Shattered Kingdoms

How does knowing that you need to recite it tell you what the hell it does?

Edoras will probably say you could just experiment with it to see what it does, since he already knows and doesn't want others to know without them satisfying his requirements for their effort.

That item is from one of the silliest areas in-game, though. It's kind of the least of that area's problems.

Gee I don't know, but the other day I found this vial of Power, I wonder what the heck it does when I drink it. Maybe I should identify it.

Hey, there's a scroll of enlarged dimension in the game, I wonder why that shopkeeper doesn't say what it does when I ask.

On my first character I bought a "seemingly-empty vial" and I was like "wtf is this crap" so I drank it. Then it made sense.



Actually, it's because you're not supposed to reveal IC information on the forums, or use information obtained OOCly on your characters, and while both of those things obviously happen, -all the time-, I still prefer to do what I can to follow the rules. SK is meant to be played in the game, not on the forums.

The POINT is, Edoras, that some of these potions cost a large amount of money, and it's not really feasible to just "buy one of each and see if they might be useful to you."

Of course, with your knowledge of coin farming, it's probably not an issue you care about.

We're talking about being new-user friendly. Which you aren't.

While going through a shop's entire inventory is by no means a cheap endeavour, it's a one-time thing on each character, and those items will never change. Sure, you might spend an obsidian or two to see what all the "holistic" medicines in Druidic Wonders do, but once you -know- what they do you're going to buy three or more of the items that you like and end up saving money overall because you're not buying a more expensive form of them that is immediately understandable from the shopkeeper.

With my very first character, I had no problem buying one of every item in a shop if I -really- wanted to find out what each one did: All things considered it's a rather small price to pay for the knowledge about the items themselves, which hardly ever changes. On each new character I roll, I do the same thing, or just go to that one shop where there's a sign which says what every piece of jewelry does.

The only real issue someone might have now is the fact that the economy code often has ridiculous effects on the prices of items, but that's a symptom of the economy code griefing people, not the fact that there isn't a sign that explains in full detail what every sold item does.

My point is, there are plenty of items sold in the game that are very obvious, by their description, what they do. There are others which are not, and this was done -purposefully-. You're meant to have to explore these, and I find that to be a good thing because in most cases, those items are either cheaper or more effective than their clearly-labeled counterparts, and SK is a game that is geared towards rewarding exploration, even if its only in small ways.


It would be nice if the subtype of a weapon was displayed in the buy prompt, though.

Edoras's argumentation skills seem to have seriously broken down since I stopped playing.


In response to the assertion that this fosters exploring, I will just say that farming for coin is not the same thing as exploring. Newbies don't have the ability to rapidly gain coin, and they shouldn't have to in order to explore. Going to new areas, looking around, and discovering new shops are examples of exploring. Do you know what doesn't count as exploring? Killing 50 citizens in Garazul so that you can buy all the useless crap sold in one of the little stores you found (when you were exploring).

The way things currently are makes no IC sense, promotes transfer of knowledge through OOC mediums, and makes things much more difficult for people who are new to the game. Finally, the assertion that having to buy everything you ever see for sale is a good thing because it rewards exploring is laughable.

Thank you for pointing out exactly the problem I am talking about.



Thank you for offering a more rational substantiation of what I was considering.


It's a shame that you write off people's thoughts because of what you think of them, Edoras, when your own thoughts do not ever seem to go beyond defending your viewpoints with sloppy rhetoric in the face of lack of true evidence.

I personally would love to see the five million useless objects in the game scrapped and the memory allocated to them instead used to eliminate the only excuse for limiting the availability of truly useful items in the game in such a way as to dissuade people like Edoras from logging on when Ardith posts about being in jail to get items that his character likely lost. It would be really nice if those kind of moves were not fruitful SK tactics, and we could play the game just with the client instead of the forums. If these useless items weren't in the game, shopkeeps would not be buying them from players and throwing the economy into ridiculous extremes. Double win.

The most ardent defenders of a troubled system or situation are those who have learned how to exploit it. I hope this thread avoids showcasing that fact.


Lest we get off track with this thread, I think people on all sides of this new tangential discussion (except Edoras) agree that there should be more ways for the isolated player to learn about the features of items for sale without having to buy them.

I agree that shops should provide more information, especially about weapons. There are so many weapons out there, especially the exotically named ones that are difficult to ascertain exactly what they are.

For example not all swords are equal and things like say, named weapons you literally have to buy / find and identify them to find out what they are. (Blessed, Dragonsbane or whatever its called etc) a lot of weapons you can't simply look at.

However, if you look at a Katana and a Longsword and a claymore there is a huge difference in the sword's appearance. This should at least be made visible by shopkeeps or so that way you don't buy 3 weapons lookin for a single sub type.

I pointed out that even when I was a new player, it wasn't that difficult to buy every item in a shop if I was really that inclined to know everything about that shop. The key information in that example is that it was when I was a NEW player, which is a direct counter-argument to your statement that it isn't newbie-friendly to have shops which don't clearly explain everything that's sold within them. It's up to the player to keep from exploiting that information in an OOC manner.

Your arguments seem to be A) It isn't newbie-friendly to have shops which don't tell everything about the items that they sell, and B) there should be more ways to determine what an item does without having to buy it, and C) that it fosters OOC information sharing to have items which aren't painfully obvious in their purpose.

I'm arguing against A) because it wasn't difficult for me as a newbie to even buy the items myself and have them identified, and it's even less difficult to just ask someone else. I don't think that B) is necessary either, as part of SK is the exploration factor and the knowledge that the world doesn't end if you don't know everything about every item sold by every merchant in the game. There's absolutely nothing stopping you from buying all the items you see, even if you don't need them, but it's going to, and should, cost you. I also don't think that C) is a good reason to change this issue in particular, because those who want to cheat will cheat, regardless of how easy it is not to.

My main focus is this: I don't consider it "newbie-friendly" to put every single bought item in the game on a silver platter. I consider it boring. There's no reason that you have to know what every single store-bought item in the game does as a new player, or old player: Just buy the ones that seem useful, and don't buy the others unless you have some OCD desire to know everything about the game. I can see your point on this, but I just don't think it's really worse than the alternative you're suggesting. I'm not picking on you in particular, grep, (Except for the statement I made about you trolling, but that's because most of the posts you make are very bitter) I'm just giving my honest opinion.

The weapon subtype thing has merit, that'd be a good thing to add to the buy prompt.

Edoras, when you were a new player that was more in likely before the wacked out economy code change. You know where supply and demand was emulated and things got to be crazy expensive, like pots costing 1 obsidian +. Not everyone knows or even wants to keep their bank at 50 obsidian just for buying stuff, so yes, buying stuff in a shop now is a helluva lot harder than it used to be. Prices aren't fixed anymore and when yer consistently putting 10 obsidian + in a shop, that drains your bank incredibly fast.