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Unless you are horribly unlucky, you should have no trouble enchanting ...


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Something doesn't seem right...


I locked my first set of armor this evening. 3x HCP. I go to look at the calendar to see when I might get a CHANCE to unlock the project and there are currently 0 merchants scheduled for the month of October. I vaguely recall reading that more and more wizards feel like they're experiencing this failure.

I'd just like to express how much I dislike this failure requiring a merchant to unlock it.

I'd like to suggest an alchemy potion be available to unlock locked projects as an alternative. Or a merchant scheduled once a week that only does project unlocking.

VEYTHORNE

I locked my first set of armor this evening. 3x HCP. I go to look at the calendar to see when I might get a CHANCE to unlock the project and there are currently 0 merchants scheduled for the month of October. I vaguely recall reading that more and more wizards feel like they're experiencing this failure.

There's probably going to be at least 30 different merchant opportunities this month alone to unlock failed enchants.

VEYTHORNE

I'd just like to express how much I dislike this failure requiring a merchant to unlock it.

I'd like to suggest an alchemy potion be available to unlock locked projects as an alternative. Or a merchant scheduled once a week that only does project unlocking.

It doesn't require a merchant. You can use a sarmoc potion to unlock it at any time.

GameMaster Estild

Oh yeah, the part that doesn't ever seem to get mentioned, you have to pay the merchant a service fee as well as burn a GALD session chance. It cost 200k to unlock a 6x project, ON TOP of finding and using that session.

Wyrom says, "Ordim is the reason savants won't be coded as well."

>> If this is true, and the opportunities to unlock a project are so plentiful, what is the intended purpose behind locking a project?

I'm at a loss to explain this myself. My best guess is that it was a compromise or something to get rid of the item destruction result. For now I'd suggest viewing it as "Darn, my item was locked! At least it wasn't totally destroyed!" If you would prefer the totally destroyed result then simply toss your project down the well when this happens and you're back on the old system...

-- Robert

Liia announces, "Funnel cakes will now be delivered door to door in your neighborhood!"

>>It's just another time sink to delay more powerful* items in the game.
>> My best guess is that it was a compromise or something to get rid of the item destruction result

I have a different theory. I would submit that in a game from time to time a 'bad result' is indicated. This is always a moving target - make it too harsh and players will quit (and yet there are 2x wizards than any other profession, so. . . )

What would you want the 'bad result' to be? Me, personally - I say we just blacken the project and toss it. (Taking the extreme end of the spectrum and fighting like I'm right - but listening like I'm wrong.)

Doug

Well, I outlined three solutions that could co-exist with the current lock project state that would improve upon it while still keeping it's intended goal of "punishment".

However, let's explore "bad result" a little more. Let's even draw comparisons to other existing "bad results".

Currently, failing an enchant (which has a nonremovable 3% chance of happening regardless of any skills) can result in one of FOUR different states -

Delay, the current temper level is redone. If it took 10 days to temper, you start that 10 days over again at the same level it was at already, no need to repour, just wait out of the time.
This is the best possible failure outcome. It does not cost anything for high level enchants (imagine having to repour an ultra-rare potion for an 8x+ enchant) but the time for tempering can be oppressive, with higher level enchants reaching weeks to temper.

Damaged, full setback of the current step progression, you need to repour the potion to move forward at the step you are on.
This can be crushing for high level enchants when it costs an additional pour AND the temper time to recover. If you had infused your pour, you lost all that mana energy now as well, which means up to 3 weeks. Frankly, this should be where failures end for "punishment", BUT WAIT! There's more!

Locked, no progress or regression occurs on the project. You must seek out a merchant to unlock the project. You must also pay a set cost that the merchant will inform you of based on the enchant of the project.
Pretty straightforward. As it currently exists this failure could hold up your major project slot for some time. If you don't want to wait to track down a merchant, you have to untemper and remove all progress/pours/infusions.

