Aethertraders!

Estarra

Every so often you will see an announce on the market channel of a gnome trader arriving on an aetherbubble. These traders are looking to trade specific crafted items for aethergoop crafted items. For example, the cooking trader may trade rockcandy for a platter of food if the food is valuable enough. If you find a gnome trader, TRADE LIST will show all the goods that are available for trade. TRADE <item> VALUE will show you what a specific item you have will the trade for. TRADE <item> FOR <goods> will make the trade. The gnome traders that you may see are as follows:

• Chef Gioia Shucks will trade aethercandy for crafted food
• Rubie Royale will trade aetherbuttons for crafted jewelry
• Raphie DiGagio will trade aetherscarves for crafted clothes

NOTE: The aethertraders will only make one trade and will disappear afterwards so they are available only on a first come, first serve basis.

The valuation of crafted items is determined by how much a crafter has refined the item, which can be done by combining it with another item of the exact same design or with gold. The Refinement Skill is now available in Cooking, Tailoring and Jewelry which also allows the crafter to see the valuation when probing. There is also a Valuation skill in Discernment which allows seeing the valuation when probing any crafted item that is tradeable.

Aethergoods can, of course, be broken down to aethergoop and gold, which is a way to convert commodities (or gold) to aethergoop. Keep in mind aethertrades are limited and therefore will be somewhat competitive.

This is an experimental system, but the aim is to give crafters more incentives and gameplay. As more aethergoop crafts are added for more trade skills, more aethertraders could show up. Also, once timequakes come online, the traders could also trade anomalies for crafted items (so crafters would be a more integral part of the guild research project system).

Rancoura

Sounds neat! Does "one trade" consist of e.g. one aetherbutton for one piece of jewellery, or will we be able to trade multiple crafted items at once?

Edit: Also, is there a rough estimate of how often will they be available?

Pysynne

What about Alchemy which also has aethercrafted items?

Jolanthe

Just a general question: will they always announce as soon as they arrive?

I feel like I will never win any fly-by races against people with bubblixes and the like, but if they wait randomly like an hour to three hours before announcing themselves impatiently, I feel like that'd give some people chances to stumble upon them accidentally.

Estarra

One trade for one piece of jewelery. But a maximum refined piece of jewelery is worth double what you would get from 10 pieces of substandard jewelery (the lowest value that can be traded), so refining is definitely the way to go maximize profits.

Estarra

They will always announce on market channel (if you have that channel on) when they arrive at an aetherbubble.

Kalnid

This seems kinda like you're entirely unable to compete without bubblixes. Buttons exist, but it sounds like you only get one piece per trade? So you're spending a button and some comms to earn one button. Also, what do you mean by 'refined', just stuff that needs more comms per item like masterweapons or crowns?

oh whoops there's helpfiles on it already, "Some crafted items have a valuation based on the number of commodities used to create them and the skill of the crafter." so yeah comm count based

Estarra

A super-refined piece of jewelery will net multiple buttons.

Jolanthe

It looks like the refine/fusion also combines the decay times, which is a nice practical touch either way.

Aydeksa

I'm confused as to why a clear commodity sink is restricted to one person at a time. Wouldn't it make sense to maybe give a 10 minute window that the mob stays there and accepts all your garbage clothes, jewelry, and food?

Lycidas

Or at the least, one trade per character? Otherwise it seems like just a waste. You've crafted this item to trade away, now you just patiently wait to try and be the first, against people who have instant teleports there, one way or another.

Estarra

Basically, I want to start slow and see how the system is used. What I definitely don't want is to turn on an aethergoop spigot for limitless 'garbage' items. Also, it provides some competition and isn't just a 'free' handout with no effort. It will require people to refine to maximize output as well as having to compete to be the first to get to the traders. Of course, adjustments can be made in the future but I don't think it will be in terms of 'windows' of time where you can convert limitless amounts of items to aethergoop.

Aydeksa said:

I'm confused as to why a clear commodity sink is restricted to one person at a time. Wouldn't it make sense to maybe give a 10 minute window that the mob stays there and accepts all your garbage clothes, jewelry, and food?

Estarra

BTW, I think I'd like to do something with forging next if anyone has ideas for an aethercraft for forgers. I'm thinking of aetherknives, though I'm not sure what they'd do.

Aydeksa

Aetherknives - Cut yourself some slack and get a TrueFavour and XP bonus for a short time.

Jolanthe

Aydeksa said:

I'm confused as to why a clear commodity sink is restricted to one person at a time. Wouldn't it make sense to maybe give a 10 minute window that the mob stays there and accepts all your garbage clothes, jewelry, and food?

It looks like the cooking one has already repopped at least once, so if they're relatively frequent in that they'll keep on popping every couple of hours, then that seems more acceptable. This would be doubly true if everyone decides to invest time in refining to maximum value for trades - it will inevitably lead to different people getting pick ups since the time, commodity, and power investment might otherwise dictate you'd not have time for anything else.

But we'll see.

Kalnid

Instead of making it first there, make it a single trade per person per spawn. It's still limited, it scales with population, and it's less of a kick in the teeth if you burn a button on it and someone else gets there first.

Shaddus

Another way for whales to get ahead. A majority of players are never, ever going to use this system. If it's one person, it's going to be whatever person is quickest about hitting a bubblix alias and tracking down the trader.

Ayisdra

So, refinement looks to rather power heavy (and gold heavy if you use that). Why would I ever use refinement instead of just making a design that uses x100 the comms than what is required? I could easily just make a ring that uses 1000 comms and probably hit the max valuation without having to bother with refinement.

