Sidharta:


God yes. An illusion-improving artifact is something I would buy as soon as I get enough credits.

Also, a power regenerating artifact would be nice, provided the effects didn't stack (someone buying a bajillion credits and thus buying a bajillion power-improving artifacts.)




Yay for my random thoughts!
-Etanru

Web proof boots is all Im waiting for, never got them for the other realms so I might as well start here.

How about a family stamp which automagically returns to the head of the family (not just the person that bought it), and can be used to stamp letters? The stamp would show on the outside of the letter (instead of a plain white letter, a plain white letter stamped with the x family crest) so you couldn't really forge a stamp, it'd be a mark of authenticy... sort of, unless of course you let the stamp fall into the wrong hands and they stamp off a bunch of blank letters.

Sword of Unfairness - Instantly puts the body part it hits at critical wound level damage.

Manse of the Creditwhore - Rubbing the lamp triggers the manse ability, but makes a special manse where you regen 500 health per second and it has guards that attack your enemies, each with the strength of 10 stainless steel goats.

Voodoo Doll of Skillset Imbalance - Putting the ear of scalp of your target in the doll makes your allhex double to 12 hexes instead of 6 when targeting that person. Hexing does not use equilibrium.

Chef of Doom - A magical chefs apron that, when worn, blesses all the food you cook with a +5 to all of the diner's stats.

Knitting Needle of Death and Destruction - All clothes sewn with this needle, when worn, will have a curse. They will constrict around the person's body parts it covers, squeezing it with the strength of a hundred tae'dae. For limbs, it makes them useless and induces a constant health drain. For gut, chest, and head, causes instant death. Cannot be removed. Give to your enemies and have your pooka make him wear it! Sell it in your shop as a practical joke!


(Just kidding! Thought I'd make y'all laugh...)

On a serious note... Regarding stat altering artifacts, what about something that lets you switch between +X size and -X size? Because unlike other IRE games, in Lusternia, size matters!

Swords of Unfairness - decays after you score first hit with it. It's not a problem, considering it never hits... And you thought it'd be unfair to others?! Har har har.

Manse of Creditwhore - costs 10000 credits and gives you official right to be called creditwhore.

Voodoo doll of Skillset Imbalance - all skillsets of holder of the doll are cosnidered imbalanced and promptly downgraded. (This doesn't destroy the doll itself, making an interesting cycle...)

Chef of Doom - all food cooked by wearer of this apron will be infected by exteremly contagionus instadeath disease.

Knitting Needle of Death and Destruction - all clothes sewn with this needle have -999/-999 armor rating. Death and destruction guranteed.

as promised, here we are with my artifact ideas.

Armours:

since i am unsure of the type of armour within the game, and im familiar with only the ones in aetolia/imperian, ill post armour and weapon enhancesments.

for metal armour:

A coating Of enchanted permafrost= reduce cold damage by 75%

A coating of bloody runes= reduce magic damage by 75%

Ruby Armour= reduce fire damage by 75%

quartz armour= reduce electrical damage by 75%


For leather armour:

A thick, fur pelt: Reduces cold damage by 75%

Lucidian Pelt: Reduces magic damage by 75%

Salamander Skin Armour: Reduces fire damage by 75%

Orclach Skin Armour: Reduces electrical damage by 75%


Those are some ideas for armours. i';; post weapon ideas later.

Not having tested personally how much size matters, I'm not sure how much call there would be for that. I mean, how much of an X are we talking here? As a tae'dae, I'm already near the upper end of largeness, and it would have to be a pretty big X to make me small enough that I'd care...On the other hand, a race that was medium that could reduce itself then use a smallification artifact would have a good writhing advantage...

That would actually be pretty cool, and not as unbalancing as other stats.

Large size makes you harder to shove and summon. It also does something else good, but I forget what. Small size makes you tumble faster and knights miss you more often (not quite the same as dodging, but similar effect). Small people gain more nutrition when they eat but get hungrier faster (though this does not impact hunger attacks, just normal hunger over time). On average they eat the same amount; small people just need to eat more often while large people eat more in one sitting.

Sandals of the Planewalker: Sandals that allows you to go to any planar rift/archway/etc. and simply "move" up to enter that Plane, a substitution for Transverse.

