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4) The gnome weapons are aethergoop items, not credit items, so your retire credits likely wouldn't help with getting one. Except possibly by working out a trade with someone by gifting them a credit artifact they want for a gnome weapon artifact being gifted to you. That said, there are ways to earn aethergoop in game, not only relying on promotions. However, there are artifact whips that can also be used, but are not as good as the gnome weapons.

5) I can't speak for Cavalier, as when I go warrior it's as a Pureblade. Monk, however, is my favorite archetype and I have, on various alts of varying levels of lesson investment, played all of the monk archetypes save for the Hallifax and Gaudiguch monks. Monks here are a bit different from how they are in other IRE games, and you'll spend a bit of time getting your head around how they work. But they are fun and can be quite strong in PvE and PvP. I don't check the forums here often, but if you do choose Lusternia and go monk feel free to shoot questions at me in game about them.

6) You'll be able to get the initial 10 wondercrystals if you make it all the way to demigod(level 100), as you get wondercrystals for level milestones. And if you don't plan to take part in any credit sales or the like that can get you wondercrystals, I do suggest it as the first wonder item you build, simply for the fact that it can, eventually, lead to more.

7) Also, you can't buy 11 balance runes to get the speed reduction that way, as the artifact runes don't stack like that. But as Aeldra said, there are a few sources for the various buffs and all.

Hello,

am going to try to answer those as I can.

1) I can only speak for the two orgs that I've been in (Serenwilde and now Celest), I always felt that players themselves could do with a little more emoting at times, but I have never had any trouble finding any decent role playing springing forth and I would say, personally, that itch was well-scratched in either org.

2) I would dare say that mostly depends on your timezone, I feel right now we have a strange balance where there's orgs that are generally not very active and then suddenly very active depending on what time it is. Maybe someone with more insight into which org can say more to that. I felt that in the  last  years all orgs have been very newbie friendly and welcoming.

3) I'm not aware of any systems for sale, but usually you can find someone who can at least share you some basic stuff to use as a basis.

4) "must have" I feel is always a stretch and it heavily depends on your class. for PK, I feel having scent (through a nose artifact) is pretty important, for bashing, having a gnome weapon with the respective 9  gearboxes for extra damage split is prudent.

5) I have personally felt that setting up as an effective Cavalier is not easy and requires a certain amount of fiddling with the mechanics. There's definitely people who've pulled it off. Monk is an overall strong class across the board, both for PK and bashing.

6) neccessary? I would say no. Helpful? yes, of course. The cornucopia has a small chance to produce another wondercrystal once it's at 10 crystals every ingame year (around 12 OOC DAYS), which can help you slowly build towards gaining more wonderitems if you can invest for the initial 10.

7) The buff system in on itself is relatively simple once you wrapped your head around it. You say you understood the helpfile, but just for clarities sake, the first number always says how strong the buff is and the second how 'high' the buff can last before its overwritten. For example, if you have three 1/3 health buffs and then get a fourth 1/3, you'll be at 3 total, not four, because there's no buff that is effective past the three. However, if you get a 1/4 or a 1/5 instead, you'd get your 4 in this example. These calculations are always done for your maximum benefit.

Getting them can be through numerous ways, that can be through class skills and abilities, consumables that you buy with renewable resources ( gold or aethergoop ), blessings from certain quests or of the Elder Gods, Artifiacts, etc. I would personally recommend to not go out of your way and try to max all of those, but maybe ask someone from your chosen org to help you figure those out. E. g. the effect of the balancing runes is very minor and generally having 6/6 balance recovery increase is not as powerful as it may sound at first. Having 13/13 health however may be vastly benefitial.  Not sure if that counts for an ELI5 explanation, but I hope it  helps.

Generally, you'll find from back then, that with the addition of powerful server side curing and the overhaul of how combat works in general, things are a lot better to grasp now. Hope this helps.

- aethergoop generation and sinks

- commodities production and sinks

- gold generation and sinks


The one thing that we still need to determine is what the eventual goals of this should be. Obviously commodity production is one of the big player concerns, but we wanted to open up this thread to give you, the players, a chance to give your input,

What would you like to see when we begin to tackle the economy?

1) No more huge comm upkeep costs on research, and/or failing to upkeep research shouldn't drop you a level, but instead just deactivate the research until the upkeep is paid.

2) Make generation more consistent; there should be valid ways to generate all kinds of comms.

This is an idea that I'm not sure has come up before, but might have some potential:

3) Consider if organizations / villages really should have commodity shops at all (centralized depots for selling commodities).  When organizations have them, you end up with the large "perceived gap" of administration saying "x comms exist" but players not seeing those comms.  Allow organizations to keep their stockpiles or add to them, but repurpose them to be just that - stockpiles - instead of the main comm shopping locations.  Villages shops have that weird "10 comms purchased at a time" cap with wildly fluctuating prices every time you buy 10.

- You could then set up a set of different "traders" that have outposts along the highways.  Each of them has ties to certain villages, they sell on those villages' behalf, but aren't actually aligned with the villages.  Doing comm quests at the villages impacts the associated trader's supply & price, instead of at the village shops directly.

- This detaches comms from org control entirely, and gives you a central place to look at / tweak incoming / outgoing comms, instead of the much more opaque distribution we've got going on now.  Org stockpiles are essentially removed from the equation, they're considered "sunk" comms, much like gold in the org bank accounts.  Prices can adjust on a more gradual scale (if more than 80% of the comms generated sold the previous weave, increase 5% - if less than 20% sold, decrease 5%, or something like that).

