Taking the size and number of entrances into Serenwilde, it does leave us very disadvantaged I think. I suppose we will see how it plays out and then ask for some kind of change if defence is near impossible.

I don't really know how statues work, but isn't it possible to get someone from another city to put some up in Serenwilde?

Nope, statues cannot be placed in the forest, only outdoor urban locations, so yes, we got screwed.

No, because they can only be put in road or urban environments.

EDIT: Darn, Anonymous too fast for me again.

The Serenwilde only has one or two more entrances that the cities, if I remember correctly.

Magnagora- North Gate, South Gate, Lich Gate, Harbor

Celest- Northwest Gate, Southwest Gate, and I think they have a Harbor as well. I know little about Celest.

Serenwilde- West and east parts of the Alabastor Road through the forest, the Moon River North and South, and from the Razine Mountains. That is still enough to place a working totem at every entrance, even if the Serenwilde happens to have three times as many entrances.

If something has been overlooked and defense does, indeed, become too hard, perhaps it should be made so that any time a totem attacks someone the commune is informed over CT? So that was one or two could just be placed around each entrance. The defense wouldn't be as good as statues, but it would allow defenders to reach there faster.

(Serenwilde) Mother Miadoka says, "One of our totem trees has detected intruders at 'Da Woods!'.'

That was an interesting and original idea for balancing, Guido. Kudos to you. Anyhow, there are much more then a few more entrances, there are 20+ entrances, and Serenwilde is sprawling huge, with the entrances spread far apart. It covers way more area then the cities, and we have so few people able to bond.

Edit: Not to mention we have a freaking road going right through the Serenwilde.

in that huge commune of yours you don't have 30 people with stag ability?

I know of maybe 12 people in magnagora with Lich ability.

It seems many fail to remember, most likely by choice, that when bonding was first tested and explained, it was MEANT to be as it is now. All of us in the Hartstone at hte time were surprised by the BUG and mentioned it to Auseklis who may have forgotten or never gotten around to dealing with. Things are fixed as they should be now, as the divine intended originally.

To be fair, I don't think anybody is arguing whether totems were intended to work as they do now. That's slightly tangential to the question of how well they're balanced versus statues.

I like Guido's idea. It kind of makes sense for Miakoda to be aware of totems, as they are living trees.

Another (less direct) option might be to make bonded totems supply more power than normal totems. Then that power can be put towards guards to bolster defenses.

Yes I know that Ethelon, but it doesn't mean it's a fair and even change. Maybe it is, maybe it won't really hurt us once we adjust to it, but it seems to put us on the back foot when it comes to defence. We'll see.

I'm just hoping we -have- enough people to bond to the number of totems needed. Maybe I'm paranoid, but.. ick.

Hartstone has one of the lowest member scores, Serenguard has a much higher one, but some of those people have Moon. Today when the change was made, Nikua was scarmbling for stag users. Only me and Athana were around that could bond to a totem.

... What are you trying to defend the entire Serenwilde against? I'd understand if someone had an extermination skill which nearly required forestal defenses being needed. However, in this case we were looking at the eventuality that Serenwilde would have a totem in every single room of the forest which would be entirely silly.

Be smarter about your totem placement - what rooms do you NEED to defend against, and which aren't so important? Totems at -every- entrance needn't be the goal. How about totems at key stoppage points? Around the Moonhart Mother Tree? At the entrances to the village? And remember - YOU HAVE WISP! Someone enters the Seren, you can stick near the Tree and Wisp them into a group of guards.

Wisp was made useless in our own commune. Now it works local area only, that is fine, it should have been that way to begin with. However, it is blocked by monoliths, and we already have much of our Commune covered in monoliths. I don't think it should be like this, it should ignore monoliths, but only be stopped by shield and/or being off balance/eq like beckon.

no... maybe you should just not monolith your entire commune if you want to be able to use it as a place to teleport from... *thwap*

Yes, because we can clearly stop raiders from dropping flamed monoliths all over our commune while they kill things. Think before ya thwap!

Um.. Seren monoed their own commune That wasn't raiders' doing.

We did it, because we could flow, and teleport was inconsequential. However, now they changed flow, and willowisp, and the commune is already monolithed. What a pain.

Aren't there those sigils that blows things up?

Mushroom sigils.

I know they had em in Achaea, what about here?