A little while ago, Estarra made a topic about Avatar/Cosmic Lord raiding. It got off topic and was locked, but, because it has been a recurring issue that's never really gotten resolved, I feel that it is important enough that we should try one more time. There have been three basic ideas suggested by the administration each time the topic is brought up:

A] Make the Avatars invincible under certain conditions to prevent the nonstop killing of the Avatars.

B] Make the Avatars harder to kill, making it more difficult to raid Avatars constantly.

C] Reduce the consequences for Avatar killing less severe.

The administration seems to be, in my oppinion approaching this issue in the wrong way. I respectfully disagree with the three ways of correcting the issue suggested above and would like to make the following points:

- Losing power is not much of a discouragment. Reducing the power lost through raiding does not adress the issue.
- Killing an Avatar is only a minor discouragment in and of itself. The real reason why people do not like having the Avatars die is because that means that they must preform the essence collecting quest to raise the Avatars.
- Camping for essence is extremely boring and is not fun at all. This is compounded by the fact that the Org that killed the Avatars will try to kill people gathering essence and, in general, make gathering essence as difficult and unpleasent as possible.
- Dumping essence into an object provides little to no sense of acomplishment. You have no way of telling how much progress you have made.
- The rate at which an Org can collect essence is directly limited by respawn times on the essence containing denizens. Waiting for things to respawn is not fun.
- For the Guardian Archtype, killing a Cosmic Lord results in having to gather 25 spikes or 25 supplicants and then spend 50 power remaking pacts. This is also rather tedious, but is only a minor issue in comparison.
- Making the Avatars harder to kill or invincible some of the time does not resolve the issue. The quest is still tedious, even if it comes up less often
- Likewise, the quests to raise the Org shields are unpleasent to have to preform purely because of the extensive degree of tedium involved.
- For Magnagora, the quest involves killing a dozen or so weak denizens, turning the corpses in, killing a slightly stronger denizen, then turning that corpse in. This process is repeated several dozen times, meaning that the same denizens have to be camped long enough to kill around two hundred of them.
- For Celest, the quest involves collecting large numbers of squid in the Inner Sea to get a pearl then turning that in and repeating the process several times. The quest is similar in the degree of tedium to the Necromentate quest and just as bad because of it.
- I am unfamiliar with the quest for Serenwilde.
- Likewise for Glomdoring, though I think it's the one where you kill a baby.

It is my oppinion that, rather than change how hard it is to kill the Avatars and Cosmic Lords, these quests should be altered so that they are much less tedious and more enjoyable to the players preforming them. The administration, in the past, has stated that they make quests which involve camping denizens, collecting essence and preforming other minor tasks repeatedly so that players in different time zones can participate. I am firmly convinced that it is possible to have a quest which allows for participation from players in all time zone while also maintaining a minimal degree of tedium. I have some ideas for a new set of Avatar raising quests and encourage others to share ideas.

For the Avatar raising quests, replace the current essence collecting with the following:
The converted Avatar will attack once per set duration, as it does now. The objective of the Org raising the Avatar is to either purify the tainted Supernal, retaint the purified Demon Lord, or spill the blood of the attacking Great Spirit each time it attacks. In order to do this, the defending Org must preform a task inbetween the attacks. I would recomend that this task involve both influencing and hunting. My suggestions is some combination of collect some essence, influence some demons/angels/fae*, or make some darklinks/starlinks/cones at an astral node. After these tasks have been successfully preformed for 24** attacks, the Avatar is revived. Thus, there is no need to tediously camp denizens (you only need a small amount of essence every hour or so) and everyone in the Org gets a chance to help. One issue that might arise is that if it takes a minimum of 24 attacks per Cosmic Lord killed, that's 120 attacks. It may be necessary to rebalance the damage done to the shield after each attack or lower the amount of damage done if the raising tasks are completed before each attack.

*For the influencing/node linking portions, the influencer/guardian could preform some emote in the room where the essence is dropped and recieve a defense which makes their actions assist that specific Avatar. Celestians could kneel before Japhiel's pillar and start to glow, while Magnagorians grovel before Gorgulu's pit and drink the slime.

**The number 24 in totally arbitrary. It could be more or less. I suggest 24, as there are 24 hours in a day. Likely, it should be 24 for Supernals and Demon Lords (24*5=120) and 40 for Moon Avatars and Night Avatars (40*3=120), so that it takes an equal amount of time for both cities and communes to raise all of their Avatars after a raid.

As far as I'm aware, the biggest thing that makes the Commune shield quests so difficult is that they're time-specific (Full Moon for Serenwilde and New Moon for Glomdoring).

The Celest shield quest involves picking up squids all over the inner sea, colour them and put them in the spire. That's the main, tedious part and it can be done alone. I lit the spire four times practically by myself during the fake divine event just recently. It takes so long though, because after you've gotten one pearl, you need to wait for the squid to reset before you can continue. Doing all of this is incredibly tedious and will leave your mind swimming. And you don't even get a nifty honour out of it.

