Shattered Kingdoms

So, after 4 months of being back on the game and most of that spent trying to resurrect Team Darkie, and now 2 weeks on a lightie alt on the side, this has been bugging me.

Among the very glaring problems on SK that severely favor light aura characters, the one thing among them that isn't entirely dependent upon code is...

The pretty huge difference in building equality for Team Lightie and Team Darkie.

First and foremost, before we even get to "omgz da loot".

Let me start with a basic TLDR of this post -- PvE does not feel good on darkies.

Every end game area on the game except one is dark aura creatures. Meaning lighties are automatically at a distinct advantage. They get to use protection and all the lightie cabal abilities are amazing in PvE. WWB? Great. Bak? You just reduced the NPC's AC to 0, amazing. IA vs gas blast/magma scripts/etc. Horsemanship for boosted tanking/damage output. Etc etc etc.

I currently play two characters. A deep-elf hellion, and an elf priest. My elf priest + a paladin/merc/whatever (and just those two) can do far more in PvE than my hellion can with /two other/ PCs (a tank + priest + me). Because on team darkie, our tank and healer don't get protection vs the enemies (protection vs gas blasts and other AOE things for the healer), and also don't get any nifty cabal abilities to power them up.

The Crucible abilities are literally useless in PvE. Okay, mages/healers have infinite mana. Who cares? That doesn't make your character /stronger/. It just means you have to stop to sleep less. It's a convenience ability, not a power level one. The rest of the crucible skillset is useless.

MC? Meh. Shield Wall is nice, but requires you have a whole group for it. See above, where my priest(no cabal)+tank can do far more than my MC hellion with TWO other PCs. Midnight is useless in actual end game PvE. Everything has true seeing and there's too many no-magic rooms anyways. You get...midnight plate. A few extra AP on your shield doesn't make up for not having IA/Horsemanship or WWB/Bak/Hands of steel. Yes, Shield Wall is nice if you have a 4-5 person group, but...If you have a 4-5 person group, who gives a [REDACTED]. A 4-5 person lightie group can breeze through every piece of content on the game.

Seriously? Take true seeing off of all these end game NPCs. It affects nobody but the MC and scouts. Both currently suck.

Also, on this note. The ONE end game area that is lightie NPCs (Isles of West Wind) is stacked with world destroyer level NPCs. Has anybody on staff actually playtested that area on a normal darkie PC, in a group with other darkie players? It's not fun. In fact, you're much better off going there as greybies with a token darkie to carry back the darkie loot. NPCs like the Divine Warders are markedly more difficult than NPCs like Death/Darkness/etc.

And the fact that the lighties can just....walk around IWW just feels ridiculous. This is an endgame area with NPCs that can easily wipe 5 person darkie groups. And any lightie can just fly around the whole area solo while collecting level 40-50 lightie-zappy loot.

Even on the matter of the "random loot" drops in Necropolis Sewers, Grey Wastes, and elsewhere, these areas are significantly easier to farm on lighties. The NPCs in the GW are literally BoG-fodder.

Now on to the matter of loot.

There is a pretty clear difference in distribution of loot on SK, and it heavily favors team lightie. Not only is there, in general, much better "lightie loot" than "darkie loot"....

A lot of the stuff that is "for darkies" or clearly "evil themed" is...not actually zappy?

Why can light/grey aura characters use things like the Heart of Darkness, Mind Killer, the Weight of Despair, the Infernal Halberd, the Cloak of the Raven, etc?

Mind Killer is a weapon that is literally scripted to cast the Algorab religion's holy spell for the wielder. And...it's not dark-aura zappy? It has a long IC history of being used by paladins too. I'm kind of curious what Algorab the god, and the Paladin Gods, think of that.

I could be mistaken on this specific point, but...I'm pretty sure the Nightmare Temple has more Light-Aura Only loot than it does Dark-Aura Only loot. Vestige of Hope + Cracked Eucalyptus staff at least for lighties, and I don't know...any darkie pieces.

