Shattered Kingdoms

What does it mean? What effect does it have on my character?

It's a hoarder flag, if you don't have enough hours and lose your gear at the monthly reboot you get one.

You won't be able to re-equip for 7 days, anything new you get you will lose on log out.

I'm going to throw my thoughts on this in, since it was brought up. I understand why the de-hoarding system is in place. But taking a full week away from a player is pretty harsh. Given the player count, it's too harsh. It makes it really frustrating for a player who is normally pretty consistent, that might have just had a bad month on hours. Two or three days I could see. But not seven.

Wait....what? Are you serious? Why is there no help file on this? Believe me, I have searched. Wow...a full IRL week? With a punishment this severe, there should be a help file or at least a login banner like Paragon status, explaining that punishment. I have already begun to equipment my character but will lose that. So anything I do on Findill now is a waste for a week? What about brewing, can I make new potions or will those just disappear if I don't hand them out before logging out?

If I didn't think of making a post here asking this question, I would have spent all day and night getting gear, just to lose it tomorrow and not know why. Perhaps I would have gone and reequip again and lost it all again. How would this motivate me to play more? I would have most likely abandoned the character thinking it bugged, cursed, what ever, because I wouldn't even know the time frame and that it would go away in a week.

This really bites and leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I have never, not once, been punished playing this game. I cant even remember a time I have been given a warning in all the years I have played this game; since 1997 for those who don't know me. It is a shame that my first punishment is an automatic one that is pretty severe, but it didn't come with a warning, an explanation, nothing but a flashing red H. I think as a player, I deserved more than that.

Code Update 3/1/2014 Q&A

It's a three year old change. If there was a help file, you wouldn't have found it beforehand, but I will fix it and create one today. A login banner is a lot harder, but I'll see what I can do.

Does it have to take nearly 60 obsidian too? Wiped my inventory and account down to 5 blacks

Keep in mind that unlike most other games, money is a limited resource on SK. The money you are holding is a fraction of the overall currency pool. The more money that is in player hands, the less is available for NPCs to carry (and thereby to be looted when you kill them). Five obsidian is enough to get you started again after a long bout of inactivity. If you want to keep more, you just need to stay active.

Thank you, that would be much appreciated. I understand the need for a dehoarding system and understand I didn't meet those standards this month, so I'm not upset I was punished. I was frustrated by the steps I had to go through to understand so severe a punishment.

On a side note, while I got your ear, I would like to bring attention to something that has been bothering me lately about the game. It seems to me that the direction of the game is one of more and more difficulty. I can understand the need for large, end-game raid like encounters that take everything we got as player to accomplish but I don't understand why the day to day stuff of the game is getting harder. I think a good strategy for the game would be to make day to day stuff easier as the end-game environment gets more difficult. With a low player count, having the ability to prepare oneself for end-game content should be easier and more manageable on individual terms. Take brewing, already such a chore that few priests will tackle it as I do, but you made brewing more difficult and more expensive. Why would you want to make such a chore more difficult? Why not make changes of the game that encourage such axillary tasks instead? That would encourage more people to brew and scribe while they idly wait for a group large enough to tackle end-game content comes and thus be more prepared to tackle it in terms of potions and scrolls. I think making consumables more available in general would help as well and give smaller groups the confidence to tackle end-game content because they have such items as healing staves, plentiful healing and buff potions, scrolls of mighty magic and so forth. That's all I'm asking really, just making the preparation for end-game content easier.

I am not sure where you are getting the perception that the difficulty is getting harder. In fact, the game has in general been getting easier. Just look at yesterday's update, which made coming back from the dead easier (which followed an update half a year ago where we also made coming back from the dead easier).

Brewing was not made more difficult. There is now a limitation on how many spells an item can hold based on its level. This will increase the rarity of multi-spell potions and was added to better balance the power level that multi-spell potions and scrolls have on combat. That may indirectly make brewing more expensive, as you need further (or more expensive) vials to brew the same number of spells. But the cost for the first spell is the same and the hard limit on what is achievable means that you will probably not waste purchasable vials trying to hit the brewing lottery jackpot.

And as far as preparation goes, it was made a ton easier a few years back with the far more predictable enchantment system.

It occurs to me to ask, since you didn't know about the hoarder flag, do you know about the improvements to death and enchanting?

In my opinion, anything that creates more time and energy to acomplish it than before is making it harder. Not sure why you want to make combat harder at all by cutting into axillary things like brewing. Would you mind explaining to me why you want to take the direction of more difficult combat and making consumables rarer and more expensive? If I could get my head around your reasoning, maybe I could support these changes.


I am aware of those recent updates, yes.