The Grind

This is inspired from a lot of opinions I read in this thread, http://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/1679/the-foolishness-of-overbuffing-kits/p11 but I've been thinking about it for a while.

That the grind itself exists in a positive way, is itself necessary (especially for those who do not want to cough up a lot of cash immediately) I do not question. But just how much of a grind is a good thing?

Anecdotally, even when I was unemployed and otherwise had nothing else to do, I still didn't have enough time to grind out a lot of the stuff people who have simply played before me already had. Very many of us aren't children. We have real lives, relationships, and jobs to maintain. How much time is reasonable to expect from people, if not choosing the "pay" route when looking for their win? If it has become too high, I think that honestly has the potential to seriously threaten Lusternia.

To even form my own opinion, I would like to know what the actual numbers are. To those of you who have reached the top tier, especially, but anyone, really: How many hours of grinding will it reasonably take you, under the current conditions, to achieve everything you feel you need to to even enter combat, let alone excel?

It will take somebody who knows a lot more than I do about all the stuff you need. Do you know?

Mayor Steingrim, the Grand Schema says to you, "Well, as I recall you kinda leave a mark whereever you go."
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Comments

  • ShuyinShuyin The pug life chose me.
    A RL day of straight aetherbashing to demigod is enough to enter combat, ignoring supplies and studying.

    Excelling takes way longer as it should, but being generally useful doesn't take much at all.

    Everything else helps a lot.
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  • Okay, so more realistically, which I am arbitrarily calling a two hour daily hunt any given day, for argument's sake, something like two weeks for demi. (I'm not really interested in considering the time in takes to assemble an aetherhunt).

    What about all the buffs, which are perceived as required at least situationally, that some people have been complaining about?

    Mayor Steingrim, the Grand Schema says to you, "Well, as I recall you kinda leave a mark whereever you go."
  • About a year of playing during which I was full-time employed gave me enough time to reach Demigod. During that time I've had an active IRE Elite subscription and bought the lesson packs, no other money was spent on the game. I feel that got me reasonably prepared to enter combat. I suspect another year should put me on a 'somewhat decent' level artifact-wise.

    The problem I see is that you can speed up the levelling process a lot but you need the right conditions. Either you have someone with the capacity to tank Icewynd and other top tier areas who can boost you through the latest levels, or you have a competent aethercrew. Then through stacking of xp buffs you can gain absurd numbers because everything is additive. Tonics, lips, various achievement buffs spring to mind. There is a similar problem in the game with buffs like the ability to obtain absurd levels of health or dmp through stacking the right things. I actually have a lot of admiration and respect for those who min/max like this, but I do also look forward to the overhaul eventually addressing this because it can create a divide so big you can't really continue to justify it with "but they invested so much in the game they should be allowed to see some return for it". This is why diminishing returns and even hard caps are generally considered a good idea. We don't have as hardcore a community here as in say WoW, but that isn't a reason to leave things be. Someday someone is going to do it, and if not careful that might have some dire consequences. And nobody would like for the admin to have to scramble and put in emergency patches or anything like that because someone suddenly is pretty much immortal. And I'm not even talking of exploits here.

    There is a public bashing system out, which does level the field. One could do reasonably well by combining lips and tonics and hope that nobody else decides to farm UV + a few other areas for backup that day. Still, it takes a credit investment plus you need to clear a day in your schedule for it. This is why I've unsuccessfully suggested we should have lips that don't expire while offline, but this was deemed too OP. Honestly I think for an added cost they could be reasonably implemented, they'd appeal to working people who might have more time than money.

