New Iron Coin Artifacts

Dristin

ANNOUNCE NEWS #2447
Date: 9/14/2015 at 20:48
From: Razmael, the Synthesist
To : Everyone
Subj: Iron Coin artifacts

Hey folks,

I've released a handful of new iron coin artifacts. You can find them under AP LIST IRON COINS and
AP LIST MINIPETS.

+++ New Minipets +++

A direwolf pup 70 iron coins
A miniature alpaca 60 iron coins
A white-coated chinchilla 50 iron coins
A yellow-breasted meadowlark 30 iron coins

+++ New artifacts +++

A few of these have no corresponding item, so you will need to purchase them directly onto an item.
If you do not have an artifact to add powers to, most player-crafted items will take them.

colour_write (no item)
----------------------
Cost: 50 iron coins

Allows you to WRITE on books/letters with colour! Refer to HELP WRITING IN COLOUR.

librarysearch (no item)
-----------------------
Cost: 50 iron coins

Allows you to LIBRARY SEARCH while in a library to perform a search of all its books
contents. Has a 3 second cooldown between searches.

librarylink (no item)
---------------------
Cost: 50 iron coins

Allows you to LIBRARY LINK while standing in a library, to be able to access that library and use
library-related commands for it from anywhere.

warp (no item)
--------------
Cost: 100 iron coins

Allows you to WARP, teleporting you to a random room that you can path to normally from your
location. Does not work if recently involved in combat. Will not take you through doors.

pocketwatch (a brass pocketwatch)
---------------------------------
Cost: 30 iron coins

The TIME command will show the exact time it is in the world of Aetolia, e.g. "Twilight has
overtaken the light in Aetolia. (21:03:30)".

artifact_pike (a venantium pike)
--------------------------------
Cost: 30 iron coins

This pike (and whatever head is attached to it) will never decay. Will reset to your inventory after
one week once dropped somewhere, but can be articalled back earlier.

vortexentry (a chaos crystal)
-----------------------------
Cost: 30 iron coins

Speeds up movement to and from the Shattered Vortex, decreasing the channel time to 5 seconds.

A crystal of the Aztob Cult
---------------------------
Cost: 5 iron coins

You can CRACK this crystal to be unenemied to the Aztob.

A crystal of the Demonsbane Revolt
----------------------------------
Cost: 5 iron coins

You can CRACK this crystal to be unenemied to the Demonsbane.

Alexina

Some interesting items, nothing super thrilling. Would be really awesome to get venom rag and custom wing rooms back (I guess they were a bit too powerful for iron coin artifacts, but at least it meant people wanted to get iron coins on a regular basis).

Riluo

So is the warp like direcall or do you not get teleported into enemy cities etc?

Areka

Any chance the color writing will also work for orghelps?

Obyn

Colour writing works on orghelps by default without the artifact.

Malok

Obyn said:

Colour writing works on orghelps by default without the artifact.

When did this get made possible? With this artifact and recently and such? I don't remember ever seeing a changelog/announce for it. We were all asking for it forever. Regardless, that's awesome!

PS: It doesn't seem to work for a GHELP I edited, with or without the in-game editor. I'm confused.

Aldric

I know I haven't exactly been around lately, but some of these really make me not question that decision whatsoever. I get that the game's a business, but is there really such a necessity to make people pay for some of these features?


colour_write (no item)
----------------------
Cost: 50 iron coins

Allows you to WRITE on books/letters with colour! Refer to HELP WRITING IN COLOUR.

Couldn't this theoretically be done using the plethora of inks/dying materials already available to us from an RP standpoint? People already RP with forms of text with prefaces or what have you that it's colored, and technologically Aetolia is at a point where it shouldn't take a magical property to be able to write in color.


librarysearch (no item)
-----------------------
Cost: 50 iron coins

Allows you to LIBRARY SEARCH while in a library to perform a search of all its books
contents. Has a 3 second cooldown between searches.

Something that's been asked for for years now as a basic library capability. Seems like kind of a cheap move to make it something you have to pay for rather than an innate feature of an already somewhat unwieldy library system.


pocketwatch (a brass pocketwatch)
---------------------------------
Cost: 30 iron coins

The TIME command will show the exact time it is in the world of Aetolia, e.g. "Twilight has overtaken the light in Aetolia. (21:03:30)".

I can see how this could be more of a convenience that you pay for in terms of benefit to vampires knowing exactly how much time they've got until dawn/midnight, but to have this be the sole way? Seems somewhat cheap with no alternative method available that would otherwise make sense from a roleplay perspective (ie your city has a clock in it).


The first and third ones are slightly more excusable, slightly, but making library search an artifact you have to pay for is kinda low. What's next? An iron coin artifact that lets you submit an additional liaison report per round? Putting a cap on the amount of food you can eat in an IG day and providing an artifact that lets you bypass that? Requiring an additional credit investment to unlock just your transcendent skill in a skillset?

Aarbrok

Yeah this whole library search artifact is a detriment for something that -should- be available as an accessibility for novices to find books and for quality of life, not something we should pay for, thats asinine.

