Well, there's still 'minimal benefit' by making people go to aetherspace as well... even less 'benefit,' actually. :/

As I said, we're open to changes.

Are you suggesting astral? What do other people think?

Is this to say that once "blessed" the new herb can only be used when on sparkleberry balance?

Or when you first eat it does it just consume both herb and sparkleberry balances and you'll recover the herb balance faster and be able to eat it again, although eating it so soon wouldn't give you the sparkleberry effect as well?

Where in Aetherspace would it be dropped? Bubbles or the actual ship area?

I'd say Astral/Elementals/Faethorn/Catacombs (not Cosmic/EthGlom/EthSeren, since it's harder to get in there) just to keep a larger number of places. Just say that the sceptre can't go to a place highly attuned to a city/commune's 'Greatest Beings'.

Currently, bubbles.

Hm. If we're blessed, is there any way to see it? Maybe a command for normal people to see what's going on with blessings to ourselves/our guild/our city? I even feel like we ought to know what the Ascendants from our own city are doing...ie, Celestians should be able to see anything Ilyarin has done. Makes them seem more divine and awe-worthy, in my opinion.

If you, your guild or your city is blessed, you'll see it in your defenses.

All Ascendants and Demigods know the status of all realms at all times, including their blessings.

This will likely sound rather selfish but I'm okay with that. Is there some reason, besides an extremely altruistic nature, that demigods/ascendants (and it seems it will take a primary challenger and at least some support staff) would spend so much time or essence in getting blessings that are not all that useful for them personally? After the novelty wears off, why would people keep doing this? Altruism only goes so far.

I'd suggest some very nice personal boost be tied to the sceptre/orb/crown to inspire more people to want to have it. Consider these are items of great power. They should be able to do great things. One slightly sarcastic idea is that at least one of the artifacts, chaos perhaps, would recharge an astral node! It'd be nice to have somewhere to bash after hemorrhaging essence.

Well, they certainly could reap the benefit of the blessings (assuming they bless their own race/guild/city). Otherwise, it may be interesting, for the truly mercenary ascendant or demigod, to give his or her blessings up to the highest bidder. Certainly, I could imagine a few guilds or race factions or cities/communes, offering power, money, prestige or whatever to the demigods or ascendants in control of a domotheos.

But, otherwise, sure, give us ideas for each of the items! (There's 27 of them.) If you didn't tell me you were being sarcastic, I would have thought your idea to recharge an astral node was pretty creative and unique!

Well I was only being slightly sarcastic. The thing with the blessings is these are demigods and ascendants we're talking about. They don't need health regeneration or more weighted stats (not really) etc. etc. While many of the blessings would be great for non-demis they just don't seem of enough personal benefit for the demi to warrant the cost.

Yes it would be a bonus but would it be a bonus in line with the cost. My opinion is no but it's quite possible I'll be proved wrong.

The question then is, what do Demigods and Ascendants want?

Well, we're looking at a lot of "acheiver" type personalities for the most part so probably something to achieve. Not just doing something for the sake of doing it but achieving something. When you achieve demigod you've dedicated yourself to pretty boring tasks for a long period of time in order to get there. The difference with the domoths is they're transient. They have no real meaning because they only last a certain amount of time. You're not achieving anything. You're accomplishing something but there is a difference. It's kind of like how influencing a village is an accomplishment but it's not achieving anything because it's going to revolt again in a few weeks.

So getting a domoth blessing for 3 days or a week or two weeks for your race/guild/city is nice but it'd be nicer if it was working towards something more meaningful. An example of meaningful would be if your org got a mark each time a crown was activated in their favor. If you get 5 marks for one of the domoths and have at least one for every other domoth, your org gets the minor blessing permanently. Do it again, lesser blessing permanently. Do it again, major blessing permanently. Your marks resetting each time of course. Another org would have to do the same work to strip it from your org.

Another random example would be if you could gain the crown of a domoth 10 times (or some other arbitrary number though nothing completely insane) you get a minor seal. Maybe it could be the one to recharge a node heh. Do it 20 more times. You get a lesser seal. It recharges all of astral! Do it 40 more times, you get a full fledged seal. Though, having to do that 80 times for what others only had to do some minor activity for an hour is probably a bit much but eh.

Permanent for the demi/ascendant would be one thing. But for the whole org/guild/race. That will end up making the gaps in orgs further apart then already are (IMO) I could totally see people leaving guilds/orgs or changing races just to be able to have these permanent marks. Granted taking them down would be able to stop them, but why would a demi/ascendent not just switch orgs/guilds/or changeling as well? It would make the essence cost on them nothing to do that instead of actually try and battle a team of others who may rally around the org/guild/race who got the perma stat in the first place.

If there were to be perma boosts they should be for that demi/ascended person only. Which would actually give a great deal of motivation for the bored demigods out there with a billion essence to blow.

Along those lines, what about an honour which tracks how many times a demigod or ascendant has achieved a crown. This number could extend the base time of how long you control a throne.

Possibly claiming a scepter, orb and crown could generate passive essence every Lusternian day. (I'm guessing Ascendants are more interested in essence than Demigods.)

I was going to say about how the spawning when the ascendant isn't there makes it really hard, but it looks like you fixed that one when you noticed we were being ganked by like 20 of them. Thanks!

I don't think we'd want elemental and Faethorn as they predispose mages and druids fairly strongly. Also, astral may have further issues with people flooding spheres with astral beasts. I'm not sure I understand what cactaombs have to do. I really do like the aetherbubbles as they are fairly "pure/neutral" when it comes to advantages/disadvantages and it does take some effort to get to them.

BTW, I note there was a group who helped Forren claim the Domotheos of Knowledge. Was it fun to do? Challenging? Worth the effort?

Well, that's assuming that each of them needs to be in the exact same place. Chaos, for example, might be a good fit for Muud. Nature, for Faethorn. Death for the Catacombs. Etc.

Is there any particular reason that they all need to have the same spawn point for the items? Nature's got a lot more of a tie to Ethereal than Frosticia, imo.

The idea was that it would be a challenge to find the item if you weren't the Challenger (or at least have to go through the effort of tracking down the Challenger).

Does anyone else have problems with the items appearing in aetherbubbles?