As one of the people who gets this bonus I have to disagree with the worth it part. It boosts my mana by 300. How many demigods/ascendents were participating? Do we have a sum total of how much essence it cost all together to get this bonus?

I have it in my head that smaller people will benefit from this more though I have no real evidence of that. However, the question still remains, when the novelty wears off, how many demigods will be willing to participate in this? I assume our two ascendants will be more willing as they don't have the costs for just being up there.

I have been thinking about this for a bit now and while there is little benefit for the challenger, there is even less benefit for the supporters. The challenger gets to choose their race, guild, city/commune to get these benefits. So they get something, however trivial. What do the supporters get besides an essence bill? Last I checked Rika wasn't Merian!

It is not my intention to trash the system. I think it's interesting and has potential. However I think it runs a very real risk of turning out a lot like the nexus world/construct/weakening system. A very interesting system that eventually turns out not to be worth the costs of participation.

While I think that's a step in the right direction, I don't think it would really solve the underlying transient nature of it. It would depend on how long it'd be extended. And it is still lacking in real personal benefit for the demigod/ascendent. An honor line is nice to have but doesn't put food on the table.

I really like the idea of gaining these items building up to something very nice for the challenger if they keep with it. At the very least having some way for other people to gain seal like benefits when participating as right now this is an extremely exclusionary system even amongst the demigod population.

This still leaves the problem of the benefits for the support staff.

EDIT: What about this for sceptre. When you gain the sceptre, you, and those who helped you (would need some way of identifying these people) all get the karma blessing for that seal for one RL day at no karma cost and no karma burning to keep it. For the challenger themselves, they get that karma blessing for that seal for x number of days with x being a reflection of how many times they have gained that sceptre. So this is the first time you've gained the sceptre? All your helpers get the karma blessing for a day and you get it for two days. Second time? Three days. Up to a maximum point.

When you gain the sceptre (or any of the items) a certain number of times, you get the bonus effect for that. Which can either be unique or be the same for any attainment of that type of item (sceptre, orb, crown). With additional benefits if you manage to attain that item in each of the 9 domoths.

Suggestions/Tweaks:

1) Nature Major: Change this to bless sparkleberry with the effect of another herb. For example, you can bless sparkleberry with chervil and get some clotting every time you eat a sparkleberry. This only consumes/requires sparkleberry balance. Alternatively, give sparkleberry a bonus allheale effect, on sparkleberry balance.

2) Knowledge Lesser: Change the DMP to affect all magic damage types. Magic, electric, cold, fire.

3) Whenever someone successfully claims a sceptre/orb/crown, they can go to an astral node and release pent up domoth energies to recharge it to full.

Ooooh


It doesn't? It looks like magic sourced damge.


Sceptre is too low for this.

I got the domoth and blessed merians. I personally didn't gain anything from it other than some gold.

Aetherspace is huge. "Knowing the map" isn't something that everyone can do, and "5-10 minutes of manual flying" every time is not exactly a "Oh my gosh, yippee! Let's go DO IT!" kind of requirement.

As such, I still agree with Shiri. Make it easier to get to bubbles generally, and fine. Otherwise, no Aetherspace.

While I will admit I was very irritated with my experiences in aetherspace when hunting down the Sceptre of Life about half an hour ago, I guess I do not see such a problem with it in hindsight. However, for some of the aether bubbles it is an annoying trek to get to (ie, nightbubble, which is where I have had to go). It probably took me about 20 minutes to reach. Flashpoints will be very convenient if you have one to the bubble it happens to spawn on, but otherwise it is far trickier. I think it would be far too easy, or far too hard, if it spawned someone that is as easily accessible as outer planes, however.

Well, if you were "very irritated" by it... that doesn't seem like much of a problem, in hindsight? Generally, when someone gets irritated with something, they avoid doing it again in the future (or just stop doing it).

I also note you don't really seem to have an objection to making aether travel to these bubbles easier for people who aren't Commanders.

FYI, we have a list of aethership updates (mostly thanks to the forums!) that will probably address these issues for you. Yes, we'll probably get to them sooner rather than later.

I seem to remember that list being quite... immense. Hm.

Any chance you remember off the top of your head which ones were aimed at making travel easier in-general for us? I do remember that there were a few. It's hard to actually approve it in this context without knowing which path the improvements will take, but it's good to know it's in the works. Either way, I guess I'll stop belaboring the point with the caveat that these changes are in the works and that, in my opinion at least, if you want the largest number of Demigods/Ascendants to participate, it should definitely roll out "sooner rather than later".

Honestly, while the Aetherspace component may be an irritant, I don't think it's the key thing that would prevent Demigods/Ascendants to participate. These are people who already have spent a good deal of time (Demis at least anyway) doing things that cannot be called anything BUT grinding to achieve a goal. So it's clear they are willing and able to do such things. So changing the aetherspace part might remove an irritant.

So I guess what I'm saying is that while aetherspace might be one of the straws that breaks the camel's back in this situation, it in and of itself is not that big of a deal. Unless you happen to be a person who really dislikes aetherspace and wants to avoid anything ever being in aetherspace because of that personal dislike. In which case, yes, it is a huge disincentive. But we have to hope those people are the minority.

While these people might be the minority, that doesn't exactly matter much-- there is a significant percentage of people who dislike aetherspace, and while it is the minority, this viewpoint does need to be kept in mind as these are people who participate in most of Lusternia's endeavors.

That said, with aetherspace revamped, this stance might change for some of these people. As it currently stands, however, it is a pretty large irritant-- and while Demigods may be achievers, most of the ones who make demigod and stick around actually *like* hunting for some reason, which means it isn't really much of an "irritant" to them. Thus, they keep doing it.

Idea:

Send messages to people when they directly fall under the blessing of a domoth. When I got the domoth blessing for merians, send a message to all merian characters with something like: "The Silver Sceptre of Erudition blesses your race with increased intelligence."

Suggestion to a change to the Harmony Major blessing: Instead of doubling the dross power draw, perhaps change it to double the power generated at the commune/city nexus through essence additions? The way it is now seems a bit..weak, and essence would be much better to strive for than just a double dross power bonus.

An extra free 30 power is weak?

Well, it's only free if you use up all your reserves, or for newbies. Though the extra power for newbies is nice!

Yes, power to the newbies is all well and all, but I'm kinda thinking more along the range of benefitting the entire commune rather than those who just blow through their entire reserves. :/

Make dross available regardless of reserves. That's a real free 30 power.

As a side note, I think it would be best to divide DOMOTH STATUS into 'DOMOTH STATUS' and 'DOMOTH STATUS FULL', whereby the latter shows what DOMOTH STATUS is showing now, and the former just shows whether a Veil is free, being challenged, being ascended, or championed (ie, just the one coloured line). As it is, the current syntax could get a bit spammy if you just want to glance at it and see who controls what.

The items should not pop up on bubbles that any org has a vested interest in or is tuned more towards one org than another. It kind of defeats the idea of the items showing up in neutral territory.