Differences between Lusternia and Achaea

Yarou

Soo .. what are they, exactly? I joined Lusternia last night with my boyfriend @Azrim and half an hour into the game, I got scolded by a Divine LOL. In Achaea, we don't have many active Divines and the few ones that we do have don't usually waste their time with mortals. So being grabbed by the nape by @Myrsai was a surreal experience, though as a character, Yarou wasn't very impressed.

I'm rambling, sorry. The gist of it is: I'm a long-time player of Achaea and could use some tips on how to adjust properly to playing Lusternia. I can see there's some really big differences between the games and although Yarou wasn't very affected by her scolding, I as a player don't think I should make a habit of pissing off the Divines, haha.

So far the roleplay is awesome, which is awesome. I love roleplay ;D

Eodh

When I switched from Achaea to Lusternia a few years back, one of the biggest differences I noticed was that Lusternia does not cater to rogue players. Everything from conflict systems being mostly organization-based (revolts, flares, domoths), to abilities that require membership in an organization to be used (mostly power abilities) ushers you to join a city or a commune.

Also, the lack of a Constitution-style PK Rules. Prime Material is protected by Avenger, unless you're an enemy of the place where you engage in combat. All the other planes are open to PK, even if it is "part of your organization".

Gaudiguch, specifically, is markedly different from Ashtan (or at least, Ashtan back when I played there). It is the City of Freedom in name, and while we do tolerate more shenanigans than other organizations, we do have a purpose that we strive for (Freedom for you, even if you don't want it. You want it!).

Kiradawea

Lusternia uses enchantments instead of tattoos. It has less black and white morality when it comes to cities. A lot of things in the Lusternian lore is built up around the rule of opposites. And there exists an equivalent of every archetype in every city. Even between forests and cities are there similarities between mages/druids and guardians/wicca.

Also, once a real life year there's a megaevent that starts the ascension trials, which are a chapter unto themselves.

Cyndarin

The short version is Lusternia has stronger lore and RP, where Achaea has the better conflict and PK mechanics. 

Gods come in varying degree of involvement. He/She only got involved because you kept insisting Synkarin was female.

Synkarin

I do have delicate sensibilities

Kurut

Synkarin has such a pretty face though! It's all "Rawr, I'ma splat you!" and then you splat, but he's still super nice about it! 

As far as differences, there are a ton of them. Too many to really single them all out and put them in list form. I suppose the bigger ones are the emphasis on community and interaction. Achaea has cities and such, but Lusternia has genuine lore and RP-driven communities of people, and their Divines are, in many ways, a part of that community. It's not uncommon to get good Divine RP, or zapped into smithereens! (If you do something super bad!)

The leveling system, while similar at a glance, is a bit different too. We have Demigods instead of Dragons, and then there's the whole Vernal Ascendant and True Ascendant thing, but you don't have to worry about those until much later.

Also, influencing! You don't have to be a scary murder machine to gain levels, you can engage sapient mobs in influence battles! If you win, you gain xp and esteem (complicated, help file explains it though!) and if you lose it shatters your ego (can't influence for a while) and you lose some xp.

The list goes on and on and on, but Lusternia is a wonderful place with (mostly) wonderful people, and if we seem a bit weird at first - That's normal! Embrace the weird! Be the best angry circle-of-life splat all the things druid you can be! Or burn all the things Pyromancer! Or spoopy secret-keeping Illuminatus! Really, the possibilities are endless, and there's a place for everyone here.

Xenthos

Spoopy?

Kurut

Xenthos said:

Spoopy?

Funny and spooky at the same time! In all my time in the Illuminati, I had never seen anyone who was serious business all the time. In fact, a lot of things are super fun there! You should see one of Ixchilgal's dances!

Enyalida

@Mysrai and Gaudiguch in general is the hotspot right now for divine interaction, for sure. This is a good thing for players in Gaudiguch. 

Lusternia in general also has a larger number of conveniences than Achaea, though notably not a mobdamage or balances config. The queuing is locked behind a skill, but is a lot stronger than Achaean queueing. 

Aithera

Something that took me a while to get used to when making the transition from Achaea to Lusternia (ages ago, so my comparisons are kind of out of date) was the mechanics of power and the planes.

Each city has a nexus, Gaudiguch's being the Eternal Flame. You can LINK NEXUS to draw power, which you will then use in some of your abilities. There's dross power, if you're blocked ( and novices start as blocked) which doesn't cost anything. By the time you get unblocked, you'll probably know about power quests, so that you can add power back when you take some out.

Each Nexus is also a portal of sorts to different planes. There's the Nexus world, which you get to by doing a specific emote at the nexus, and then there's TRANSVERSE ELEMENTAL, TRANSVERSE COSMIC and TRANSVERSE PRIME to get to your city's respective elemental and cosmic planes, and then back home again. 

The planes are sort of layered out with prime at the center. It goes prime > Ethereal > Elemental > Cosmic > Astral. Cities skip the ethereal plane, forests skip the elemental and cosmic planes.

... This may be too much info.

If you're at all interested in Lore, I strongly recommend reading (or listening to) at least the Elder Wars and Chronicles of the Holy Celestine Empire. It'll help give you some background to who the Divine are and how they view the world, and why the people who hate each other hate each other.

Cyndarin

Achaea has serverside curing, Lusternia has an awkward, less successful substitute called firstaid. Still need a system in Lusty.

