So this is a.. 'nerf everyone but me please?' rant?

As for influencing, it's fine how it is, less options for higher levels but things are more predictable, you usually get them all the time, or you can never get them (depending on your various skills) less risk, less gain.

I've gone both routs jewelry and tailoring, and it's already set up similar to how you're saying, I've had, in the past, every piece of jewelry on plus common looking clothing, and I wasn't quite to royalty, and the same for tailoring(everything but shoes.. Zenji doesn't wear shoes...)

I'm strongly against MORE damage reducing skills, it would effect various guild skills that use ego, would effect some psionic attacks heavily, and could unbalance debating.

Debating which I've got to say is nicely balanced as is, I had a wonderful debating duel with Forren in dairuchi where we practically tied on each other, the difference was less then 40 ego in the end.

Needless to say I don't want anyone poking into the code just because Verithrax wants more people to buy his personal line of underpants.

Going from level 1 to level 50 in three hours is fine?

thought you said four...lemme check. ya you said four, shorlen.

You also said "conceivably," didn't count time it took for bromides (unless your hypothetical character is going out with 50 or so full vials of bromides?), and assumed you'd have the place purely to yourself for those three-ish hours. In the grand scheme of things, is level 50 really all that much, though?

Besides, I think it'd likely take at least an hour or two to get to level 20, in Newton or running from village to village influencing the common/unnamed denizens ... again, taking into consideration the existence of other people around to compete with for finks/gnomes or village denizens to get exp off of.

Shorlen your wrong I dont have wheedeling and I can take Quettle but I'm a faeling with throne, and blessing so thats kindof biased.

I didn't have the place to myself, and someone was killing monks there, which makes the ones nearby uninfluencable (those who were there and now know who my alt is, don't you dare say a word). Having to wait for monk respawns is annoying

Regarding bromide - there's a trivial quest in Newton that gets you 1,050 gold take takes five minutes or less. Do it twice and you have enough for four vials villed with bromide. That's all you need to get started in Estelbar, and the quests will get you descent experience as you do them. Influencing pays for itself several times over, especially in Tosha.

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Influencing is the devil!

Now I have to make a list of things that are the devil.

Shut up.

Influencing needs to be buffed up for higher levels and nerfed for lower levels.

This is simply accomplished by increasing the ego damage mobs cause.

As for prestige, either make it so it actually matters, and make it difficult to get to a decent level, or scrap the prestige system altogether.

I'll be honest, sorry about the earlier post, anyway if its that easy for some people to go from levels 1-5 to 50 in 3-4 hours seems silly and also seems like there's something wrong with that. Influencing seems like...a cheapscape to me, easy to go from low level to high in a relatively short span of time. Just curious, but has any bashed for 3-4 hours straight?

You saying all of this becose you arent new in Lusternia.
You know very well what is going on, what exacly you need to do to reach your goal.
New players that want to get to level 50 wont get it 5 hours, more likely 20.
It took me less then graduating time from novicehood to reach level 60 at one of my alts. And i was bashing only, and in this time i also bough all needed vials, herbs, enchantments, robes, shield and coat and cloak with proofings. And i was ready to fight as Celestine. And i did fairly well as him, but lack of cr didnt make him any good fighter so after few days i suicided him.

And i dotn think that royalty is easy or hard to get.
Im always royalty, never thinked about how hard or easy is to reach royalty.
But i usually wearing: boots, few pocketbelts, cloak and coat, robes or armour, crown, one or 2 necklace, 2 bracelets, and a ring or two. Sometimes belt and other silly tailor stuff like that
Mainly i only wear what i need to fight/bash.

Oh, and for those who aren't aware, brooches used to have absurd amounts of prestige, made even more absurd by the fact that you can wear any number of them. Back when you could have twenty on you easily, everyone who had them was looking like royalty. Now that I don't have five anymore, I find it much harder to get to royalty.


And wtf?

EDIT: Oh, I know what that was now, see below.

