I do not know if this has been brought up, but I suspect it has.

Looking at maps of both Ethereal Territories, it strikes me that Glomdoring seems to have a far better setup then Serenwilde.

For starters, all of the EtherGlom Supermobs are situated within line of sight from the Master Ravenwood, and there is one entrance to the Smob room cluster. Not only does this make defending them easier, it means that the Daughters generated by binding fae are funneled through this one tiny area and are highly concentrated there. In comparison, none of the Serenwilde Smobs are in line of sight and are spread out so that any Ladies generated have a much larger number of directions to wander off on their own. EDIT: Or just make Daughters disperse more.

The Ladies vs. Daughters could be somewhat fixed by just making the Ladies have a higher tendency to stick with eachother.


The other issue I have with the geographies is the placement of Aspect entrances. As it is now, the Serenwilde entrance to the Avatar area is one north of the archway entrance to the area. In contrast, the Glomdoring entrance is a minumum of ten steps away from the Glomdoring avatar, and is ONE ROOM above their nexus. Not only that, but to get to the room, you need to walk through the previously mentioned Daughter funnel to get there.

You might say: "What about flying or climbing into the trees to get past all that?" Well, if there is anyone paying the slightest attention, let's say a druid, in either organization, the question becomes more of "Who can hinder movement to their Aspects the best?". Not only does the Glomdoring side have more distance to possible hinder, with the use of treebane or shoving in the funnel room, or even the use of brumetower to compelty block out tree elevation in that room, the fundamental imbalance rears its head again.

The only thing that can possible be said about the Serenwilde placement is that Enemies really have one spot they are ever going to be in, though that confers little if any benefit to defending, and dosn't address the problem at all. I don't understand why either no one has noticed this, or nothing has been changed. It seems like just moving the entrance would suffice. I suggest putting the entrance one south of where Luna currently is and having a north exit from the nexus to that room.

To the first part: http://forums.lusternia.com/index.php?show...t=0&start=0

Another couple of things that can be said:
Getting at Ladies behind the Moon Avatars is more difficult. You actually have to be careful in Ethereal Serenwilde; in Ethereal Glomdoring, they're all at the back end of nowhere and you don't have to travel through them to get anywhere (whereas you do have to travel past Moon Avatars to get to the northern end of EthSeren). I note that you already make a point about flying / tree use... and a nice good shove or geyser when someone walks by is always fun at the Moon Avatars.

Ethereal Serenwilde is also much better for Shrine placement. If you put a shrine through an Avatar, it's pretty much undestroyable. Glomdoring's setup allows for only one shrine with Avatars. I believe that Serenwilde currently has 3 shrines bounded by Avatars... and that EthSeren is sufficiently large enough / spread out enough to allow for all shrines to be maximum size. You can't fit even 3 15-room-size shrines into EthGlom because of its compact nature.

I feel as if you are overlooking some of your own natural advantages in favour of a 'grass is greener' thing; sure we have some positives, but I'd hope that we do given that we also have disadvantages in other areas.

@Veyrzhul: Lol, that thread turned into a Glom zerg defense. Approach this one with caution.

I liked Vathael's 'testing' personally, when I re-read it.

I have heard that point made, but the chances when you can capatilize on that (via forced terrain changing or possibly through pathtwist) are so few I can't imagine it changing much.




I have also heard that point made, but if you are dropping shrines, chances are you can survive being in the Avatar room anyways. I'm also not sure, but can you defile from the trees? I'm also not sure what having three separate shrines has over putting putting two shrines down is, because they do not overlap at all. If your important areas are more compact, you have less need for more shrines anyways, it seems.

The Avatar thing was not really something crippling, and I do not suggest moving where the Avatars actually are, or changing the actual geography of the areas much, that would be too drastic. The main point here was that your Daughter funnel thing is only really a big deal because compared to ours, your Aspect placement is more defend-able and riskier. Riskier to attack, that is.

When I see threads like this, I can only think of how superior ethereal defenses/advantages are in comparison to elemental and cosmic. But continue!

What? Avatars do a huge amount of damage, you're not surviving if you're standing in that room defiling.

No, you cannot defile from trees.

Shrines affect the entire area, not just their local 15-rooms of influence. Thus, more plentiful (and larger) shrines are always better. Even more so when they cannot be destroyed without having already killed the Avatar guarding it.

You can also capitalize on things above Avatars by, say, Hexsense w/ paralysis, combined with Treebane / shove / geyser / whatever. Using skills that tell you when a person enters a room in order to do something is not new.

Edit: I've also been playing around with a map of EthSeren, it does appear that 3 15-room sized shrines all guarded by Avatars is unlikely. Still can have 3 Shrines guarded by Avatars though, 2 at 15 and one a little smaller. Best placement I've gotten so far in terms of size was 2 15-room influences and a 14-room, two of them guarded by Avatars.

Haha, true. I meant that if you are bothering to drop shrines, you probably have a large group with you and can defiantly do group defiling, begging on the Avatar not hitting you every round and multiple people defiling at once.

In any case, this is more about the placement of the Aspect entrance relative to the archway and Avatars then where Avatars are and how to use that in general Lady/Daughter raiding. It may be possible to get an optimal one more shrine effect in (which is probably not going to happen, though that is not important for this), it's that it is just far far easier to get to the Monolith then the Feather. Having the one shrine possible does not balance proximity to nexus and Avatars, and distance from archway.

Looking at past talks about placement of the paths, it seems like one south of Luna might have the same clumping thing as the Glom placement does with that one room. I don't think it is really that that much of a deal, but somewhere else or some way to get around that might be necessary as well if it were to be moved. That spot would be better then others because it isn't behind the Avatar wall in EtherSeren, though.

