Shattered Kingdoms

Definitely not useless. The ART mod is there to make enchanting less frustrating, not make it possible to do the otherwise impossible. In other words, it further reduces grinding. Actually, I will reveal a bit and mention that ART was not even part of the original plan, that was suggested by a one of the players who were given a preview of the changes. It was definitely meant as a positive addition. Too bad that every change seems to become negative during the rollout.

PS. Maybe the real downer is that I told you something about how the mechanics work for once. After all, how could you know that art was not affecting the enchant spell all along?

Really, I was mostly making fun of my fountain RP character. Man, I suck hard enough without having no ability to enchant.

Sorry that didn't come across as planned.

I do maintain that if the logic behind not giving us the spells learned is that "the magic is now different," enchanting is also significantly different to justify a clean wipe.


That's all.

Thanks for the public support.


In the interests of being fair and balanced, I will say that this has probably not changed. Limited gear may well be more important than before.

Easily? No. It would have been easy to make everyone's enchant spell reset to 0 every single time they logged in, but that would not have been useful. It would also have been possible to make every single one of everyone's skills and spells reset to 0 once. But I didn't think that would have been well received either.

I believe it should affect both. That's the kind of thing that should be statistically verifiable if you are motivated.

I'll be honest, I wrote this particular code many months ago as part of the refactoring of the enchantment system. It had to be changed and I believe what I've done here actually buffs the song, but I'd have to go back and examine to be sure.

I definitely had the intention to examine songs of sleep as well before this change went in, but it looks like that is something I overlooked.

I haven't gotten to test out this change at all yet, and probably won't for a little while, but I do find it interesting. There's a few things I think really would be better dealt with immediately. I like a lot of things about it, I like that stat mods can, to a point, be enchanted, and I like that enchantments can be targeted. I also like how it preserves the strength of innate enchantments as it relates to stat mods. I like the ability to be able to enchant weaponry in three different ways. I absolutely love that enchantments can finally be targeted. However, this post naturally is only concerned with the problems I see with it, even though in principal I like a lot of ideas about it.

First, if art is going to affect enchanting success, then sorcs and priests should be able to re-spend their stat points. All of them. A lot of players roll characters with the intention of keeping them around for a long time, and many sorcs/priests who are years old IRL will be much less useful for enchanting than a character that was rolled last week and maxed art. Personally, however, I'd rather that art didn't weigh into enchanting. That seems very unnecessary.

Secondly, the other big problem is the fact that armor can't be enchanted for saves now, and enchanted saves even on jewelry don't stack. This means that obtaining any save over 20 is going to be next to impossible unless you find armor that carries the enchantment innately: And since from now on sorcs are always going to have max art for enchanting, that means your saves AND magical damage reduction are going to be in the tank compared to what they used to be. Sure, I realize that impairment has been lessened, but even without impairment that makes warlocks, sorcerers and anyone with a petrification scroll an absolute murdering machine.

And then junking it and waiting for 20 more minutes every time it fades, which brings me to my last point.

The biggest problem is that it the timesink required for enchanting hasn't changed: It's just offset it onto waiting for repops. As things stand now, the only armor or jewelry that is worth enchanting comes with an innate stat mod or save, meaning that as soon as said item fades it's absolutely worthless. Everyone's just going to be sitting around waiting for repops now, and/or the best armor is now on summonable NPCs. This change actually made it even more frustrating to get higher level armor that actually takes time and effort to gather.


I'd like to see some of a few things. First, I'd like to see either A) see art not matter for enchanting or B) all existing sorcs and priests get a free stat reallocation if they wish. Existing sorcs and priests shouldn't have to reincarnate to level 22 and then relevel just to get the chance to max art if they want to. Otherwise you're just punishing people for playing longstanding characters.

Secondly, I'd like to see that saves can be placed on armor, and/or that even enhancement saves (fort/will/reflex) should be stackable. It's crazy to think that it's impossible now to get over 20 in a single save without having at least 16 enchantments for that save to come from innate enchantments that are immediately lost if an item is faded. The game did not need a bigger push towards sitting around waiting for repops, which is exactly what this change seems to have done.


As a final note, I'm slightly worried about the potential success rate of enchanting versus what's really required now. Now there's a totally new enchantment type placed in the game for people who need physical protection along with protection from spells, yet I would surmise that enchanting success, in general, has been lowered. This seems like a really big hit to players who need to be protected both from spells and from physical damage, namely, melee characters. I'm almost certain that melee characters have been totally shafted from this change for the variety of reasons I've listed.

Of course, except for MR barbs.

Forgive my ignorance of the code, and feel free to correct my misconception of how this happened.

It seems that the reason that we didn't get a learned spell is because it was totally new. Like when someone leaves a cabal and rejoins, there is no baseline of knowledge to translate into active skills and spells. This stated, it would seem that removing enchant spells from the game for a few ticks and reinserting it would have reset them across the board.

Again, I am excited about the changes, I just feel that one class got pissed on. Everyone who had a priest with mastered enchating has to go back to the trainers and act like they never knew a damn thing while enchanters have full access to the work that they ground out to perfect the spells.

Yeah, MR barbs are going to become even more OP'd x10 with the new changes compared to all other melee. Get a suit of full AP innate bonus. Eat everyones face.

Unfortunately, removing it from the game for a few ticks wouldn't have worked. However, let's see what else might be accommodated with respect to relearning spells for existing characters. Perhaps a special trainer will make an appearance at tonight's Thankira event...