For those of you blind enough not to read the GM announcements before posting:

Blood worms are a new 'feature' of the croc swamps near Riverhaven. They attatch to your legs as you walk around the swamps, and when they do, they start to suck your blood. This results in bleeding and vit loss. They can be tended off, which gives First Aid, Mech Lore, and Transference(empaths only) experience.

Steel

Don't have to check closely at all Krin, it's the one that has the big Mind Lock next to it that isn't FA or Mech...oh, and the other that has the big bewildering next to it...god I love those things...just wish I could tend em a bit better, 75 ranks is not enough.

-Teeklin Tessenoak, Proud Ranger of Elanthia

<winks at Teeklin>

Told you guys those things were damn sweet, eh? Really makes me wish they would flood out a few other areas where I can actually learn weapons and armor while "fishing" for worms, heh.

Pull off a bundle full of trophy croc skins, see armor at thoughtful and only my 8th weapon is moving. <sigh> When I stop by for the worms, I don't even bother hunting the crocs anymore.

~~~Krin

So how does one remove a bloodworm?

And can we get some transplanted to the water in the Gwenalion Fens? Would make hunting elsraels a little less boring.

~Kodiac

PS The els comment was sarcasm. I only go there for a quick swim...

>Need both hands free, just like the bolt.

No, you don't.

Since this is an entirely new type of feature to the realms, I thought I'd go ahead and post my thoughts on the subject. What makes sense to me, and what doesn't... what I think is good about worms, and what isn't. So, without any futher ado...

Skills learned:

General: Skinning, First Aid, Mech- Skinning for the 'deft motion" of the hands that is doing something akin to skinning a critter. First aid for the tending. What confuses me (for all guilds) is the mech lore. It can be argued that we are using our hands for precise, careful manipulation of the worms, but it seems to me that it should either be mech lore or skinning, having both seems a bit redundant (except in the case of empaths who don't learn skinning).

Rangers: Animal lore. I haven't seen -too- many ranger tends, but the I don't see anything different from general folks when the remove the worms. It makes sense that they learn animal lore... I mean, they are working with a live critter, and figuring out how it acts and behaves in order to apply it to their removal. I think perhaps some special messaging showing that they are working with the critter would help explain the animal lore a bit better.

Empaths: Transference, First Aid and Mech- This makes sense to me. Other empaths have complained about not getting the skinning experience other guilds get. But if you look at how we remove the things, its with a 'gentle touch'. We are by no means prying, peeling or coercing them. Skinning does not apply, but we are working very precisely with our hands, so I see the inclusion of mech lore as being feasible. I tend to think that either our touch repels the critters, or we use it to somehow control them, or coerce them to leave the skin, which explains the transference. It does of course imply that transference is more than just taking wounds.

My concern here is that it seems as though almost any empath can do this with a large degree of efficiency. I think the chance of failure should be a bit higher, or perhaps make this only available at a certain 'level' of transference when one takes into account the considerable amount of experience being awarded. Even though we're touching them, I don't think a novice's touch is as effective as a transcendent, and the success rate should reflect this.

Final note on skinning- It was brought up to me that skinning is typically an activity that requires a 'tool' of some kind. It therefore seems that perhaps a knife or something may seem a bit more appropriate to help pry the worms off. Perhaps causing a bit of damage in the process with low skinning scores. Its definitely a matter for speculation.

Final note on mech lore- Mech lore seems to have gained a significant downtweak in experience gained (outside AES) for working with the worms. Perhaps this is because we are only doing minor work with the hands, but as it is, the mech received is really only residual in comparision to the quantity of experience awarded for the other skills involved. I'd suggest that this get a (slight) boost.

Other issues.

Frequency: To me, it seems fairly random as to when I get the worms most. However, if I were forced to put my finger on it, I tend to get them more at sunrise and sunset. This, however, could just be my imagination. I've heard of people getting 6 in a matter of moments where some people have literally gone an hour without a one. This does not seem to be based on skill to a great degree, because I have seen both highly skilled and poorly trained characters in both conditions.

It seems to me that perhaps it may be too random, sometimes. However, I am not sure what skills at all would equate to more bloodworm attacks, if any. Perception to avoid them? Swimming to avoid them? They seem to come fairly regularly now, perhaps gen rate has been tweaked a bit over the last couple weeks, as I haven't really heard much of the hour long wait recently.

