This is just a big "thank you" to whoever's idea it was to get rid of myrrh in Lusternia. That was annoying and pointless crap.

Aye... but what I wonder is this- is learning slower on Lusternia, or do we learn at the same rate as a myrrh-enhanced character on any other IRE game?

Same speed. Inept to novice is 7 lessons on Lusternia, 7 on Achaea. Other ranks are the same too, though i'm yet you check past Gifted.

The thing is, though, I actually wish it was a bit faster, really. There are 10 skills everyone starts with, 1 choice between highmagic and lowmagic, 3 guild skills to choose, then 1 trade skill. 15 in total, assuming you never forget and change a skill. While Achaea had 16 skills total, 7 were mini 'resistance' skills that took half as many lessons and weren't really so... neccessary. They did have more trade skills, but they all cost credits anyway.

It just seems like there are so many more skills to learn in Lusternia, and they all take lessons - it's a bit overwhelming. Even if you filter out all the less neccessary skills, you still have Discernment, Discipline, Environment, Influence, Planar, and three guild skills. In Achaea, you could easily get by with two or three guild skills, Survival and maybe Vision.

Maybe i'm just rambling for no good reason and things will clear up... or maybe i'm just sad that I don't have credits to use

One thing's for sure though, it is great that they got rid of myrrh.

I agree... myrrh was a stupid concept, I don't know who thought of it but it was honestly just a way to get new people to not want to play the game...

It was probably suggested as a way to be more like 'Here's the normal expectation for learning. Myrrh can just be a nice little bonus.' but it obviously quickly became the norm, so if you didn't eat myrrh you were screwed. Maybe.

I bet it was those darn concoctionists at work...plotting in their tree-filled cellars on how best to extract even more money from the populace of consumers

Tree-filled cellars, eh? There's something I wouldn't mind seeing.

Yeah...and myrrh was so cheap anyway, it was more like a way of screwing over novices that didn't listen to their guildmates and went out on their own. Or screwing over novices that arrived at a time there were no guildmates present. Hurray for having got rid of it.

Damn I am showing my age - myrrh started out as necessary, because it let you learn 3 lessons at a time, instead of the usual 1 (back in the dawn ages from whence I appeared you could only learn 1 OR 3 lessons per teaching.

Once the Divine sped things up so you could learn 1-15 lessons at a time it became less necessary, but the herb was left in, with its virtually useless ability because redundancy is a good thing! So much useless stuff from Achaea still hails from the early days of the game where the things in question were actually some good.

Ha! I remember those days actually

Myrrh actually also boosted the amount of points you got per lesson in addition to letting you learn in triplet. Lusternia learns at the boosted rate by default, in case anyone had any doubts.

It's fun using in-character methods to explain the lack of myrrh to other IRE expatriates. Some of my favorites are "We're all enlightened here," and "There is a bit of Vernal God in all of us. We certainly don't need tree gum to make the most of it."

And yes, THANK YOU for dumping that obnoxious little herb! Now we won't see so many abandoned balls of myrrh in public places...that happen to have fire sigils attached...

I just steal Etanru's reasoning of "Myrrh is an old wive's tale." Purely to annoy him, y'know. *hide*

Oh! Another thing! TANK YUU VELLY MUCH for not forcing us to learn how to use a shortsword during the introductory tour! Most of my characters would usually immediately look for a nice, big puddle to drop that thing in. I'd feel unclean for days for having touched that nasty pigsticker, jet-fuel-burning wusses that most of my alter egos tend to be. It also makes shortswords look respectable, as opposed to a giant flashing neon sign with "OMG N00B" on it.

So, um, if we're really good and eat all our vegetables for ONE WHOLE MONTH, any chance we might see some khopeshes in Gaudiguch history books? Pweeease?

The thing is, though, I actually wish it was a bit faster, really.


Learning is faster than other IRE games. Imperian was the intro line, 8 learning lines, the ending line. Lusternia is the intro, 4 or five, then the end. Don't remember if it's 4 or 5, it had the number in Beta, you know "Teaches you the first segment."