Shattered Kingdoms

I've always been frustrated by the rather nonsensical nature of junk. Instantaneous and permanent destruction of large bodies of items at once? There is certainly no logical justification, but it's an obviously necessary function to reduce the level of, well, junk that's in the game. But that doesn't mean it can't be improved. Here are a few ideas I've been brewing on.

What if junking were limited to the outdoors?

In the great outdoors, it's pretty easy to dispose of something; one good chuck and it's gone, with little to no trace. The same does not hold true for the indoors, which are small, compact, and by comparison, orderly. The required method for permanently destroying an adamantite breastplate in the middle of an inn would just not be feasible. While realism is not the goal of a fantasy game, that doesn't mean it's something to be shunned or avoided.

I like the thought of having to "take the trash outside". It feels more fluid, less at-odds with the immersion of the game.

What if junking high-level items required special means?

While, again, realism is not the goal of a fantasy game, I still dislike that joe sixpack can somehow pulverize practically invulnerable, magic armor of incredible magnificence with just as much swiftness as the ancient and fearless knight-commander of the hammer of light, or the dreadful leader of the undead legions of the north, whom have far greater power and a wider variety of means at their disposal.

What I'm thinking:

Items level 1-40 can be junked as normal.
Items level 41-48 must be junked at a forge - such as a blacksmith. (error message: The material is too strong to destroy by hand.)
Items level 49-50 must be manually destroyed, through enchanting. (error message: Only magical forces could destroy such a powerful item.)

The thing I like here is that items gain an innate level of significance. The armor of the Grand General Infernal isn't just tossed out like a banana. It requires more than just half a fart to destroy, speaking to the significance of the item itself, and the difficulty it took to obtain. Sacred armor blessed by the gods themselves should not be destroyed lightly. That's the idea, here.

These two ideas also address a long-held frustration of mine - griefing via junking. "get all corpse;drop all;junk all" and, worse "skin/butcher corpse;junk all" are among the most effective ways of discouraging another player, OOCly and ICly - and it requires less than one second to execute. While that total vulnerability is key to making death and PK painful and imminent, more often than not it's merely a method of griefing, usually supported by little to no RP. Changes such as these would require that the killer spend more time at the scene of the crime to enact his or her vengeance, exposing him or herself to the potential backlash. That is to say, junking would become less of a no-risk affair.

As a somewhat tangential addendum: I'd love to see material-specific junking commands, such as burn, shred, or shatter.

Just a few thoughts. Thanks for reading.

Good idea, I actually agree.

I like.

You do realize the limitation it will be in numbers of available items per reboot?

So you kill your mortal enemy paladin who has let's say an energy shield that can summon an auto rescue NPC paladin NPC that spams HW. And this shield is GM lvl and apparently it zaps everyone but a lightie.

What do you have to do? Obviously you can't pick it up(with a few special exceptions, don't open this discussion now) so you can't fade/evaporate it, you can't junk it either. So any lightie can simply walk in and grab it, right?

The same can apply to a darkie with let's say Soulshard, but darkies don't get access to call armor so you don't have a reason to hurry and take all corpse so you can avoid the reincarnation/call armor tactics.

And generally, stop asking for more "makes sense RL" stuff. Last time you did that shovels appeared.

Personally, I'm just wondering why you should able to destroy an item you can't even touch in the first place. Regardless, there are methods of destroying it, as you alluded. It's just that much more difficult - as it should be, IMO.

I'm also pretty certain nobody asked for shovels.

What part of reincarnate;c 'call armor' don't you get?

I am wondering also why should one who just returned to life to be able to get all his armor just like that, so until this someone gets more realistic ways of obtaining back his things, there doesn't need to be a realistic way to destroying his things before he can easily get them back, without pretty much any penalty for getting killed.

Generally, you try to complicate things that worked fine for many years for no apparent gain, save for some realism.

I actually agree with it though, junking primarily -is- done as a griefing tactic. People loot what they can use, and they junk the rest -just- so the other player can't have it.

It does make sense as well.

The soulshard/holy shield of white energy zaps lighties/darkies because it's protected by divine magics. How can you touch it to destroy it if you can't touch it to pick it up?

I have no problem with being unable to -easily- destroy all of an opposing players belongings. Grab what you want, and leave them the rest, no need to be assholes all the time. As was also stated there are still -several- ways of grabbing items that zap you.

Last I checked, reincarnating to solely save armor (as a paladin) is a reportable, cursable offense. This issue was last raised in regards to an incident with Cyra's paladin, but no curse was issued as it was determined that he had a strong enough incentive beyond armor to justify reincarnation. If you have a problem with that or with call armor itself, that's for another thread.

This is not about realism, but about immersion. DA, you are more than welcome to disagree, of course, but please do not act as if dissension with your logic mandates ignorance about the game's mechanics. Please read the entirety of my post, as it is quite apparent (to me) that you have not fully understood the intentions behind suggesting these ideas.

Junking works fine, why bother with it in the first place?

But to take it once more to mechanics' level, what about corpses during levelling? If you kill a GM NPC, what will you do with it? It's an item you can't enchant. Will you wait for it to crumble? Do you realise how much the load of the server will go up if suddenly 2424141 unjunkable corpses appear in ToM/Tlax/wastes/any higher level area? Leaving corpses behind has another bad side effect also, that they can be located so a gank squad might appear and disrupt your levelling.

Or let's consider the aura restricted items. You used to be able to enchant items from the ground, but this was changed a few years ago. So now all you can do it get a charmed NPC of the right aura to pick up everything, or get certain priest PCs to help you. I'm sorry but I consider the time spent for all of these to take away from the fun of PK and turn the attention in other matters that include very specific classes of PCs.

And junking is not done to grief as you say. It's done to slow down the enemies. By junking an item, an aura restricted one especially, you don't stop your enemy from going there and picking it up again within a few mins if he knows what he is doing. What you do is that you force him to spend time to enchant his things again, so he can't simply take all;wear all and be ready for PK once more.

After all wasn't that something that most people don't like now in SK? How any warrior can grab an easily obtained tanso steel weapon, enchant it and be ready to PK instantly?

Keep junking as it is, let death mean something for SK.