Stealth manuevers! I wouldn't expect every profession to get some love though. If not this year maybe next year!

I tried to make the STAMINA updates for squares in particular, though accessible for everyone (antipodal to the MANA abilities). Opinions are always varied but I think that there are some more HSN updates that squares will enjoy as well.


Ixix

Isn't the experience tied to your picking skill vs. the difficulty of the box (with appropriate modifiers for the pick, etc thrown in)? Technically I don't think level is a factor (other than providing a cap to how much max training you can have).

Or am I missing your point?

Or is my understanding of how picking experience is earned incorrect?

-- Robert

"All wizards are beginners; some of us have just been beginning longer!"

>Isn't the experience tied to your picking skill vs. the difficulty of the box (with appropriate modifiers for the pick, etc thrown in)? Technically I don't think level is a factor (other than providing a cap to how much max training you can have).

One of these modifiers (403) comes with a 50% experience penalty. Otherwise the harder it is to open with a pick, the higher the experience and high experience is about matching the mod of the pick to the difficulty of the lock.

Until about level 80, there is balance between a smith and a dabbler because the 3x smith gets full experience for like level boxes and the 1-2x dabbler gets experience halved for using lore. Beyond 80 the fraction of boxes that require lore even for a like level smith gradually increases and at cap there are a lot of critters whose lock range always require lore (and hence are only worth half the experience) no matter how well trained the smith.

There are other issues that make the penalty a bit worse than 50% but its lore having too big an effect compared to lock pick training on capped boxes that I really object to.

> it is much easier to gain exp by using a common lockpick on a kobold box at cap,

The lockpicks required to get high experience off a kobold box at cap aren't common, but I can (and do) manufacture them. The lockpicks required to get high experience off a lot of capped boxes don't exist and can't be manufactured.

Sounds like the traps & locks in the >=80 range are modded too difficult.

Either that, or it's time to release another 1-5 lockpick materials, with even higher modifiers.

Is it safe to say that the assumption is that, by that point, all Rogues will be using Lore? (Hence the marked rise in difficulties.)

Also, a query: at the lower levels I suspect it's pretty much "disarm/get pick/unlock/done", right? At the higher levels is where you spend the time fiddling with it: calipers to make certain you're using a pick appropriate to getting the most experience, "doing stuff" with it to reap the LFM components from any traps, and so on?

If the time component of all those moving parts (trap components, calipers, pick selection, hell, even the casting RT and so on) were reduced somewhat, would the current level of experience be closer to the right ballpark?

And the follow-up: DO the high-level Rogues use those traps later on, or do you sell them, or what?

>> Is it safe to say that the assumption is that, by that point, all Rogues will be using Lore? (Hence the marked rise in difficulties.)

At high 70s (I am primarily opening boxes from fire mages and the Rift plane one these days) I use lore on maybe 1/3rd to 1/2 the boxes I open. I could use lore less often but I don't try and maximize my experience per box since my primary goal is simply to open them and my primary means of gaining experience is hunting. I also try and minimize pick breakage and usually get 1-2 years life out of each pick (opening boxes for about 4-6 characters that hunt around 3 hours each per week). Most of the boxes I pick come from similarly leveled creatures.

>> Also, a query: at the lower levels I suspect it's pretty much "disarm/get pick/unlock/done", right? At the higher levels is where you spend the time fiddling with it: calipers to make certain you're using a pick appropriate to getting the most experience, "doing stuff" with it to reap the LFM components from any traps, and so on?

I use calipers on every box simply to make sure I don't break my pick. Using calipers (mastered in LFM) adds around 7-10 seconds per box. I generally use either vaalin or invar lockpicks these days (so the calipers tell me which one and then I use lock lore if I think there is a reasonable chance of the pick becoming damaged). Gathering LFM components doesn't add any additional time over and above disarming the trap.

>> If the time component of all those moving parts (trap components, calipers, pick selection, hell, even the casting RT and so on) were reduced somewhat, would the current level of experience be closer to the right ballpark?

Mastery in LFM reduces the time it takes to use calipers and pick each box overall. Opening more challenging boxes (the difference in picking skill with modifiers vs. box difficulty) adds to the time. In a general sense this means that the longer it takes you to pick the lock the more experience you can potentially be earning.

I wasn't previously aware of the experience penalty associated with using Lock Lore.

>> And the follow-up: DO the high-level Rogues use those traps later on, or do you sell them, or what?

I generally just sell these at the pawnshop. The vials are useful in removing plated boxes (0 seconds RT to remove the plate using a vial) and have a large collection of spheres and crystals with the idea of playing around with these sometime in the future.

