Ideas of Wonder

Estarra

If you liked the Wands of Wonder, what other ideas for abilities for future wonder items would you like to see?

Eritheyl

Purchasable in-game prs.

Tremula

Crown/Circlet/Diadem of Wonder? Instead of doing a damage type, they give you a slight defence to each of the damage types and have cool little powers. Maybe at twenty crystals you can have an activated ability (FOCUS DIADEM?) that will cause you to have the effect to hear everything that happens telepathically in your room temporarily, like the Meliashmora quest reward?

Estarra

Coming up with powerful utility powers (like the portals) is pretty difficult. The room telepathy power is pretty interesting, though. But how annoying would that be? Would anyone want it?

Portius

Random utility skills are good, with the caveat that you don't want to pull so much out of skillsets as to make taking them pointless.

I would like prints, from hunting. This for its questing utility, both for Kiakoda where you more or less need it and in others where it's just convenient to check your progress.

Random convenience things for tradeskills. Things like faster tattooing, boosted chance to generate a cooking curio, having some degree of control over how enchanted robes turn out. That kind of thing. Stack with the tradeskill artifacts where appropriate.
---
Agreeing that buying these as a limited time artifact in game with credits would be nice. They'd also be a good thing to match with a 21 day quest, with the reward being X crystals.

Kiradawea

While I would ideally want this as its own artifact, how about a power that allows you to see all the probable items in a room. Many objects are hidden in the longdesc that do not show up on IH, and an artifact that just plain tells you what those items are, rather than forcing you to play "guess the synonym", would be much appreciated.

Estarra

Kiradawea said:

While I would ideally want this as its own artifact, how about a power that allows you to see all the probable items in a room. Many objects are hidden in the longdesc that do not show up on IH, and an artifact that just plain tells you what those items are, rather than forcing you to play "guess the synonym", would be much appreciated.

I think that'd mess with quests!

Everiine

Portius said:

Random utility skills are good, with the caveat that you don't want to pull so much out of skillsets as to make taking them pointless.

^This. Unfortunately, I see this everywhere, and even as the Overhaul seeks to reduce feature creep, skill/ability creep is still rampant. With things like this, I prefer minimal abilities, and not-powerful ones. Prints is okay. Abilities that lower cool downs are nice, too (ie, instead of something being able to be done once a month, having it available twice a month).

Elanorwen

Tremula said:

Crown/Circlet/Diadem of Wonder? Instead of doing a damage type, they give you a slight defence to each of the damage types and have cool little powers. Maybe at twenty crystals you can have an activated ability (FOCUS DIADEM?) that will cause you to have the effect to hear everything that happens telepathically in your room temporarily, like the Meliashmora quest reward?

Let's not make yet another must-have-for-pvp item like damage enhance/resistance curios.

Tremula

Elanorwen said:

Tremula said:

Crown/Circlet/Diadem of Wonder? Instead of doing a damage type, they give you a slight defence to each of the damage types and have cool little powers. Maybe at twenty crystals you can have an activated ability (FOCUS DIADEM?) that will cause you to have the effect to hear everything that happens telepathically in your room temporarily, like the Meliashmora quest reward?

Let's not make yet another must-have-for-pvp item like damage enhance/resistance curios.

I wanted something small, like the 5 DMP you get from a curio. Like I said, slight defence.

Elanorwen

Tremula said:

Elanorwen said:

Tremula said:

Crown/Circlet/Diadem of Wonder? Instead of doing a damage type, they give you a slight defence to each of the damage types and have cool little powers. Maybe at twenty crystals you can have an activated ability (FOCUS DIADEM?) that will cause you to have the effect to hear everything that happens telepathically in your room temporarily, like the Meliashmora quest reward?

Let's not make yet another must-have-for-pvp item like damage enhance/resistance curios.

I wanted something small, like the 5 DMP you get from a curio. Like I said, slight defence.

It is yet more must-have feature creep for min-maxing. I thought part of the overhaul was to deal with that.

Shuyin

Jump the shark.

+balance and +equilibrium full wonder effect.

People will buy it guaranteed.

Aerotan

Estarra said:

Kiradawea said:

While I would ideally want this as its own artifact, how about a power that allows you to see all the probable items in a room. Many objects are hidden in the longdesc that do not show up on IH, and an artifact that just plain tells you what those items are, rather than forcing you to play "guess the synonym", would be much appreciated.

I think that'd mess with quests!