Acquisiton: To me, I think this is an issue. You have to move around (room to room) to get them. While the movement part makes sense, I think that if anyone is moving quite a bit, its the hunter chopping at the crocs in the water. In my opinion (drawing on the tulmutuous squall that brought them here), the worms seem to be flushed out by movement, or attracted to it. It seems to me that people fighting crocodiles should be just as much of a target as those moving about.

This has turned the hunting population in crocs to to sub-categories. The first are the empaths and rangers who want the experience the worms get, and the second are the hunters who find a good room and basically stay put so they don't get worms. The worms therefore lose a bit of their bite, as I have noticed the new trend in crocodiles is to sit in a room by the reeds so you don't have to move at all, thereby circumventing the worms entirely.

Another facet of this is...why are we only getting these on the legs? Shorter races I would imagine are probably submerged up to their middles in the water (it is significantly harder for me, an Olvi to swim there than it is a gor'tog). I'd suggest opening the abdomen and back, and perhaps the arms up for infestation for them. Also, it is quite possible for someone to be in the prone position and swim from room to room in the Marsh. Yet, every time I have done so, only my legs have gotten bitten. I think if one is prone, that the chance of infestation should move to all body parts.

In addition, since these critters are obviously looking for food, I wonder if having open bleeders affects frequency. If not (which I have not seen evidence of in my times using my bleeders as bait), I believe it should. This also brings to mind whether or not the worms (if they begin to infest in rooms as well as when people are in motion between them) should be attracted to carrion. There are after all, a lot of dead crocodile caracasses floating about.

Defending Against the Worms:

A lot of fuss has gone on saying how crocs is 'ruined' but I tend to disagree. I do have a few suggestions to make the area more playable for the First Aid impared. I would like to see the system expanded to allow a player to kill the worm, perhaps cutting it or something, so they stop taking vitality hits.

The heads would the remain imbedded and cause a nasty infection which would need treatment right away. This then buys the hunter time to get them removed (often death is nearly immediate for hunters without first aid enough to remove them currently.) Further tampering with the worm heads would cause vitality hits and larger wounds and make the infection move faster. I think this is a fair trade, it gives them a couple minutes to find help. This is not hard to find as there are tons of empaths swarming the place now.

Spirit Of Protection- I'd like to see this spell upgraded to protect against such environmental threats in such a way as PFE is used to protect against spiritual ones.

Failed tending:

Currently, I have heard several opinions on this. A lot of people are claiming that a 30 second roundtime is way too steep. For people who can't tend to begin with, this could be a death sentence. I think a fair tradeoff would be to make those 'horribly aggravated' wounds at least start to bleed. As it is, I am kinda surprised that something horribly aggravated does not result in some serious wounds.

Misc.

Disease is a rare thing with the worms, but I'd like to see some special messaging put into place here. Like, "The wounds on your legs begin to burn with pain" etc.

Sensing worms- I don't know the factors involved in seeing the worms on yourself, or someone else, but I am not thinking a large part of it is skill based as people with less than half my perception and first aid have seen things way before I have. It has been brought up perhaps a way to EXAMINE the body part would be useful here.

Thanks for reading this, and any constructive comments, insights, or perhaps suggestion for the improvement of the worms would be very helpful. Let's give Towint a lot to read for once, eh?

Shaunn

By the way, my empath Kto has found that using this command makes bloodworms a bit easier to remove...

tend my right leg WITH MY KNIFE

Using a skinning implement makes the worm come off like magic.

Of course, I personally know nothing about that.

~Kodiac

>>While the movement part makes sense, I think that if anyone is moving quite a bit, its the hunter chopping at the crocs in the water. In my opinion (drawing on the tulmutuous squall that brought them here), the worms seem to be flushed out by movement, or attracted to it.

Well, I don't know a lot about leeches and the like, but my guess is that they aren't that mobile -- that is, they have a hard time moving over to a hunter. They need to have the hunter move to them. That is, they spend most of their time attached to marsh grass (or perhaps just floating around in a certain area), and when a person moves through their area and brushes up against them, that's when they latch on. This means that it makes perfect sense for the hunter to get fewer worms, as he's not moving to them. And I think it's in place as one of the defenses against them.