Reset, Lose all progress, do not pass go, do not recover anything - it's as if you never even started that enchant project. God help you depending on the enchant project, lots of time and money can go up in smoke on this one.



So what can we compare this to inside the game already? Well... We have ensorcell. A newer designed spell that takes up a slightly higher spell slot but shares a lot of the same mechanics, so to speak.

Failure-
A failed attempt costs 5% of the amount of necrotic energy that would have been required for a successful attempt
There is no chance of losing or damaging an item due to a failed attempt
A sorcerer may make another attempt immediately after a failed attempt, provided they still have the required amount of necrotic energy

So at WORST a failed attempt at ensorcelling will cost you an inky black potion ~250k/alchemy made potion, and 5% of your necro energy...

Based on existing designs it makes no sense to have enchanting be punished so severely in comparison. Push comes to shove, the max "punishment" for failure for enchanting should only ever be damaged at worse with the weighting towards delayed.


Wyrom says, "Ordim is the reason savants won't be coded as well."

I'd have to strongly disagree with that from my own experience. I've had 4 failed projects all resulting in locks. I've untempered three of them and unlocked one with a merchant.

There's no option to avoid a reset in the full reset failure "punishment".

Even if you don't compare it to the failures of ensorcell, you still have the following systems and costs that can be lost - Time, temper times are a HUGE block to the amount of equipment that goes out at higher enchants, a full reset of a higher enchant can cost months of time. This can be offset, somewhat, by infusing potions, which also costs HUGE amounts of time. The number of potions that need to be infused goes up as the enchant goes up, it takes a minimum of three weeks to get into 90% reduction time combined at a minimum, not counting the time investment in earning and absorbing experience during that time, which adds into the equation now effort. You have to hustle to hit that 10k per week mana points. Higher level enchants also require exceedingly rare and costly potions.

While the recent changes to enchanting are fantastic and a long time coming, the deck is still stacked harshly against an enchanting wizard when it comes down to what is risked verses what is rewarded.


Wyrom says, "Ordim is the reason savants won't be coded as well."

>>While the recent changes to enchanting are fantastic and a long time coming, the deck is still stacked harshly against an enchanting wizard when it comes down to what is risked verses what is rewarded.

I will freely admit that I had a very hard time trying to get through your points, JOEKUPS, and it was all due to this concept you're offering of punishment. I'm going to try to set that completely aside, though. I'm human, so please forgive if I slip, later. I'm going to come at this from the other side (I think?)

I'm also not going to drag ensorcelling into this discussion because I'm fearful. I suspect there are already discussions about how much penetration / saturation the spell has achieved and what its impact on game health is. And usually those discussions result in refined constraining of the spell's continued use. I wouldn't wish that on anyone - even though I suspect it may one day occur. So please forgive me if I don't jump responses down that rabbit hole - because I won't. But then, I'm human - so we'll see.

With that, there are really only two qualifications for enchanting, at the core.

1) Time. Everything in GS that is difficult has some measure of time as its expense.
2) Limitations. As an enchanting wizard, one must know one's limitations.

To my way of thinking, presently - Time for enchanting is a joke. I don't mean that like it is likely to be interpreted. I'm fairly sure none of us like to see 10 plus days for curing an item (the 'temper time'). But - it isn't as though it affects us beyond the one-major-project limitation. The fact is this time frame does not affect the enchanting wizard in any way.

The real 'risk' that the wizard suffers - now that item destruction no longer affects enchanting - is that the time on the project is impacted. I think you, JOEKUPS, laid those out pretty well - doubling down, resetting to an earlier point, erasing progress, or full stop until this new 'seek out a merchant' process can be enjoyed.

But - with time being a joke already, this is the equivalent of multiplying the 'risk' by zero. That is to say, time doesn't affect us so affecting time doesn't affect us.

