Free enchants are worth a good bit, especially to someone in a commune. I'd have traded Nature for Elementalism in a second, and Cosmic is absolutely wonderful.

I'll take Farscout over Nature Guard too

I wouldn't mind nature guard being replaced with a skill that's actually useful to us and having the herbalists deal with their own problems (and I say this knowing that I might be switching back to herbalism in a while).

If it makes everyone feel better, I'm just gonna strip harvest all the sparkle until you mages stop tainting/flooding.


I'm looking at you Forren!

Just stripharvest the sparkle Krellan guards.

And guard the flooded stuff. Nature guard prevents it from being killed by flood / taint as well, I believe (which means that the premise of this idea will fail).

I only flood Taint. Don't blame me.

trueground ftw?

Wasn't it also looked into by Ekard and shown only melds cause them to die off a bit?

No, I'm pretty sure that wasn't the result of that investigation

Guess I misunderstood then, not surprising considering lately.

I remember the results showing a minimal effect too. Someone go necro the thread.

My opinion is that Nature Guard should guard the plants from everyone and not just non-Nature users. I understand the need to keep the plants safe, but it's being over-used in some cases. You don't need to protect 50 rooms to ensure that you have plants after hibernation. You only protect that many rooms because it increases your ability to monopolize them. Therefore, if you can't harvest what you guard, you'll think twice about it.

Ditto the sentiment.

And here's a link to the thing: it kills them off, eventually. Won't necessary destroy them per se, but numbers definitely go down.

Edit: Ekard's detailed post is five posts or so from the bottom.

I have to say, I'm really interested in the responses to this thread, in particular from the Seren leadership.

On one hand, people try to preserve RP by saying 'deal with this IC' and 'we can only respond if you tell us about this IC.'

On the other hand, they seem to violate that very same RP by suggesting that if they are told IC, they will actually help members of Celest and Magnagora to gather resources, whereas given the current situation all of those resources could be horded for the Serenwilde itself.

For the record, taking the position that it wastes too much power probably won't get you too far, since Krellan doesn't actually guard all of astral. He strip-harvests most of the spheres, then plants in the spheres which can be most easily reached by Serenwilders, and guards them there, using much less power and mistletoe (mistletoe which he harvested himself, so it's not really a Seren resource that is wasted anyway, it's his own personal resource).

So, when all is said and done, what Krellan is doing is reasonable and helpful to the Serenwilde from an IC sense. The question (and the reason this thread is here, I assume) is whether it should be allowed from an OOC perspective. So, keep in mind that the decisions and consequences are in fact OOC in nature - Krellan's actions are perfectly and reasonably in-line with his own and Serenwlide's RP.

Also, for the record, as I believe has been mentioned, flooding the area to kill of the plants will not work, first of all because nature guard protects the plants from flood, and second because if the plants do die it will drive prices up even higher.

So... making sure that Serenguard and Spiritsingers who want to harvest astral *cannot* is helpful to the Serenwilde? Selling sparkleberry at an extremely high price-- because he kills the rest and harvests out two spheres, which he can get to easily-- is helpful to the Serenwilde?

He's in it to make gold for himself, not to help the Commune. There's definitely room for them to say he's harming the Serenwilde by, y'know, ripping off his communemates with outrageous prices that he enforces by ensuring that there is a shortage and people can't get the herbs elsewhere.

In the process, he eliminates all competition for the Serenwilde, making it so that only Seren guilds can harvest it. Granted, it does harm the Serenguard and Spiritsingers, but the majority of the commune harvesters are Moonies or Hartstone anyway. This is actually helpful to the Serenwilde collectively, in that it limits the resources to the Serenwilde. It might be detrimental to some individuals, but collectively it is best for the Serenwilde.



I agree with that, he loves making the gold for himself. Any other moondancer or hartstone could do the same though, since they can harvest through guard and he's placed the plants where they're readily available to Serenwilders. As for the prices, people can still get the herbs from any other Hartstone or Moondancer herbalist. He's not limiting the supply to himself alone, but to Hartstone and Moondancers.

You're wrong, though. Any Shadowdancer or Blacktalon can also harvest them (it's not like getting to Taurus is much more difficult for a Glomdoring member than it is for a Serenwilder). He's not trying to ensure a Serenwilde monopoly (as such can't really be done), he's trying to ensure a *Krellan* monopoly.

There's really two perspectives here.

First, there's the OOC perspective. Someone doing stuff like this is bad for the game in general. It drives prices up, it significantly lowers supply, and it makes a bunch of people really upset.

Then there's the IC perspective. Nature skills don't exist to make a profit for oneself, they're founded in the historical purpose of Serenwilde, which is to heal and protect Nature. I forget at the moment whether it was actually brought up IC that he was literally nature guarding beneath Seren's noses while they were harvesting, but it's certainly ticked off certain Serens to find that there's no sparkleberry available for them to harvest. Finally, stripharvesting is an ugly, ugly thing, and if Krellan really is stripharvesting the other Spheres to limit the supply, he's not going to find much support for that.

That said, I would support a change to Guard such that no one can harvest through it. That way it actually serves its purpose of protecting the plants, even in the case that a newbie herbalist with Nature who hasn't learned about hibernation and the evils of stripharvesting comes along. It doesn't completely eliminate this particular abuse, though, as he can just keep track of when he guarded last and harvest before guarding again, but it might help some.

Your points are contradictory. A *Krellan* monopoly is not possible, for the very reasons you mentioned - the plants can easily be reached by any Blacktalon or Shadowdancer, as well as Moondancers and Hartstones. He is trying to ensure a forestal monopoly, which doesn't seem negative at all from an IC perspective.

From an OOC perspective is a different story. I don't have any strong feelings either way, but everyone might agree that it's unreasonable monopoly and should be dealt with, but we should keep in mind that for the leadership of the Wilde to do so is actually an OOC act. Make sure it's something that you really want to do before you compromise your RP in the process.

Ritual users have skills that deal with books and writing so obviously all ritual users should have skills that allows them to stop or restrict non ritual users from using bookbinding then according to your logic?

Nope its just not fair for either herbalism or bookbinders if you look at it like that.