- People have discussed having "comm caravans" moving to and from places; you could actually implement some kind of a competitive system here where you can hijack one trader's caravan and take it to another for some kind of a reward.  Maybe the traders have "special comms" that they're willing to part with when they have a leg up on the competition.  Some kind of system that isn't org-based in any way, at least not officially.  This isn't really a requirement, but it IS something that has come up before and could easily be a part of any movement in this direction.

I don't really have a comment on goop or gold generation at this point.  Might have more to say as more ideas come forth in that regard, especially in the realm of sinks - at this point my stockpiles are high, and thus I don't pay any attention to what's coming in for me.  Better for those who are actually focused on the generation to start that off.

3) Any commodity sinks result in a net gain of goop, gold, or experience via the refining loop or the bashing/influencing loop

4) Even artifact heavy players have at least a minor need to engage with the player economy

5) Any gold sinks in place end up supporting item production or the bashing loop. (barring special events like the holiday shops or auctions)

6) No sink feels like a chore that MUST be upkept.

1 and 2 are to help curtail the 'winners keep on winning' issues and to make it so that players who want to engage with the economy without spending massive piles of gold can do so by investing time. 3 and 4 are to make sure that gold keeps moving instead of getting hoarded. 5 is to make sure that gold does eventually leave the economy, but 6 is so that players who sink the gold out see a palpable benefit for it.

I've seen a lot of ideas tossed around but my take is that an ideal system would have all or most trades produce low-cost, short-effect items like kirigami, some medium cost, long-effect items like enchantments, and some expensive but long-term effects like armour. Ideally, all of the long-term things would also have some sort of upkeep associated with them that won't cause it to become counter-productive but might reduce its effectiveness if not kept up. These shouldn't feel like just another layer of necessity but should be really desirable (much like kirigami or goldentonics do.) Traders should be able to acquire commodities relatively easily, but may need to go out of their way to quest for them from time to time. Alternatively, make it so that ALL commodities are freely able to be purchased at a centralized commodity market at a markup, and orgs get gold when 'their' comms are bought from this marketplace, or can restock by buying from it (ie: orgs set buy and sell prices based on their stock levels, lowest sell price that can meet the demand gets the gold being offered by the buyer, highest buy price when a seller sells comms gets the stock being sold.) As a potential gold sink, give traders access to higher quality or rare ingredients from NPCs that offer benefits when used in a recipe or are just hard to come by (:cough: honeycomb :cough:), or offer temporary capacity expansions or commodity reduction buffs. (Or, y'know, the ability to buy vault keys for 500k-1m gold or something.)

I'd like to see players able to do commodity quests to acquire raw comms, and for players with no other option to be able to go to an NPC to acquire a public design at a steep markup, though I'd also like it if tradesfolk could offer remote services by having something attached to shops that lets clients provide comms to spit out a finished product. (ie: Trader who is a bookbinder sets up an Origamatic in their stockroom, and from that point on they can PRICE DESIGN 24521150:24 and PRICE DESIGN VELLUM 42:2. From then on, anyone can wander into their shop and BUY VELLUM to pay 42 gold and get a sheet of vellum, BUY VELLUM COMM to spend a leather and 2 gold to get a sheet of vellum, BUY BOOKBIND 24521 to pay 150 gold and receive a deep indigo flame origami, or BUY BOOKBIND 24521 COMM to spend 3 vellum and 24 gold to receive the same origami.) This would free the tradesperson to offer multiple designs that might be otherwise cost prohibitive, or offer a wider selection of goods rather than needing to stock multiple of the same thing. Similarly, something like this could be used to ease pressure off of the people needing to find specific flavours of enchanter, alchemist, or any other rare trade.

And it'd be nice if shop policies could be more granular in the way that manse permissions are, and to set separate buy and sell adjustments and have the largest modifier apply. Ie: PRICE POLICY ADD PERSON ROARK +20 -20, PRICE POLICY ADD ENEMY HALLIFAX REFUSE REFUSE, PRICE POLICY ADD GROUP GAUDIGUCH REFUSE -99, PRICE POLICY ADD GROUP TRASTO +0 +10 would refuse to buy comms from or sell to enemies of Hallifax, refuse to sell to Gaudiguchians but buy from them at 1% the price anyone else would get, and would sell at price to Trasto members, and buy with a 10% markup, but would charge Roark 20% more and pay him 20% less.

I also wouldn't complain too much if comms got simplified as a whole and the lore restrictions in designs got a once-over. Durile metal, precious metal, stone, powder, gem, red meat, white meat, dairy, produce, rough textile, fine textile, bone, spice, herb. Let certain things qualify as those comms when raw (cows can fill in for red meat, dairy, and bone, sheep for red meat, bone, or either textile, clams can be white meat, gem, or powder, etc.) Commission a mortal reviewer task force whose sole mandate is to comb current designs and convert the comms (AND reduce comms if the pattern hasn't already had it reduced) and double check that they're lore-freindly, and poke trademasters for designs that aren't a simple conversion or aren't lore-friendly anymore. If we're in the design system stuff anyway, it'd be best if the members of a publishing cartel were able to see that their cartel was the one that published a given public design in case they want/need to adjust them (especially since when the comm squish happened, the publishing cartel was the only one that could request comm adjustments).

If we're open to pipe-dream, full-blown overhauls of the system from the floor up and not just unretiring artifacts, tweaking numbers, and introducing new sinks to convert goods into gold and gold into stuff, something about Starmourn's system feels a lot more alive and dynamic than ours, or did when I was playing. Just being able to swap ingredients for different or higher tier versions that you went out and got yourself to have different effects made it feel like the time you invested in getting the comms actually mattered, and that you could be rewarded for tweaking and experimenting, and investing time in the execution of the skill, or trusting someone who had done so, or if all you needed was something cheap to fill a slot, you had that option too. However we'd need to completely redo how commodities are generated and how designs use them.