Well, with recent special reports and all your vast opinions on everything, what I'd like is for your ideas on what should be changed, fixed, or added into Environment. It's been said that there is not want to make Environment filled with combat skills but more with utility, so it would be great if utility was focused on rather than combat. (But some ideas for combat are still welcome). Not all ideas will be used in the Environment report, but you may provide inspiration for something else.

I'd love something that made you immune to waves on the water plane / sea. Not sure if that's codable though, I think it's been rejected before *sadface*

Other than that.. something to speed up swimming and/or something to provide a waterwalk effect when diving.

(Environmental sounding word)Sense - SENSE . Would give the number of targets available in local area. Target can either be race or mob. So you can SENSE HUMANS to see if there are any Human characters in the local area (will not ping aethersight) or SENSE GRUB to see how many grubs are on Earth still. Essentially, Prints but without the ability to see the entire array of things.

And fix Weathersight. I need to reiterate this until it's done.

Make secrets 100% on active, with a much shorter eq, % chance on passive (i.e when you walk into a room. Not sure if you could code it so it didn't work on LOOK). In fact, maybe even just making secrets let you see secret exits would be nice, so many people use automated maps anyway. You could bump it up a bit if you were to make it 100% usable.

Cut the balance loss on observe.

Ability to squint over walls and other such obstructions (inc. weather.) Probably add it to weathersight and lower it a LOT.

Add in a really good new trans skill. Not sure what, but the replacement of powermask with aethersight was great for discernments.

Is there even a significant point to all the swimming skills? Merge them and put them right at the bottom.

Give level 1 healthregen at trans. <.<

I agree.

That would still be one of the most underwhelming trans skills in the game. Making it utility rather than combat/bashing would probably be better.

I especially like that last one. But it's noteworthy how all the good ideas are things that would also make sense in Discernment. It and Environment should always have been one skillset.

Hunting definitely doesn't need nerfing, but pitching tents should have been Environment. Maybe it should stay very low in Hunting as it is, and very high in Environment (the same way lots of Totems happens in Environment too but much higher).

How about something moderately high (say Fabled) which extends Scan to give room names like Scent does? (Still wouldn't see through gems of cloaking the way Scent does, though.) However, what should it do if you don't have Scan?

Scent as a trans skill would be pretty fantastic, now that I think of it. Sucks for totem users though.

Ecolocation?

Two changes:

1. Environment level has no effect on seeing/disarming traps (for Tracking). This would fix the biggest flaw with Environment, which is that Trackers -must- transcend it to be competitive, but a lot of Environment's abilities are reflected in Tracking. Due to the parent pool business, Trackers end up transcending a skill that is largely useless to them.

2. If above change is accepted, then I suggest Pathfinding as the Transcendent Environment ability.

I approve of this, poor artie boots though.

Make the trans skill like scent but without giving room names. Would still be pretty awesome.

PS: As for pathfinding, give environment a skill that lets you find paths and see where they lead (if that's currently possible) but not use them without the artie boots?

PPS: And make artie boots regular artifacts kthx.

... scan?

( I know scan doesn't see absolutely everyone in the area, but I don't think we need another intermediate )

I know this sounds stupid, but what about a ranger sort of ability. Yes, I mean, racial enemies!

Perhaps at certain stages, you can set a type of enemy, and have it do a certain amount more damage to that. Orc, Fisher, Illithoid, Kephera, Viscanti, Undead. I dunno, but you get the idea.

Mm,

Put campfires here, allow hunters to cook animals.

Sidenote for Hunting/Tracking: Maybe carve markers for different directions and place them at locations?

That's the point though, scan is utterly useless half the time. Namely for -any- indoor area.

Sorry for the necro but this doesn't seem worth a new thread! Too bad I didn't think of this in time to suggest it during this thread's original run, though.

A high-level Environment skill that would let you put an existing Vitae defense into remission, and reactivate it. So you could have vitae up, but going into a situation where you'd rather not have it fire (e.g., a PvP fight off-prime) you could SUSPEND VITAE (powercost 3p any), and then when you were done, you could RESUME VITAE (powercost 3p any). While it's suspended, of course it wouldn't fire. (In essence, suspending it would remove the vitae defense and replace it with another one: "The power of the elixir vitae trickles slowly through your veins." This substitute defense would survive logoff and death, and would be converted back to the real vitae defense when you resume vitae.)

Edit: On second thought, maybe this would make more sense in Discipline?

any changes to squint/observe/secrets needs to take into account what the relevant artifacts would do.

Make climb not a mythical skill that is just stupid how you have to spend so many lessons to be able to climb.