Suggestion/Vials of Mana and Skilling

[Chenier]

START AN ENCHANTER

yeah, well, now we gotta have a druid to forage, a necro to farm and an enchanter to make mana vials...

An NPC that takes components and makes mana vials is waaay outta the question for SOE. So were soul binders once...=)

Personally, I don't make recipes that require mana vials or much enchanted stuff right now - and I steer clear of recipes that do.

But I do feed an echanter that has 250 in jc, his trophy and the jewelry mastery AA's all the vegetables I can forage so he'll do my gem studded chain combines as he is working on baking. =)

[kiztent]

You have to do a lot more than start one to help with smithing.

/agreed

You can't expect it to be easy. If everyone could just have a level 1 enchanter to make the stuff, then it would be pointless to have it be class specific.

If you make it too easy to get the components value of the final product will be zilch.

When will people deal with the fact that some classes/races can do things that others can't?

Dunno. Probably around about the time enchanters chill with the attitude. It's not like we're dealing with storebought components except for the enchanter supplied one.

The fundamental question (for me) is this: does requiring a particular class for skillups help or benefit tradeskills as a whole? If so, what is the benefit? If not, why shouldn't people agitate for alternatives?

I've never seen anyone complain about imbues/enchants on the post 250 skill stuff or any item that's retail not wholesale (IE items to be sold versus items for skill ups). It's the enchants and imbues sitting across the skill up path that really annoy people. Explain how that is anything other than a stupid timesink and I suspect there will be less complaining.

[Marteeny]

Dunno. Probably around about the time enchanters chill with the attitude. It's not like we're dealing with storebought components except for the enchanter supplied one.

If I came off as having an attitude, I apologize as that was not my intent. My intent was, and is, to simply debate the topic and express my opinion.

The fundamental question (for me) is this: does requiring a particular class for skillups help or benefit tradeskills as a whole? If so, what is the benefit? If not, why shouldn't people agitate for alternatives?

Mana vials and enchanted metal are not required to advance your skill in any of the trades. There are alternate routes to 250 in every case.

It's the enchants and imbues sitting across the skill up path that really annoy people. Explain how that is anything other than a stupid timesink and I suspect there will be less complaining.

If you are averted by stupid timesinks, it is time to give up on tradeskills. There are bottlenecks in every direction you take with tradeskills. I am an Enchanter, so mana and enchanted metals are not a bottleneck for me. Any foraged goods are. If you are a foraging class, it will be the opposite. If you are neither, you have a tougher road ahead of you.

Every class has abilities that others don't. I find it humorous that people complain that the only way to get enchanted goods are from an Enchanter. The name kind of says it all.

[Quesci]

The suggestion has been made before, but I am gonna make it again.... all tradeskills need to follow the model of Jewelcrafting. Make recipes that require mana vials also have a comparable recipe that does not require the vial, but will yeild a product that does not have any stats.

Ceramic bands without the vial of mana would cast no spells. Wu's armor made with no mana are just like silk. The hard part to justify will be if the mana is used in a subcombine (acrylia temper) of what is clearly a skillup recipe (acrylia chain). I am sure that Sony could come up with a solution. In the meantime, I buy mana vials in the bazaar, and consider the retail price as part of the cost of the recipe. if no one is selling for my price (or at all), I do something else.

[Mendan]

And I'd like to see an NPC that sells all the foraged things I need. Many classes and races do not have any way to get foraged goods other than buying them from foragers. Seems like the same logic to me.

If you want to enchant metal or create vials of mana, there is an easy way to do it.

START AN ENCHANTER!

Wow, so getting an enchanter to 49 so that I can make any vial I need is as easy as getting a ranger to level 3 and foraging stuff? :roll:

[Cigarskunk]

If you want to enchant metal or create vials of mana, there is an easy way to do it.

START AN ENCHANTER!

Not quite that easy - busting out a ranger so that I could forage and do a bit of silk/pelt farming was fairly easy - just park the sucker in EC or EK (depending on what I'm looking for) and let it run around and kill stuff while foraging - doen't make it feel like as much of a time sink with the character that way.

Banging out a chanter just to do mana is something entirely different though - you need to get some real levels on that sucker to do some of the higher end mana so unless you've got a good way to PL it nice and fast, then the time and expense of leveling and equipping that toon are going to override the mana savings and ease you get by having it - I've only got a chanter because I want to play an enchanter.

As for alternative ways to make the vials and enchant metal - why not talk to the gnomes?

