Best Of

It's been a while, but I wanted to share another idea, based on some chatter I've heard in the past month: Deep Ylem Mines!

In the middle of non-Orrery seasons (i.e. 10th Arios and 10th Niuran), special secondary shafts open at all the city ylem mines. These secondary shafts all converge on some sort of exposed central leyline, spanning all the cities. The goal is to quickly bash your way through eld and environmental hazards, intended for a group of 2-3 people, and extract that central leyline for your city. A few details:

• These shafts are instanced and do not have an Open PK aura. Some of the chatter that prompted this idea is about how non-PVP people are never going to be roped into a PVP event, which is true! This is a competitive but purely PVE event!
  
• A new set of secondary shafts open at noon every day between the 10th and 25th. 16 rounds (and therefor possible points) in total. Each city has their own "set" of shafts (i.e. any number of instances can be spawned).
  
• You may invite 1 or 2 allies into your instance, but may not enter a deep ylem mine if you helped with an extraction earlier that day.
  
• Each city is in a race for First Extractions. Multiple shafts may be extracted per day (by different people), but the important bit is who gets a day's First Extraction. A First Extraction would a boost a city's production facility, instead of the Orrery's gift of commodities.
  
• The tethers are still intrinsically linked in this endeavor and the final score is combined by tether. Each First Extraction is worth one point. At the end of the month, the points of each tether are compared against one another, much like the Orrery, and boons are granted to each city based on the difference. A score of 8-8 would be a wash, with neither tether having been able to secure any long-lasting benefit. A score of 10-5 would be great for the winning tether, conferring bonuses to their pylon such as: a free Transmute charge for every citizen; the ability to gather some residual ylem from the Cities' pylons; or a special modification only available from the Deep Ylem Mines.
  

That's the basic idea. There are some extra things that could be added to make the competition interesting, such as:

• After a first extraction is made, other cities have a chance to up the ante by "delving deeper". Higher depths increases the eld power level and the environmental hazards very quickly. Speed becomes less important, in favor of bashing power. It could be required to go deeper each day, so, by the 25th, you are 16 levels deep, if 15 First Extractions had been made already. Otherwise, each day could have its own minimum depth, keeping speed paramount and not locking out people who can't complete a 16-depth mine.
  
• As you delve deeper, you could see signs of other cities making their own runs. Manipulating the ylem of the mines, you could draw eld into enemy mines and make their runs harder.
  
• A difficult to navigate, chaotic map. There may be no way to tell if you're getting closer to the extraction point, save for stumbling on it with Detection on, and environmental hazards make running through without killing eld impossible.