-- Robert

"All wizards are beginners; some of us have just been beginning longer!"

>Also, a query: at the lower levels I suspect it's pretty much "disarm/get pick/unlock/done", right? At the higher levels is where you spend the time fiddling with it: calipers to make certain you're using a pick appropriate to getting the most experience, "doing stuff" with it to reap the LFM components from any traps, and so on?

There's a time/experience/damage trade off. Calipers allow the trade off between experience and damage to be judged much better, at the cost of time. For capped boxes its about getting a bit more experience (I'll average around 60 per box once they get into the lore region) while not damaging picks. For the kobold boxes its about getting the most experience with virtually no breakage rolls (because my special low lock size picks are super weak and take a lot of time to retune if I ever break them) and that will average a bit under 100 for customers in the East Tower or a bit over 100 for alts. In the middle it will be about 125 for minos in the East Tower (there's not a lot of East Tower business between kobolds and minos in my experience) and about 175 for boxes where its only my own time I'm taking. Pushing it from 100 ish to 125 comes with an unavoidable increase in breakage and pushing it on to 175 gives further breakage as well as modest amounts of extra time.

You do have to take more picking RT to get maximum experience, but its still a relatively low fraction of the total time if you are a lock master.

>If the time component of all those moving parts (trap components, calipers, pick selection, hell, even the casting RT and so on) were reduced somewhat, would the current level of experience be closer to the right ballpark?

The only issues with the current experience I have is the unavoidable lore penalty on boxes from a lot of like level areas at and approaching cap, and the way bounties discourage me from service picking. (Bounties = saturated when in town = not interested in service picking because managing that experience/time/damage trade off is a lot of what I enjoy about picking)

>And the follow-up: DO the high-level Rogues use those traps later on, or do you sell them, or what?

Plate melting ones get used (because melting the plate and then picking gives experience that just popping the box doesn't). Otherwise its as Greganth says. They are nice flavor items on occasion but normally they just get sold for a few silvers more.

Coincidentally, I have a few vials that I want to burn critters with but can't seem to figure out the verb. THROW, TOSS, and HURL all do not work. Any suggestions?

Good idea. I grabbed 1 rank and was able to hurl them. Without any significant training though they are not effective weapons. Would be nicer if they used the SSRS like society abilities.

You can probably drop perception down to 1x as well if you have 402 up while you check a box.

Perhaps if it were done on a percentage scale?

If you are singled-or-less in <relevant skill for the spell, be it Disarm or Pick>, then you are subject to the full penalty.

If you are up to exactly singled, you still get 100% penalty.

If you are singled-or-more-but-doubled-or-less, then the penalty is calculated as "how close are you to doubled", reducing from 100% [singled] down to 50% [fully doubled]. If you are at 23rd level, and have 40 ranks (out of 50 doubling), then you have 80% of the skill of a doubler/you are lacking only 20% of the skill. You take only 20% of the penalty from 100->50, or 10%. Your net penalty is 50%+10% == 60%.

If you are exactly doubled, you get only 50% penalty.

If you are doubled-or-more-but-tripled-or-less, then you are on the sliding scale between 50% down to 0%. Say you are still that 23rd level thief, with 63 of the 75 ranks possible to you. You have 84% of the ranks/lack only 16% of the skill possible to you, so you take only 16% penalty.

Once you are exactly tripled, you get 0% of the experience penalty.

We have a guild skill that lets us repair lockpicks immediately for not very much coin. They dont even need to snap first. Besides mages arent normally very good at pickin so they need the extra help. Also, they probably wanted to lore boost as many spells as possible so.. water lore.

One of the goals, I have to imagine, is to make those under-used lores more useful. Water was by far the worst offender (increase DF on 903?) so I'm not surprised it's getting some love.

I do think the cost/benefits are still way out of whack though. If you want rogues getting in on these, those seeds should probably be about half what they are currently.


'Given to wizards' is kind of a weird tack to take. It's not like wizards are getting big gains out of this. I doubt more than a couple wizards in all Elanthia have points in picking, let alone water lore.


As to general lowering of pick/trap RT, show me a petition and I'll sign.



Now onto a slightly different topic, I have two comments/complaints about the STAMINA change:
1) The Number of required ranks seems somewhat excessive.
2) I think you got the names reversed. The ability to gain CML and act for free seems a lot more like a "burst". And getting tired, gaining a slight increase in stamina, and then being ever more tired than before sounds a lot more like getting a "second wind".