Last time I checked, lunar shards (required for Astral Guides, and Beacons) didn't work:


You harness a small amount of energy, push it through the minimal resistance of a jagged red shard and watch it dissipate harmlessly. Well, that was fun.
Roundtime: 4 sec.

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TG, TG, GL, et al.

"Disagreement with the fundamental plan at this point is akin to supporting Richard III vs the Tudors."
-Raesh

The actual Astral Guide creation process works 100%. This includes binding/invoking sigils, etc.

However the needed component "Celestial beacon" is broken. Also keep in mind in that shadows AND dazzle can be used to fuel the shard. (I'm just using dazzle in the logs.)

This is what happens when you try to create a beacon/shard.

>charge shar 6

>You harness a small amount of energy, push it through the minimal resistance of a jagged red shard and watch it dissipate harmlessly. Well, that was fun.

> prep daz
> cast shard

>You gesture at a jagged red shard.
>A shaft of ruby light beams down from above to strike a jagged red shard, illuminating it for all to see.

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This is what it SHOULD do:

> [beacon]: charge shard 15

>
You harness some energy and attempt to channel it into a jagged red shard.
Roundtime: 3 seconds.
R> [beacon]: prep dazzle 15
You raise your arms skyward, chanting the words of the Dazzle spell.
>
>
> [beacon]: cast shard

You gesture at a jagged red shard.
The abundant moonlight lends strength to your spell.
Bright flashes of light circle and merge with the red shard.
> [beacon]: charge shard 15

I believe gweth smashers cannot be made without the unleash spell. If this is the case, is it possible to temporarily make dazzle work?

CJ's Raesh, CJ's!!!

"Burn him! Burn him!" You hear the cries echo around you as everyone in the vicinity suddenly moves away, giving you a wide berth! It goes without saying you'll be wanted for forbidden practices in The Rakash Village.

Microtransactions have nothing to do with the fate of CJs. The enchantment system as a whole is in a weird limbo where 3.0 broke it fairly badly, but the extensive work needed to repair it is largely impractical since the system is being phased out in favor of the new Enchantment system. That's the main reason CJs are disabled, but beyond that I've never hidden my personal dislike of them and what they do to game balance. I am not opposed to skill boosting items and I'm not opposed to enchanting them - but I believe the cost vs reward balance for CJs was drastically out of line.

JJs are an entirely different story - they were always a platinum perk and would not have been approved as a general player made enchantment, moon mage or otherwise.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

The Astral Guide problem is that they broke with 3.0 and there's basically only 1.5 people on staff with enough knowledge of the Moon Mage enchantment system and 3.0 to have a hope of fixing it without a massive amount of research - and neither of us has had time to get that that specific item on the to do list. (For the record I'm the point five).

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

It's not necessarily just the size of the boost, it's also every other aspect of the old incarnation: stackable; full power with low skill (burned uses meh); no cooldown; infinite stock, and so on. I'd like to see them tweak some of these variables and add a touch of spontaneous combustion danger then return them in some form. No easy task there though.

You mean align em to a skill and when it fires off its charge it passes through prediction mechanics and has a chance to curse or bonus? Not a bad idea there at all, allow the mages skill in making it to determine power of bonus/curse and users arcana to determine success or curse chances.

>a touch of spontaneous combustion danger

I dunno if I support that, maybe if they could be recharged and a non-lunar mage was attempting the recharge I could see it. Otherwise gweths are lunar enchantments as well and they got no shot to combust when used. If you went with a model like that you'd have to make it consistant with all lunar enchants IMO.

"Burn him! Burn him!" You hear the cries echo around you as everyone in the vicinity suddenly moves away, giving you a wide berth! It goes without saying you'll be wanted for forbidden practices in The Rakash Village.

I can CJ returning as a prediction in a cookie kinda thing.

Aligned to a skill, absorbs all of your pool for that skill, better the enchantment the more of the pool it will hold. It runs all the risks of a normal prediction and its randomness.

