Confirtmed - Swirling Shadows no longer no rent

[Stilts Stonebender]

My biggest concern with making them non-NoRent and non-NoDrop is that SS was a skill up path untouched by the screwed up economy of the game.

The change will add competition by farmers for something that used to be junk. Anyone that hadn't done the quest to get the mallet and anvil had zero use for them. I would like to see them made NoDrop as well, in line with the rest of the components. It keeps the farmers from messing up something that, for all intents and purposes, was never broken.

Yes, it was a pain to do, but the only other people killing them were lowbies, Vah Shir looking for quest components and other high skill smiths. 9 times out of 10, I was the only person in Shadeweavers thumping lesser shades.

[Twistagain]

Possible reason for original NO RENT tag

I think the reason for the NO RENT tag was probably a storyline issue. The shades are supposed to be kind of ethereal...and the substances of off them (swirling shadows, and xakra kel armor) are supposed to fade away after a short while...hence NO RENT.

[Kingbobb]

Taking the No Rent tag off fixes nothing. If anything, it breaks smithing, or at least makes it unbalanced.

No Rent on a SHADOW item is a role playing, storyline device. But since SS was the one cheap (platinum wise) item in the game to skill up smithing with, making the components No Drop and No Rent kept SS out of the normal skillup progression. It was a quest item path, so the extra tags, which effectively removed it from the normal paths, balanced it.

While the no-drop no rent tags justified the high triv levels, it also made it stupid frustrating to use as a GMing path. And for those with difficult, or no, cultural option, a "fix" was needed.

However, wth shadows without No Rent, SS will take a stop closer to the normal smithing progression, and in this case, it's again broken, just as when Fine Steel allowed you to GM smithing. SS, stat wise, is about on a par with fine steel, and below acrylia chain and plate. Yet it trivs higher than any of them. Without the No Rent challenge, there is less justification for placing SS outside the normal armor progression path.

Please stop attacking people's opinions by calling them "whiners." This board has always been about discussing ideas and in game topics.

[Menion]

Taking the No Rent tag off fixes nothing. If anything, it breaks smithing, or at least makes it unbalanced.

Actually IMO it does fix a lot for the casual smith who does not want to stress out about corpse locking or his ISP crapping out and loosing possibly 6-8hrs of farming / work. I can't tell you the number of times I wanted to take a break, or watched my lag bar drop down and think my ISP had just dropped me.(Cable modem is fixed now) Overall I think it's a great change personally and I am done with Shadow Scream.

No Rent on a SHADOW item is a role playing, storyline device. But since SS was the one cheap (platinum wise) item in the game to skill up smithing with, making the components No Drop and No Rent kept SS out of the normal skillup progression. It was a quest item path, so the extra tags, which effectively removed it from the normal paths, balanced it.

Personally, I believe SS armor is still completely balanced by the time it takes to gather all the materials. Between resetting the War, farming substances and then farming the shadows themselves it still took me 3 SOLID powergaming weeks of everyday farming components and doing combines to go from 183-238 off of 1300 combines. If I had to do it all over again I probably would have spent a couple weeks, farming plat to subsidize my SS armor combines with some Sickles. I don't think that is unbalanced personally. All dropping the NO RENT does really is make it so the casual gamer can go out grab 40 shadows and do his nightly combines without the worry of loosing them.

My whole point is you still have to farm for weeks on end to do SS. An option most powergamers who are in guilds will be unwilling to do, because it cuts so deeply into their raid times.

While the no-drop no rent tags justified the high triv levels, it also made it stupid frustrating to use as a GMing path. And for those with difficult, or no, cultural option, a "fix" was needed.

However, wth shadows without No Rent, SS will take a stop closer to the normal smithing progression, and in this case, it's again broken, just as when Fine Steel allowed you to GM smithing. SS, stat wise, is about on a par with fine steel, and below acrylia chain and plate. Yet it trivs higher than any of them. Without the No Rent challenge, there is less justification for placing SS outside the normal armor progression path.

Why exactly is it broken now? The substances are all still NO DROP, the only change I see here is that it's now easier for casual gamers to use SS as a progression path. You still have to put in the time farming substances, doing the Vah Shir quest and the shadows are still rare as heck. (6hrs+ for a 10 slot BP for 100 combines isn't all that great folks) so where is the imbalance?

Power gamers / tradeskillers will still progress at exactly the same rate now that they did before the NO RENT change. Just instead of locking corpses full of shadows they will now be banking or just doing the combines right away. This makes NO CHANGE to the smithing progression IMHO.