    Personally, even for someone who earned a decent income in the past, I find credit costs for most items to be very high. Any microtransactions above 25 euro make me feel uncomfortable. I suppose it is because I feel that for 50 euros I can buy a single player game that will last me a good long while. Then I look at what that in credits can get me and really it's nothing. I don't know who these people are who throw thousands of dollars at the game, but they're not me for sure. And I feel sometimes that this was also perhaps not intended, that artifacts should be really rare, but somehow we do find ourselves in a situation where beginners are casually told to get a ton of stuff or go home. And since I care and worry entirely too much, that leads me to fearing some hapless newbie will be misguided into spending a lot of real life money on the game, and who knows what their real life financial situation is. Sure, each their own, but I actually know players whom I think should be saving their money yet they are happy to spend amounts that make me break out a sweat and hope that disaster does not hit them because they've literally no buffer :(

    I think at the end of the day though we should acknowledge that this is a pay to win game, and so not taking the pay route in some way is setting yourself up for defeat. You either spend money, time, or become good at bardics. And best cough up that IRE Elite subscription, too. Which I will say I do feel is very fairly priced, just like the lesson packs. If we had more low hanging fruit like that, I'd be inclined to throw additional money at that too, and I wish there would be experimented more with that. But then again I know from numbers from pay to win games there is like a very minor percentage of the player base who is actually responsible for a big amount of income (wish I could quote some numbers now). So it may not be 'worth it'. And Lusternia / IRE is not a charity. I think we perhaps should just be grateful that we have things that are cheap, and stuff like tonics and ikons which do improve the situation somewhat from what it once was like.

    That said, I too would be interested in some numbers! What I can share is that I've found a Divinus whip, RoA, crit and health rune all to be worthwhile investments for those who enjoy bashing. Skills like bodyguard, maxing resi and so forth also make a difference, and so do buffs and tattoos. It can be a bit fiddly sometimes to get it all sorted and maintained but honestly you do get back what you put into it. Especially if you avoid deaths in the later levels.

    As a final thought, learning how to code so you can at the very least write yourself some basic stuff and install existing scripts and even modify them a bit is something I'd recommend for everyone to do who wants to play on a somewhat serious level. I've found that has made a major difference for me. It may not appeal to you, but honestly it is to Lusternia what learning how to operate a computer and maintain it is to life. Lua makes for an excellent first language, and while Mudlet doesn't come with a lot of bells and whistles to help you debug stuff, we do make up for it by having a supportive community. It may seem daunting at first but honestly I'll say I find learning combat is more daunting and difficult :P But I may be biased because I have an IT degree and thus eased into coding quite easily as I already knew all the basic principles and just had to learn how to code for a client and the syntax and functions of Lua and Mudlet. In a society where everything becomes more technical though, I do believe an understanding and basic aptitude in coding will help future-proof you. So it is a worthwhile investment in yourself to make, and there are lots of great beginner resources out there, not just for Lua but for very basic coding principles.
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  • Riluna said:
    Okay, so more realistically, which I am arbitrarily calling a two hour daily hunt any given day, for argument's sake, something like two weeks for demi. (I'm not really interested in considering the time in takes to assemble an aetherhunt).

    What about all the buffs, which are perceived as required at least situationally, that some people have been complaining about?
    It will be way more than two hours, unless you have money to throw at daily lips for example. It's the stacking where you can achieve things like a RL day to Demi. That and having a bunch of insane people who are willing to sit with you there all day :P
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  • Oh. I've never personally been on an ahunt longer than 3 hours. And that one was a while ago.

    I'm still thinking about a lot of your points, @Rialorm, but I do agree about the minority funding the majority of the company's operations.

    But if that's the case, to pursue that as the norm is counterproductive to the constant focus on growth (i.e. always attracting new players), unless you're just waiting for the next lottery jackpot for the next minority person to come along.

    Mayor Steingrim, the Grand Schema says to you, "Well, as I recall you kinda leave a mark whereever you go."
  • Grind for me is a mixed thing - based on my mood. There are days where I am completely happy and content to sit in front of my computer for six hours straight, bashing, questing, influencing. I also play a lot of other grindy games outside of Lusternia as well. However, there are also days when even completing Project Eternity seems like too much of a hassle for me. The grind state in Lusternia is good for me in that sense - when I'm motivated to waste time (oxymoronic concept, yes) there actually is enough grind to keep me occupied, and sometimes I even run out of bashing areas. Yet when I feel like just chilling, I don't feel too guilty just standing around the Master Ravenwood. For the casual player, however, I will admit, the game's grind is... daunting, to say the least. I most definitely would not have had the heart to continue playing without having spent on the membership for the two years or so I had it, because grinding for credits entirely in-game would have seemed almost impossible. I don't do bardics/artisanals, of course, so I'm missing out on a lot of free credits.