Now that's a broad statement, and I certainly can understand that opinions will differ. It's entirely possible that there are wizards out there that exist solely to enchant (silver generation). And yes, if that concept of a wizard is what's under discussion, I'd submit there is a very real impact. Right with that, though, I'd submit that's a wizard that isn't playing the game. I'd really rather not have that wizard taken into consideration for game-play decisions, myself.

I'll pause there - that's likely to be a fairly contentious viewpoint, and needs a bit of time to be explored.

Doug

I can see where you are coming from but I can't fully get behind parts of it.

I'm not sure how you made the leap to an enchanting bot. I know that term comes up a lot, along with other bot wizards that just cast defensive spells, the old "pocket" wizard. That's just an outcome of how the game is currently designed and well beyond anything we are discussing here. Even so, let's explore that for a second as well.

Not too long ago there was a big shakeup when a cap was put in place for how much silver a character could generate selling stuff they did not actually generate from the treasure system. People were making millions of silvers a week skinning critters not even a fraction of their level. Getting to the point, there are ways to game the treasure/skin system and TRUELY generate silvers into the economy at a rate that eclipses anything enchanting can at this point.

Not even taking into the fact that enchanting doesn't generate silvers into the game, it takes them from other players, but directly to your point, the amount that people are paying for enchanting is nothing compared to other systems with similar amounts of risk. People just aren't paying for enchanting because of how available it is and the time it takes to accomplish. Are there outliers? Of course, but generally speaking, you don't see people asking for enchanting projects except for the most niche of situations. You also can't just enchant things and sell them to the pawnshop. The max you'll make is 35k, which probably isn't covering the costs of your potions to get to that selling point if you even can.

So why isn't enchanting more popular with people, is it because everyone has a pocket enchanting wizard? Maybe enchant level just isn't that important? Well if that's the case, why so many hoops to jump to accomplish it?

>>But - with time being a joke already, this is the equivalent of multiplying the 'risk' by zero. That is to say, time doesn't affect us so affecting time doesn't affect us.

Sure, you could get a wizard to a certain point and just do nothing but cast enchantments, but the system already has several governors in place for this - The time it takes, one major project at a time and now mana points to reduce temper times. "Well, then why even bother having it as a factor?" If you don't count spending months of time invested into something as a risk whats the point of it?


>>I suspect there are already discussions about how much penetration / saturation the spell has achieved and what its impact on game health is. And usually those discussions result in refined constraining of the spell's continued use. I wouldn't wish that on anyone - even though I suspect it may one day occur.

This probably hits the nail on the head, even if you didn't mean it to. Ensorcell has been limited in all the ways enchanting never was - Can't be done for PP, cant be done by merchants, it's entirely player driven. Enchanting was let loose to be done with PP, merchants, Duskruin, raffles, all kinds of non-player ways to enchant things that even with all the buffs are still out of reach of player enchanting. All the time with having none of the drawbacks.

You can't go back in and time and fix things, but you can learn and grow from your mistakes and successes. There has been a lot of great growth in enchanting this year, I'm pointing out where there are still places that can be improved and brought up to modern expectations.

Wyrom says, "Ordim is the reason savants won't be coded as well."

Either one degree of failure--cursed/+0 to -10 [values that I have seen]/'blackened' description--was left out, OR it was removed in the rewrite along with destruction and I forgot about that.
But that has always been the next-worst behind losing the item, because not only do you lose this Enchant, you lose all Enchants done to date.

.

There used to be different results in the temper depending on what potion you used (so if you used a superior potion [mirtokh for a +10, say], you got a lesser amount of time required), but that may have been done away with in the rewrite that gave the specific levels of potions required for a certain enchant.
(When a single cast was all that was required--for a +5 or a +40--then the difference between "2-3 days" and "24-36 hours" was dramatic. Nowadays, that's the slippage/wiggle factor in a single temper cycle.)

I like the idea of an npc in the wizard guild that will unlock it, but it will cost significantly more than a live merchant. Make it a percent of the item's value and boom, there's an option that trades time for silvers.

That said, maybe the tempering time from many things enchanted penalty should be looked at? I have heard there are double digit days per step for 5x and 6x in prime?

