Reeds, Papyrus, Kelp, Ink.

[Joanavon 553]

With the confusion and blackout of wiki/forum news due to the unfortunate actions of people to pathetic to mention I have a few questions:

1. What is Kelp for?

It's described as: A brown algae long and slimy with air bladders clearly visible.

I know that .5kg of reed FIBER in a (Non) fruit press gives a papyrus sheet and carving knife on a reed PLANT give the pen and have heard that Octopus sacs from OBSCENELY hard to find tiles requiring a very high and likely to become very expensive pendulum and Lurker cast to even find them give you black ink. I

Is that the only way to get (Any color) ink?

If it is then it's almost a cruel joke to implement something so fundamentally useful then lock it up behind a stupidly hard to find item that is only really obtainable by the elite few.

[Stargrace 602]

1. As far as I know, Kelp has no use yet.

2. Agreed about the ink being quite difficult for players to obtain, perhaps mention it in suggestions and see if other types of lesser quality ink could be made, with 'octopus' ink rewarding more characters or some other sort of benefit.

[Aetherwalker 1,863]

Scuttlebutt has it that we'll eventually be burning the kelp for soda ash, which would then be burned with sand to make glass.

[Mypoppy 57]

octopusssssss ;D

[Pingpong 1,070]

Sounds like good ideas to me, I like to have several ways to make ink as the "idea/industry of ink/paper" develops.

[Aetherwalker 1,863]

Tempted to outsource some iron and bust out a 90ql pendulum to see if it actually has any advantage over the 70qls I'm usually dishing out.

[Joanavon 553]

from reports it seems even with a very high ql pendulum and a very high cast the range on the lurker deep pendulum is still absurdly short.

[Joanavon 553]

hmm well i have a ton of kelp so i could throw some in the fire. if i remember right it cooked too.

[axeblade346 164]

Joanavon why so many double post? http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/62212-reeds-papyrus-kelp-ink/#entry614243 is the same topic started by you , same text...

[Wulfgar 1,119]

If it is then it's almost a cruel joke to implement something so fundamentally useful then lock it up behind a stupidly hard to find item that is only really obtainable by the elite few.

I agree. Not only are the tiles incredibly difficult to find (there are like 8 "special" fish tiles whereas most are useless), they apparently also move with seasons (every 11 days? lol).

Either make octopus more common (appear randomly from fishing anywhere or at least all special tiles) or scrap all the ridiculous nerfs recently done to fishing.

Easiest way would probably be to learn from real life where no-one actually used ink from octopuses but from various other easily acquirable materials.

[Domhnall 68]

To me, the best, most reasonable and closest to real life ink would have been the black dye we already use and still have a suitable *rareness* as acorns aren't growing on trees (a topic for another rant).

I can only hope that writing notes as currently designed was to slowly guage what kind of strain they would be on the backend databases before a simpler method is introduced and a flood of notes hit.

[EliasTheCrimson 348]

I, for one, hope that ink creation in some form will be made simplified enough to make note writing accessible to everyone without any special skill requirements.

[Brash_Endeavors 4,735]

Berries are also a very common form of natural ink: http://www.ehow.com/how_6321987_make-natural-ink.html

Just make Octopi ink the only one that is PERMANENT, the rest fade and destroy the parchment after a set time.

Berry ink maybe = 36-48 hours.

More difficult acorn ink = 5-7 days.

Octopi ink is the only permanent ink that lasts forever, so the best only one suited for books and tomes etc.

[Vorg 5]

I say all the dye's should be useable as ink and maybe even show the text in that color, though white might be a bit hard to see in some cases depending on how white the paper is and how white the dye is. You would likely start seeing a lot of red notes floating around as that seems to be the easyest to get and fully renewable.

[Dorian 865]

I, for one, hope that ink creation in some form will be made simplified enough to make note writing accessible to everyone without any special skill requirements.

+1

[Girlinhat 18]

I don't even understand why octopus ink is used at all. People are trying to balance it like "let dye be temporary but let octopus be permanent." I don't see any need to compromise here. This isn't an issue of "we'll let the devs keep it partly their way but we always want some of our input." This is a situation of "wtf were you thinking making a giant new feature and then making it so that virtually no one can use it?" We shouldn't be comrpomising to make octopus ink make sense. We should be getting an entirely different source of ink that actually makes sense and people can actually obtain.

[zuperman 27]

Berries are also a very common form of natural ink: http://www.ehow.com/...atural-ink.html

Just make Octopi ink the only one that is PERMANENT, the rest fade and destroy the parchment after a set time.

Berry ink maybe = 36-48 hours.

More difficult acorn ink = 5-7 days.

Octopi ink is the only permanent ink that lasts forever, so the best only one suited for books and tomes etc.

+1 ... i really like that idea

[joedobo 1,187]

It's totally unbelievable that the devs didn't anticipate the ink issue. Their was even a few comments (myself included) in a city haul thread while ink was on test about making it more common.

[Sandyar 524]

Berries are also a very common form of natural ink: http://www.ehow.com/...atural-ink.html

Just make Octopi ink the only one that is PERMANENT, the rest fade and destroy the parchment after a set time.

Berry ink maybe = 36-48 hours.

More difficult acorn ink = 5-7 days.

Octopi ink is the only permanent ink that lasts forever, so the best only one suited for books and tomes etc.

I find it annoing that something rare should be the best and its nothing with reality. http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere/2010/09/22/pigments-and-inks-typically-used-on-papyrus/

There is no need to make it a requirement to settle at water which is already very popular and space limited.

On deli it seems to be only outside coast lines that contains fishing spots.

[Darkmalice 242]

Why not just used a carved piece of charcoal for writing? Or crushed woad?

[Rhaaggar 0]

Unless they ease up on fishing, ink sacs are going to be next to impossible to find. Lets see. Get decent boat, pole, pendulum, get said pendulum lurkered, find a random not clearly defined spot(could be marlin, shark. etc...), fish for hours on end only to finally get the hit that if it doesnt break your pole the timer will run out and you are back to hours of catching crap fish and rebuilding poles. Is that about it or did I leave something out? At least make it clear with a message from the pendulum that you are at the octopus, marlin, etc... spot. Take some of the pain out and make it a venture remotely fun to pursue for those of us that spend rl money to support the game.

Edited May 28, 2012 by Rhaaggar

[Joanavon 553]

Not to mention even with a very high cast the pendulum range for detecting a special fish tile is absurdly small. Requiring you to sail about trying to get any message other then "you fail to sense of the pendulum".

[Heroic 30]

With the octopus ink and the fading we would lose a great new feature :-(

I think we lost in the details and forgot the main goal: messages between players who not on the same time.

They should be available as long as the other player can read it otherwise the sender never can be sure if he got the message or not.

Edited May 28, 2012 by Heroic

[Dorian 865]

I'd like to see the possibility of using dye for the reed pens. Perhaps these parchments would have a higher decay than one with ink, as the dye would potentially fade easier. Dyes are much easier to obtain than an ink sac from a rare item that only is found in certain spots which change from season to season.

Oh and as a bonus we could send parchments with red or green lettering for holiday cards.

[atazs 965]

Making ink only from octopus is stupid. I understand the dev team wants people to use the mmore regularly but then make them more regular