I'm not going to go giving away all the secrets of my skills

If you're in the forest it makes you a tree. It does kind of stand out, but if you're not looking for it...

It'll only work until people start using it then.

Wow I'm honoured! I didn't make it on your list.

The reason I'm omnitrans and have a pet and have lots of artifacts is so that -IF- I ever have time to be involved in combat, I have the choice of doing so, and so that -WHEN- I have time to do so, I don't log in and find all my stuff decayed.

I really enjoy being able to log in whenever and not worry about having messages that my items have decayed.

I mean that I only come to Lusternia to see Malicia.

That, or you could just grab Necromancy to virt, ghost in, and nativeform on a statue, considering that the statue doesn't hit you because it's already registered you entering as a ghost and being unable to hit you.

Buy a webcam.

Yup. Who needs strategy when you have ghost?

Blasted Mages*. I KNEW you had more tricks than you showed.

* If you're not a warrior, you're a mage in my eyes. Blasted magic users

Yeah like Torak I wish more people would do things besides bash. I remember when I first started playing and had to go defend southguard from raiders. Of course getting my ass handed to me but damn if it wasn't exciting! Now I think I could AFK in the moors for an hour and come back and no one would have attacked me. Lusternia is just so boring to me now.

I had a fun time over in the Inner Sea just yesterday protecting the Ship of the Dead. Even when it turned from a romp around hunting for Aquas into a misstep into Celestia that got my utterly slaughtered it was fun (though I was calling out bug at one point.. took a long time to realize HOW I got up there).

I can't say it enough: I love the Sea battle.

How DID you get up there?

And yeah, that fight over the sea was fairly entertaining

Want to know one of the nicest things about fighting underwater? NO DEMESNES!

Hmm i never thought of that

the main disadvantage if you had to use focus mind to cure all the colstfoot afflictions, no weapons rbounding and finally, blademasters tear up underwater with arms afflictions and other myrtle cured/afflictions

Yeah, nerve damage underwater is seriously borked and needs changing.

Also, needlerain + stillwater underwater = tehpwn.

Ghosts can't enter archways to my knowledge

It's because of that kind of crap that the game shifted away from PK. People don't like being jumped. There's no way to tell between random people going around the highways doing cows/pilgrims/whatever and random PvP gun bunnies going around looking for trouble. And yet, people who enjoy PK assume everyone else does and make the highways dangerous, which causes grief even to people who enjoy PvP occasionally. Very few people like being jostled into PvP suddenly, specially since the game gives such a large advantage to attackers. This means that first contact with the PvP system usually consists in getting jumped and dying in a highway for no reason at all, and people who go through that usually don't enjoy it, think the PvP system that let them die in five seconds isn't so great, and won't support more PK. The PvP system isn't unbalanced, but it is highly biased towards people with high skill levels and artifacts. It's also biased towards towards attackers, and takes a lot of skill. Random jumpings aren't PK, they're just quick and easy killing. There's no challenge at all and it turns into a macho passtime which consists in bullying and generally griefing newbies and lowbies who are doing the highway quests. I think most people would be more likely to enjoy the game and want to stay and get involved in PvP if their first contact with fighting isn't getting jumped and dying at the hands of a bonecrusher with two artifact flails and trans skills. More people would get involved in raiding if the combat was fun for people without transcendant skills. More people would PK if they weren't forced to fight and if advancement in cities and communes didn't depend on how many other players you kill. The PvP system is great, it just needs a little rebalancing to make it less dependant on character skill and more dependant on player skill (Which, by the way, is one of its selling points, or supposed to be.) It also needs to be used with decency; this isn't Carrion Fields. It's not a cheap PK Diku MUD in which you go around killing everyone that shows up in your level range.

Here's a real question:

Why is it that Lusternia is the only IRE game where people are "griefed" for running their mouths, raiding, etc. when slain later? In Aetolia, if you open your mouth and say to someone they are blood sucking monster (ie. vampire), it is perfectly within the rights of said vampire to devour you. People die all the time. The same goes for Imperian only more so.

The average person can likewise defend themselves. As a top ranked fighter in Aetolia, I could count on if I attacked someone, I could count on them either fighting back -or- holding me off till backup arrived from their city/order/etc.

