An advantage scrolls have over magic items is the ability to browse for what you want at the pawnshop, whereas at the gemshop (and pawnshop) you cannot readily tell which spells are available an a given magical item.

You gesture at a beryl-inset pewter band.
You sense that the band is a magic item with an unknown spell from an unfamiliar realm of magic.
You detect that a beryl-inset pewter band can be recharged to its original capacity.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.

If you have the sufficient number of Arcane Symbols ranks, you'll be able to identify all spells regardless of sphere.

Providing a means of training (no water lore please) which makes identifying spells in magical items as easily as reading scrolls would go a long ways towards reducing the disparity between scrolls and magical items.

I'd tie the ability to sense a spell directly to your skill with Magic Item Use and leave Elemental Detection out of the equation.

---

!>tell child to be quiet
The child cries, "I don't wanna!"

Viduus just wasted a ton of time coding something

~ Methais

---

Really? How much time was wasted exactly?

Viduus

I'd like to see a version that gives the failure free aspect to existing MRs, but not the 1 mana per charge, and no disgustingly rare ingredient.

> Really? How much time was wasted exactly?

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the update and don't mean "wasted" in a way that's trashing on you or the change itself. But at the same time, what good is anything when it's essentially unusable? If you buy a Ferrari that doesn't come with any keys, what good is it unless you're Cameron Frye's dad?

I hunt the Confluence an insane amount, even moreso since this update just to see how long it's going to take to find a core. I have a lot of downtime at work, so I'm able to grind a lot.

Based on what I have documented in the thread on the PC, I've opened approximately 950-1000 plinites since the update with 0 iridescents found so far, with some of the first batch (172) possibly being found before or on the same day (but possibly before) you made the iridescent description change.

I just don't understand how people are expected to be able use a system like this with how the drop rate is, which so far has been non-existent, especially for the average player, which I'm sure I grind way more than. Maybe instead of relying on an ultra low drop rate, let us also combine X amount of regular cores into an iridescent or something. Greater essences should work the same way imo, but I've found 1 or 2 of them already in the time I've so far found 0 iridescents.

I'm a big fan of the update. I'm a big non-fan of it being virtually unusable.

~ Methais

>>But at the same time, what good is anything when it's essentially unusable?

So, serious questions to chew on. Do you consider bromin, aleteh, and grenshol potions to be worthless additions to the game? If a rodyn potion were only available through merchant events, would you consider that better or worse?

The difference between the temper potions and the rodyn potion is that players have no method to generating the temper potions, so they will only ever appear as fed treasure or during events. In the case of rodyn potions, though infrequent, players will eventually produce a potion without GM intervention.

>>I hunt the Confluence an insane amount, even moreso since this update just to see how long it's going to take to find a core. I have a lot of downtime at work, so I'm able to grind a lot.

I know. When it was decided a core would be the limiting factor on the potion I started watching confluence hunters. I've spent a few hours watching you mow the place down like it's shooting fish in a bucket, I'm not even sure you'd bothered to fully buff at the time. That being said, I am a little surprised at your reaction as based on what I've seen, as you'll probably end up being the biggest generator of these potions, and by proxy the biggest beneficiary.

>>I just don't understand how people are expected to be able use a system like this with how the drop rate is,

So, it's not a system, it's a potion. I get the desire to play with something new, and that's why I pushed for an event release rather than waiting for a random core to generate.

I understand the frustration with core abilities being tied to rare drops, which is why I keep stressing rodyn's weren't designed to be some magic bullet for charge item. Charge Item is the system. If/When it evolves, rodyn's still won't play a critical part of it's base functionality, nor should they. They'll lie on top as additional functionality that enables you to go above and beyond the base function of the system.

Viduus

>So, serious questions to chew on. Do you consider bromin, aleteh, and grenshol potions to be worthless additions to the game? If a rodyn potion were only available through merchant events, would you consider that better or worse?

Merchant items vs. treasure drops are apples and oranges. I also never said anything was worthless. I think this update is a great idea that's unfortunately virtually unusable. Just like 512/Shatter. Huge potential to be incredible, but effectively dead on arrival due to its insanely high requirements.

>I know. When it was decided a core would be the limiting factor on the potion I started watching confluence hunters. I've spent a few hours watching you mow the place down like it's shooting fish in a bucket, I'm not even sure you'd bothered to fully buff at the time.

It's just as easy to get killed in there as it is to do the killing. Plus the fact that nothing in there crits makes it incredibly tedious, but that's irrelevant to this. You may have seen me mowing them down, but it's far from running around in god mode, as I'm sure you've seen my name light up plenty of times in there too. Some days I never die in there, other days I die nearly every hunt. Some days I'm the pigeon, some days I'm the statue. Not complaining, just saying.

If by "fully buff" you mean outside spells and all that too, that's generally a bad idea in the Confluence. I go in fully self spelled, usually with a statue. And up until the other day, have been enjoying the added benefit of keeping mobiles up in there, but then spellburst got fixed so it's back to self spelled. :(

I also have 39 million exp and all of my useful magic and combat skills are maxed including stuff like Dodge and MoC, and I have some pretty decent gear on top of it. Not like Roblar level gear, but still a pretty decent setup. I've also been hunting this place almost exclusively for most of its existence, so it's probably safe to say I know the ins and outs of the place better than most, and am usually able to hunt it pretty efficiently, at least when I'm not getting wrecked by major ewaves and whatnot, which happens quite often. Not that the place is rocket science or anything, but there are a lot of things people should know about it before hunting it or else they're probably going to get annihilated, and there are a lot of mostly small annoyances with the place that can add up into huge annoyances that will end up getting you killed. But that's part of what makes the place fun, in spite of the tedium of hunting uncrittable targets. Plus, to me anyway, it's the most "wizardly" hunting ground in the game, being full of nothing but elementals and all.

