Shattered Kingdoms

Do you find it difficult to re-equip your character if you lose items in PK or die in difficult to reach end-game locations?

If so, what do you find most difficult about it, and what solutions can you offer to fix the issue?

Re-Equipping seems to be easy enough. The hardest part of it is getting a priest/sorc to enchant things for you.

Keep money in your bank, at least enough to buy a new weapon or something if you do die to help you get new things that you can wear until you get better things. Or you can also use the coins to buy a set of tanso/brass/cloth to get you by until then. One thing that helps to recover is knowing where things come from and having someone locate for you. There are plenty of places to get diamond, addy, mithril, dragonscale, or cloth that are not difficult to get to.

Re-equip is odd for me. I have zero problems refitting in decent gear, but it usually takes me a while to get back into optimal mode. Instead of just adamantite its adamantite with good saves. Instead of trinkets with moderate saves, they're great. Getting it all consecrated and enchanted and having to get them back again etc etc.

The number one "hard" part about re-equipping is having a priest and/or sorc to enchant your gear. You can take easy to get gear and throw some AP/MP on it and be perfectly fine. Because of that, If you have an enchanter and/or consecrator, re-equipping to moderate position is easy.

Getting back to optimal shape, on the other hand, depends on whether or not any of the greater save jewelry and moderate/greater save armor is currently held by other players, in which case you're going to have to make some corpses to get back to optimal shape. Otherwise the majority of good armor can be retrieved with a group of 2-3 people.

It sounds as if the hardest part is finding that priest/sorc to put runes on your gear as well as forming a moderately sized group to go to some of the places containing the best gear. What are some solutions that would hasten this process? We obviously do not want people quiting the game in frustration due to the large time sink involved in regearing.

Should guards regain the ability to cast consecration? Gate? What solutions can you come up with?

Do people often quit because of the regearing time?

If you're using me as evidence to that, let me reiterate: it wasn't so much the regearing that made me not want to play, but the fact that the only reason I had left to regear was to PK, and I just didn't want to get heavily back into the PK arena. That 5-20 hours of prep isn't bad when you're doing PvE and it's pretty unlikely that you'll lose it all if you screw up, it's just not fun for me anymore to spend upwards of 100 man-hours getting a perfect suit only to risk it every single time I go to PK.

So for me it wasn't so much the regearing time as much as it was that I didn't like what I would have been regearing for. I'd accomplished what I wanted and the game wouldn't have been much fun for me afterwards.

A store with an NPC that you can pay to enchant your gear, however will never go to 4+. Max 1-3 runes. This would make some basics easy for people who don't have priest/sorcs available. To fill back out entirely they would still need to visit priest/sorc in the end but a shop could be an inbetween.
Downside: Most solutions to these sorts of problems stems from allowing NPCs to fill more roles in a character's life and needs, while I personally think this is fine so long as an NPC is never preferred over a player, Dulrik is particularly keen on not wanting NPCs doing all that kind of jazz.

The problem with the PK system that causes frustrated players is the fact that it is a downward spiral of negative reinforcement.
You die and loose your stuff. This means you are less able to get new stuff which puts you at higher risk of getting killed and losing your stuff. This in turns tends to make players lose heart and delete leaving the people with less people less able to recover and get stuff. The problem is the solution ends up looking like Imm favoritism to people who are "bad at the game". This is why many of the current games have switched to more casual styles of play to remove the negative reinforcement from their game. I am not saying SK should head towards this style of play it really doesn't suit the design of the game.

Some solution seem to work against sensible world building actions. For example you could have a market with slightly better than average gear that switches To the city which has been losing PK battles the most in recent time with gear with fairly good saves that death rots and or time rots. This encourages players to switch sides more which either will speed the games switching sides or perhaps stabilized the sides more evenly. It also encourages people to roll on the side that is loosing.

Simple solution for high end item locations would be to put in a fast rot/very expensive potion of the paladin spell call armor. This could be adventure guild quest related which puts you in a slightly more risky position after you recover your items. Five obsidian seems a reasonable price to go into some of those zones. Also if you make it so it takes say 15-30 minutes to "create the order" you can know how long it will take and if someone is feeling cheep they can try to ninja your gear from the zone. It also makes it not that useful for local zone recovery where you could get a group easy and go in and kill say a Fytrysk.

As far as players taking all your stuff after a PK this is something that needs to be worked on in game. Something with the numbers of the player base increasing players need to remember to leave "neutral" players as neutral so that are not cable associated will actually help both sides of the field leaving the "losing side" a way to find enchantments and such to help stop the downward spiral. Sure they are helping the enemy IC but what they are also doing OOCly is leaving you with enemy to fight.

I also do not know if the power of art has been adjusted for the change in ability to enchant. If it has not perhaps adjusting for the deflation of enchanted gear might be worth looking at making enchantments less require and more desired.

I don't believe Dulrik changed art, but I think he changed impairment. I might be wrong, that was a while ago.

I don't think that a "comeback mechanic" would be good for the game in regard to PvP: If you're losing, you should seek out RP to keep you from getting PKed into the dirt, and part of the onus of that is on the winning players to allow for reasonable recourses that don't violate the RP of the person being murdered repeatedly. I'm also not a fan of any mechanic that rewards re-rolling on opposite sides: If anything, I think that one of SK's faults is that it lacks stable characters.

If anything I'd just rather take out more external factors from PvP. I think the biggest change to that in my eyes would be changing up city warfare to be more static-guard focused than spawning bounty NPC focused, and make it so that all capital cities are no-transport (but recallable). I'd posted many ideas on this in the past, as personally I enjoyed city PvP a whole lot before bounty NPCs were (re?)introduced to the game.

Bounty NPCs truly change the nature of the game.

It's so challenging just to start trouble in a realm for long. It takes a grave commitment to enter into and exit out of PK--purely gameplay wise--because of banishment, the disadvantage of fighting on lawful city terrain (bounty NPC attrition from moving). By the time you find someone (lol why go to the inn ever?) and they can be stopped with a bash or sleep, you want the spoils.

Knowing where loot is--that's cool. And preserving gear is easy enough, even if you're just relaxing in the inn.
Maybe that's why relooting should even remain steep as it is?

The other elements, like going against the law, finding a target, mechanical and gameplay consequences and risk of PK merely existing, the city defense system--the tediousness of obtaining gear brings challenges like these into view.

I think the game needs 'fighting zones', if you will, that give armor and eq incentives for those who participate in PK.

Just thinking 'out loud'.