And for those of you worried about Shadow farmers moving in now, I really don't see that happening. Who is going to farm them? I am a 60 Ranger, while I could for the most part clear the TS island solo, without needing a heal(Depending on which nameds pop each rotation) I still ended up using my 61 Shaman to recharge my health bar and buff my hit points between rounds. How much do you really think people are going to get for 100 shadows? 200? Compared to the time it takes to farm them 6+ hours for a 10 slot backpack there are much easier things to farm for cash that don't Proc Lifetap for 150hp a pop.

Please stop attacking people's opinions by calling them "whiners." This board has always been about discussing ideas and in game topics.

I was not attacking you per se but the attitude that no matter what the Dev team does positive or negative somebody always has to cry about it. No wonder why Denmom got mad at people.

[lonewylfe]

Actually, it seems that while they made it not no rent, they also made it drop a tad less. Haven't farmed enough to totally confirm this yet personally (only spent 2 hours) but have heard it from others.

I really don't see how this suddenly unbalances smithing, there's still a lot of time and effort that has to go into this, plus the Vah Shir quests that have to be done.

I bet the gm's and guides got sick of having to restore lost shadow everytime a server crashed or someone's isp crashed. They're probably partying as much as the smiths are

[Zeralenn]

Personally, I'm doing the happy tradeskill dance.

Course, I'd be major-league ticked off if I'd gone through shadowscream and now those of us STUCK at 191 got a little bit of a break.

Shadowscream is still a pain in the butt and will still require a lot of awful farming. It just doesn't require me praying every time I run with swirling shadows that my connection doesn't drop. And that is goodness.

...Zera

[VikingNoah]

This is great news... a huge roadblock has lifted!! I think I would have died from shock on the spot if (NOTE fantasy scenario incoming) I had also read that the war in Hollowshade Moor had been fixed! wink ...but I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, heheh.

[Meschit]

This is a good thing, but SS farming will still be a major PITA. The prospect of farming TM, HM and PC, going to laggy TS, farming underconned greens, and spending hours getting swirling shadows still has no appeal to me. I'll stick with cultural, tae ew, and sickles in the meantime.

[Rendael Brigh]

I always considered storing swirling shadows (or anything else for that matter) on a corpse an exploit.

So you would consider corpsing a PoD castle key an exploit?
If the looter went LD for 31 minutes, the raid would be screwed.

[Thorvari]

In related news, the farming of the Owlbears just got easier, since they also nerfed the Owlbear Screech stun from 7 seconds to 1 second. This will make it easier to get off an AOE if you are mobbed, since you won't be chain stunned for long periods of time.

http://lucy.fnord.net/spellhistory.html?id=1383&source=Live

[Bennan]

Nobody knows for sure what the effect of this change will be. That being, suddenly getting a horde of 250 Smiths on each server, increased competition for shadows etc etc.

As someone said, we just corpse locked them before, now we don't have to worry about that part of it anymore.

[Stilts Stonebender]

Sorry, but everyone talking about casual gamers and road blocks, etc... I don't get it.

SS wasn't broken. You farmed one substance, got the war to flip to the other race and farmed the other substance and banked it. Then you go make a bunch of rings. Bank that too.

When you were ready, you go collect your stack or two of swirling shadows. Grab the book to PoK and get your KEI/STR buff. Grab your substances, mallet and anvil and a few stacks of water out of the bank. Stop by a merchant and buy as many molds as you can carry and find an open forge. Make your orbs, then make the armor. When you run out of shadows, that smithing run is done.

Tell me, where is the problem in that? That you can't do 1300 combines of SS in one sitting? What's wrong with doing 20-30 combines and calling it a day? The problem is, people think they should be able to skill up to 250 in a weekend. Tell me, did you skill up Evocation or 2hs from 0 - 250 in a weekend (and I'm not talking about level 65 epic Froglok clerics, either)? It takes time. If you don't want to spend the time, don't start the tradeskill.

This change makes Shadowscream in to "pre-nerf" Fine Plate, with a bit more farming. Mark my words. Two things will come of this... (1) The trivial for Shadowscream will be dropped to banded or Fine Plate levels. (2) The drop in trivial will be a direct result of the jump in the number of 250 smiths that this change will create. That doesn't help any smith. Only the non-smiths.