Anyway, I don't have much more to add right now, besides the fact that I love your ideas. They're great. The only thing I'm iffy about is that this might end up hurting Guardians because they now have to wait five whole days (at worst) before they can begin remaking their pacts and until then their bashing goes beyond the pit it is in now.

I'm in love with your ideas Greleaq

The amounts of power lost in these things is really not that great. I don't think the power lost needs to be reduced.


The essence loss is a real pain. You spend hours and hours gathering essence and not only do you not get any power for it, often you get zero credit for doing so.

What I would like to see is that giving essence to raise adds power to the nexus with a specific note in the powerlog. Soandso added 1 power through the forge of Methrenton, etc. Then when enough essence has been dropped that power can be subtracted from the nexus (Methrenton has been raised at a cost of 150 power.). This doesn't really address the larger issues, it is always nice to give people credit for their efforts. There could even be an honors line. Perhaps not one for each, but why not, Raised a Supernal of the Light, etc?


I wouldn't mind seeing it so that guardians at least got to use their symbols without being able to use the pledge powers/protection while a supernal is down. I don't know if leeches have special protection against cosmicfire but it takes a ridiculous number of attacks for a guardian to kill one (I think it was something like 11+). I can see why guardians are weaker when the half-form are down, but it also makes sense that guardians should also be more effective at helping the half-formed get raised than they currently are.



I think I would rather see multiple ways to help rather than just a new way. Coming up with a replacement is just asking for someone to figure out a way to shut people out of that one.

I would also like to see something for little ones to do. Perhaps they could pray. I wouldn't add a ton, but why not let them pray once an hour and that counts for say 1 essence for every half-formed down? It could even take power to pray.

I agree that how hard the half-formed are to kill should be a function of how hard they are to raise. If it is easier to raise them, less frustrating to do so, then it somewhat matters less how often they can be dropped. I think it is worth pointing out that if they've made too invincible for too long that does tend to shut out people in other time zones. Likewise, making it too hard to raise them impacts certain time zones more than others.

Four at 14 int. They have a drain life attack.

There needs to be a time limit on how long it takes for the quests. I think it took us three-four days to raise the necromentate.

It took us a week to raise the Drums.

Because the quest can only be tried one hour out of every 32 hours. And pretty much requires that you succeed twice in a row.

Some of your suggestions seem to require guardians who may are may not be present.

I can see influencing counting, but this is also subject to griefing and isn't something everyone can do. You think people will kill you for gathering essence, wait until you're stuck there influencing and some psion walks up and debates and kills you. This also encourages someone to not only kill all the demon lords, but all the demons.

I am not saying it shouldn't be added and counted. What I am saying is it should be in addition to and not in replacement of (which I think was your intent).



I am confused, are you really saying that the quest to return them should last 24 to 40 hours depending on the org?

These are both valid points. I think, perhaps, the answer would be a variation on this idea:



A person gets the defense and any power they add to the nexus counts as an equal amount of essence for the attack. After every attack, the power is drained with a line "X power was drained repelling the attack from Y."


Well, you have to take into consideration that there are 167% more Demon Lords and Supernals than there are Avatars. I think it makes sense to make the Avatars take 167% as much time. If people disagree, it's not a major issue to have both sides can just take 24 hours.

The amount of power lost due to Demon Lords/Supernals isn't a big deal, unless the Necromantate dies as I understand it since the Purified Demon Lords would remove spikes before removing power (bar the amount of power lost when they are slain). This amount is also subject to whether the Earth Lords/Water Lords are empowered. From my time messing with the Power Logs of Magnagora, there didn't seem to be a major loss in terms of net power, but rather a loss in revenue.

I believe you get Karma for depositing essence for the Demon Lords/Supernals. I know I got those lines, but an honour would be nifty. Getting a defense would just make me NOT want to gather more essence since it's probably time-based unless the time compounds or the defense makes gathering more essence more 'profitable' in either gold, experience or esteem.

The point of it being frustrating, in my opinion, is from an RP-perspective but only works very well with the Guardian Archetypes which lose their symbols and pacts. Geomancers couldn't care less if the Demon Lords were down for half a year as it doesn't affect their skills and combat viability. As far as 'frustrating' is concerned, nothing beats destroyed constructs which make Guardians and Mages have to bring everyone else up to Elemental/Cosmic so that they could get to Ethereal/Astral.



By time limit, you mean an upper or lower bound?

I would think he means upper.

For whatever reason, there is a leech or two that is above and beyond all the others too, which tends to confuse people.

Little are harder to kill than starsuckers or quinotaurs or astral mobs.

BUG/IDEA it, that sounds goddamn dangerous for little newbies trying to get some low-tier hunting in the hizhouse.