Yep! That much is true, and that much probably shouldn't be changed unless the abash gets nerfed in one of its other aspects.

No, it's not. If you want to go Aetherbashing, you're going to need a minimum of 5 people, more if you want to hit up the good stuff, and a multi-million gold space ship at your disposal. If you want to go normal bashing, you need some health potion, and maybe a bit of mana potion. If you bring 5 people with you Aetherbashing, you've still got a decent chance of imploding if Deathsense is to be trusted. If you bring 5 people bashing with you to undervault, you'll proabably walk away without even using much healing potion. Risk/Reward is fine when considered with Effort/Reward thrown in.

Some of the scripts I've seen posted for aetherhunting should be closely examined by the admins to see if they violate the automation policies. I've talked to too many people and seen a few scripts that indicate people can pretty much walk away for an hour and gain a level without needing to do anything at all.

1. Yes, you need five people. Unless you're in playing on the most off times, this is not hard. The experience IS incentive to go, and that's why people do. As to the needing multi-million gold ships, this is true, but a moot point. Every org has (That I'm aware of) one or more of these ships, and if your org hasn't appointed several people to fly them, that's the org's fault.

2. We've been talking aetherbashing vs high level bashing. You'll need a bit more than a health potion and mana. Either way, I'm not sure your point. You're trying to argue aetherbashing is harder than (Or on par with) regular bashing. Aetherbashing requires 0 supplies and 7 lessons of investment. It requires that your character exist (Level 1). High level bashing requires supplies, that your health (Level) be high enough, and probably a bit of lesson investment to get some damage mitigation skills.

3. The comparison between 5 people on aethership vs 5 people in Catacombs isn't really a good one to make. I go back to level. Four of your friends could alt, three invest 7 lessons to turret, and one invest up to modules. You fly around, they pew pew. Hooray. Try dragging your four level 1 alts through Catacombs. You're right in that they won't even use a health potion - they'll die instantly.

As far as implosions, I think 99% of them are due to trying to go to fast or sloppy autoing. If you manual siphon one monster at a time, kill it, check modules/hull, then manually siphon again, I'm very sure you won't implode unless your pilot/empath goes linkdead/falls asleep at the keyboard. For all the implosions you do see, I can assure you there are crews going hours upon hours without anything going wrong. Ship implosions are like airplane accidents. It only looks bad because you don't see a news article every time a plane makes a successful trip from point a to point b.

Aetherbashing is still insanely easy, though obviously you can't do the things that people did in the beginning. It's a bit slower, and the xp is not as great. But I still firmly believe that Aetherbashing == xp, high level bashing == gold/offerings.

Edit: For more proof, look at how many demigods there were pre-aetherbashing (Even post aetherbashing nerf) vs. now. Also look at the average amount of essence demigods now have vs. before aetherbashing. If the xp was comparable, you shouldn't see a big jump - but you will.

As far as I know, nothing violates automation rules until the person is completely AFK. Which they do check for. I know, they've checked me while abashing.

Sure, it's questionable if you're not actually AFK, but your entire hunting experience is automated still. At any rate, it's something far easier done for aetherhunting than regular hunting, which is part of the big attraction of it. "Hey, friends! Download this simple script and we can all be demigods in no time!"

15.8 Triggers, Automation, and Auto (auto rat, auto weevil, etc)
Triggers and automation are allowed in most cases as long as they are not used
for gaining gold or experience, whether you are AFK or not.
What is not allowed?
Auto ratting, auto weeviling, auto questing, auto bashing, (and auto
pretty much everything else).
1) that you automate via triggers, and
2) that you use to gain gold or experience.
Automated play in any form is likely to constitute a violation of our rules.
Penalties will depend on the context. In extreme cases, a violation may be
punishable by shrubbing or banning.

You keep on saying that you only have to invest seven lessons, this is not true, If I'm leading one of my famously successful hunts or going on someone else's you do NOT take a level 1 with seven lessons investment, ever, ever ever, not even if it means that you can't go on the hunt. Know why? It sucks, it DOES take more investment than you're letting on.

Also, the point that there are always the org ships... They are used, yes, but other people DO buy ships, myself included. It'd be like if an organization bought a set of artied bashing weapons for anyone to use, yes, that person will get the benefit, does that mean we should scale back everyone else's exp because one person didn't have to pay for it? Of course not, that's crazy talk.

