Does anyone know if being in a group of peolpe makes you gain insanity faster or slower, i mean, it'd make sense for it to be slower, and that way it would also encourage group bashing.

Being in a group of people is insanity to begin with. They didn't make Astral more group orientated, they made it group suicide. 2 spawns per link per person, plus insanity.

Its two spawns a link now?

Heh. Wild Nodes is going to be damn interesting next time someone links those spheres if it doesn't change. I can see it now...

I think this is perfectly in line with the game's original idea of Astral: It's a dangerous, horrible place you do not want to visit. It wasn't meant to be a high-level bashing area where you can spend an hour bashing and make 50k or more while people who don't bash Astral are making, at most, 10k an hour. So quit whining. Reaching Titan wasn't meant to be easy. Making 50k gold wasn't meant to be quick. Achaea has about five active dragons right now; in one year of play (Bit more if you count open beta) Lusternia got several more titans and demigods than it should have. Because of Astral. Yes, this will deplete prime bashing areas and hurt everyone as a whole. You just have to take it and go do something else (If bashing is the only thing you do in Lusternia, then, well, I guess you can go play some Diku MUD or Achaea. Won't be much different.) This problem will disappear once Lusternia has enough bashing zones for all level ranges, which I hope is something the admin are working on.

Erk, yeah, it'd be like, game over if it was done at the beginning, from what you've been saying...

Verithrax when you actually get a grasp on reality, let me know. Not everyone plays lusternia for the same reasons. Some play for trade, some play for politics, some play for influencing, some play for quests, and Oh My God.. some play for bashing.

Astral, which I can safely assume you haven't the faintest clue about, was not made harder, it was made absurd. Every single Astral hunter who WANTED it harder, has said the same thing. They went overboard.

Just a few thoughts -

Just about every time I've been on Astral with a group, we've linked more than once at a time. Why? Because it's just not enough mobs to be worth while otherwise, even with multiple people on the sphere. Because it's more efficient that way. So if all we have to do to control the population on an Astral sphere is to limit ourselves to linking once before clearing off the sphere again, is this even a problem?

I've no clue where this 10 minute figure that everyone is citing came from. After all, I was on Astral for essentially the entire duration of the wild nodes and was able to remain functioning after that time. That is, after roughly an hour and a half, I was at highly neurotic, and it took probably at least a couple hours to wear off (I wasn't paying close attention to time).

Also, I think for noncombat purposes, the effects of low-level insanity are not as bad as people have made them sound. I actually went and filled kegs before the insanity wore off. Admittedly, I did have to work harder to do it, I had to stop after each step and make sure that it worked completely, but it was doable. So maybe it's not possible to go directly off Astral and bash gorgogs or something else, but it's possible to earn gold despite insanity. Although yes, it is annoying. (Changing things so that it doesn't seem quite so similar to stupidity would certainly make it easier to RP the problems off and make it less annoying to me.)

Given my last two points, I see no problems personally with hunting on Astral for an hour at a stretch, maybe one hour a day most of the time though. I probably won't go up there alone, though, as even before I would sometimes have problems soloing two Astral creatures at once. So perhaps Astral is not going to become a bashing grounds exclusively for titans/demigods so much as for those who are willing to make the sacrifices to gain experience more quickly for a while, then put a little bit more effort into doing things other than hunting or fighting for a while.

Ely,

Diamante was on Astral for like three hours (he said)... and after three hours have passed, he's FAR above normal sanity... he was sociopath, I believe.

That's the real problem: you invest X time to bash Astral and have to wait far far longer than X itself.

And done later on, it might be a defensive tactic to offset the increasing insanity of the mortal defenders. Kind of tough to steal a node if you have to wade through a half dozen creatures in each room to get to it!

just updating, up to 4 hours since I've been on astral, and Im still highly neurotic. Based on what most people said, I have a few more hours to go. Needless to say, Im not going to go over 20 minutes up there with the stupidity as it is,. It completely hinders RPing, even if you try to play off the insanity, as it's just stupidity that people see, not any insane behaviour

Again, this makes more sense with the stories about the Astral plane than what Astral was before. I know you don't give a about roleplay, politics, influencing, questing, trading or in fact any aspect of the game that doesn't involve pushing enter every time you get eq back, but most people do. And don't whine so much about something that was just introduced. Like everything it'll be tweaked to a milder level. Also, last time I checked, the gorgog caves were filled with high-level denizens that are just as strong as Astral critters, aren't aggressive, and drop quite a lot of gold. Every single village has a quest that gives you at least 1k; most give 5k and return very slowly. There are plenty of denizens who'll give you 300+ gold if you influence them with charity. You can make around 1k or more from pilgrims, the Skarch is filled with critters that sell at 75 per, and you can also make a lot from pilgrims. And then there's the exp you get from PK, which you can do as often as you want since you don't care about roleplaying PK. Lusternia is a constantly changing world, and you simply can't expect any guarantee that the tiny little aspect of the game that gives you a reason to play will always be around.