How's about a gnomish mana concentrator - it draws mana from the surounding area and concentrates it into mana vials. It could either take mana batteries like the bandage and grow/shrink toys or it could just have it's own "mana bar" that charges up on it's own. It could be a container that you put the components inside of or it could be a simple right click which just cast the spell for you.

That same principle could also be used to enchant the metal - either use a battery, let the thing build up a "charge" or load it with a mana vial to charge the brick/block/whatever for you.

[Grug]

My first serious EQ character was an enchanter that I played to 38 before Kunark came out. Oh how I wish I had not deleted him.

Doze, my new chanter is now level 16 and exists for no purpose but to provide me with trade goods. I hate playing him but I am faced with the horrid option of either playing him to 49 or debasing my Ogre shaman of Rallos Zek by continual begging for things I need to make my own cultural armor.

I am sure many enchanters love having the unique ability to make all others beg but I will not bend a knee.

This shaman is confused as to why I must ask for help from some snack race in order to make racial armor for my god Rallos Zek. It is humiliating.

edit ---

I just saw a post on another board and UA is now offering advanced characters for $29.95 each. Now if EQ would only offer 49 chanters for that price LoL. Sometimes I almost wish that I was some 17 year old dishonest jerk that could just ignore the EULA and e-bay purchase a chanter but then I would feel humiliated in RL instead of just within the game.

[Chenier]

Oooh Cigar, I like! Bravo! And then it could be portable too!

[Quesci]

Personally, I am getting kind of tired of the tinkered stuff available. I know that this will upset the gnomes, but mechanical devices should not be so common or reliable. This is the same reason I can't stand Plane of Innovation -- if I wanted to fight robots I would be playing Anarchy Online.

There is no reason why ANY function couldn't be duplicated by gnomes. Tinkered teleporters, tinkered tracking devices, tinkered Ice Comet... why not a tinkered resurrection device?

[Cigarskunk]

Personally, I am getting kind of tired of the tinkered stuff available. I know that this will upset the gnomes, but mechanical devices should not be so common or reliable. This is the same reason I can't stand Plane of Innovation -- if I wanted to fight robots I would be playing Anarchy Online.

NP - let's assign a 5% critical failure chance to all tinkered items - including those geerloks that no-one depends on. If the critical failure occures then not only is the tinkered item totally destroyed, but it causes a point blank AOE nuke to eminate from the user which will not only damage the user, but all players and mobs around the user.

Additionally, because of the inherent unstable nature of a tech item in a magical universe, any tinkered item which is within a certain distance of one of these explosions can daisy chain with, say, a 50% likelyhood of exploding in the same manner.

If the amount of damage from the explosion was sufficient, I could just see an entire row of trader merchants going up in flames one night in the bazaar as someone attempted to use the forge or the oven too close to a bunch of folks selling tinkered gear. :shock:

There is no reason why ANY function couldn't be duplicated by gnomes. Tinkered teleporters, tinkered tracking devices, tinkered Ice Comet... why not a tinkered resurrection device?

That's a great idea - I'm sending it to the Dev boards as soon as I finish this up. With those three items, my SK would be invincible - I could travel anywhere, never fear death and IC anything that I couldn't kill personally!

But seriously, you don't like PoI, don't raid it.

As for the tinkered enchanting/mana item - no biggy - it could just as easily be a mob dropped item, merchant sold, spell research item - take your pick.

Besides, what ever happened to the argument that tech and magic can't be told appart once they reach certain levels - the only difference between a car and a magical coach that doesn't need horses is that the coach is more likely to pass emision inspection.

[Sylphan]

Enchanters are supposed to be the makers-of-things in EQ. It's part of the game design. You're all just lucky that isn't more true.

'Enchanter' could be translated as 'maker of magic items'. Aside from some cultural recipes and maybe some tinkering (since machines generally aren't magic), enchanters could, potentially, have a lock on all other tradeskills. You're lucky other adventurers can make items at all... many recipes should require an actual enchanter, not just a nice portable, lightweight, stackable mana vial! You could all be stuck making tailored backpacks, large jars, and fine steel longswords, while enchanters made the 'magic' items.

Oh, here's an idea... make mana vials no-drop! But no, even that's not enough. There are already tons of 250 (!) jewelers out there who've never seen an enchanted gold bar in their lives. Tailors can make acrylia armor *without enchanting the acrylia*! Brewers can make Kaladim Constitutionals *without enchanting the soda water*! And Mistletoe Cutting Sickles! And Crucibles of Escape! Geez, even mana vials aren't required for everything.