The Infernal Halberd and the Cloak of the Raven both have scripts that only work for hellions. But, also not dark-aura zappy. I don't know of any high end paladin-scripted items that...aren't light-aura only.

I don't know of any light aura "the eyes of Dulrik" type items that are (good and useful) and not alignment restricted.

If I see a "holy broadsword of supreme light" in the game that casts Accelerate Healing, I'm pretty sure it's going to be light-aura only, and if it wasn't, there'd probably be an outrage about darkies getting Meissa's sacred spell.

Anyways, I'm sure none of this is fixable overnight or anything, but it has been bugging me lately, and I'm just going to have to adjust my playing to a style that is more fun. AKA, playing a lightie most of the time.

First of all, phat lewt > rp. Thus mind-killer is a paladin weapon liberated from evil. Hopefully it will be lighty only after a few emotes and holy water rps.

Isles of the West wind is the same for greybie and darky. At least the darky can get a chest of phat lewt. The greybie gets zapped by almost everything there and also gets murdered.

Crux skills can be fixed with minor tweaks that would be very simple to implement.

As a recent returned player myself, I second nearly everything said in the original post. Darkies is ridiculous crippled in lewt and places we can PVE, don't even get me started about end game places to LVL. There are FAR more few places to level as a dark once you get to champ, maybe even master. Somewhere along the way, the game decided to favor all Lighties as a whole.

I've done both Crucible and Midnight, and I have to agree. I wish desperately darkies got a boost!

Just delete your darkies to give them a boost Jennbo.

J/k. <3

The game is blatantly skewed in favor of lighties v darkies in almost every way. It's both an ability coding issue as well as a builder issue, and only a disillusioned person would expect it to change.

PvE:
Crucible skillset is accurately pointed out as nothing more than a convenience mechanic and there are scarce few places where you can't reliably just take a few extra minutes to clear a place instead of "needing" to use the only crucible ability that's remotely useful in PvE.

The midnight skillset is definitely more useful than crucible in PvE, but better stats on a couple of armor pieces, slightly higher stats in return for a noticeable mana drain, and slightly less damage assuming you have the comp to utilize it doesn't even hold a CANDLE to HoL, horsemanship, or especially fist abilities and ki straps which are out of this world powerful.

PvP:

The crucible and midnight skillsets are decent in PvP on paper. The problem is that they're going up against the Fist cabal, which has not only received repeated massive buffs to their skillsets in the following changes: (Listed in order of 'QoL' to 'gamebreaking')

1) Reduced PE cost to Fist skills (yes this was a long time ago)
2) Enough reflex makes you virtually bash-proof (Disproportionaly a huge benefit to Fists over all other cabal)
3) Ki straps being extremely accurate, preventing Fists from being disarmed while allowing them to disarm at the same time.

On top of that, from the builder standpoint the ki straps in the game are numerous and inarguably overpowered. They should honestly be outright removed and then the Fist cabal would be somewhat balanced given the fact that Fist members are incredibly powerful if they have enough reflex.



And what has happened to darkies with all these gameplay changes that inordinately benefited Fists? Necros have been nerfed into obscurity through builder changes and code changes, the Crucible hasn't changed at all, and the MC has gotten up to 6 extra enchants on their chest/shield and... pikemen.

Ki straps, bash immunity for Fists, and useless necros, midnight plate upgrades and... pikemen for MC.

Okay

So I think everyone can agree that anyone none lighty gets the shaft. So what can we do to fix it now?

I think builders can move the necro tower back to krychire and make the grey wastes not aggro to none lighties.

Add more darky and grey only scripted lewt.

Lots of code changes...

You can't add enough scripted darkie loot to keep fists from being the OBVIOUSLY superior cabal even for lighties. The only reason that rolling Fist wouldn't be the best play is if there were literally no more ki straps left in the game for you to use.

"the unyielding ring of tyranny carried by a stalwart male elf"