If we use the "zone map" on Elanthipedia to gauge distance... it's got a glaring flaw when considering the time it takes to travel to the islands and among them. I think it'd be super if we could find a way to significantly improve this (maybe drive in some more populance in the islands as a benefit?)

https://elanthipedia.play.net/Zone_map

Notable times (most common travels I've noticed by folks)

Crossings to Knife Clan, ONE DIAGONAL DISTANCE - takes 15 seconds on foot (script)

Crossings to Riverhaven, ONE DIAGONAL + ONE VERTICAL DISTANCE - takes 2 minutes if you can swim (which I think takes 150 ranks?) or maybe 4-8 minutes on ferry depending on departure time.

Therenborough to Hibarnhvidar - 10 DISTANCES - 5-10 minutes - (mix of vertical/diag/horizontal) swimming (150 ranks), ferry (crossings to Leth), gondola (leth to Shard), ice skates (shard to Hib) roughly 5-10 minutes depending on departure times.

Now the fun part...
Aesry to Ratha (1 diagonal square) - 1 hour 15 minutes, ASSUMING the ship is docked and ready to depart. Could be as long as 2 hours 30 minutes.
Aesry to Taisgath 2 squares - hours and hours... trying to calculate... (head explodes)

So in summary:
Conservative estimate: very LONG DISTANCE travel, Theren to Hib- 10 minutes
Very liberal estimate: very SHORT DISTANCE, Aesry to Ratha - 75 minutes.

It's no wonder the ships are almost never used... and the islands are so often empty. And those were using friendly estimates... if we assume someone with 150 ranks athletics and iceskates can get to Hib in 5 minutes... and it could take nearly 150 minutes to travel ONE square away (Aesry to Ratha) then it seems a bit insane. ;)

There were dolphins who took you there when the Province first opened in like... 10 minutes? Or am I thinking the Feast of Eluned? Where did the dolphins go?

It doesn't speed up the older transport ships but there's a few other mainland/island options that are much faster:

https://elanthipedia.play.net/Sea_mammoth

https://elanthipedia.play.net/Airship

https://elanthipedia.play.net/Travel_map

A Moon Mage can also transport you by Moongate or Riftal Summons.

There's also https://elanthipedia.play.net/Jump_Jewelry for purchase and use by anyone and https://elanthipedia.play.net/Teleportation_tattoo for NMUs

>>https://elanthipedia.play.net/Travel_map

I have never seen this, and I'm on elanthipedia more than the common bear. Thank you!

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>Train athletics and you can travel the vast majority of the mainland game world on foot in ~5 minutes without a fee (beyond subscription).

Yep. It's quite convenient, but I was imagining bypasses for long-distance. At this point, a nominal fee to go from Crossing to islands instantly, or Leth to Haven, or Dirge to Theren, would be good.

Faster travel means that outlying regions aren't really outlying regions any more. I'd be honestly surprised if the game even loads the islands segments most days.

Travel items, as far as I know, are simply jump jewelry, which are too fiddly and too real-world expensive for most players, and still require the presence of a single specific moon - I played Plat with them, and they're by and large quite nice, but they're also not a replacement for static hubs. When you could get a full set of them for free you could almost always find a moon in the general direction and walk. But even then sometimes everything was down.

Umm, you do know about the airships to Aesry & umm M'riss(?)?

Or the swimmie critters? You can get one from Leth area, go to fang cove then ratha.

Sorry I cant remember exact names & such, but basic gist of it.

Yes, the ships are a PITA but there are alternate way around things, folks still use the ships either as a time waster or to hunt. I think the ships from haven still have the pirates, I'm fairly certain the one from crossings no longer has them.
If anything I wish the Dugan from Leth area (yeah yeah acenanama or whatever) held to a steady schedule but ehh thats life.

Zadraes is correct and I have little to add to the technical explanation, except to note that the map of the Provinces is encompassing a big area that is not always accurately represented (seeing Leth's tree from Shard would not be possible due to curvature of Elanthia). An old, old post from Godrich is archived on Elanthipedia with some very old but never overwritten distance assumptions. IIRC, the trek to Arthe Dale from Crossing is meant to represent around 60 miles.

That's not to say we should make you feel like you're trudging hundreds of miles out to sea to reach the islands, but those systems Jeremael wrote way back when are calibrated to those kind of distances to the result Zadraes laid out.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

sounds like the coding needs to be fixed before ships can go faster.
but ships don't need to go faster to improve travel time to the islands.

as an example: reduce how long they sit at each dock from 1 hour to 5 minutes.
more ships can be added as well.

it's been awhile since I travelled to islands by ship, but I do remember it taking a couple of hours because it would sit at each dock a long time.
artificially inflating how far the islands are.

maybe a combination....

1) reduce dock sitting to 5 minutes.
2) add the time that you shaved off sitting at a dock to the actual sea voyage, so they really are far away.
3) add additional ships.
4) clean coding.

using travel jewelry and other paid options is not a solution, it's a cash grab that rich P2W people do.
like paid quests.... ridiculous.

Or...we could have a similar system like the Theren -> TC moongate. I mean I know people would still burn three hours of their lives just for nostalgia but it would definitely take some pain out of going to the islands.

Wait...what I was just doing?

Or we could always go the complete opposite!

Make travel completely reality based...

Every room should come with a travel time penalty, like it should take you least 5-10 minutes based on your walking speed to walk thru the Crossing town green area. A city the size of Crossing would take the normal person even at a brisk jog maybe a couple hours. Travel to Riverhaven from Crossing now that is clearly quite a dire trek, even by guarded caravan or speeding horse you are looking at least a day or so to traverse the forests, volcanic steeps and boggy marshes.

I vote for even longer and longer travel times!

(moral of the story: if you want faster travel become a moonmage. don't complain because it could always be much worse)

Of the Commoners and for the Commoners!

Yeah, folks complaining about the time travel takes from say Crossings to Ratha, or Aesry or M'riss/Mer'krish do realize that we now have the sea mammoths that gasp even non premium folks can access? You don't have to be a citizen to even use them also.

Go from crossings to leth (a whole 35 coppers) then go out to that acenamara or such place, catch a mammoth to fang cove then catch one from fc to ratha, easy peasy.

Go to shard & catch the balloon to umm aesry, easy peasy.

Go to Langen & catch the balloon to m'riss, easy peasy again.

Heck, you can even balloon from crossings to Muspar'i now instead of having to walk all the way up through Haven & Theren.

We already have other ways to access the islands than the ships, leave the old way alone for those of us who enjoy the time on them.

Reality of the story, potential new players would not want travel to take hours.
Let alone craft anything with the bloated crafting system.... it is very realistic, too much so.

Refusing to do changes and upgrades eventually kills the game.... as new players become fewer and fewer.
The current player base is getting older, and sadly some are walking the starry road.

refusing to change will mean we will be the last ones to play in Elanthia from retirement.

What about replacing the current island boats with new boats that use whatever system the ferries/airships/etc use?

Could open a pathway to replacing/refactoring the boat code, removing its relevance to non-player travel. You could set the travel time to be fairly quick.

Also +1 the idea of opening the islands to f2p