    Of course, you don't need omni-trans to begin combat, or even to bash or influence decently. A large part of the game becomes accessible to all players once they invest a few hours into the game (hit level 70 or so). However, there's also a lot of things that are literally out of your reach unless you get hold of a large amount of credits in the game. There are certain aspects of the game that can be achieved with a reasonable amount of hard work and grind. For example, I spent months figuring out and grinding out enough charisma buffs to be a decent influencer as an Illithoid - it required raising Cthoglogg, for obvious reasons, and that alone took a great deal of effort (including the fact that I couldn't do the whole quest alone), but it was possible and perhaps even fun at times. However, there are other aspects of the game that simply can't be done unless you actually have certain artifacts, which can cost up to hundreds, nearing thousands of credits. Before I got Demigod, I survived Muud because illithoid and psymet made a super tanky combination for bashing. But I still died plenty, and I was always highly neurotic after finishing the outer circle (the inner circle was mechanically impossible for me to bash at that stage). Non illithoid or non psymets would have probably found it impossible, (not difficult, impossible) to bash Muud pre-demi without a RoA. They might even have found it impossible even with a RoA. There might be other race/class combinations that afford the same or better survivability, of course, but illithoid psymets are definitely pretty high on that ranking.

    Combat is actually less extreme in that sense - even without artifacts, it's possible to be a successful PKer, especially since 1v1s almost never take place in out-of-arena combat. Theory and teamwork are actually far more important than credits (and grinding-prowess) when it comes to combat - you do need to hit certain "minimum requirements" (getting a system might fall under here?), but they are generally far lower for combat than for other areas of the game. Still, it is pretty clear that the game has content which is not available for everyone.

    Now the big question is, is this good or bad? And where is the line we draw the limit at, if we should draw one? I might not be looking down from an Ivory Tower, but I'm probably halfway up there, so it's easy for me to say, "yeah, it's fine. I'm having fun with the grind, and it's good it's not going to run out any time soon, or I'd have nothing else to do in this game," but from the perspective of casual or new players, the grind might seem a little too much to be considered reasonable. A lot of it has to do with perspective - it probably seems more difficult than it actually is, but that perspective is what matters. The game isn't going to be fun to people who always have the idea at the back of their minds that they're never going to get anywhere because the grind is too much.

  • edited December 2014
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  • Saoirse said:
    Please keep this kind of stuff out of this thread. I'm genuinely considering whether I dare invest another dollar into a company I believe could be on a path to completely bankrupt itself.

    Mayor Steingrim, the Grand Schema says to you, "Well, as I recall you kinda leave a mark whereever you go."
  • Considering I feel dying is much harsher before Demi than post Demi, I'd actually like xp loss on death for non-Demis to go the way of the dodo, either through artifacts or just cut it out entirely. If you end up having to sit through praying that is punishment enough because you might as well use that time to make a cup of tea, have a toilet break and possibly pursue the forums while at it. I do think essence loss for Demis should very much stay, so it becomes a thing you need to keep working for and people don't start doing stupid stuff like suicide runs. Pre-demi deaths however easily negate an hour of work, even when you use what you have available to lessen the loss. It's not very motivating when you're still figuring out the game and not having everything transed and artied and you die twice in a row which means you entire evening of playing was throw out of the window. Furthermore dying before Demi can drop you a level and with crit chance tied to level you actually take a step backwards then in being able to recover. It's indeed not very motivating.

