Shattered Kingdoms

Ok I'll bite.

The two items I'm talking about are:

The "voluminous" cloaks from ch'zzrym in the caves to the north and down into the tunnels. A sprite merc spec'd in sickles (if I recall correctly) asked me about containers that held anything worth mentioning, I led them there. Next reset their capacity had been gimped to uselessness.

The mithril chestplate from the dark druid. A PC I had been asking about armor with decent innate runes told me outright that you couldn't find decent armor with great innate willpower, I showed them that. Immediately gimped.

Another imm might chime in to correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly positive this was a random coincidence with a faulty line of reasoning in backtracking to determine causality. We've been tweaking a lot of equipment throughout the game, wimping some gear and buffing others. We can actually find equipment and track innates a lot more effectively through our admin access than we ever could by using the method presented above.

The dark druid armor, for instance, lies in an area that I oversee. I may have adjusted that armor last year, but I haven't touched it since then. The only other person who could have accessed it to make any changes is already familiar with that equipment and wouldn't have needed this scenario to act on.

I'm not questioning the timelines that you present, just the causal relationships that you attribute to them.

Forgive me if you are not seeing my perspective... But you mentioned both 'Enchanted' and 'Proper Build'. Those to me go under preperation.

By "proper build" I think he means using your attribute trains appropriately, like maxing mana trains on the healer.

Yeah, I got that. We should be able to reset our attributes with Loyalty Tokens

Correct. It also only takes about ten minutes to enchant a full set of store bought tanso steel armor with armor protection.

If you want to argue that as "preparation" that's a stretch. Frankly, you don't even need to enchant the armor. A priest and mercenary with proper builds and unechanted store bought tanso armor is sufficient.

Sufficient, but with even moderate effort you will see a significant increase in effectiveness. Even just putting some saves on store gear is worth the few minutes it takes to do. You don't need a top tier kit to get results, though obviously that has a higher return on investment, but even moderate effort will pay dividends. Particularly in PVE scenarios. A good build counts for quite a bit, but a bit of work put into preparation (gear, saves, enchantments, potions, herbs, scrolls, wands, etc) goes a long way.