Wrong.

The real answer is that it's not just Krellan; there are a few others who do so these days as well. It's basically a free-for-all for whoever finds them first. And it is also easier to just blame one individual.

That said, most of (perhaps all) of the others wouldn't be doing it if Krellan hadn't started it. It's a bit difficult to tell at this point, though.

If we smack them all with large trout every time they strip a room, will that help..?

There's not enough trout in the seas.

Try weevils.

The reason why I personally blame Krellan is because for a period of time, he did do it, for the sole reason of trying to keep a monopoly on the supply of sparkleberries. He is the reason why sparkleberries are not still at 30 gold or whatever it was a few years back.

Nowadays, sure, Krellan isn't the only one doing it, but I daresay that the reason anyone else is doing it is because they have to. If they don't strip harvest themselves, they can't any at all and later on, someone else will just do it anyway.

I've no objection to Herbs getting the Guard skill. Maybe then more people would invest on keeping things growing rather than rushing to get their fill first.

Can't we just... Nerf Krellan? Or all the people doing it?

I mean I was once issued (Crazy, I know) because of spam scrying, I pointed out that in the help scroll on spam it specifically said scrying was NOT against the rules, so I wasn't doing anything 'technically' wrong, I was still told in no uncertain terms that whilst this was true I should in no way hide behind such rules and that doing so was a bit of a move that might not be tolerated in future.

Haven't we given him (and others) enough slack with the 'not really breaking the rules' part? Would it be so wrong for an admin to say "Ok, you've had your fun now, enough is enough."... Please? I want to be able to afford sparkles.

If not, could we improve protect (so you can't harvest under say 15/20) AND give it out as, say, a low level environment ability?

I mean when there was a problem with regular commodities the admins said 'Fine! We're gonna mess with things until we're happy!', which is fine, I don't recall anyone every complaining about it, but yeah, maybe there was a problem there.

But now there IS a problem here, so HELP us!

Raising the limits on protect wouldn't help at all. Quite the opposite, in fact; more people would just sit and wait until it wears off and then harvest the excess. Personally I'd be glad if the limit was lowered, say to 5 or even 1. It would remove some of the "Ooh, there's 200 sparkleberries that can't be touched here for another two days; let's get them all then".

The only real "solution", if you would call it that, would be to allow guarded rooms to be re-guarded, extending the guarding to 35 days, even if it's still being guarded (no matter for how long). Then it'd be feasible to perma-guard Astral.

Of course, there's always the alternative to introduce a perma-guarding artifact (implant it in the room like a manse artifact and it's permanently guarded).

Or, just have sparkleberry grow somewhere huge like the UV as well.

Oooo I like this. It still has the same level of danger. But they may not want this because it would dramatically increase the number of sparkleberry. So many lovely berries!

The environment requirement hampers that idea a bit. I also have no problem with lowering the Guard to 5 a room but enabling one to re-Guard a room. Would be better if Herbs had it too.

Though, ultimately, I would much rather Nature Harvest to be an area-wide guard/growth instead of the piddling skill that it is currently, but that's not happening soon.

Seriously, though, when an endgame benefit (Nature crown) is determined and implemented mostly because one guy's being a , something's wrong.

You realize that Nature Crown's benefit was around long before 'one guy' was an herbalist... right?

Don't you come at us with your logic.

At any rate, maybe it'd make a certain ammount of sense to have them also grow on Muud? Also a soulless, also drives you insane, also incredibly dangerous but NOT epically massive like the UV.

There are no power-nodes in Muud though.

Uhm... So?

It's the power that makes sparkleberries, not the soulless influence. Normal plants use water, but sparkleberries use power.

Experience loss from losing an influence battle should be looked at. I shouldn't lose 3-4% from losing an influence with a guard when I lag out, but only win .05% if I win.

Should be the same as a normal death, shouldn't it? Sans the XP-loss on praying or such...

Influencing loss is the same as praying for salvation.

Please make STAGE MANAGERS with no argument not clear all the stage managers. Please.