Also if we have a time command already why would we need a watch?
(Clocks for major cities as a purchaseable addition from Delve may be a better choice)

but really the library one should be a normal skill, if you are in a library you should be able to search it and not have to pay to do so....

Alexina

Re: @Aldric

I didn't get the impression that these artifacts were added to screw us over. Rather, it seems like Aetolia has gotten to a point where administration doesn't want to add new stuff that could impact bashing/combat since those two aspects are hard enough to balance already and you need artifacts that appeals to the rather large group of people that has no interest in either of them. What's left?

Quality of life (more slots for allies and enemies, knowing the exact Aetolian time, faster travel to and from the Vortex, etc), cosmetics (shield tattoo has elemental messages, worn minipets, ambience tokens, etc) and roleplaying-enhancing perks (writing in colour, vox iterators, etc). These are made available for rather small investments (compared to level 3 sip, etc) and when they are, people feel like the features should have been implemented for free. I agree with you - these are features that most people are not going to pay for and they're extremely convenient for a majority of us - but I can also see where they're coming from.

Moving off topic:
I would absolutely love to see a thread where Razmael/Oleis talk with us about artifacts, the thought process that goes into making new artifacts, how they're implemented (credit artifacts, iron coins, promotional, auctions, cryptic chests, etc), artifact sales (which are really, really rare compared to credit sales), how they gauge the usefulness of newly implemented artifacts, statistics (I'm slightly curious about if anyone at all except me bought the residual expand artifact), and so on and so forth.

One cool thing would be to just see a huge list of all the artifacts in the game (including the limited ones from auctions and promotions) and how many people own them. There's some artifacts that seem really oddly priced too (either too cheap or too expensive).

Zsadist

@Alexina, I'd love to see that as well, along with discussions about how we feel about artifacts that are newly released. Personally, some of the artifacts seem a tad.... pointless interesting, but I can see why they do it, sort of. Additionally, in regards to your question about the residual expand artifact, I think you are the only one who has bought it. Reason being, 30% increase to reserves is nowhere near enough to warrant a 1000 cr investment. Thats completely irrational and utterly insane with how quick you can burn through 100% reserves.... having 130% will make absolutely 0 difference. Personally, I'd rather see the residual expand become leveled to 50/100/200... THAT would be worth a lot more cr than 30% for 1000cr.

Additionally, can we get a coin artifact that allows off plane communication?? Thanks to changelog 1026. it makes bashing off plane kinda lonely.

Riluo

Artifacts have been a major concern for a long time but there has been a ongoing refusal to address it since way back. In reality not all should be tweaked but many should. I could list a hundred things that are warranted in being looked at but the flame war would ensue and I am already at the point where I feel my words and requests are falling on deaf ears.

In terms of a vague statement of items, the residual needs fixed, pray_mat, charm, master_bombcrafter, staff of illusion, and rune_leech.

This is not to say our admin are to blame because they are not, but artifacts are becoming plain odd now and broken.

Keroc

Riluo said:

Artifacts have been a major concern for a long time but there has been a ongoing refusal to address it since way back. In reality not all should be tweaked but many should. I could list a hundred things that are warranted in being looked at but the flame war would ensue and I am already at the point where I feel my words and requests are falling on deaf ears.

In terms of a vague statement of items, the residual needs fixed, pray_mat, charm, master_bombcrafter, staff of illusion, and rune_leech.

This is not to say our admin are to blame because they are not, but artifacts are becoming plain odd now and broken.

I fixed 90% of artifact bugs a while ago. If there's more issues, then you really need to start bugging them. Too many people seem to never bugs things and expect that we somehow know things are broken.

Submit a bug or more importantly an issue if it involves a credit investment on your behalf. Forums aren't really the place to bring these things up if you want a response/fix.

Riluo

It is not so much that they are bugged but more so what others have stated already in terms of cost vs benefit (and thank you for fixing the stuff ).

To be honest we need to find a way to convey this that does not place blame on you guys because you are not to blame it is more the culture of things presently (player-wise) and the need to see some of the older things looked at once more to ensure the money put into the game is continued for all involved. However this can only be addressed if it is opened to discussion in a way that works not only from the top down but the bottom up too.

I hope that makes sense.. I am a bit tired

Keroc

Riluo said:

It is not so much that they are bugged but more so what others have stated already in terms of cost vs benefit (and thank you for fixing the stuff ).

To be honest we need to find a way to convey this that does not place blame on you guys because you are not to blame it is more the culture of things presently (player-wise) and the need to see some of the older things looked at once more to ensure the money put into the game is continued for all involved. However this can only be addressed if it is opened to discussion in a way that works not only from the top down but the bottom up too.

I hope that makes sense.. I am a bit tired

No worries then. Your post earlier seemed to imply there were bugs with those artifacts in question.

If you guys wanted start a thread about cost vs benefit for artifacts, then I'm pretty sure none of us upstairs would mind that. In fact we'd probably love to hear about it. If we can make artifact purchases more worthwhile then there's not much reason not to.