(Bellator Societas): Diamante (from the Prime Material Plane) says, "Coming up on 4 hours, still highly neurotic :/."


You think that is reasonable, Ely?

Allow me to be redundant. When you get a grasp on reality let me know. I will leave it at that.

Gorgog caves filled with == 30. Thats nowhere near like Astral.

A basic design trait common to all IRE games, Lusternia included, is that gaining levels becomes very difficult after level 60. Even though this change was, probably, a bit overboard and will be reduced eventually, Astral left the game unbalanced, both by pouring too much gold into the economy (Remember when credit prices skyrocketed because the market was being depleted constantly? I do.) and by pouring too much experience into people with Astral in planar (And making Conglutinate a skill far, far too important.) Those things weren't good for balance. That's why Astral was nerfed once. It's been nerfed again because it hurts player balance. You can still hunt Astral, so don't whine. You just can't stay there for hours, continuously linking and bashing. The game will probably be getting new bashing areas to compensate for that loss. Also, Lusternia was never meant to focus heavily on bashing. That's the reason we have the Influence skillset, comm quests, and several other things. You can get to level 60 without killing anything. I even seriously doubt that this, once it has been tweaked so that it doesn't stop all astral bashing, will hurt anyone besides the people who spent unhealthy amounts of time killing Astral critters.

Also, Gregori, if you have nothing to write but a flame, don't touch the keyboard.

Verithrax, astral this time didn't skyrocket the credits. People stopped buying as soon as they hit 5k. And hell, 4k-4.8k sounds fine to me seeing as they help with skills. Astral unbalances Lusternia? It's the only reasonable place to bash without dying to Magnagorans--hell well, with a less likely chance of being attacked from Magnagorans. You try bashing catacombs? Yea, well I have with a group. It starts an ethereal fight instead of bashing. So instead of stopping everyone from being able to bash in general--add more places before screwing up the only place to bash.

This post has been edited because I do not know how to follow the rules of the forum and refrain from personal attacks.

EdiT: First off if a Mod chooses to edit my posts for not following the rules. Do so. However do not edit my posts in a condescending manner as though I posted it myself. Learn to do your jobs, or find a new calling.

Man, you have no clue, and should be reported for the personal attacks. Its not that bashing is the only thing we ever do. I bash a lot, no doubt, four hours a day sometimes. But Im also here up to 10+ hours a day on days I dont have work or school, so in comparison its not much. I know gregori does a lot more than just bash, he manages, I believe 3 shops (I rent the fourth) and is , whats the job again, oh yeah, regent of the serenwilde.
Just because a lot of us retreat to astral to get away from the things that happen in day to day life in lusternia, doesnt me we do nothing but bash.
I run a shop, have a fiancee, get involved in every village influence I am here for, make posts, stir up trouble, astral was a way to escape for sometime and make soem decent experience. Im not defending that astral was fine the way it was, cause it wasnt. I think that for the most part the changes are awesome, I just have a problem with the ongoing stupidity effecting every aspect of the game, from reading helpfiles to walking to wishing my fiancee happy birthday and instead flipping her the bird.
It's really just frustrating. But yes, verithrax, get a clue about what people do with their time, before you go off and come down on others.

Why does it have to be a "basic design trade common to all IRE games". Why bother having different IRE games if you're going to make them the same?

Heck, I didn't even hunt astral I just don't want my bashing areas to be constantly camped now.

Bashing is what I like to do. I enjoy doing it, but if I can't bash simply because everything in the basin is DEAD because people are busy killing 10-15 creatures to make up for that 1 Astral creature they used to get.. what am I going to do?

If you're not gaining money, and going insane doing it. Then is bashing astral really worthwhile? Remember, not everyone wants to spend 300 credits to trans a tradeskill just so they can do things that are non-bashing related. And honestly, the only reason to take up trade skills such as forging is to make your own weapons because as far as I can tell there is not much profit to be made as a smith unless you're already one of the established ones. And how much fun is it reforging for 10 hours to get the desired stats on that masterwork broadsword somebody ordered?

Influencing:

Okay, so people give up on bashing and start influencing. Wait, a mob can only be influenced so often.... dun dun dun... Guess what, everything is now over-influenced and you're stuck twiddling thumbs again? Influencing IS bashing, just fewer people do it.