Just heard different opinions on Astrology, it either being worthless or really good (I think it's great). Was wondering if any other Astrology users thought though something may be missing from the skillset, after all, we are useing the Planets and Signs. I was thinking we should have a skill like Scry or Window personally, something that can locate another player, even based off their Nativity or alignment of current planets.

Anyone else have suggestions for Astrology?

1 - Give us a way to stargaze from somewhere other than the observatory (telescopes).

2 - Implement some sort of in-game functionality whereby the location of any given body at any given time can be calculated.

On the whole, I do like Astrology. It's fun, if a little weak compared to tarot. The random factors, however, and particularly the speed at which they change, are real irritants to me.

Rays are not that great. Some are usable (I love Aapek, rapidfire aeon slightly over 1/3 of the time!), some kinda suck (Eroee, nooo, sad. ) The retrograde thing bugs me, but I don't see any way around that or we'd be overpowered quite a lot of the time. Spheres are just great except the LAME ones that don't really do much. (Not a fan of twincrystals/spider/glacier. I'm encouraged to wait and hope the Druids get something that for whatever weird reason does poison/psychic/ice damage, but besides that.) The ascendant/descendant stuff is pretty good.

Honestly portable telescopes (I would be sad if they were artifacts rather than artisan/jewellery/forging/something works, but whatever, if that's what we have to put up with then sure.) are all I can think of that really needs changing about it. (I could wish Eroee would have lust or ugliness or something in lieu of justice, but the former would be overpowered, and I'm not sure about the latter.) :|

Eroee giving Lust/Ugliness or something aside from what it does already would be nice.

Oh, and I can't figure out what we could possible use ignite for. Everything else is at least VAGUELY useful, but someone's gonna have to explain that one to me.

EDIT: And sun is retarded.

To be mildly annoying.

Someone should explain what I could possibly use Pyre for, while they're at it.

Read above.

Didn't they say it would double damage while someone was under it? Maybe if you time it properly you can get a staffcast off...or something. It takes salve balance to put out a fire, right?

It does not double heat damage. It makes the on fire condition do double damage, which is nearly impossible to get anyway, and if you do get a pyre, whoopee, 300 damage?

And it's put out by frost (or mending too, I think).

...oh.

Okay.

Include cleanse and walking into a flooded room!

Plus regular fire goes out BY ITSELF for NO REASON. As far as I know. Kept happening with spore grasses in Glomdoring. Sneeze, ignite, wait 1 second, it goes out.

What about like an Astrolabe or Armillary Sphere? Those where used in medieval times to keep track of the sun and stars.

For reference:
Astrolabe-
http://www.astrolabes.org/

Armillary Sphere-
http://www.humboldt.edu/~rap1/EarlySciInst...re/ArmilSph.htm

That was a bug that was fixed, fire goes out on it's own if the caster is no longer logged in. That was the reason for the above bug, it was looking for a person that cast it(when in this case, it wasn't a person).

Ohhhh. Never knew that. That works then.

EDIT: As for Armillary Spheres and Astrolabes, uh, sure, but I don't see what's wrong with a telescope.

EDITEDIT: I MISS MY OLD : huh : smiley. The sign and arm look stupid.

A typical old astrolabe was made of brass and was about 6 inches (15 cm) in diameter.

Why can't we carry one?

More ideas:

1 - Make rays give better afflictions, or just do something more useful.

2 - Spheres like Glacier and Spider should do something more useful.

3 - There should be some sort of utility in the skillset. Tarot is currently way better offensively and utility-wise.

Tarot is unique in that aspect, as all the other tertiary skills have very little utility.

Astroglide needs to go down, instead of up. I can't see any reason for Celestians and Magnagorans to use it, and very little reason for forestals to use it, since they then can't get down without Nexus. (And if they have Nexus, they can just, uh, get up that way. )

Eroee and tarox need slight tweaking, that's it. Most of the afflictions are somewhat useful, even if they have to be aeoned/asleep/whatever to actually pull it off.

As for the cruddy spheres, I had the idea that spider could affect poison shrugging, and glacier could affect STR (the only stat we're missing), and twincrystals could do...something (I'd say mana draining things, but that would probably be horribly overpowered). Everything else has some use.

And we need portable astrolabe-functioning things.

They can get down if they trans Artisan, for five power.