Shattered Kingdoms

I believe the reason for your lack of GM characters Allikat is the reason you make them explode or implode.


As for the discussion on leveling. Since I am still working myself through the levels, I cannot certain say if I like it or not. But being a player who has A LOT less time available to him to play then he used to, I prefer any help to make leveling go by faster so you can actually play the game. The fact is, no one in their right mind enjoys grinding. I doubt people enjoy doing quests they have done a million times for xp too. It is fun the first and maybe second time, but then you know how to do it. And no matter how reluctant you are trying not to use ooc knowledge, you can't pretend not to know where to look on how to do a quest.


So I say have more bonanzas, make leveling in whole easier.

Why do you feel the need to make GM unattainable?

HP and MOVE have never improved after Master.


All of these things are relative. If the majority of other people are also no more than Master, then you are on even footing. Even so, I can evaluate again to see if the chance of these should be less from Master to GM.

I never actually said 'unattainable'. Any level that is allowed by the game is attainable. But I want the majority of characters to be willing and able to play the game by Mentor without feeling pressured to grind their way to GM first. Right now, we still have a lot of GMs in the game, maintaining the pressure for everyone else to want it. But if this is finally done right, Grandmaster will become as rare of a status as it sounds.

Yes, I will continue to watch to see how people power-grind. That doesn't mean I will necessarily "stop" that method. It depends upon whether it feels like a cheat or a loophole. In the meantime, it's too early for me to say how these changes have impacted the leveling equation.

The bonuses for haste and giant strength cap around about mentor.

I'd say that the way GM is becoming harder to attain is disproportionately rough on several classes. Fighter classes are fairly unaffected, since all GM really affects for them is a few saves, the ability to get really awesome enchants, and the ability to keep the super-rare awesome items of the game. They can still get enchants, good armor and weapons, and be very effective in PK.

Scouts, however, get the boot because of skinning and herbalism, both of which give some really central bonuses to the class at GM. Those aren't things that affect the magnitude of their abilities, they're a completely different way of using those abilities. A GM scout is drastically better than a Master scout, especially when you compare them to other classes.

Do I even need to get started on necros? Wraiths are the central component of PKing with a necromancer. You don't get them until GM, so you don't PK until GM. The only other option is using controls, and controls are an extremely risky option even against a barely prepared enemy. The class already has a buttload of weaknesses, and plenty of innate enemies all too ready to take advantage of those weaknesses.

I think you already did something about scouts. You might have gone too far when you wimped the rate of success with their skills, especially skinning. I'm sure we all know about the arduous task of killing nine or ten tough-skinned mithril monsters per successful skinning, plus respawn time. You might want to raise the success rate a bit, but I'm not sure if you have already. Necromancers, however, could definitely use a similiar fix. If you pushed down the levels at which you get different types of animates to the point where wraiths came at Master, then gave boosts to animate HP as you got closer to GM, that would make the class a much more viable choice at Master.

I believe skinning and herbalism were both dealt with several updates ago. I know it's true for skinning. I think Ain dealt with herbalism. The only new thing I'm seeing here is Wraiths. Sounds like something that would be easy enough to fix. Always interested in getting rid of another excuse to grind.

So to summarize the issues that I've picked out of this conversation:

- Fury
- Backstab
- Locate Object
- Saving throw modifiers
- Dispel modifiers
- Wraiths
- Consider

Man, I picked at wraiths years ago for the same reasons of master being *complete*

I'm not for a wimp to saving throws though.

Why do wraiths need more hps? I'm completely against that idea.