    I also very much support more xp for quests. Maybe have a choice if you want an xp or a gold reward if both would be too much. I think xp for quests would in itself already make things more interesting.
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  • PortiusPortius Likes big books, cannot lie
    You could also remove the ability to lose demi through death. This also fixes the bulk of the grinding problem, since it means there's a save point. Hit demi, and then you can do what you want without fear of dropping below that. Dying slows your progression via powers, but if you don't care about those you can do whatever without losing progress.

    That doesn't retain the limiting factor on suicide tactics in combat for people who have all the powers they want, but I think there's probably more interesting ways to do that than through XP loss anyway. Add a temporary stacking debuff for each death or something along those lines, and that way you have something that might add strategic depth.
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  • EnyalidaEnyalida Nasty Woman, Sockpuppeteer to the Gods
    edited December 2014
    I think it should be mentioned that you can't realistically build meaningful wealth via bashing either. Beyond credits, gold buys you very little that is meaningful, and the time required to grind credits is so high that it's non-practical for anyone but the highest tier of grinders (bashers/influencers) to do - and they probably already have all the credits they need from other sources!

    As far as I can tell, there is no low or moderate-entry technique for building wealth totally IC. A new player's best bet for getting rich is to land in an org with good credit reward programs, and take part in contests like bardics, artisanals, and tiered hunts.

    The way to make grinding be fun would be to introduce afflictions to PvE, so that you can use a wider range of class skills on npcs. These npcs would need to be sparser and significantly tougher to take down than npcs that just get damaged to death, but provide a far greater reward for killing.
  • Grinding to demigod via influencing is easy peasy if you know the right people.

    Grinding to demigod via bashing is horrific without astral hunts or aether hunts.

    People keep saying to nerf influencing boosts,

    but I say just buff bashing exp.

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  • Oh, and, btw, even RP can be tied to the grind. See: 75mil essence for Veneration.

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  • LavinyaLavinya Queen of Snark Australia
    Maligorn said:
    Oh, and, btw, even RP can be tied to the grind. See: 75mil essence for Veneration.
    That's just to buy the power. Keep on going past that to trans the skillset.



  • PortiusPortius Likes big books, cannot lie
    Please clarify some veneration mechanics for this discussion, since I'm not totally sure I understand them.

    You buy veneration with 75 million personal essence, after which point your patron can give you a cult at no additional price? If you leave the order you lose the cult but you don't have to buy veneration again?

    To advance veneration and pay the essence cost for most powers you use your cult's essence, not your own, which is generated as a percentage of all offerings of cult members?

    Veneration has some combat utility but is mostly RP type skills?

    Do I have all of that right, more or less?
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  • ElanorwenElanorwen The White Falconess
    Portius said:
    Please clarify some veneration mechanics for this discussion, since I'm not totally sure I understand them.

    You buy veneration with 75 million personal essence, after which point your patron can give you a cult at no additional price? If you leave the order you lose the cult but you don't have to buy veneration again?

    To advance veneration and pay the essence cost for most powers you use your cult's essence, not your own, which is generated as a percentage of all offerings of cult members?

    Veneration has some combat utility but is mostly RP type skills?

    Do I have all of that right, more or less?
    It costs 10m extra to make a cult for a demigod. Free for ascendants. You don't have to buy veneration again if you leave the order, but if you join another order and are given a new cult, you have to trans veneration again.

    It's much faster to use personal essence to increase veneration level from what I've heard... that is provided you do bash. Cult essence comes from 10% of the cult members' offerings.

    Veneration has a lot of RP type skills, but yes, it does have some combat utility too.
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  • It costs 75 million essence to buy the power.

    It costs 10 million essence to make the cult, unless you're an ascendant. It also costs the god 10 million essence but that's peanuts.

    It costs 120? million cult essence to transcend Veneration. You can turn personal essence into cult essence with a 10% loss, and you get 10% of all offerings made by cult members as cult essence.

    If you ever lose demigod, you lose the cult, Veneration rank, and the cult power.