Enchanters don't EVEN have an AA skill to increase their success rate in the making of magic items, except in jewelcraft. Enchanters don't EVEN have a real advantage over other classes in most tradeskills, let alone a complete lock. And now people want to be able to make mana vials on their own, without even going to the 24-hour bazaar to buy some?! Don't you have sense enough to keep quiet to avoid the impending nerf stick?


P.S. KEI should be like a bard song: when the enchanter leaves the group the mana stops flowing. Then you'd learn to appreciate it!

[Dragoron]

I'd just like to know why a magician can't summon a vial of mana......

[Carmaris]

I like the idea, Cigarskunk. But instead of drawing the mana from the surroundings, it should draw it from the user. If the user is pure melee, then it converts hp to mana. That way you're not leaving the battery to charge while you're off adventuring and the same sort of time sink that current mana vial creation remains. It would also maintain the level restrictions necessary to make the vials--activate the item and it immediately drains the mana/hp necessary for a single charge. Because melee hp goes much higher than most mana pools, I'd say convert 1.5 hp to 1 mana to keep them from having an unfair advantage. And vials created this way are no drop, so nobody can infringe any further on the enchanter mana vial market.

The only class I can see this being totally unfair for is bards...they can't use KEI to regen mana.

[Cigarskunk]

That way you're not leaving the battery to charge while you're off adventuring and the same sort of time sink that current mana vial creation remains.

LOL - not *EVERYTHING* in EQ has to be a time sink - there's no rule that says that players *HAVE* to do something productive and then let thier character sit around doing nothing and burning bandwidth while they wait for thier personal mana/hitpoints to regen.

I do like the idea of it taking the hitpoints/mana from characters like a mod rod, but if you're worried about melees now having an unfair advantage over casters in *ONE* aspect of tradeskills instead of casters having an unfair advantage over melees in *ALL* aspects, why not let the machine drain mana first and then start on hitpoints?

That solution would probobly keep pure melees and pure casters about equal while giving a slight advantage to hybrids, or do you just want to keep all of the advantages to doing tradeskills for pure casters?

As for bards getting hosed on this - LOL - not by a long shot - they've got mana *AND* hitpoint regen songs which to the best of my knowledge, they can twist together. As such, bards would probobly be one of the best classes using one of these machines if the machine modrod/lifetapped you to work.

In the area of level restrictions, I'd think that just about any tradeskiller who was skilled enough to need this gadget would atleast be in thier high 20s/low 30s, as such, they'd easily be able to swing the hitpoints/mana to pull it off for atleast one enchanting.

The thing is though, the whole point of this device was so that folks wouldn't have to worry about getting a toon up to 65th level just to make some metal bits - the machine lets anyone who has the skill bang out a few enchanted peices of metal or mana vials at whatever level they've made it to.

Now, a more difficult prospect would be a way for folks to get gems blessed without a cleric at thier beck and call. I'd say either a spell that summoned up, say, a three charge rod that wasn't lore or no-rent so that traders could just stock up on the things and then cast it at thier lesiure.

Another option might be a pottery or JC made item of under 200 trivial (maybe 200 even if you want to be troublesome) that could then be "blessed" by a cleric or shamman of the correct god to hold 20 full charges and could then be re-charged/blessed after it was empty - if it was cheap enough to make (under 100plat I'd guess) then it could be disposable.

If you want to make this one more difficult then needed, simply make it so that only someone of that particular god can right click cast it - that way you get to force tradeskillers to keep banging out toons of different gods so they can make gems they need.

Remember, the point of this discussion was to come up with ways that VI/Sony will never use to make life a bit easier for tradeskillers at choke points, not to narrow those chokepoints even more so.

[Carmaris]

Well, as far as the timesinks involved, I was thinking along the lines of actually coming up with an idea that could be used--and the high cost of mana vials (mana wise) would need to be transferred into such a device for Sony to even consider it.

BTW, bards don't benefit from any form of mana regen. Well, that's not entirely true...they can use mod rods and be twitched by necros, but enchanter buffs and their own songs do not help with their mana regen rate...they have to rely on FT and medding.

As far as doing mana & hp...extreme advantage to healing classes. Cleric get's KEI, uses up all their mana, starts in on HP...could probably have a CH ready by the time they need it, rinse and repeat. Heck, even at 1.5 hp/1 mana, I'd be able to make the stuff at an incredible pace...burn up my mana, start in hp, then have my cleric heal as needed....It would need to be one or the other, mana or hp. Same device, coded to drain just mana if you have it.