Havastus

Celina said:

Achaea has serverside curing, Lusternia has an awkward, less successful substitute called firstaid. Still need a system in Lusty.

Luckily, one is coming. Though it's locked behind a skill that you have to learn.

Enyalida

Eh. Curing isn't really locking anything behind anything, it costs 25 lessons and refunds you those lessons the first time you toggle it on, ditto firstaid. I haven't heard any updates on making serverside curing beyond what we have already.

Lerad

It was in the works a long while ago, and was put on hold for the overhaul... at least, I THINK. My memory might be failing.

At the very least, I was under the impression that one of the goals of the overhaul was to clean up the underlying afflictions and defenses code so that it'd be easier to implement a server-side system.

Tylwyth

Well the idea for the curing over haul is so that you don't need 20+ liquids and 20+herbs 4+pipes to cure everything, just a like 4 or 6 cures(each cure covering a type of condition). So, maybe dust/ice and maybe a few herbs like sparkle and Kafe, and then then your basic mana/healing/bromides potion. and one piped item(steam).

 

Nienla

As someone who has played both in earnest, I will say the following:

1.) Achaea puts a lot of stock into traditional fantasy archetypes. You see this with Mhaldor being the "City of Evil" and Targossas being the "City of Light and Good". Eleusis is the Nature-based org and you have Cyrene as the place for neutral folks. Lusternia, on the other hand, puts emphasis on ideology rather than morality. You can make arguments for New Celest being "evil" by fantasy standards or Magnagora being "good". You can make arguments for Hallifax even being "evil", but I think these would be disingenuous to those organizations. They're following an ideology rather than a morality. Gaudiguch is an exception sort of, but even they have an ideology despite it being an antithesis to all the other ideologies in the Basin. Your ideology also has something very tangible and real. You have your respective planes that your character will defend and follow and you can go and visit the very basis of your ideology. That's something that Achaea doesn't really have.

2.) While Achaea definitely got lax in terms of PK lawyers (for Lusternians who haven't played Achaea, Achaea's PK rules used to be like 10 pages or so). Lusternia is even more basic and mechanically enforced. Basically, you can kill someone on Prime once every 30 days unless they go after you in revenge. If you hit someone again, you'll get Avechna'd. Read HELP AVENGER for that. However, ANY other Plane outside of Prime is open PK. This includes your respective ideological planes. This is actually where most PvP occurs as a result. Achaea is similar in that the Underworld and Annwyn are off-plane and thus open PK. Despite all the harping that the Avenger system gets, I can say that as a former admin elsewhere, I'm sure it cuts down on a lot of silly issue reports regarding conflict because someone jumped somebody else (for no apparent reason but usually there is).

3.) I'd say that Lusternia is a step up for roleplay from Achaea. If you played in Mhaldor, Mhaldor is about even with Lusternia standards. I, for one, would like to see more upgrades to our emote system to broaden roleplay, but it's there and exists. There's a lot of OOC clans, like in Achaea. However, unlike Achaea, Lusternia doesn't technically recognize anything as OOC (even OOC clans).

4.) The Divines these days are actually more important in Achaea than they are in Lusternia. Unlike in Achaea though, the Divine don't directly represent any of the ideologies. They usually just have something in common with the organizations that they decide to patron. Example: Lisaera created Mother Moon, ergo she would naturally align with Serenwilde since they worship and follow Mother Moon. Mysrai is all about dem paradigms and so is Gaudiguch, so it's a natural fit. Zvoltz values order and no other city is more orderly than Hallifax. The list goes on. I will say that the Gods are a bit more active in Lusternia than in Achaea from my personal experience. This is likely because Orders have more direct mechanical importance when it comes to conflict and it's easier to go to a God's Fulcrux and, if you're lucky, strike up a conversation.

5.) Combat and conflict in Achaea and Lusternia are where they differ. Lusternia is vastly different compared to the rest of IRE by a long shot in good ways and bad ways. Firstly, Lusternia has a universal resource called Power. Power is directly linked to your org's nexus and you draw power in order to fuel your more powerful abilities. Think of it as like a burst gauge in a traditional fighting game. It's Lusternia's way of limiting you from spamming your powerful abilities over and over. We're getting rid of endurance and willpower (thank god. most useless and arbitrary vitals ever). We also have ego, which is a vital that measures your character's 'charismatic endurance'. You don't have to bash things in Lusternia. In Lusternia, if you get skilled enough in Influence, you can actually just influence mobs instead of killing them. Instead of hitting your health, those mobs will affect your ego instead. If your ego hits 0, you'll have a shattered ego and you'll lose experience. In village revolts, players will have ego battles and debate with one another in order to shatter the egos of the other side so they can influence the village. You can't influence for a little bit if your ego gets shattered. I will say that one bad thing about Lusternia is that, even with the overhaul fixing this, it still has feature creep. There are old skills like Hexes, Runes, etc. that suffer because they haven't been touched much since the olden days. Not to mention, since classes have access to a bunch of tertiaries, it can be make them hellish to balance. Achaea doesn't really have this problem because it limits you to 3 skills per class. However, Lusternia does offer you some creativity. One bad thing that Lusternia does, in my opinion, is that it has no miniskills either and there are a few skills outside of your class skills that are required or highly recommended for combat.

Whew. That's about all I can think of in terms of big ones. I've been all over IRE at this point so if you have any specific questions or how things in Achaea or Lusternia relate, let me know. There are a few old Achaeans that are here in Lusternia now too.