The following adjustments have been made to the Elemental Confluence hunting ground:

-All the elementals in the Confluence now randomly drop a new form of treasure: plinite. Plinite is the solidified energy (or "heartstone") of the elemental. It can be sold to the gemshop as is, or one can attempt to manually extract the plinite's elemental power core. Careful extraction is done via the EXTRACT verb and requires a lockpick and training in both the Picking Locks and Disarming Traps skills. If successful, the core is extracted and the plinite casing preserved for sale to the gemshop.

One can also use brute force to pry open the plinite via the OPEN verb. Doing so automatically destroys the plinite casing but allows the core to be recovered without a skill check. Prying open the plinite casing while still in the Confluence is dangerous however, as the surrounding environment will amplify the released energy from the shattered plinite.

The recovered cores are mostly relatively valuable gems, but some contain unusual magical effects based upon their appearance (all activated via the RAISE verb). Possible effects include the ability to quickly leave the Confluence, the ability to be immediately drawn to your nearby attuned entry portal to the Confluence, enhanced protection from the innate dispel attack of the elementals, enhanced protection from elemental damage, temporary reactive elemental flares, temporary enhancive boosts, and more!

-The creatures in the "hot side" of the Confluence (lava, fire, steam, and lightning elementals) have been adjusted upwardly in level (with updated statistics to match):

Fire Elementals - Level 99
Lightning Elementals - Level 100
Lava Elementals - Level 100
Steam Elementals - Level 99

-A significant bug was detected that was causing all the elemental's TDs (particularly spirit ones) to be extremely low. This is has been corrected. While the creature TDs are still lower than average, they are no longer dozens of levels lower than they should be.

Coase

This update sounds amazing! Great job addressing some of the concerns with the hunting area. Do you get exp when extracting similar to lickpicking or is it just a skill check?

I like the updates. The plinites are a great addition that makes the loot just a bit more interesting. Those tranquil cores will definitely be something to stock up on. Any hints on what the balanced cores do? I saw the Elemental Transfer Protection pop up under spell active. I tried to see if it had an effect on getting dispelled due to high DS, or if it prevented flare damage, but neither were the case.

Droit

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Speaking to you, Ceyrin asks, "Do you spontaneously come back to life when you die?"
Speaking to you, Ceyrin says, "Because I do."
You say, "Yes. I have a condition called Annoraxia.""

>I can appreciate that the previous TDs were rather absurdly low. However, I'm a little unclear how these TDs are "lower than average".

I understand the concern, but comparing semi creatures to what are supposed to be the most... elementalist creatures in the game... is hardly apples to apples.

I suppose the difference can be all the spells these elementals have compared to greater earth elementals, where the base TD may use a similar formulation.

The TDs are lower than greater water elementals in Nelemar it would appear :D

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>Daid: Pretty sure you have a whole big bucket as your penny jar. You never have only two cents. :p

Not related to these updates but any word if Sigil of escape is intended to get within a couple of rooms of a tranquility like symbol of return or 130? With the new methods to escape the confluence now it has less importance but i'm still curious.

>With lightning elementals now level 100, could we please have lightning resistance added to 620? - Droit

Seconded.

>I havent been in since the changes and I cant speak to sorcerer TD but I can definitely say that the elementals spirit TD seemed lower than it should have been.

The sorcerer TD was also insanely low before. Like 330s to 350s. The sad thing is I was still dying not too infrequently, mostly from air elementals. Either 1 second RT for movement and they'd get me, or enter the room on my cast RT, and a second later do the blowing thing (which blows). When I hunted the hot side it was pretty much okay (though they could get me, too).

There's not much to compare with, but it's become like a flip of a coin if I can even ward them now. My sorcerer's training is diversified so I know his CS is isn't amazing. But if this was really a "below average" TD it shouldn't be nearly so bad as that, right? I understand there are not a lot of creatures to really compare against considering there's nothing that's level 95 besides the elementals.

Still getting hit with RT for movement is pretty lame I have to say. It's not often but it still kills me.

Survival...........................| 199 99
Climbing...........................| 199 99
Agility (AGI): 99 (34) ... 99 (34)
Intuition (INT): 99 (34) ... 99 (34)

I can appreciate that the TDs were apparently a bug, but given this quite drastic raise in difficulty, the pre-existing hazards have become that much worse.

I do want to check out some more interesting hunting tactics, since spamming Pain was effective before but boring.

Anyway, I am really excited that the Confluence is still being improved. The regular changes to this game is what keeps it interesting and fun.

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>Daid: Pretty sure you have a whole big bucket as your penny jar. You never have only two cents. :p

I like the loot and level changes. The TD increases are very steep though. On the cold side, they were typically 350-60 MjE TD before (extremely low, admittedly), and are now around 450 for the most part. It makes sense that they had to come up, but this is a large difference.

