...Of course you won't just do a 1 room meld. Go meld all around the statue, make it so the breaker has to keep running into the statue to break all of it.

And oh god, you guys have spirits, use those to catch us (no complaining about gloomtide, if you drop spirits, you have to spam the enemyall alias every so often, it comes with the territory). Hell, just check WHO every so often and watch for suspicious activity. Not all of us have gems.

It doesn't, but since I'm feeling generous by telling you guys exactly how to stop the raids, I figure I might as well be thorough and mention another way to stop the OP shieldsong.

Edit: And still, this doesn't stop sporing into the GPed room, considering you just need to forest it once when there's no raid, make a bunch of spores, then pass them around.

won't ecology twistedpaths or that other path thing work as well?

Probably not, but there's some req with the paths where like you need both farmland terrain or something. Most guard clumps are in roads, so that's a no-go.

what about that hartstone path skill? i recall it needed a meld, but hey

I think I did. Guess it was too many words, though.

If I had the time, I'd have written a shorter letter.

This maybe intended to be so, but it is not so. Hit a shrine: yes. Hit a tree: yes. Hit a statue: yes. Hit a denizen or guard: no. Which makes so little sense that it seems it has to be a bug, but no response yet on my bug report.

Having actually been a part of a guard raid, this most certainly seems to already be the case. Unless it's missing it for certain denizens or guards, as I think I hit a villager too.

I'm wondering what you think it would do, even assuming we had four druids sitting around not using their demesnes all the time. Do you want us to use it to throw people into the guards, or away from them? Either way, since it fires so unreliably, it wouldn't be much help.

Well, there's the way in everyone was looking for.

I hope you're right, because then the (many) times it doesn't happen are definitely a bug.

Regarding mage/druid guards, have them do their entangle immediately on entrance as well as periodically.

I don't know what to say about GPent. It went from outrageously nice (OP permanent barrier until caster leaves) to really nice (OP barrier that lasts 5 minutes) to its current incarnation (brief and bypassable with limited use), and now people are talking about making it have one purpose only - the rather rare smob raid.

Even assuming pathtwist bypasses greatpent, you would have to already be inside to make it your demesne center and set up the pathtwist into it.

I think what frustrates people is that pretty much any choice we make with guards results in some frustrating situation.

Put no guards, villages are now targets for the frequent kick and run raids we have, but they actually accomplish something through these besides just being annoying.

Put enough guards to deter the single raider, they become a target for larger groups and essentially needed be watched by somebody constantly or run the risk of them all getting slaughtered.

Put a huge wad of guards that can actually manage on their own, but cost so much they make our power minister weep.

EDIT: I suppose the middle situation is how things are intended to be. It still just comes down to there that the current balance of fighters in the games leaves us little chance of fighting off a Glom raid in our villages.

Ahem. I didn't say you make them during the raid, kind sir.

If you want to make the argument that you shouldn't have to keep a pre-meld on a place at all times to reasonably defend it, I think that's sensible. Though if you do, I think you ought to try to come up with some solution for Celestia and Celest as well - nevermind the chance this feeling might extend to the new cosmic planes once they actually need to be defended or their denizens can be heard crying out.

So your plan is have one druid per group of guards standing around 24 hours a day not using their demesne for anything but to have a pathtwist into the guards. That's practical.

(Incidentally, once someone greatpents the other end of the pathtwist, can we use another pathtwist to get us into the first now-sealed-off pathtwist?)

What he and others have done are make suggestions. I think from the sound of other posts, what Seren seems to be looking for is a fool-proof means to keep any degree of raiding from happening in a village. That should never happen. You can take steps to curtail such things, but there shouldn't be a way to completely lock down any village.