>That being said, I am a little surprised at your reaction as based on what I've seen, as you'll probably end up being the biggest generator of these potions, and by proxy the biggest beneficiary.

From a purely selfish standpoint, you're right. This would theoretically benefit me more than probably anybody else due to the frequency I hunt there, and I briefly considered not posting at all about this for that very reason, because these things are going to sell for a ton if/when one eventually is found. But I would much rather see wizards as a whole flourish with something great like this being usable more often vs. my bank account increasing a little bit more.

I just hate to see such a good idea be hamstrung so hard right out of the gate. Honestly I don't see what's so OP about it in the first place in 2018 in a PvE game where nothing is balanced around PvP, but Simu and I also have a vastly different view on how to balance things while still keeping things fun and tedium to a minimum. Simu is typically much more liberal with how much "fun" they're willing to sacrifice in order to achieve their view of "balance." Not necessarily referring to you or even this update specifically, just dev as a whole, based on most of the changes I've seen over the past couple decades throughout various crews of GMs.

>I understand the frustration with core abilities being tied to rare drops, which is why I keep stressing rodyn's weren't designed to be some magic bullet for charge item.

I get that. But they could be though, even if it had to be adjusted some vs. what it is now in order to achieve that, because right now it's based around finding the golden ticket. And it's not like 517 has anything in the works anyway, which is also a major contributor to the overall frustration. It was nerfed massively in GS3, and to my knowledge, the spell's base functionality for actual charging hasn't been touched since, if I'm not mistaken, except for some GS3 > GS4 conversion stuff like how EMC is factored in.

That's another thing that makes this frustrating...dev is aware that 517 has had issues for an extremely long time, and there seems to be little to no interest in addressing it, at least not in any official sense. Pretty sure your post from the other day acknowledging that 517 has issues is the most that's been said about it by a NIR in years. That's not your problem, but it's still a problem.

~ Methais

>I don't remember stating that 517 had issues, if I did, then it would have strictly been a personal opinion comment.

You're right, I went back and I think I was misremembering one or both of these statements:

>Any fundamental changes with 517 would have to occur at the spell level, not through some alchemy addition.

>I think there are valid arguments to be made in a 517 vs. 714 discussion, however I also think there are also a lot of misconceptions floating around.

My apologies on that.

>In this particular case, ideally, you want pre-bug fixed GS3 517 to work on all magic items. Permanent rechargeables again, sounds great!

What is "pre-bug fixed GS3 517?" The only GS3 517 I know of is pre-nerf and post-nerf. I don't remember it having any significant bugs. Or any noticeable bugs at all really.

As great and fun as having GS3 517 back (and Telekinetic Disarm too, just because) would be, that's not what's being asked for. The biggest problem with 517 is the lack of availability of rechargeable items, which really becomes apparent when you put it next to Scroll Infusion, which is overall a pretty apples to apples comparison.

>So the tricky part becomes threading the needle. Finding a balance point in which the spell is useful but doesn't create more problems, then getting everyone on board with that vision.

I think the easiest fix all around without nerfing existing items would be to let all new magic items going forward be rechargeable with static degradation or failure rates or whatever to put it in line with 714 scrolls like you briefly hinted at in another post, and leave existing MR items exactly how they are. Don't touch them at all. That way people with existing MR items aren't getting nerfed, while a problem that's existed for a very long time still gets addressed. Scroll Infusion still "wins" due to scrolls having multiple spells, but it would still fix the biggest problem with Charge Item, as the problem isn't really with the actual spell itself. It does have some issues, but imo they're minor and nothing that the spell would need to be redesigned over.

The mechanics 517 uses are fine for the most part. The problem is how rare finding MR items is, especially finding one with a decent non-imbeddable spell. Any spell that's imbeddable is mostly pointless since you could just imbed an infinite amount anyway.



~ Methais

>We'll define it as pre-change 517 to not split hairs, but the reason I referred to it as "pre-bug" GS3 517 is when it happened the forum post from the GM making the change stated that there had been a long standing bug in the code that prevented the greening effect and/or item destruction from happening.

Must have been greening, because I blew up plenty of rechargeables in GS3 before the nerf, so that part stayed intact. Don't remember greening anything though.

You'd think blowing it up would be enough anyway, instead of 2 forms of catastrophic failure? :/

~ Methais

I would actually like to see the new scroll system be put into MR items.

405'd:
You gesture at a pink topaz inset silver headband.
You sense that the headband is a magic item with the spell Balefire inside.
This item will temporarily allow knowledge of the spell Balefire.
You detect that a pink topaz inset silver headband can be recharged to its original capacity.

Allows use of the spell, based on MIU up to 2 hrs and 4 hrs like scrolls.

Several hundred plinites since my last post, still 0 iridescent cores.

If it’s this hard for me to find one, how does Simu expect others to do it?

I’m curious approximately how many of these are expected to be found in a year on average with current drop rates under “normal” hunting conditions.

~ Methais