Quests that rely on 'guess the noun' aren't exactly the norm any more are they? Those tend to turn into either someone tells you the appropriate noun, you stumble across it by accident or by probing every word in the longdesc, or nobody ever finds it, and everyone assumes the quest is broken *coughcoughmalacodacough*.

Honestly, I was thinking of suggesting something like allowing a skill in either discernment or the tradeskills that lets you see some/all of them on IH...(tradeskills meaning, like, artisans can tell what pieces of furniture are functional, jewelers get an innate sense of when a mob has a pendant/necklace/crown/dentalfilling that you can get, tailors can tell that a tapestry is too tacky to be real, etc.) except that manually flagging all of those old items would be an Eph-breaking pain.

Lavinya

Please no more combat boosts or buffs. Don't make these must haves!

The poll showed overwhelmingly that we like utility. So! Ideas:


- Catacombs (maybe limited once per day)
- Enchants are always nice - icewall, ignite, window
- Maybe a boost to trades with a chance to use less comms, perhaps?
- ability to reveal secret exits

Portius

Also, I'm a fan of inventory consolidation for neatness. So having a wonderwhatever that can function as a cube and/or tarot deck would be nice. In the case of cubes, make sure that cube rubes can go on the wonderwhatever and that people who already have them can get a free transfer of the rune over to the wonderwhatever.

Kiradawea

Estarra said:

Kiradawea said:

While I would ideally want this as its own artifact, how about a power that allows you to see all the probable items in a room. Many objects are hidden in the longdesc that do not show up on IH, and an artifact that just plain tells you what those items are, rather than forcing you to play "guess the synonym", would be much appreciated.

I think that'd mess with quests!

Mess with quests how, if I may ask?

To make sure there's no miscommunication, I'll explain exactly what I want.

As you're well aware. there are quests that involve locating objects in an area. Such as Estelbar, where you have to locate the tae'dae toys by looking in the hamper or underneath the seesaw and so on. These objects are hidden and do not show up if you use the "In Here" command. You have to look around the room and probe the item in question. That itself is not a bad idea. Makes you take a moment to actually read over the roomdesc for the items to probe.

The problem appears when the object you have to probe isn't clear in the room desc. Either because the room description refers to a plural where the item takes a singular (room mentions bookcases, but you have to "Probe bookcase"), because the room description uses a synonym to the object being probed (drapes/curtains) or sometimes it isn't clearly referred to in the room description at all.

This leads to a frustrating game of "guess the word" because you not only have to try to probe every distinct item in the room long description (and sometimes not so distinct  items), but you also have to try any synonyms you can think of, including singular/plural forms of the word. And even if you've ended up probing every single word in the long desc, you're still left with uncertain off if you have found everything.

If you want to maintain the incentive to actually look and search around the rooms, that's simple enough. Just add a power and/or balance cost to this ability to probe hidden objects.

And before you mention "bug the words that don't match the room longdesc" that's a catch 22, because if the words are mismatched, then we can't figure it out. If we could figure it out, then there'd be no need to bug it.

It'd also help with bug reports, as we'd be able to do our own troubleshooting for quests, to confirm if the problem is a mismatched word, or an item that isn't spawning.

Shuyin

Here's a legit suggestion that's sweet:

1. +damage parasites

2. +damage urns

3. avarice horn

4. +damage scorpions

5. prints ability

6. +damage eagles

7. faster turret balance

8. +damage virgins

9. acquisitio

10. +damage fesix

11. 1x mantra wind tumble

12. +damage abhorrences

13. 1x rad rune

14. +damage goats

15. 1x prismatic effect

16. +damage bulls

17. 1x no xp loss death

18. +damage lobstrosities

19. +damage mitrans

20. rituals via that isn't dependent on terrain.

Kaimanahi

Legitimately OP...

Shuyin

Whoa whoa, I would argue it is less OP than +balance, I am an optimist.

Though I would say that a prismatic barrier is less OP than all-cure.

Xenthos

Shuyin said:

Whoa whoa, I would argue it is less OP than +balance, I am an optimist.

Though I would say that a prismatic barrier is less OP than all-cure.

Via isn't interrupted by the target moving... if it's not terrain-blocked, then they can't even try to get away from it by running off the road.  It's a little much to have a delayed-teleport that can't be avoided by running away, especially when the user can trigger the "entered-room" line to immediately hinder the person and prevent them from running further.

Doesn't matter if monolith stops it, really; I'm comparing it to the others, and your suggestion is far more powerful than they are.