~Serienna

You get a wriggling leech from inside a green stone jar labeled "Tools" which is in your leather bag.

>remove worm with my leech

You expertly remove the blood worm from your right leg with a gentle touch, leaving the wound no worse than it was before.

The blood worm slips free and quickly slithers away, vanishing from sight within moments.
Roundtime: 10 seconds.

BvB!!

~Owner of Murray the Wonder-Leech

No. Its hard enough to navigate around in that area for a non-ranger as it is.

Much less have bloodworms or something like it on you.

Unless you rangers really like dragging corpses around.

Skin em off...hm...

I haven't been out there yet, just cause i have 62 in FA. You guys think i'd be okay to run around for a few minutes and hop out? Would be curious to see how they'd teach me, but not if they gonna kill me no matter what i do.

Jal
ps - 97 skin
17 al

Thanks, Krin.

Will go and give it a try sometime soon.

Jal

Hm...thanks, Rorn...maybe i'll put off my adventuring there for a bit.

Jal

>>With the change allowing bloodworms to spread over one's body, it sounds as though things have only gotten more difficult.

Only if you're lying down and swimming.


Also, have you trying TEND MY RIGHT LEG WITH MY KNIFE? ...have a knife obviously. It seems to lower the ranks needed by quite a bit.

>Also, have you trying TEND MY RIGHT LEG WITH MY KNIFE? ...have a knife obviously. It seems to lower the ranks needed by quite a bit.

I have done this, but it only seemed to reduce my failure RTs to 28 seconds (from 30) and I saw no perceptable increase in success rates, probably because my skinning skill is rather embarassingly low. Getting some skinning skill from the crocs is why I have been hoping that I can hunt the area again.

>Gheist, something you might want to look at is teaming up with an empath when you want to hunt crocs.

This is extremely effective, but doesn't suit my training style well. I know that my choice of training stlye is my own, and am not going to say that the bloodworms have made training impossible for me. If things are as they are going to stay, I can train weapons and defenses anywhere from gargs to la'tami, and I can get my swimming and skinning any number of other areas. It looks as thought the only way to earn those FA ranks up to close to 100 remain pet bleeders (my refusal to utilize them is why I have such relatively poor FA too, heh).

I'm just not sure that the bloodworm difficulty as it is now is a good reason for this area to be beyond my means. I would prefer that it be managable at lower ranks, so that lesser skilled people can work their skill up in there. From a clerical perspective, I'm going to have to train up elsewhere and come back to crocs for FA later, after I will no longer learn (m)any other skills.

-Gheist

>>Get rid of the bloodworms. period.

Bullpucky. I used to hunt almost exclusively in crocs and no longer feel comfortable doing so on a regular basis. But I'm not complaining. The Empaths (including my own) are THRILLED and it's about time they had something like this. There are other hunting areas.

~Donte's Loon

>>Gonif>>a ranger needed to get back to his grave

That Ranger wasn't thinking too clearly.

Instead of trudging after you, sloshing through the bloodworms, they should have let you move ahead a few rooms at a time, then TRACKED you. No worms, and you know what grave to look for so when you get there, there's no need to track anymore.

Easy.

And someday we will be able to lead a group while tracking (or so we were told might be possible) so hopefully it won't just be something for us, but something we can use to help other people in the same way, some day. Let someone with high stamina lead the search, and track them, bringing the group along.

If they couldn't track you 2 or 3 rooms at a time then they were either too young to be hunting in there in the first place ... or had neglected an important Guild-defining skill and now see the error of their ways, hopefully.

~~~Krin

Bah I spent ten minutes trying to get me a blood worm and no luck.

mutters curses

And I'ld just like to point out it isn't that hard to always know where the reeds are in position to your hunting zone if you take the time to map your entry route then count your steps east before you can step through the reeds to safety.

2 benefits you know where your grave is and if you get in trouble high probability of making the road before death.

Arrys

The difficulty of the bloodworms in the swamp is something I am still working with GM Towint on. I'ld like to see it come down some as more leech-type creatures are found throughout the lands.

GM Damissak

Could we please get some bloodworms in Shard so that those of us who live in Shard don't have to travel all the way up to crocs near Crossing to play with them? There is an area on the road south of the south gate where rock trolls are that would be a good place to put them......thats the swampy area, where you start to have a rt moving from room to room down there.

~~Synnovea