Um... example:
Mother Tree, a planar rift to the ethereal.
Someone just walks to the planar rift or gateway and enters to move in/up, without having to Transverse, nor wait for long periods of time to finally transverse.

Wand of Warlock: A wand allows the user to instantly teleport any target, except himself, to a random location on any of the Planes

Effigy of the Beloved:A portable statue that when placed on the ground casts Aeon/fear on everyone

I think any artifacts that effect fighting, either weapons or armour, are a bad idea. Also, I think an artifact that would allow theives to be unseen on WHO, QW or scry, would be horrible.

I think you should just stick to the Misc. Artifacts. Or atleast not have anything that a Forger doesn't have an outside chance of making (weaponprobe wise).. But really.. no stat altering, please.

And, this is just a name to let you know what I'm thinking.. but a Portkey, which you can set for a certain location, or maybe two or three locations. Wouldn't be stopped by Monolith, but there would be certain rooms that you can't set as a location, unless you are a citizen or Denizin (such as Nexii or rooms within a certain radius of the Nexii)

Not sure why everyone is against stat-altering artifacts, strength doesn't have a notable effect on damage, dexterity is just defensive, size-altering would be nice to choose between faster writhing or better athletics advantages, charisma's only for influencing and constitution only really helps for bashing, leaves only intelligence, I do agree not to have an intelligence artifact, cause that'd have effects like Tuerney in Achaea, or all the mage dragons popping up one after the other...but I don't really see why not to have all but intelligence artifacts for stats, it won't affect the balance a lot and it's good for business .

I'd like to see a way to improve weapons and/or armor that doesn't actually constitute the weapon or armor...like, for example, people have mentioned mantles and coatings to improve armor and weapons...the idea is to not permanently remove a customer from needing forging, but to improve every item they currently use...imagine like they did for monk weapons in achaea, how it increases a percent of your damage. Maybe a gauntlet that improves the accuracy of whatever you are wielding by X or adds Y to damage (maybe of a certain type, like fire).

Good weapons and armor have their biggest audience in knights...many of which are also forgers. If I had artifact weapons, I'd probably end up forgetting forging, unless I had a shop or steady business.

It would also be a shame to put all the effort into the crafting system, only to have people buying artifacts that all look the same...

Had some ideas..
I agree, that artifact weapons and armor shouldn't be there. But I do think you should be allowed to spent, 100 credits or so to customize your current weapon or armor and have it reset to you. And i like that idea of credits that impact what you currently wear instead of being a special suite you have. Allows for more impact of good designs and such.

I think tweaks need to be made, but stat enhancers not for intelegence or strength or constitution sounds good to me. Size changing would be good but only if realistic. a size 6 tae'dae? Should change your descrption to add midget or giant like undead is added.

I agree with having artifacts that won't impact combat too greatly, because its really going to make combat worthless for a large population. Convinence and RP artifacts I think are best. Yes everything can affect combat, but I mean stuff that basically only affects combat.

Also any artifact that greatly reduces one's need for a trade type may not be so good.

Well one cool thing with my first idea, of special credit bought comms for forging artifact weapons and armor, would be that perhaps it could be possible to later smelt that item and craft different weapons and such, allowing some variety, still getting use out of forging and such as well. Of course I don't know how easy it would be to do this, unless they did something like make new item materials for sale in artifact shop for certain amount of credits, and versions of the weapon types in forging that require the special materials to make in certain quantities.

You already can. That's the policy in every IRE game even though it's not well known.

It seems to be that most of the people who are against any sort of combat boosting artifacts are ones who will not be purchasing credits for the most part. So, they feel it will all be unbalanced against them if those types of artifacts are introduced. I say put the combat boosting artifacts in anyway. From what I have seen in most of the IRE games the large credit sum purchasers are usually predisposed towards acquiring combat artifacts over the miscellaneous ones.

None of the artifacts are unbalancing, because they can be countered with artifacts of your own. This is a game, but it is also a business. If a business model is followed that caters to the non or low credit purchasers’ wishes, then it will surely limit the amount of funds coming in to keep the world running. That in the end will surely end the world they love, more than them being unable to defeat a person who has purchased far more credits than they have.

