The issue, if any, might be convincing enough people to come to siphon. And if everyone starts bashing, bashing grounds are bound to empty out. We'll see.

Yeah, it's the siphons that'll make or break it. Even I can get about 100k essence in an hour influencing, and I'm likely not even close to top-tier (since bashing is likely more rewarding). It's likely then that people might be able to pull together 200k or more per hour. If the admins based the top-tier aetherbashing at about 1m per hour, that's now down to 500k per hour. Siphoners will get half that or 250k. So sure, there's a little more essence there, but at the same time, it's mind-numbingly boring and you don't get any money from it.

Still rolling with the numbers we've been given at around 1m/hour for a good aetherhunting team, -40% comes in around 600k per hour. We've been told 300k/hour is about normal for a good astral bash - this would mean even the lowly siphoners would get 300k (average for demigod astral bashing), turrets etc would get 600k (twice that). Throw on the dime-a-dozen XP boosts in Lusternia, aetherbashing is still the best to go-round.

Edit: And there being 'no gold' is more a matter of players no taking advantage of the 'system' - my understanding from when Vermilla etc were in my order and regularly aetherbashing w/ Celest, they produced quite a lot of gold.

Experience-wise, yes, I agree (and sorry for somehow halving it instead of taking 40% off. Not sure what happened there). I'm not sure that people will choose aetherbashing over other forms though, as through normal bashings you also get gold, karma (for quest corpses if we're not taking astral bashing), essence for the gods (if we're talking astralbashing), and likely a few other things I forgot about. That's just a hunch though, I guess we'll just have to wait and see how it plays out.

1 mil per hour might be if you HAD boosters.

I ran some numbers a few days ago and as an aslaran with no boosts at all, I was pulling ~700k per hour on chair tops. I'm wondering if my previous figures were skewed because I was human with (possibly) a domoth blessing. I'd need to compare with what Glom gets to be sure if this is normal.

Previous aetherhunting >>>>>> Astral >> Solo

What I'm saying is why should solo prime non-organisational enemy territory should be so risky compared to everything else.

Mmmm no, I was turret and human and had a truefavour, which I find to both be pretty common, and I was easily making essence. Yeah, it went down, but it was good while it lasted...

You know what aetherbashing has over regular bashing? Lack of death and cure wasting.

You got any numbers for me as human with a truefavour?

We had a hunt not long ago, and I just went over it again. Over the six-hour hunt (it actually lasted more or less exactly four hours from first to last beast and with a two-hour break in the middle), we killed 844 of them. I lazily counted with about 3500 essence per (I think it's off slightly, but not by too much), and ended up with about 3m essence. At four hours, that's 750k per hour. That's gargantuans though, mind you, and not dragons. Not sure how it'd stack up to dragons, since I rarely, if ever, hunt them.

EDIT: Oh, and I'm not saying I'd never aetherhunt again. Quite the opposite, I'm still as eager as before. I just think it'll be way harder to get a good crew to actually go aetherbashing now.

Nah, we're all lazy and still like easy xp.

I feel like lowering the essence gain was the wrong solution. What're you going to say to people that didn't get their chance to ride the gravy train? Too bad you didn't start playing sooner?

Issues like this should be balanced up if an overhaul isn't available.

Well... To be honest, "it's always been like that" isn't really a good reason not to change something. Heck, they changed VAs and demigods, they added affinity, and that's just in the last 6 months. I'm not going to argue neither for nor against any of those changes, but big changes are sometimes needed. A 40% cut on a single bashing method (that, admittedly, was way above and beyond any other) isn't that big in the big picture.

Is the reduction with the aetherhunting relevant to non-demis or is it just demis?

I'd assume it hits everyone the same. I've never seen anything else make a distinction between Demis earning esteem and people getting XP anyway.

Let vernal demis get two ascendant skills and demis get one! Demigods seem so lacklustre right now.
Also, about divinefire, since it always only stated about curing health/mana/ego in the power description; it also doesn't cure afflictions any more, I take it? Does refresh only cure health/mana/ego (once) or also afflictions?

EDIT: Also, if you change powers (like divinefire) not only in terms of cost but also how they work, removing the power and reimbursing the full cost seems more appropriate than just returning the difference in essence from a lower cost. I probably won't be keeping divinefire the way it is now, and 2.5 million essence, while not a whole lot, should not just go to waste completely because of a change. Yea, I know, ascendants lost 80 millions. Reimburse those, too!

Meh... that sucks!

This argument is invalid. Turn it around and you get a veteran Demigod decrying aetherbashing for being the Demigod Express it is and demanding justice because they didn't have all that fancy stuff when they were bashing their hard-working ass off 24/7. The answer to your plight is, in fact, "too bad you didn't start playing sooner." Learn it and live with it. I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but I would really like people to stop using the same old argument after every nerf.


I fully support this. I once went to influence kephera and found 6 of them seduced. I died, vitae'd, died again (due to my incompetence) and phoenixed for a grant total of almost 7 million lost. Herp derp.

What? The Hives (and all of Undervault, actually) are still Prime and, as far as I know, protected by Avenger. Unless you're enemied to kepheras or have PK CAREFUL OFF, the first death (vitae) should have given you status on the seducer. I know they changed this a while back. Try a BUG if not?

... he wouldn't have lost multiple millions if he wasn't enemied to the Hives, btw.

The 2 million loss is in enemy territory and fires for each death.