Unless bashing is changed to require more than one or two bashing attacks, it is never going to be anything that requires a complicated strategy to pull off, even with resistances. Lusternia's PvE is already much better than other IRE's because of the (pretty awesome) quests and aetherhunting. I am not familiar with Lusternia's endgame, but I have the impression that at level 100, your crit rate helps immensely regardless of class. Are there not options besides bashing for essence? I would have assumed influencing, aetherhunting, quests etc would still be available.

Compared to a 500-700 cr artifact, 20 cr for beastmastery+beast is really not that expensive. Personally, I think 500-700 cr is very expensive for an artifact that only has bashing utility, and would never buy it myself, but the crit bonus artifacts run 200-1200 cr, so I guess for a new ability, that sounds about right. Compared to 7 or 89 lessons, it is more expensive, but in this case I am going to argue that certain classes are inherently more expensive to play and that 20 cr is not all that difficult to obtain in game.

If the concern is largely directed at endgame bashing, wouldn't a shield-destroying skill be better added as a demigod power? At my current level bashing (80s) I don't find denizen shielding to be a large hindrance for the things I am hunting.

IREs are all set up to require a certain amount of time/money to play with a full skillset. As far as taking care of beasts is concerned, the cost isn't abnormally expensive compared to other investments. For example, playing a warrior class is expensive with regard to equipment, correct?

My impression of highmagic void was that it was geared for combat, not bashing, hence its lack of bashing utility. That said, I wouldn't complain at all if they were made useful for bashing, but from what Aison is saying, it sounds like magi are at a disadvantage in general? Not sure just fixing the shield breakers or adding an artifact would solve basic imbalance, if that's what it is. However, if there is an imbalance, it probably should be addressed with the resistances etc overhaul?

Magi are not at a disadavantage bashing.

Aetherhunting is obnoxious because it requires a minimum of 6 other people, and only dragonbashing is terribly worth it. Influence also pales somewhat when compared to the upper end of bashing, though it is more reliable. The majority of quests also aren't worth a terrible amount of xp/essence.

Besides that, you're spot on.

Edit: Oh satchel, good idea. Have it be able to hold vellum and you just made the day of every bookbinder.

Maybe, but if you can get a group of people doing it even kind of consistently, it is extremely lucrative essence-wise.

It's been a few months since I went aetherbashing, so I don't remember exact numbers off the top of my head, but with some trans aethercraft high level gunners, I was pulling in either 3 or 6 times as much essence per hour than I do, say, bashing Muud. And without the insanity to boot!

I'd like these little keychain curio things one could attach to prayer beads. These could then be attuned to another god so you can also pray to them, provided they are er, friends of the god who the prayer beads are for. IE - I have prayer beads to Mysrai. I could then attune my little charm to Kalikai, but not to say, Nocht. Yes, larger orders would have more gods they could add, but this is just a random idea all together.

Whatever happened to those unique monk runes Roark mentioned? Nothing for the sake of balance?

what runes?

Can we just release that magic chisel, plz? It's been up from auctions and artifact package promos, but just not regular release by itself.

I can't find the post, but there was a news post in Announce around when monks came out stating that wounding runes were not going to be attachable to monk weapons, but that new great runes would be added specifically for kata weapons.

CODE

ANNOUNCE NEWS #839
Date: 7/15/2007 at 15:45
From: Roark Libertas
To : Monks
Subj: Runes

Please note that artifact runes currently should not work on shofa
blades. This is temporary, but we wanted to start out without runes to
get a feel for how the skillset plays out. When runes are released for
them, not all warrior runes will work and some new monk-only runes will
substitute. This is because weapon stats on monk weapons do not have a
1-to-1 correlation to warrior weapon stats.

Penned by My hand on the 2nd of Vestian, in the year 181 CE.

There it is!

Kegrune lv. 0:
Boosts capacity of the keg to 150, but does not increase the fills it recieves. Thus, it does not halve the contents when pouring to an unruned keg. Price would likely be 50 credits. Why? Because I want runed kegs that I can upgrade to the "real" keg runes.

Rune of
A rune that, when placed on a piece of jewellery, makes the enchantment permanent. It would still drain charges, but once it reached zero charges, it just becomes unusable, but still rechargeable from a cube, instead of having to be re-enchanted from scratch.

Sounds like a perpetuation of a bug to me. You shouldn't have items with zero charges and a spell that remains.

Uh... what? This is intended to make it not lose the enchantment if you run out of charges. What does that have to do with a bug? Or is there a bug currently with items that, when they lose all their charges, mimics this suggestion?

It's been a while since this came up, so I'm not sure of the status any more, but it seems to me that being able to have zero charges of a spell on an item is screwy. (The current situation, I think, is that enchanters can somehow enchant items without putting any charges on them.)

Yeah. Enchanters that start enchanting, but stop before any power is drained, leave the item with 0 charges (as far as I've understood it). Debatable whether or not that is a bug (the enchantment is useless anyway; it fades as soon as it's rubbed and doesn't give the def), but no matter if the current situation is screwy or not has nothing to do with my suggested rune, as I see it.

I think it still has bearing, but maybe the jury's out on this one for now.

Personally, I think it'd be awesome to never have to worry about the spells wearing off, but it's already pretty good just to have all the jewelry be permanent and keep recharging from my artifact cube.

I'm still waiting for Excorable and Divinus damage runes to be released. Chitinous crusade FTW!

Aetherdock:

Allow aetherships to dock to aethermanses.

please?

That won't work.