Hey, Ethereal is set up to reflect the Communes. Think about it, Glomdoring is a Crow (or raven shape before the TW), Serenwilde represents the natural order of things, in that it's all four seasons.

I can understand where you come from, having been part of both communes, but I'd rather prefer themas they are than make any more changes that might affect aesthetics. Besides, the biggest issue with glom to seren was that the nest was in the nexus room, that was fixed and in a neat (I think) way!

In an aesthetics view, putting the monolith north of Mother Moonhart is still symmetrical, and as close to being in the center of the four seasons as is possible without being on the Nexus, which makes sense with the idea and RP of the Aspects/White Hart.

I still get the vague idea that that particular location is not the best one, with thought (because of possible bottlenecking again), but it is the best one that made the most sense.

Sorry, but Avatars also do large AoE damage, to which you need a very large number of people in order to survive any length of time with them. A 'large group' of 6 or so people is not surviving with a supermob for a very long time; certainly not long enough to defile a room. All six die, the room gets fixed up, and the raid's over anyways. Essentially it is Not Happening.

I feel like "where the Avatars are" is a pretty important part of the discussion, because it is itself a balance difference between the two organizations; and Seren's avatars being where they are is a very significant boost up in defense. Consider it something like a clot of 50 Daughters just sitting in one room waiting to eat you.

Balancing in a vacuum with one item against another, discarding all other balance concerns in the area, is not really balancing. You have to consider the other benefits that Ethereal Serenwilde has in defense before you can just go, "Oh, Glomdoring has it so easy!" I'm pointing out to you that Serenwilde does, in fact, have some decent benefits of its own.

I guarantee you that Serenwilde's last defiling party did not have 20+ people in it, by the way; which would be about how many you need to successfully defile and destroy the Seren shrines. With numerous deaths.

All I'm really getting from this discussion is that Enyalida hasn't ever fought an Avatar. Last I heard, Albion is the strongest mob in the game. Even if she wasn't or has been eclipsed, it's not a huge stretch. They hurt like hell last time I was on an smob raid and they've been buffed a few times since. By "a large group," you really have to mean "your entire org and some friends."

The last "successful smob raid" (when the smob in question actually died) took, what, 30 people, 15 of them demigods. And even then a lot of the raiding party died, and it was against the weakest Demon Lord.

Right right, looking more at the maps, I realize that my point about daughters vs. ladies was piggybacking on the placement of the Aspects. As it is, you have to cross over an Avatar room in some way to get to about half of EtherSeren, which provides a boost to defense on the northern bit, which includes, of course, the Cradle of Vision. I don't really feel like there is anything of importance up there besides the Cradle, but since combat does sometimes come down to chase, it provides a good service to have the Avatars right where they are (which I never really was against).

The issue I have with that is that the only defensive boost that provides to Aspect defending is the shrine thing. I don't underestimate the power of said shrine defense/offense but it seems somewhat minor and unsolvable. If it is that you guys can't have three fully imbued shrines up in the area, no change of the level I'm suggesting will help. You can always have a small shrine on top of one of your super mobs or your Avatar (though it's not a super good idea.)

I can totally accept that the Avatars are super strong, but the current placement of our Aspects has little to do with that, because they are so far away (and there is as much reason to go near them as there is to go to Glom Avatars).

So this essentially boils down to, "It's great for us to have our advantages. We'd like to keep them. But hey, we should have your advantages too!"

Shrines that cannot be destroyed is not minor. :/

Further, there's far more reason to go near Serenwilde's Avatars than Glomdoring's... because if you want to actually, y'know, kill Ladies... you have to go past the Avatars. Repeatedly.

It's pretty easy to raid Ethereal Glomdoring, as many solo-raiders can attest. The bottleneck results in daughters filtering in and out constantly in tidy, manageable groups of 1-2 in the surrounding rooms. They can then be lead away into the entire northern portion where raiders can and have lead both daughters and defenders on a merry chase through a large and undefended area, as Xenthos mentions. It's true, if you storm in you will hit a clump of them, but if you display even a smidgen of patience, you can get the job done. Plus, you will earn the added bonus of annoying the hell out of us, because every time we think you're done, you can come back for the next group.

As far as aspect placement, the nest has already been moved once semi-recently. If your goal is killing aspects, you really can just walk right in. The contrast with Serenwilde is that your entrance is right there. People come in to fight Serenwilders, but they won't come out, so they just go and kill your aspects, hoping you this will spur you into action. I guess you could petition to move it to one of the lower rings, since I think for fairness' sake it has to stay in front of the avatars... but I don't really think this is going to have much more of an effect on whether or not they are killed.

@Enyalida: I'd just like to point you towards Vortex's layout. There, feel any better?

I don't want to change the way that Avatars work or their location, or really change how Ladies and Daughters spread or don't. I just want to move our Aspects farther from our archway, and closer to our nexus.


The advantages of your room being where it is are many, and I don't really want any of them, I just want a disadvantage removed.

As far as I can see and has been mentioned, it stacks up like this:









I just want to remove that last disadvantage on the Serenwilde side. Am I missing anything?


Aha, almost got post ninja-ed, though a rather slow ninja could have gotten that one in there... Okay, a reeeally slow one. I wanted to brush up on how shrines worked before I posted anything else.

I don't think that moving the monolith will suddenly make the Aspects themselves any harder to kill, I just think it will provide some possibility of intercepting movement on Aspect raids.

Caerulo I noticed that... It's terrible, hard to meld and move around. Looks like all of your fighting is done in the corridor! I can't help but feel like the way that Institute spires work would be better for you then them. (Put the spire in the little corner and have it hit the valve and the pot) Eh, I don't want to try and touch or go into Institute/Illuminati and Cosmic issues, probably pretty far over my head.

Eep, sorry about the codebox weirdness, didn't realize it would do that.