In Lusternia, we seem to get the "stop it, it hurts, your griefing me - and I shouldn't have to fight because I don't like it." That's fine, but if you terribly wish to avoid becoming better, is it really a shcok when someone pounds you into the ground in 5 seconds? Do people honestly expect to be decent at something they refuse to practice?

And Verithrax, player skill is >>>> character skill. With -2- trans skill (Moon and Hexes), I could beat 95% of Lusternia. And that's without even having to use asthma affliction to lock them.

==============================================

And with that being said, "random" jumping is another off-the-wall concept here. I am always reminded of Stangmar:

Munsia has a demesne, Stangmar declares Munsia and begins to break it, I defend Munsia and kill Stangmar. I "randomly" jumped him and he called me a terrible "griefer."

Or... Urazial invades Ethereal Serenwilde by using coalesce and kills a brownie. The same day, I attack Urazial and slay him on Water. He called it "randomly" jumping him.

The list goes on and on.

The PK system gives players a lot more freedom than the old issue system. That's good, it saves us a lot of grief and generally improves the game. Unfortunately, some people abuse the automated system, on both sides; some people use it to get vitae killed and then taunt away unfettered, some people use it as an excuse to kill without any real reason (As in, I'm walking down the highway and someone whom I've never met kill me, even though I haven't been involved in raiding or anything of the sort for quite a while.) If people were mature and realized that PK is neither the centre nor the purpose of the game, it's part of it, not something indispensable everyone will get involved in (Lusternia would be pretty deserted if only the regular combatants who don't mind being jumped played, and empty even if we only took out all the people who don't fight at all.) It's kind of like a Tae'Dae who assumes that, since his misses and his Tae'Dae friends enjoy bearhugs, everyone else in the forest does, too, even the tiny furrikin cubs with very little health. Get that into your heads, not everyone enjoys PvP, and throwing them into PK while they don't have any skills and will certainly die without being any challenge to you means spoiling their enjoyment of the game and making them less likely to come back. You can, of course, roleplay an insane maniac who kills anyone he wants. Just like I can, of course, roleplay a rapist who goes around doing obscene emotes. Your right to roleplay an obnoxious character ends where it starts spoiling the game for other people.

Oh, and two trans skills isn't 'low'. Low means Mythical first skill, Virtuouso second skill, Master third skill, and that's still pretty high. Two trans skills is a pretty high bar and most people aren't happy to find out they don't stand a chance without them.

That being said, it would be nice if there were more incentives for raiding, and more ways to hurt an organization or at least reasons to PK off-prime, so that the munchkins don't go prowling around the highways and bashing fields killing random lowbies and old pacifists.

Also make it so that three relatively weak people have a very high chance of defeating a single very good combatant; equalize things a bit. It's not fun knowing Murphy or Narsrim can kill you in one or two hits even if you're fighting him with other two people. Groups should always have a crushing advantage on isolated fighters, to stop extremely powerful people from dominating whenever no other extremely powerful people are around; without Narsrim or Munsia around, Serenwilde isn't terribly easy to defend against Murphy, even if you throw three people with low skills at him. People without trans skills end up feeling like cannon fodder, because that's what they are, and ignore PvP completely.



What about me going down the highway or the mountains and getting killed by someone I've never met before, for no reason at all since I haven't raided, kept a demesne, or done anything of the sort for years? This has happened on at least three, or more, distinct occasions, to me. It happens all the time to players who don't fight at all.

I'm fairly new, and a refugee from Achaea, and IMHO most things in Lusternian are fine, aside from the PK system. My suggestions for improving it are as follows.

1: Remove karma. The blessings are stupid and the curses even worse. The game would be much simpler and more accessible to newbies in terms of PK if it relied solely upon the Avenger.
2: Lower experience loss from praying, and remove conglutinate.
3: Alter experience loss from praying in enemy territory to be the same as praying elsewhere.
4: Make Champions like members of the Mark in Achaea - free to PK and be PKed, exempt from the Avenger. (Since there are only 3 champions per organization, this can be policed very easily by Divine, to prevent them slaying fifty novices.)

I'm quite aware these ideas may be considered radical, but they'd definitely facilitate conflict.