Finally, I suggest looking at the number and price of combat artifacts purchased compared to miscellaneous artifacts purchased in other IRE games. I am not sure, but I would bet that far more money is generated off the combat orientated artifacts (Defensive and Offensive) than the miscellaneous ones. I must admit that Lusternia is a different place from the other IRE games. Perhaps gearing the artifacts here towards more role-playing and crafting purposes can adequately generate funds? I guess that question can only be answered by the player population and time.

I said no to the combat based artifacts becuase the the recent discussions in Imperian over artifact lvl 3 Bows for Wardens.

With the amount of whining on these boards over Knights. I think it would be an unwise business move to introduce weapon and armour artifacts untill these types of issues get balanced out.

Combat has not existed long enough in my opinion to have the information needed to make sure its all balanced out. Purely because if you look at the people with the top levels, they are all Magnagorian. I do not think its because the type of player who would get high levels would be in magnagora, thats rubbish in my point of view. But rather combat has been so dominated by politics that people have not had the time to gain levels without losing them fairly quickly. Not to mention the IC nature of Magnagora and the Astral plane. Once all sides have fighters in what I would call , second tier fighitng, (they don't kill everyone but they kill enough and they are between levels 50 and 70) then I think is the time to -maybe think- about the combat artifacts. And considering the amount of credits I have allready bought, I don't think I'm really one to be called unlikley to buy artifacts.

Agreed, no artifacts that completely or close to completely give immunity to attack/damage type XY. (75% Resistance to any kind of damage is way too high. And making it cost 5000 credits doesn't solve the problem because evemtiaööy someone will be willing to spend that money 'cause they have no life and a job that pays too much, and then they'll screw everyone over.)

What I'd like to see is RP artifacts that allow you to customize things that can't be customized otherwise, giving you new ways to add to your roleplay.

Example:




Now, I realize that this is a huge artifact and can be abused quite some. Maybe it'd be possible to make the code look at least for affliction lines and block those? I imagine that might add some performance load but since this is an artifact it'd probably not really affect the realm, unless everyone buys one *grins*
Of course I'd love to be able to afford it *smirks* but due to the great potential of the artifact, it's price would be rather hefty.

Regarding the coloring, I imagine it to really let you place color anywhere in the message, maybe through some sort of color tag or a keyword, so you can, for example, really produce a genuine room description with all proper colors and such.


As a whole, the artifact allows for really nice roleplay, for example custom rituals or storytelling.
Granted, this is already possible to some extent by the existing illusion abilities, but those have some drawbacks that make them kind of bad for that sort of use... Most of all, not everyone can do them.






Another idea regarding artifacts, I'd like to see some skill specific artifacts. It could alter a number of abilities of that skill slightly, or give some small general upgrades/downgrades the involved classes have use for, similar to the way some racial attributes change when combined with a specific skill. One possible additional downside would be that one can have only one such artifact, which means you cannot have those nifty upgrades for all of your skills but only for one.


Example:


Now that's some lengthy description, maybe I got carried away a bit *hums*
I really like the idea though. Of course I can't say how realistic the figures I used are in terms of balance, it's just meant to give an idea what I have in mind anyway. I don't really know about the price for this item, it depends on the overall gain it gives.



And another thought that just came into my mind:
What about having artifact sets?
A handful of small, well affordable artifacts of maybe 100-200 credits that only give very slight advantage on their own, but if combined provide a nice sortiment of things making life more easy as well as a larger powerup if you have the complete set.

See item sets in most RPGs. The price of the whole set would add up to that of the larger artifacts. (800-1000?)



Generally, I'd like artifacts to just basically become more interesting, more than just an assortment of special weapons and stat enhancements. But that's what this thread is about, right?

An afterthought regarding stat altering artifacts: I agree that completely discarding them wouldn't be good, apart from the fact that probably most credits are invested in that kind of artifacts... But I do think that it shouldn't be possible to buff up your character so much via arties that other's hardly have a chance against you. Sure, it's fun for you, for a while at least, but it's really frustrating for everyone else.

I strongly support Daganev's point that artifacts that really influence combat balance alot should be made available only after everyone feels that the general balance is sorted out properly. So probably not right now