EDITEDIT: Shorlen's a NOOB - that log was actually just showing a telepath trying to gank my newbie alt


EDIT: And Ekard, that may be true, but I once tried bashing as hard as I could through novicehood on an alt - made it to level 40 or so after the 24 hours of hard bashing. This time, I made it to level 40 in 3 hours. Maybe I just suck at bashing....

That's a telepath harrassing you.

Bah, and here I thought they added something The only other person there assured me he wasn't doing anything

I'm afraid he's right.

Being the utter-influencing, charisma boosting faeling whore that I am, (I even bought one of those runes, and plan on getting more) I feel somehow drawn into throwing my opinion into the fray.

First... maybe it's just the faeling charisma, but royalty never affects -crap- for my influences. Like, seriously, hardly any effect at all. Doing testing with the various boosts, I really didn't notice -any- change for -any- of those things that are supposed to aid influencing (Demesne, Royalty stat, Performing Vagabond, etc). I was influencing Tosha Monks yesterday and the day before, looking like Royalty and influencing just fine. In fact, the only thing that actually boosted my infuencing was the rune... that's it.

I suppose I don't care much either way, I don't rely on influencing as a primary form of essence/bashing. More of a supplement for when other areas are bashed out. I also factor in the, "I bet they have more important things to code right now" theory to aid in my relative apathy.

Though, I agree with the sentiment that all of those things that are supposed to affect influencing... should. In reality, attractive faeling though I may be, a person wearing thousands of gold worth of stuff shouldn't be able to beg money from ANYone.


As a point of interest, with the rune, I can take monks with five hits and Quettle with eleven.

I started some tests before, but didn't have time to really compile the information. The gist of what I think I discovered though is that influencing boosts that are supposed to stack (demesne influence, vagabond, trueheart) don't. Instead, only ONE of them appears to work.

When empowering a particular friendly denizen, it was taking me 14 hits normally, 13 with only demesne influence, 12 with only trueheart, 12 with only vagabond, 13 with demesne influence and trueheart, 13 with demesne influence and vagabond, 12 with trueheart and vagabond, and 13 with all three. I didn't test it extensively though, as I said, and am unsure if these numbers are consistant or not.

Perhaps there is a bug with how influencing factors stack, which is also effecting how prestige works (or rather, doesn't work)?

Would be nice to have a little more room for randomness and tactics in influencing and bashing both.

Nejii commented recently that he never sees me die. Well, yeah. I try to avoid it. I'm an excellent basher, I stay away from PvP, and I think it's better RP to accept a more gradual XP gain and stay alive than to focus on making the big scores and let them make up for the inevitable losses.

With very few exceptions, whether I'm bashing or influencing, I know walking in that I'm going to win, barring lag or some such.

Could influencing use some work? Yeah. But also remember, it's a prototype system. Considering it's been around for just two years while bashing's been an integral part of MUDing since the dawn of the hobby, I'd say it's off to an excellent start, and I'm quite willing to be patient waiting for them getting around to improvements.

For all that influencing is weighted heavily in favor of low-level use, and I've heard people claim it's basically worthless after level 75, I've been quite enjoying playing with it at level 83 even in its current state.

No, it's not going to set me any records getting to demigod, but at least I have to pay attention to what I'm confronting and choose between five different tactics, sometimes even using different tactics on the same MOB depending on what I want to accomplish at that moment. For bashing I just hit the one 'kill' button no matter what my opponent or mission.

They're not different tactics though, all you're changing is the end result. For me, influencing has always been, hit a kill button and walk away from the computer, whereas when I'm bashing, I need to be ready in case more denizens enter the room, or I fail to critical, or the denizen to outdamage my healing, or to use an affliction that messes with my healing.

Not to mention denizens that I need to "shieldwhore" to defeat, and the ones that run.

I've actually been doing some more influencing lately, but really...the gold and experience are not worth the time it takes me to influence for them, though the esteem isn't terrible. I am level 80 at the moment, and bashing prime is far better (including wait times for things to repop).

As for prestige. Wesmin, I think what Verithrax meant was that the 70% prestige from either just clothing or just jewelry would not effect a tailor or jeweler, because that will be hard to avoid with splendor robes (if their effect on prestige would be raised, that is.)