Kaimanahi

Just some general utility power ideas, not in any order or with any synergy/theme in mind:

1) +movement celerity

2) wonderlink - allows you to link wild energy to your nexus (like cone, starlink)

3) omniscience - allows you to hear and speak across aethers (like Veneration skill); lasts one day, once per month

4) fireworks! - creates an area-wide ASCII image from 10+ possibilities, one of which must be a platypus. ONE MUST BE A PLATYPUS.

5) divinefire - prevents attacks from most creatures; lasts one minute, once per month

6) +rooting

7) restores sobriety, once per month

8) slight sanity restoration, once per day

Acrune

Kelly said:

Just some general utility power ideas, not in any order or with any synergy/theme in mind:

4) fireworks! - creates an area-wide ASCII image from 10+ possibilities, one of which must be a platypus. ONE MUST BE A PLATYPUS.

Just to clarify, does that mean exactly one, or at least one?

Synkarin

oh man, more rooting will get more complaints

I would like to echo that these should be available for purchase in game, especially since they're having such great abilities

Aerotan

Let's see...

Wonder Pipes

A high-ish ability to allow you to be an ecology path target, and once per <period> allows you to initiate the pathing.
The ability to Rustle cattle/sheep.
A very high ability that gives you an extra Beastmastery innate talent (the ones you train yourself for)
A low ability that brings out more vermin
Summon <poteen pet> x times per day or indefinitely if they can be divorced from the buffs.
A conjuctio clone
The ability to play a song that causes everyone to dance, draining energy/mana, but restoring ego until the 'victim' cancels it by doing something that would break a shield.
uh...I'm out of ideas...

Estarra

Kiradawea said:

The problem appears when the object you have to probe isn't clear in the room desc. Either because the room description refers to a plural where the item takes a singular (room mentions bookcases, but you have to "Probe bookcase"), because the room description uses a synonym to the object being probed (drapes/curtains) or sometimes it isn't clearly referred to in the room description at all.

If a hidden object is in a room that isn't in the room description, I'd consider that a bug. The word should at least always be in the room description (please bug it if not!). In any event, we still do quests with hidden objects and I think a skill that displays hidden objects is a bit of a cheat.

Estarra

Synkarin said:

I would like to echo that these should be available for purchase in game, especially since they're having such great abilities

Sorry, promotional items can't be purchased in-game. Defeats the purpose of a promotion.

Kaimanahi

Acrune said:

Kelly said:

Just some general utility power ideas, not in any order or with any synergy/theme in mind:

4) fireworks! - creates an area-wide ASCII image from 10+ possibilities, one of which must be a platypus. ONE MUST BE A PLATYPUS.

Just to clarify, does that mean exactly one, or at least one?

Let's not overanalyze this. You can't have enough platypuses.

Tremula

Kelly said:

Acrune said:

Kelly said:

Just some general utility power ideas, not in any order or with any synergy/theme in mind:

4) fireworks! - creates an area-wide ASCII image from 10+ possibilities, one of which must be a platypus. ONE MUST BE A PLATYPUS.

Just to clarify, does that mean exactly one, or at least one?

Let's not overanalyze this. You can't have enough platypuses.

Platypuses?
Platypii?
Platypossy?
PLATYPEOPLE?!

Everiine

Platy-posse.

Portius

Tremula said:

Kelly said:

Acrune said:

Kelly said:

Just some general utility power ideas, not in any order or with any synergy/theme in mind:

4) fireworks! - creates an area-wide ASCII image from 10+ possibilities, one of which must be a platypus. ONE MUST BE A PLATYPUS.

Just to clarify, does that mean exactly one, or at least one?

Let's not overanalyze this. You can't have enough platypuses.

Platypuses?
Platypii?
Platypossy?
PLATYPEOPLE?!

INCOMING TANGENT

If you want to follow the Greek roots (and I don't necessarily endorse that in this case, because language can shift over time) it should be platypodes.

Now, time for the thing that bothers Portius to get mentioned. It should never ever ever ever be platypii. The -i plural is Latin, from the second declension nominative plural (and genitive singular, but that's irrelevant here) of masculine nouns. It's one i. You get things with two of them at the end (like Iulii) when the stem ends in an i, leading to a construction of Iuli+i to get Iulii. Basically, if it ends in -us and not -ius, it should not pluralize to -ii.

Tangent concluded.

Aerotan

So it would be Portii, got it.