Its basically just a portable prediction, with all its ups and downs. As a bonus for moon mages, it can possibly return a portion of the pool back to you rather than activating the prediction but it will be harder for non-moon mages to control.

Kind of like an enchantment based on the concepts of Tezirah's Veil, or vise versa.
_______________________
It is impossible to strive for the heroic life. The title of hero is bestowed by the survivors upon the fallen, who themselves know nothing of heroism.
-Johan Huizinga

The Light is Crimson through the Darkness.

>>It's not necessarily just the size of the boost, it's also every other aspect of the old incarnation: stackable; full power with low skill (burned uses meh); no cooldown; infinite stock, and so on. I'd like to see them tweak some of these variables and add a touch of spontaneous combustion danger then return them in some form. No easy task there though. <<

I guess I just don't see where this is a problem. I miss having something to do with all of this astrology skill that gave me a guaranteed good result, even if I couldn't cap them, I was guaranteed I'd get something good if I did it right. I am having a little trouble reconciling why Moon Mages have to be less than we were.

Right now, outside of SLS (the only combat cyclic we have and the only spell we have which approaches the level of oomph we enjoyed before)., pretty much every other spell I've used does not result in nearly enough damage, especially when you add in the consideration of the greatly increased skill and stats. AKA poor performance.

I also play a bard -- My bard with 325 target, prepped at 12, kills celps with her cyclics as better than I do with my 800 targetted, fully prepped with 40-80 mana. Her primary and secondary weapons kill them faster than I do with magic -- both of them are 150-250 ranks less than my target.

I've been sparring this moon mage since she was little. Yes burn was our go to guarantee when we sparred and I quit using it all the time in 2.0 spars, just because it was a little over the top especially when we had other good spells like crystal spike (when can we have this back and can it be cyclic?). Well I got hit by a cleric AE recently. This cleric has 100-200 less target than my defeneses, less other skills and stats -- Result -- HUGE stuns and damage that seemed to completely go around my characters defenses and smashing the hell out of her -- Reminiscent of what my character performed like 50 circles ago with her burn -- but My DFA spell "glanced" didn't do damage. Pretty much everything I threw at him didn't seem to land enough of a hurt to prevent him from defeating my character -- something that shouldn't have happened if you compare the numbers.

I sparred a Paladin who at the time was 40+ circles less, and anywhere from 150-400 ranks/skill in deficit in skills compared to my character's skills overall. I had sls up to begin with, but it was doing too much damage, and I wanted to be fair. The result was - it took forever, more than 30 (50-100 mana used) high powered casts, all fully prepped and targetted before I finally trashed him enough to defeat him.

Right now, this character performs worse than she did at 80th circle, with double the skills and stats. It's extremely frustrating and disheartening to have worked hard to develop this character and not have the kind of results that she should have for the level of skill she has.

And now you're saying you're considering taking CJ's and making them based upon a prediction system that is not performing to a level that it's a useful tool (aka a guaranteed high level (90%+ chance) of accuracy and controlled result -- in simpler terms if I make a prediction to boost skinning, I get a 90% chance to not only get a positive result, but I actually get skinning) to skilled mages. I don't know anyone that wants to perform a task they've done hundreds of times before successfully, and now fail far more than half the time.. not only fail (curse), but you don't even get the skill you were aiming for.

On top of all of this, then I read "well it's performing the way I expect it to" -- Seriously? You want us to have a high level of failure? Or at what level will we see our success rate return to what we had before, because what we have not is not acceptable, and certainly makes one of our core "skills" unusable except to mindlessly gain skills when we don't really care about them (aka working astrology to gain skill, not to actually use the result for a benefit).

OK so for the record here - the ability to create lunar shards is CURRENTLY NON-FUNCTIONAL, correct?

- Kart / Rhoat

Are the smashers makable again yet? or is this still an Unleash type issue?

"Burn him! Burn him!" You hear the cries echo around you as everyone in the vicinity suddenly moves away, giving you a wide berth! It goes without saying you'll be wanted for forbidden practices in The Rakash Village.