character, so even i truly wish we could play with the winds as i also always get a strong gale against me or a very light breeze the way i need it, both ways giving me 10kmh as you say lol, but i dont see this suggestion working either...

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Definitely not imagining for this to be a global effect but rather work on the individual vehicle as a boost (think temporary rune if that helps). Sorry if that wasn't clear.

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Okay, nevermind. Nobody is into this so feel free to /close

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On 2/22/2020 at 9:32 PM, CreZ said:

Okay, nevermind. Nobody is into this so feel free to /close

Don't give up so easily, CreZ.  I find the idea intriguing and well thought out, thought there is a lot of room to consider what could be possible with such a mechanic in place.

I would like to see some more uses for gems in the game.  As you said, unless you are a priest they are pretty much useless.  It would be an interesting thing to consider a mechanic that allowed them to be filled with favor and blessed by a priest in some manner to give deity and gem type specific benefits to followers when used in specific situations.  An aid in sailing in particular would be fantastic.  Carry a couple of blessed gems of the correct type, filled with favor from your deity and use them to petition a blessing over your journey and get where you are going a little faster.  That does not sound overpowered to me, especially if you are traveling long distances across Xanadu in a boat when winds are against you.

Applying the same mechanic to get a temporary bonus in other situations sounds intriguing as well.

Saving up gems and taking them to your deity's local priest to get them filled with favor and blessed by them in order to be used to aid faithful followers when out and about in your work and travels...  +1 from me on the idea.

Edited by Thalius

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If Ether can bump things I can too!

This is similar to some of the things in his suggestions. Some gem also could have an effect similar to Davih's seals suggestion to limit the ql or enchant loss on an item for a given time. Or one could be used as a payment for any of the suggestions for teleports around the map, alliance or otherwise, with or without mount/vehicle. Seems like it could dovetail well with a number of QoL suggestions where there needs to be some cost and limitation to offset the power of the feature but still improve QoL and bring more use for favor to followers.

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Thinking about the scope creep...

It seems to me that each god has their area, and each priest should have an area of utility... cheap utility.

Magranon now can light things, Fo can make things grow a step, I think Vynora should be able to bring wind.  I'd like to see each of the gods have two (or more) relatively low cost utility spells that are not 'game-changing.'

 

If a Vyn Priest enchants a diamond which could be used for wind speed, by any Vynora follower, that makes good sense.  Each deity then would have their own enchants they could do...

Maybe make Vyn vessels usable by Mag/Fo but only at a slight cost of faith (.05?) because they saw what you did there.

 

JS

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