Based off of that, having an auto-sipper is a violation. :/ That's rather ambiguous.

Auto sipper doesn't move you around bashing for you. Neither do triggers that make you point staff rat when you see a rat enter the room. That's what (From all I've heard) auto ratting/weeviling, auto bashing and the like mean. Zarquan is referring to scripts that automate the process entirely.

I agree. A level 1 with 7 lessons invested so he can turret will slow you down, and it's actually counterproductive. He can level faster bashing/questing at the point than with aetherbashing. It's a curve. The higher the level, the better aetherbashing becomes. When you start into the 80's, you gain more xp more easily aetherbashing than regular bashing. But actually, if you had a level one with 7 lessons for turret, BUT who had built himself up to 100% combateer, you're only gimped on criticals then, not firing speed. I only said level ones to illustrate the point. Lets be more realistic. If you take level 80's link Astral bashing, they're going to die most likely, especially if they're squishy. If you take level 80's aetherbashing, they only die if the pilot/empath screws the pooch.


Not a good comparison. You're comparing the city buying arties that only one person can use vs. the city buying something (theoretically) anyone can use. If the city buys you a cubix, you can't perm it out to someone else. Sure, you can throw it to someone while you're logged in, and that's all well and good, but its use is dependent on you existing in the game (Minus giving on logout, someone might get an hour out of it). An aethership is something that whole org (Or really, even outside the org if you're perm generous).

Is is fair to somehow adjust it because pimped out aetherships are so readily accessible to anyone? Maybe not. But is it really a good idea to not take that fact into consideration? Just because you, or others, choose to do it the harder way (Buy own ship and pimp it out), doesn't make the other fact disappear. You have to balance around the highest possible conditions.

P.S. Please shrub most of the people who actually bashed to demigod also. Triggering "You have recovered balance" to swing/staff/symbol again via a basher class is a clear violation of the rules.

Oh fine, edit in case the point is missed: this line is very fine, and there's no foolproof way the divine can tell whether a player's input is done via themselves or triggers.

True, but with the addition of aetherwill it is no longer quite the exp bananza (I've never gotten to use that word, go me) that you think it is, whilst, say, a Titan, can hunt for a fairly long time it's still finite, with the incredible number of ways there are to almost instantly regain all normal will but almost nothing for aetherwill it kinda balances out.

Also, and here's something I don't think I remember being brought up ever ever... What's wrong with there being differances in the way people bash? Influencing is safer but slower at high levels, aetherbashing is faster but more risky at high levels, normal bashing is sorta inbetween... Do all bashing methods have to be the same? No, of course not, that's WHY they were implemented, they have to be BALANCED, yes, and they are, I see far more deaths from aetherspace than from anything else.

after the last divine wars history book, there should be an area with 100s of fae and squaks just crying to be slaughtered, erm I mean "gathered"

Btw Mount Dio seems to be good bashing, and it's non-enemy territory on Prime.

Most deaths you see may be from aetherbashing, but that's because it's what's done most these days. If the crews went bashing on Astral instead, you'd probably see quite a few more deaths regularly. And as far as xp/essence gain goes, Astral bashing in groups is really the only thing comparable to aetherhunting.

I really don't mind tweaking aetherbashing if people think it's still too easy. So give us input and let us know if you think aetherbashing is too easy and how you would make it harder.

AHunting is fine, you have to be careful if you want good exp flow. It also has a ton of coordination work to keep people going if you want to do a real hunt.

Summon too many, and dead. Summon too few, and it's not all that great on flow. You can get as much / more from a good astral bash, just the risk is all on the shoulders of the pilot / empath instead of the weakest members in the party all dying off.

(I'm saying this as someone who spent a huge amount of time leading an abash over the last double-xp half-week)

Edit:
If you really want to do something, do something about all those vortexes. Cut them down to like, 500p each or something maybe, with karibideans only showing up in the last 100? Or 250 power, with karibs showing up in the last 50? As-is, there are so many vortexes that we never ever ever drain a vortex, just move on to the next when a karib spawns. Take a look at the Faethorn dock sometime.

With fewer vortexes, ships will have to move around a bit more to hunt once they burn out the ones they're on. Currently, we spawn vortexes at like, 5x the rate we can siphon from them, heh.

Sounds like we just need to make vortexes rarer.