This always confused me about IRE, but with the gems of cloaking I just thought it'd be best to ask rather than try and figure it out. Okay, so artifacts are useful. And they're expensive (granted, probably only to me, who can't buy much of anything.) But does it seem to anyone else like they would never choose, say, a gem of cloaking, 300 credits during a 25% sale, over a full skillset of something else?

Now I'm not criticising the artifact prices, or lesson conversion rate, or anything else, I'm just honestly curious as to why it is this way.

I would prefer a gem of cloak to say, trans magic or trans riding.
Neither of those skills intrest me.

Normally people only get artifacts after they have 4 -5 trans skillsets.
Or they are getting the 100 credit artifacts.

When you have money for 1000000000 credits, and you are Trans everything useful, why not?

Heh, I learned quickly the advantages of that style of artifact. If it is what I think it is, I prefer it over say trans combat. Of course, the ability to avoid windows/farscouts/scries is extremely useful for someone like me, who's always hiding. And a few people doing controversial quests could use it, preventing the opposing team from realizing he's doing it.

Gem of cloaking takes you off the WHO list and shouldn't be confused with the 2000cr veil of the sphinx (which Lusternia isn't going to offer).

Oh! Then it's silly and I'd so not waste my money on it. Who looks at who, anyway? o.O

Thank the gods!

Hmm. Actually, WHO is more usefull than some people realize. If you could qualify it by letter or name segment as with QW/BW, it would make quite a few other things useless.

Gems are good.

They might not be too useful on prime, they're extremely useful on all the other planes.

They are also useful in countering thirdeye, which is something that often gets overlooked. It takes you off WHO and QW/BW. Some people use text hilighting triggers with QA to hilight all their enemies to quickly assess who is on-line to avoid/victimize. With the gem, they have to use a location sensing ability manually for specific targets.

Or they can just do TELL PERSON THING. Even if they're snubbed, them being online makes the distinction. But still, would you rather someone had to TELL you something or use a scry on you for 400 credits, when you could trans a skill instead? Maybe gems were a bad example. It just seems like the lessons are so much more worth the credit cost than the artifacts, since by and large there's more you can do with them.

it really depends which skills you allready have.
The amount of times 150 credits in riding is going to help me, versus the amount of times a never decaying backpack is going to help me.
I'd take the backpack.

Just because skills exist, doesn't mean your going to really find the time to use them.

Tell works, but it warns the person that you are looking for them. Element of surprise goes away if you wanted to stalk him. Scry also works. The problem with that and tell, though, is you have to do it for everyone you want to target, whereas QW shows you everyone immediately. I will agree that the item does seem a bit underwhelming in my own personal from being a long-time player, but it actually is a fairly popular item. So there are plenty of people who do like it. (And I must admit that I owned one as well in Achaea...)

There's also farscout for guardians, and you could always set up a macro for telling all the people at once anyway.

I liked it on Imperian, due to there either being Farsee, Bard's Ka, or thirdeye (which could be gotten from eating an herb). I wouldn't buy it on Lusternia due to farscout. I use farscout -extensively-.

Am I the only one that's never had an artifact, ever? Including pipes/vials?

I haven't. Never bought a single credit, either.

Give me a hug.

Never had a pipe/vial/pack (though that'll change when I offload the paintbrush). I was just much better at earning gold in Lusternia than other games (actually, about 2-3 times faster than Imperian, and 5-10x faster than Achaea, if my numbers are correct).

I've never had a pipe/vial/pack, but I'll probably trade in my flowerpot for a couple pipes or vials eventually.

One artifact I've never understood the popularity of is the artifact pack. What's so great about having a pack that doesn't decay? Is it really that hard to get a new one?