Heck no, no astral back to the way it used to be.

If it's coming back, make it so people can not read a book and make 50million gold a month while bashing.

Shh! You!

You have catacumbs!!!!

Catacombs belong to everyone .

Seriously, do you know how much gold you could make there, while not even paying attention? How much XP? Believe me if Astral never "went down" we'd have a heck of a lot more than 3 demigods and 3 titans.

Replenish the nodes, I don't mind, just make it harder, and make the gold drop less, and make it so one can not just sit there linked, an effort has to be made.

Join celest and bash Catacombs Eiru, see how far you get.

I think if the admins were going to change Astral to "fix" this (which it seems they have no intention of, but you guys want to talk about it anyway), solutions like faster spawns, faster recharges, cycling recharges, etc. are just slapped on and don't make sense. And they only make it impossible to ruin Astral -- which the admin don't much like. It should always be possible, just maybe harder or easier.

If you couldn't stay in Astral for a long period of time without spending a long time off it, it would still be possible to drain the nodes. It would just be harder, and more importantly, it'd take a team of people working together. So "just one idiot ruins it for everyone" is no longer a concern. It would require dedication and coordination, and a team of people opposing them who were just as dedicated and just as coordinated could stop it.

You know those astral winds that tear at your flesh if you go up there without learning enough Planar to have the Astral skill? Maybe they get worse. At first, it's fine, but if you stay too long, they start to affect you anyway. After a half hour you get a tickling wind that drains health and mana a little. Gradually it increases. By an hour, you're taking serious damage every tick. By an hour and a half, it's deadly. The only fix is to leave the plane, and stay off for at least six hours.

Another possibility is the "insanity" option that Estarra originally intended for Astral, but dropped at some point during development, provided it was also cumulative and corrected only by a while away.

While such ideas look nice on paper and would also be fitting for some pen and paper rpg I seriously doubt that they would fit here. Always keep in mind that you need to kill countless mobs at higher levels. If I would only be able to hunt on Astral for 30 minutes and then have to leave for the next 6 hours, sorry, but that would make that plane completely useless.

No, I think that making the mobs 10 to 20% stronger and letting them drop 20% less gold would be a good solution. That way it would be a bit more challenging but on the other hand wouldn't make the astral plane a place only for the top 20.

I can also imagine the astral plane more fluctuating. For example, every now and then the nodes fluctuate and when you link the summoned creatures are as strong as during the kethuru event and also come in groups of 3 per person and link and then after a while it returns to normal.

I like.

The basic premise of this whole argument is this: ASTRAL NEEDS TO BE MUCH MUCH MUCH MORE CHALLENGING. Also, the DESIGN of it needs to be enhanced so that ONE PERSON out of hundreds will NOT hinder the astral plane's growth.

Ah, I had completely forgotten about that. Yes, astral was meant to not only be physically dangerous but also would slowly eat away at your sanity.

I was talked out of implementing insanity because it would be "too intrusive" to players. (Originally, all cosmic magic would also slowly wear away a guardian's sanity and there was no cure except time.)

Hmm, maybe it's time to dust off that old design documentation...

Why only guardians?

Well, we wouldn't do that. But the design back then theorized that all the big cosmic magic spells touched the astral.

The insanity would be a nice touch, but that hardly solves the -problem- of Astral. It's too easy. The monsters are laughable, and any single idiot can ruin the entire plane for the rest of the players. Make Astral more challenging.. make it more dangerous.. make it so people will FEAR astral, and change the design of it so draining nodes is more of a risk. That way, people will think twice before screwing with Astral nodes to spite the rest of the playerbase.. The way it is now, it hardly scraps up to what it -should- be.

Can we wait for a little while longer until the Astral becomes scarier... little Elryn is gonna be obliterated otherwise!

I think if as you were bashing up in Astral you found yourself with dementia and agrophobia and who knows what else, Astral would not be so easy....


I want to see insanity, orignal design docs are always the best!

maybei should come back in force and start trolling astral more often....i need a cubix

And anyone that comes here posting about getting killed on Astral would need to be bitchslapped. I still think that people will complain about griefers or dying, no matter where they die. Trust me!

I think Astral should stay as is but drop less gold. We have peaceful harvesters that need to get up there too.

They could hire a bodyguard to kill creatures and then share this gold that they earn on sparkleberries.

they should make for node killer's that when they link at 50% summon 4 manifestations to kill the node drainer.

How about this, Estarra.

Make draining the nodes a threat to sanity or even stability. The more you drain, the more insane you get, and it's not curable by herbs, alchemy, or healing. Maybe each node you drain dry you get the equivalent of a Karma Curse.

Think of it this way--if you drain the nodes dry, it's like drinking a glass of muck in a straw. You suck it dry, you pick up the crap muck--which could be Taint residue from Kethuru. This way, people wouldn't be able to drain a node dry without consequences.

I mean, look what it did to Magnagora and the Cosmic Hope Project.