As a by product of this change, the market for smithed armor, will again, be in the toilet. Then we get to see all the posts about how Tailors and Potters are making so much more money then smiths. Anyone remember that? Right after Velious and again after Luclin? Acrylia Studded was the rage for leather classes and tailors were rolling in plat. Smiths were crying about how everything we could make was worthless to nearly everyone that could afford it. Now, we have very nice armor (weapons are still lacking, but hey, can't have everything) that people will actually want and are willing to pay for. And in a month or two, they won't need to. Why? Because they'll be a GM smith, too.

And to those who say that swirling shadows won't be farmed for sale... Tell me, is a leather padding really worth 20p? Keep in mind, that's a level one black wolf and a level two spiderling. How about windstones? Are they worth 20-25% of the price of a finished BP each? The farmers don't care what it's actually worth because they set the price. You compete with them to actually get the drops, then end up buying from them because they out number you.

Making the shadows No Drop would protect the smithing market, somewhat. That way, there's no muling, no corpse locking, no third party farming. The person doing the farming is the one doing the combines. That both eases the way for "casual gamers" and keeps them out of the bazaar. I'd rather see it left No Rent, but that's just me.

[rassy fleetfoot]

well i for one say YAAAY! As a race without cultural armor, my 2 options are shadowscream or sickles..i dont consider acrylia plate an option, snice windstones are as bad as any cultural temper to come by.

so..poo on the nay-sayers..the only thing this change does is allow me to actually log off and take a breather after 4 hours of farming 2 or 3 stacks..they still take forever to farm, and gathering the substances sucks enough. Perhaps the shadows should be no drop too tho..would that make ya happy?

[Menion]

Tell me, where is the problem in that? That you can't do 1300 combines of SS in one sitting? What's wrong with doing 20-30 combines and calling it a day? The problem is, people think they should be able to skill up to 250 in a weekend. Tell me, did you skill up Evocation or 2hs from 0 - 250 in a weekend (and I'm not talking about level 65 epic Froglok clerics, either)? It takes time. If you don't want to spend the time, don't start the tradeskill.

This change makes Shadowscream in to "pre-nerf" Fine Plate, with a bit more farming. Mark my words. Two things will come of this... (1) The trivial for Shadowscream will be dropped to banded or Fine Plate levels. (2) The drop in trivial will be a direct result of the jump in the number of 250 smiths that this change will create. That doesn't help any smith. Only the non-smiths.

And just where is this flood of 250 smiths going to come from? Unless I am completely mistaken Shadows DO NOT ENTER THE WORLD ANY FASTER WITH THIS CHANGE, that's the key point you are all missing. Who gives a rats butt if a player can now go farm 20 shadows and heaven forbid if real life calls that person can log off. ****GASP**** The horror of it all! *faint*

They didn't boost the shadows drop rate...they just made it so that you can log with them, or if your ISP dumps or the server crashes you don't loose them. People who were going to power smith and lock 1300 shadows on a corpse will still level at the same rate they just won't have to lock them on a corpse.

And there is a big difference between farming 100 padding and farming 100 swirling shadows. Those level 1 wolves don't proc a 150hp lifetap.

Lets just say for the sake of argument that a_dr00id01 decides to make some plat off farming shadows and selling them to smiths. A_dr00id01 goes to Twilight Sea, gets the island and farms for 6 hours straight to get one 10 slot backpack full of the shadows. Now a_dr00id01 wants to sell said shadows, how much do you really think people will pay for them? 20pp a pop? Thats only 4k pp...do you know really think 4k is worth a level 60's time to blow 6 hours? And nobody lower than 60 is going to be effectively clearing that death trap of an island. People are not going to pay much more than 20pp either considering the fact that you need 2 shadows per combine.

[Zeralenn]

Just like nobody is FORCING anyone to buy windstones for 20% of the price of an acrylia BP, nobody is FORCING anyone to buy leather padding -- nobody is going to FORCE you to buy swirling shadows either. But it will be a nice option to do so.

I don't think that there will be a huge expensive market for swirling shadows because, unlike acrylia, shadowscream simply doesn't sell for that much. I know I won't pay much for them, and as long as smiths don't give in, the prices will go down.

Like so many things in the bazaar -- watch the prices. They'll come down over time.

But it is nice, if I have 20 minutes or so, to just go farm up 6-8 swirling shadows and squirrel them away. That is very, very nice. I don't have to spend another 15 minutes going back to Shar Vahl, getting my junk, dragging it to a forge, and doing my 3-4 combines because I can't camp with the stuff.

...Zera