_ _ _
Wyrom gestures at you, causing you to explode.

To be fair... how hard is it, nowadays, to find a GALD worker bee?

When LoreSinging to an item starts providing--a) similar, b) incremental, c) permanent--benefits like Ensorcel and Enchanting, you go right ahead. :)
Totally different scale of things. You can use a non-Loresung item to your heart's content, you just happen to be ignorant (barring what you can learn from analyze, inspect, weigh, info, mana, stamina, and skill) about it.

.

Now, with that said, I am totally alright with it happening at the Guild (Wizard, or Adventurer, or even somewhere else) or the Alchemist. I'm totally alright with it being released as an Alchemy recipe. (You've probably seen me banging the drum for "put more stuff into Alchemy, reward those who do it," and this is right up that same alley.)

But even restricting it to the hands of merchants is not THAT big a burden, because they are all over the flippin' place nowadays.

I'm right there with you, make it an Alchemy formula. Make it an NPC. Let the player choose. (They already can, to some extent, with the sarmoc, but then they lose ALL the progress, so that's a big choice.)

But more choices are better, absolutely.

>>To be fair... how hard is it, nowadays, to find a GALD worker bee?

It's not, these days. One just has to be willing to plan for it. It is kind of disruptive to the farming process, though. I kind of like the bard suggestion - tie it to the bardic ability to unravel spells. They should be easier to find, no?

While we're at it, let's not forget those people who are Premium. Unlock a wizard's locked enchant for 100 PP on your account - and get what you can off the wizard. It appears some of us might be willing to pay as much as 10M silver.

Doug

>Unlock a wizard's locked enchant for 100 PP on your account

Eh? Is this a feature I have not heard about or a wish?

>some of us might be willing to pay as much as 10M silver.

The last few times I saw offers for PP they were in the 10k per point range.

:D

>>a wish

A soft suggestion, perhaps.

>>10k per point range

Yeah, probably. But then - it appears the pockets of the wizard involved, the abundance of methods to actually address the situation cheaply, and the current tenor of wizards not really wanting to have to deal with anything bad that takes away from their chosen game activities suggests a market whose depths simply have not yet been plumbed.

Or, said differently - I'll bet some would pay it, anyway. And it might lead to an actual increase in premium accounts, as a beneficial side effect. ;)

Doug

>>I am not knocking the changes, just looking for more options.

I don't believe anyone could accuse you of that, Askip. You're a joy to interact with, in or out of the game.

>>For me it is the impact on the person for whom I am enchanting.

I understand. I don't really agree (used to was - you'll recall - you could blow the item up. That's permanent, not delayed). Neither here nor there, if you're enchanting a weapon for a Premium account holder and this were an option, that customer could make arrangements to unlock the project themselves (saving everyone coin and time). Alternatively, a dedicated enchanter proud of their work product (and yes, also a Premium account holder) would very likely opt to spend the PP themselves - in the name of customer service of course.

Doug

Just, you know. Not that one Dwarf... <mutter, swear, kick puppy>

That is a very nice offer and helps solve the short term in some ways but it's really disheartening the suggestions that wizards should be the only profession that can lose the ability to use their profession defining spell if they don't/can't - Pay for event attendance, find a random merchant (again, paying for premium helps this a lot), pay for premium to get premium points or otherwise pay additional real-world fees if they don't want to lose the time (money in the form of subscription fees) and effort (time spend grinding exp to earn mana points to infuse potions).

This in no way shape or form holds any parity with any other class and what they have to deal with. Frankly, the responses by people who, for whatever reason in the past, deserve some sort of recognition now with a different color name are really disgusting and I hope they hold zero sway over any development or direction of the game.

I should have learned my lesson last year in thinking that honest discussions could occur here on this forum but that is not the case. It's becoming clearer and clearer what the direction of the game is now.

Wyrom says, "Ordim is the reason savants won't be coded as well."