    If you leave the Order you lose the cult and Veneration rank but keep the power. No refunds. You can make another cult later without re-buying the power but need to re-pay the 10 million to make the cult and the 120-ish million cult essence to transcend Veneration.
  • edited December 2014
    some aspects to the grind, agree or disagree as you wish:


    - An Individual is expected to be tri-trans their class, I consider this a norm and viable concept, as any dedicated player will receive the needed lessons over time to do so.

    - The player is then expected to Trans: Discipline for advanced curing, Combat for advanced parrying & stance techniques, Resilience for extra defense and avoidance of poisons, Beastmastery for support-capabilities, their Trade skill for an upgrade such as splendors. Additionally, they expected to at least reach up to Green/Gedulah in their Magic skill.

    - A player without the necessary 'enhancement' artifacts specifically tailored to their class, are seen as inferior. A mage/druid without a Demesne rune is seen as 'wasted potential'. A warrior without warrior runes is seen as a blind man flailing. Guardian/Wiccan and Bard dont suffer as much by this.

    - A demigod/Ascendant that doesnt have the bixes to the Aetherbubbles, is unable to compete as effectively for Domoths as those that do. Can they use flashpoints? yes, but that requires near trans in Aethercraft, additionally they would have a hard time attempting to transport players supporting back to the location if they dont have a simple bix.

    - Scent (or any skill of the same type) is seen as a near must to combat. If you cant feel out who is in the area, you're gonna get screwed.
  • SynkarinSynkarin Nothing to see here
    Is the question to be useful in combat situations or to excel in combat?

    Because that's a very important distinction and difference. I think anyone can be helpful at anytime regardless of skill level, artifacts whatever. If you're a mage without a demesne rune, and we need a melder, I'm glad to have you. If we don't need a melder, I'm glad to have you still. No warrior runes, come along and keep swinging at the legs and head. Anyone can be useful if they wish to be, regardless of where they are at. 

    If you want to excel, then you need to be more along those lines, but things like scent are really luxuries. You can excel without it.

    Everiine said:
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  • Synkarin said:
    Is the question to be useful in combat situations or to excel in combat?

    Because that's a very important distinction and difference. I think anyone can be helpful at anytime regardless of skill level, artifacts whatever. If you're a mage without a demesne rune, and we need a melder, I'm glad to have you. If we don't need a melder, I'm glad to have you still. No warrior runes, come along and keep swinging at the legs and head. Anyone can be useful if they wish to be, regardless of where they are at. 

    If you want to excel, then you need to be more along those lines, but things like scent are really luxuries. You can excel without it.
    Thank you. I agree, it is an important distinction.

    I am intensely curious. How many hours of effort would it take you, without paying a single anything of RL currency, to achieve everything you feel you need to excel?

    Mayor Steingrim, the Grand Schema says to you, "Well, as I recall you kinda leave a mark whereever you go."
  • That depends on how good you are with bardics/artisanals. Suffice it to say, if you want to have a mechanical edge that competes with the best, you'll need to spend many thousands of credits. Like Synkarin said, though, you don't actually need all the bling blings (and even if you had it, it doesn't mean you can "excel"), but if you're talking about getting yourself a kit like a fully decked walking artifact collection, it'll probably take you RL years of commitment. The actual gameplay hours a person will spend varies depending on their efficiency, and if you're just talking about income from bashing/questing/influencing without city contests/bardics etc, well, depending on the area, you can earn roughly 1 to 3 credits worth of gold per hour, maybe more if you're in the right areas. So a few thousand hours or so?

  • edited December 2014
    Lerad said:
    That depends on how good you are with bardics/artisanals. Suffice it to say, if you want to have a mechanical edge that competes with the best, you'll need to spend many thousands of credits. Like Synkarin said, though, you don't actually need all the bling blings (and even if you had it, it doesn't mean you can "excel"), but if you're talking about getting yourself a kit like a fully decked walking artifact collection, it'll probably take you RL years of commitment. The actual gameplay hours a person will spend varies depending on their efficiency, and if you're just talking about income from bashing/questing/influencing without city contests/bardics etc, well, depending on the area, you can earn roughly 1 to 3 credits worth of gold per hour, maybe more if you're in the right areas. So a few thousand hours or so?
    You seem to be saying "a few thousand" like that's a casual thing.