Just out of curiosity, what are you benchmarking them against when you say they are lower than average? Ithzir seers (96), adepts (96), and war griffins (100) are about the same at ~450 MjE TD. Heralds (93) and Janissaries (92) are quite a bit lower as I recall, although I can't remember exactly since I've been hunting nothing but Confluence for the last 4 months.

Does the lockpick used matter for extraction?

I just extract 10 of these and didn't gain any experience that I could tell.

403 doesn't seem to help.. Does 404 help?

I can pick scatter boxes up to -1370 and disarm -480 traps but I still fail at extracting cores sometimes. Kind of odd.

>I just extract 10 of these and didn't gain any experience that I could tell.

Do initial testing from belled. Its unlikely to be much anyway, because typical difficulty for level requires 403 and 404 and thats going to take somewhere between 50% and 100% of your potential experience, which is anyway pretty low without a method to match pick to task difficulty. When an exp award is likely to be single figures, you'll need to be going belled to belled to see if it is actually non-zero.

>It prevents the passive transfer of energy to the player (or their weapon) when the player beating up an elemental (aka prevents the weapon heating/cooling/zapping abilities of certain elemental).

Ah, that explains it. I do my utmost not to experience either of those conditions so no wonder. These lightning elementals are about to feel the back of my hand. As a related question, do any weapon flares prevent lightning elemental zapping, or can it only be avoided by using non-metal weapons?

>It looks like there was a bug that was preventing Sigil of Escape from not teleporting you properly. That should now be fixed.

Nice.

Droit

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Speaking to you, Ceyrin asks, "Do you spontaneously come back to life when you die?"
Speaking to you, Ceyrin says, "Because I do."
You say, "Yes. I have a condition called Annoraxia.""

TDs do seem super high now that I've tried out the new confluence myself. I think I saw 489 from one of the lightning ones?

I found 705 bolt worked half-decent (180 necro lore helps).

Really looking forward to finding/trying these balance orbs.

Despite the TD troubles, I think these changes are what will finally make this a semi-common hunting option, (rather than a mostly-forgotten oddity frequented only by a few lunatics :-). Thanks very much for the continuous improvement.

I am fairly certain that is a bug with EVOKE in the ice elemental script. I will try to locate it precisely, since I remember having to make exceptions to 903 being cast at ice creatures to account for it being steam instead. The evoke changes were made after steam bolt was introduced, so this may be one of those outlying oddball things that didn't get updated.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

~Contemplar~

>I am fairly certain that is a bug with EVOKE in the ice elemental script. I will try to locate it precisely, since I remember having to make exceptions to 903 being cast at ice creatures to account for it being steam instead. The evoke changes were made after steam bolt was introduced, so this may be one of those outlying oddball things that didn't get updated.

This bug also applies to inc 903 evoke with water elementals and greater water elementals as I've posted in the Wizard folder and bug magic'ed in game also.

Also, is it intentional that inc 903 evoke does not work on fire elementals, or is that a function of it being based on fire lore?

Do initial testing from belled. Its unlikely to be much anyway, because typical difficulty for level requires 403 and 404 and thats going to take somewhere between 50% and 100% of your potential experience, which is anyway pretty low without a method to match pick to task difficulty. When an exp award is likely to be single figures, you'll need to be going belled to belled to see if it is actually non-zero.

This was done without 403/404. No experience gained from what I can tell. I could pick 10 kobold boxes and get more exp probably lol.

>But I like it being a mostly-forgotten oddity frequented only by a few lunatics. :(

Lol, I agree. I've hunted the Landing Confluence exclusively (other than bandits) for the last 4 months and I have only once seen anyone else inside. It was a two-person group, and I helped Gate one of their corpses to the Tranquility.

On the plus side, the swarms should get nice and crazy with even a few people inside, if the solo gen-rates are any indication.

>This was done without 403/404. No experience gained from what I can tell. I could pick 10 kobold boxes and get more exp probably lol.

I get more experience off kobold boxes than capped boxes, because I can match picks to kobold boxes and capped boxes require lore. If you haven't got a way of matching a pick to it you aren't going to get much experience for it, but whether its 5 or 25 (or 0), you'd need to do it belled to find out.

>But having level 99/100 stuff is way better for the postcap crowd

Oh, absolutely. The division of levels to one side in another was a design feature I wondered since the original release why they didn't do it that way. Of course, given that I hate air elementals at just this moment I am sad, but in the long run it means I can avoid them.

I started doing a bit more FWI Confluence hunting last weekend for more prayer of a rescue when I die so, I'll continue that philosophy for now.

Still hoping the TDs might be adjusted down a little bit, at least for the cold side. It's pretty darn hard to hunt there for warding at 95 and get fried without wracking.

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>Daid: Pretty sure you have a whole big bucket as your penny jar. You never have only two cents. :p

These changes that supposedly give locksmiths something do from the confluence are just another slap in the face. There is no useful feedback on extraction and the amount of experience given is negligible, at best. Might as well have continued not offering anything for locksmiths from the area.