Life + Forging = Life - Karma Blessings

I think I see the problem with your formula right there.

I think someone already said it, but how come you can't just not get a Karma Blessing till you're not gonna be forging?

When isn't a forger forging? It's like a riddle, only it's more of a rhetorical question.

Kind of like, if a forger complains in the forge but a non forger isn't around to hear it, does anyone care?

Because I don't have a calendar set up with the exact dates and times that someone's going to ask me to forge something already divined and laid out.

Oh, well, yeah. But you could say, "I'll get to that when this Blessing burns out." and if they don't want to wait, charge them a stupidly large mark-up to offset the wasted karma.

I've been trying to figure out how KARMA SUSPEND would be used to abuse the system by getting all the blessings, and here's what I think people are suggesting.

Sun 12am: Get Nature, then SUSPEND, then start hunting without benefit of blessings to bring karma back to 100%.
Sun 1am: Karma at 100%. Sit around or log off or forge for 11 hours.
Sun 12pm: Get Chaos, then SUSPEND, then start hunting without benefit of blessings to bring karma back to 100%.
Sun 1pm: Karma at 100%. Sit around or log off or forge for 11 hours.
Mon 12am Get Harmony, then SUSPEND, then start hunting without benefit of blessings to bring karma back to 100%.
...and so on...
Wed 12pm: Get Life, then SUSPEND, then start hunting without benefit of blessings to bring karma back to 100%.
Wed 1pm: Karma at 100%. Sit around or log off or forge for 11 hours.
Thu 12am: Get Death, then SUSPEND, then start hunting without benefit of blessings to bring karma back to 100%.
Thu 1pm: Karma at 100%. Sit around or log off or forge for 11 hours.
Thu 12pm: Pwn the world with all nine blessings.
Thu 12:01pm: Cackle gleefully.

So assuming someone really has the patience to spend four and a half days building up to pwning the world, what's the alternative they could do today?

Sun 12am: Get Beauty, then start influencing guards, monks, villagers, and the Good Humor Man whenever he drives by, storing up esteem every time you hit 100%.
Sun 10pm: You've gotten to 40 full esteem bottles/whatever and you still have Beauty. Go get the other eight blessings, offering bottles in between, so you end up at 100% karma.
Sun 10:05pm: Pwn the world with all nine blessings.
Sun 10:06pm: Cackle gleefully.

Can someone explain why SUSPEND adds some new abuse possibility I've missed?

If you can get enough esteem to upkeep 9 blessings (81% an hour + 450% to get it), you deserve it, to be honest. But the main problem is currently, even if you do get the 9 blessings, you still have to ride out the 81% an hour if you want to keep it, whether you are actually doing anything with them. Basically, you'd be spending most of your time trying to get back what you're getting drained of. If you can just suspend it, you can just turn it on when you need to and off when you don't, making it far too easy to just go back up to 100% and start all over again.

I think you have it incorrect. It would be more like Sun 12am: Get Nature, and Chaos then SUSPEND etc..

In reality, this would allow anybody to affectively double the number of karma blessings they can normally maintain at any one time.

Okay, so you can do with SUSPEND in two and a quarter days, not four and a half days, what I can do right now in ten hours. Yeah, I can see how that's a terribly abusable possibility.

No, the point is I can do with suspend, twice as much as I normally can at a time that I choose to do it.

And there is no way you can maintain that many blessings while getting the benefit of those blessings. (i.e. you can't pk with that many blessings and maintain it)

Suspend won't help you maintain the blessings either.

Did we all miss the post where I simply suggested that while you're suspended you can't gain karma?

yes

That's a good idea too.

Sure it will, cause I'll be at 100% when the blessings kick in, instead of 50% or 0% (assuming you can still gain karma while suspend is on)

Doesn't really change anything since you can simply rack up esteem, which is like karma-in-reserve for all practical purposes. But there seems to be some reason why some people can't get that.

Because the issue is karma getting lost, not esteem.


who cares how many bottles of esteem you have. Nobody cares about how many corpses you have either.

You are ignoring the fact that with 9 blessings, you will have to gain 81% karma every single hour you are online. That is roughly four bottles. You cannot possibly gain that much alone. Others can help you, but as I said, if you can upkeep it, you deserve it.

The maintenance issue is precisely the same whether you build up the karma before, or during, the interval. It will still cost 81% either way if you don't burn them once you're done with them.

I have come up with one scenario in which this alarmist reaction almost makes sense, though. Joe uses the two-and-a-quarter-day technique to get and suspend all nine blessings and then idles in his manse for 11 hours 59 minutes, refusing to come out for defense, to go hunting, etc. since he has no blessings at all this whole time. Then he starts up a raid, timing things so he will arrive in enemy territory right at the twelve hour mark. He enjoys the raid for two, maybe three, minutes, then pulls out and suspends again. He then goes back to idling for 11 hours and 59 minutes. And so on. Since he is in complete control of what time he needs his blessings (by only participating in things he chooses to initiate), has no problem arranging his activities around the inexorable ticking of the twelve-hour clock (since if he ever misses it his karma will blow itself out in no time, but fortunately, he has no other life than to wait for the 11:59 clock to count down), and has no problem with the cost of living without any of them all the rest of the time (since he doesn't defend or do anything else), he can use this technique to get extra blessings without having to earn esteem or karma.

If that's really the concern people are having, then just make it so the twelve hours of suspend is followed by six hours during which you cannot suspend. There, problem -- if that was even a real problem, since I find that scenario absurdly unlikely -- solved.