    EDIT: I think I worded this wrong. What I mean more precisely is - do you mean that is what is required for the casual player to enter and feel like he can "win"? (not just participate)

    Mayor Steingrim, the Grand Schema says to you, "Well, as I recall you kinda leave a mark whereever you go."
  • Most definitely not. Of course, everyone has a different definition of "winning" the game, for some it might be getting TA, for others, it might be collecting every curio ever, for others, it might be completing the full bardic reward cycle to the point where it resets etc. But if you're talking about general game aspects like winning the occasional skirmish, bashing respectable areas, completing most quests etc, you can participate and feel like you contributed meaningfully to the game with a lower effort cost than "a few thousand hours of gameplay".

    For combat, you'd still need a respectable amount of credits, just for lessons to reach certain abilities if nothing else. As already mentioned, though, non-artifacted combatants definitely have the ability to compete reasonably with artifacted ones, the edge offered by artifacts in Lusternia generally speaking are not the be-all and end-all of combat. It makes life much easier, and lets the combatant have more room to make mistakes. You'll also find your options limited when you're going toe-to-toe against such an opponent, but you certainly don't need them just to "have a chance" against an artifacted opponent. Much less so when we're talking about group combat, when your contribution as a part of a team is more in properly coordinating the right target to hit. Pre-demi combatants are definitely viable as well, maybe not so much in the arena when you're going head-on against someone with the hefty demigod stat bonuses, but in group combat, definitely.

    Naturally, you won't be able to be the tanky guy everyone wants to kill first because you are so threatening, because that requires more grind to achieve, demigod being one of them, certain defensive artifacts being able to contribute to keeping you alive as well. You won't be able to be the go-to guy who brings people back to a fight, running distances using pyramid puzzles and cubixes, getting the jump on the opposing team and thus giving your team an advantage, that sort of thing. To earn those artifacts purely via in-game grind would take a great deal of time and effort, perhaps more than is reasonable, perhaps not. But you don't need to be able to do all those things to make an actual difference in combat.

  • For reference, a year on IRE elite is about 1500 credits, and about 1800 in the second year because you'll have maxed your bonus. So a 'casual' could get those credits within an acceptable timeframe. Certainly waaaaaaay faster than getting them ingame through bashing / influencing for gold and then buying off of the market. A smart casual (or any player) will look at genie bottles as well, they are an investment but see a good ROI.
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  • Arcanis said:
    - A demigod/Ascendant that doesnt have the bixes to the Aetherbubbles, is unable to compete as effectively for Domoths as those that do. Can they use flashpoints? yes, but that requires near trans in Aethercraft, additionally they would have a hard time attempting to transport players supporting back to the location if they dont have a simple bix.
    Which I think is pretty stupid and is a turn-off from entering conflict. Why not just give everyone a temporary ability to easily reach the domoth when it goes into play so people can focus on dunking it out instead of the hassle that is logistics.
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  • PortiusPortius Likes big books, cannot lie
    I think my perspective is too warped to be meaningful on the whether or not the wealth grind is excessive, but I can give you some data on the credit income for a top culture player. It's a point of reference, at least.

    First, there are two ways to get credits from culture things. There's bardics, and there's city rewards. These are independent of each other.

    You can get a ton of credits from bardics if you win frequently, and you can get a pretty good win rate if you learn what sorts of things the judges like. There have been 11 bardics in 2014, and I have 5 wins, 2 runners up, and 4 merits. That comes to 1400 credits, plus the credits from advancing bardic ranks. Those are where the real money is, and you'll get those over time even if you only ever win merit. Getting a merit isn't that hard, although runner up and winner are pretty competitive most months.

