I've heard some places have a harder time gathering power than others, I am not sure if this because some people are better at gathering it and others are lazy, or some places just have better passive gains so I thought I'd put out some ideas.

Communes gain some decent power from their living totems so I thought the cities could benefit a similar way from their statues but make it work more like how a commune has to grow totems, the cities would need to construct their statues. First they would need to gather 10 kins people, upon leading the 10th one in, the tenth one would become a worker of which you could lead to the harbour where he/she would work and the city gains x power for delivering them like the pixies/crows or they could lead them to a specific location and order them to begin construction (like planting the nuts of the commune). Then you would need to lead up to 5 workers to that location and after a time there will be the beginnings of the statue which a mage (like the druids do with mulching) would need to say ENCHANT the statue which gives it a bit of life of which two workers are no longer needed so they leave. After a time the statue would then become larger and need to be ENCHANTED again to be finished. The mage would then need to regularly like the communes need to carve, IMBUE these statues to be able to rune them after a period of 1.5 yrs fade back to a regular statue which could be taken down like elder trees can be chopped. These statues could then give passive power to the cities, but like the communes need to be tended regularly to keep them up and running and providing the power.

On the topic of village defense, the cities could keep the CURRENT statues, which could crumble when a village revolts and also be prone to being removed but they can still built/rune straight away like they are now. Communes could with a small quest, maybe gathering a nut from their nexus and silvery/shadowy essence, give it to someone to bless the nut, then they could be planted and instantly grow into a totem which can be runed but would last until the village revolts then wither or be removed in the same process a statue is.

Anyways, just some ideas.

There some issues with that, one every statue can be runed. Not every totem can be infact I think it is One for one. One player for one runed totem, aside from that the cities have planes that are easily farmed. Apparently the Communes have their own way to farm their own essence but aside from stealing it I've never seen purple essence or what ever we get.

I forgot about that, you could always make it so that only bonded statues could be runed. Anyone can farm the elemental planes so that doesn't really matter, and you get shadowy essence from the creatures that roam Etherglom or light/dark essence that you convert through the Ebonglom Wyrm

Shadowy esence on etherglom, Silvery on Etherseren, and angels and imps turned in to the Well of Souls produce light/dark essence, I think. There's also, of course, Xion, if you count that.

Angels and Imps in the Well give grey essence which is neutral.

Well, you can only place runes on bonded statues anyway, that's what happens when the enchanter enchants a statue.

But if statues that were made like the living totems that would be fun!

Totems and statues are balanced in theory, but there's nothing on Prime worth defending in either of the cities or communes, so the defensive advantage of statues is a bit of a moot point. I'd hate to see them made into the same thing, though. Also, communes can statue villages as easily as cities can already, no need for them to be totemed.

If you put something worth defending in Prime... is that another avenue of grief?

Grief? You mean conflict?

I'd love to see more PvP on prime, especially actual raids on cities and communes themselves. Since the effects of the sea quests were removed, there's been no reason to fight on prime outside of unpeaced village influencing or miner raids.

No they can't, actually; they need a spellcrafter. There's an envoy report for this month asking for statue to be added to Tinkering, but currently they have no way of statuing a village.

Ah, forgot you needed an enchanter for statues. Though it's not exactly difficult to find a rogue or not-so-loyal enchanter - everyone has their price.

I believe the point was that special statues could be erected in cities that mimic the process and power gain like totems do in Communes.

If Communes do gain statues, there will be definite need (although I would argue there always has been) for cities to gain some power generation equivalent to totems.

Currently each Org is supposed to have two main ways of harvesting power

Seren - Ethereal Seren and Pixies
Celest - Water Plane and Supplicants
Mag - Earth Plane and Spectre Isle
Glom - Ethereal Glom and Shadows

Then communes have the living totems which are passive power gain but take a while to grow back. So if Tinkering gets statues, then a detection code change can make it so statues within city limits act as living totems.

I think you have this backwards.

The two main ways for Seren and glom to gain power is Totems and Pixies/Shadows.

Ethereal Glom/Seren was added later as a means to gain power since Totems alone was not enough, and the amount of power gained from Glom/Seren is less than from Earth/Water (in theory)

I said harvesting power, that requires work, not passively like the totems. So harvesting essence and doing the quests is what I was referring to.

Ok, but the point is, that communes were set up with a passive means of harvesting power, once the initial and time consuming effort was put in to allow for that passive gain.

The max amount of power gained from totems, is less than the max amount of power able to be gathered from Earth/Water. (in the same amount of time)

Ethereal glom/seren was added to lessen that difference.

If you meant that then, then you forgot influencing angels/demons.

touche

Hrmmm well I've given my arguments, I've proven some and concede others. If Tinkering gets statues for Communes, I have no arguments.

what happens when you influence the angels/demons?