    Then there's city rewards. If you're really grinding culture instead of producing just a bardic entry every month, this is what matters. It varies from city to city by a huge margin. Hallifax's rewards are very significant, whereas Gaudi's and Seren's are pretty negligible. A person who writes at a reasonably fast rate can do pretty well off of Hallifax's rewards and could reasonably grind out some artifacts (or skills, more likely) with them. Doing that in Seren or Gaudiguch would be a lost cause.

    Now, for scale. Hallifax gives credits equal to the library weight of every book it publishes, so 1000 words gets you 5 credits. Additionally, the Institute and Aeromancers give bonus credits for culture things. You'd have to ask an aeromancer to explain their system, but I have experience with the Institute's.

    If you are in the Institute, the best word:credit ratio is in 1000 word scholarly books. One of those will get an Institute member 11 credits total. I can churn out an adequate one in about an hour if I need to, or more plausibly an hour and a half if I'm not trying specifically for speed. Assuming I went for max speed all the time, that would put a RoA at about 45 hours and a maxed magic damage rune at about 150. Most people won't be writing that fast, so you could easily double those numbers to get their expected time commitment.

    Then there's prestige. This is a competition with limited entry slots, so you can't count on getting it very often. Plus, the extra writing time to try and improve your book to make it more competitive will reduce your efficiency on weight credits. Because of that, I'm not entirely sure how optimal it is to try and aim for prestige, but if you get it it's equivalent to about 4.5 hours for me.

    So that's still a pretty long time and people in most orgs can't do it, but it's way faster than bashing for those that can.

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  • edited December 2014
    Rialorm said:

    I also very much support more xp for quests. Maybe have a choice if you want an xp or a gold reward if both would be too much. I think xp for quests would in itself already make things more interesting.
    I've often wanted to join the admin team, just so I could try to implement a system where you get XP for quests based on your current level.  (My idea for it is complicated)

    As for time investment I can't really answer that question.  I've been playing the game for a grand total of 175 days, 19 hours, and 57 minutes.  I'm at level 93.    I went from level 85 to 93 since my return after being absent for 3 years. So about 3 rl months.   I spent a lot of money on Lusternia back in 2004 when I worked on a major website project and got more money than my college student self knew what to do with, ($6,000, I never had so much money before :P ) and I have a long list of merit bardics.

    Even with all that, I still don't consider myself viable at combat or really able to excel, without putting in the time to code/tweak perfect a system. I think I would have to invest in a laptop with a different keyboard setup even.  It's really very daunting :(  This is the major reason I find it odd that the grind is so tied to the combat.  Even if you buy thousands of dollars worth of artifacts, the real time investment required is in sparing, and making sure you can spar with people who will help you improve, and learning how to tweak your system.
  • ElanorwenElanorwen The White Falconess
    Rialorm said:
    Arcanis said:
    - A demigod/Ascendant that doesnt have the bixes to the Aetherbubbles, is unable to compete as effectively for Domoths as those that do. Can they use flashpoints? yes, but that requires near trans in Aethercraft, additionally they would have a hard time attempting to transport players supporting back to the location if they dont have a simple bix.
    Which I think is pretty stupid and is a turn-off from entering conflict. Why not just give everyone a temporary ability to easily reach the domoth when it goes into play so people can focus on dunking it out instead of the hassle that is logistics.
    That's all fine and dandy, but the perk of challenging the throne is you get to see where the item spawns. If, when the item opens, everyone could just mash a button and get there, there is absolutely no benefit to challenging the throne. If anything, the benefit is for those that aren't because they can have their full group set up and ready to go the moment the item opens for capture. As such, I will heavily disagree with the need of such an ability. Additionally, there's plenty of players on both sides of the conflict that will loan their bubblixes out to allies, if not participate. There's also other perks to the whole thing. Want to be useful? Get a screwdriver and do the aetherepic, that's 4 bubbles for the price of 1 right there.
    image

    Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
  • The aetherepic has been broken for a year and a half.
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