Jolanthe

Another good question: is the value shown via TRADE <item> VALUE subject to change/randomness, depending on the current spawn? Right now it is only possible to check the value of something if you are in front of a trader. This would make sense if the trade possibilities can vary, but if it is static, would it be possible to have a way to determine value without having to find a trader first?

If the value can be variable, it might be a prudent gesture to have diminishing returns if a single person is always getting the same trader to themselves, too. Not a must have, and maybe not the best solution to combat whale bloat, but it at least would force the hoarder to get one other person involved in their scheme for a workaround.

Shaddus

The following is going to be a disjointed mess of ideas.

Aetherknife (aetherbracers?): use to give (bonus damage) or (bonus experience gained from) or (reduced damage from) ->specific (creature types) or (on specific terrains/areas: think miniature master crowns) or

(half creature battle balance). 




Aetherknife: give to an order mob, and they are removed from the area, going inside the knife. Dropping the knife in another god realm will release the essence, spawning one of that godrealm's mobs instead. Doesn't cost the former god essence. 

Aetherbracer: use this to customise a personal ambient. Fill with goop items to burn them up into essencegoop (?), powering the bracer and releasing the ambient once an ingame day.

Aether(whet)stone: add chance (15%?) Of bonus damage during hunting. Like a critical but just a bit more oomph when you hit. I guess it would be like getting a random chance of a 1/13 universal damage buff when you hit.

Jolanthe

Okay, so I happened to have a refined pendant on hand when Rubie procced on Crumkindivia last, and using teleport construct to reach the bubble quickly and without extra cost to my person was a great way to try to claim the trade.

The pendant was refined twice, so basically cost three pendants to produce, or: 18 cut gems and 20 power. I managed to trade that for three buttons.

That might be too much for the value of the commodities and power? It felt like a really great deal, but it might be too much with how easy it was to otherwise come by and produce. I hope this isn't a system where I'd just scale upwards 1 button per refinement or so, otherwise there's not much point in refining. That or you might want to set a minimum commodity value for an item to actually gain trade valuation.

Enya

This sounds like a bad idea to solve a problem that doesn't exist, and fill a niche players weren't asking for - all while they're literally begging for doing any variety of other things... Including projects that have been bumped time and again so that "all coding resources" can go towards Timequakes. 

Xenthos

Jolanthe said:

Okay, so I happened to have a refined pendant on hand when Rubie procced on Crumkindivia last, and using teleport construct to reach the bubble quickly and without extra cost to my person was a great way to try to claim the trade.

The pendant was refined twice, so basically cost three pendants to produce, or: 18 cut gems and 20 power. I managed to trade that for three buttons.

That might be too much for the value of the commodities and power? It felt like a really great deal, but it might be too much with how easy it was to otherwise come by and produce. I hope this isn't a system where I'd just scale upwards 1 button per refinement or so, otherwise there's not much point in refining. That or you might want to set a minimum commodity value for an item to actually gain trade valuation.

I was told that it's supposed to take 100 commodities to get to the first level.  How were you able to get so much in trade for 18 comms?  I combined a bunch of things together that were 10 comms each and still had no value on the Cooking mob.

Jolanthe

Xenthos said:

I was told that it's supposed to take 100 commodities to get to the first level.  How were you able to get so much in trade for 18 comms?  I combined a bunch of things together that were 10 comms each and still had no value on the Cooking mob.

If that's true, then maybe it's a bug with the jewellery sets specifically? I can always bug it, I suppose.

This was literally my first interaction with the system myself, rather than sitting and watching other people trade.

EDIT: I guess I should also point out that the item's trade valuation was listed as "substandard", so it wasn't really high value either way. Makes me very curious about how this is supposed to curve in the higher tiers of trade value.

Steingrim

Jolanthe said:

If the value can be variable, it might be a prudent gesture to have diminishing returns if a single person is always getting the same trader to themselves, too. Not a must have, and maybe not the best solution to combat whale bloat, but it at least would force the hoarder to get one other person involved in their scheme for a workaround.

How would you know if someone saw that trader between the time you took a break and saw it again?

Lycidas

Going for broke on forging, here's to hoping:

Dwarven Offensive Rune - grants a 1/13 universal damage buff for 1 hour.
Dwarven Defensive Rune - grants a 1/13 universal damage resist for 1 hour.
Aether Whetstone - Increase crit chance by .5% per use for 1 hour. Cap of 5 stacks  (think cooking crit food)
Owner's Brand - Makes an item reset to the owner after 1 hour per use, even if not an artifact.

Estarra

We can certainly look at adjusting valuation and whatnot, but my tests seemed like it was pretty fair. I think 1000 commodities returned like ~80-90 charges which could then be broken down to gold and comms so the conversion was what I thought was a fair rate.

I'm sorry if you didn't like the idea! This was a pet project of mine and didn't distract from timequake coding at all (i.e., Orael didn't spend any time on it). I felt it was important as a commodity sink and part of balancing the economy which is what I've been looking at, as next I want to start capping commodity stores and decaying comms outside of rifts. I'm really not the one to work on coding mages if that's what your concern was. Our coding resources is basically Orael and he's focused on timequakes->artifacts->reports->mages in the near future, but that doesn't mean I'm incapable of doing side projects which, as I said, is focused on the economy.

Estarra

I should clarify that the first level that makes trading possible is 100 commodities BUT the skill level of the crafter is also taken into account. (I can look at jewelery again though to make sure nothing strange is going on.)

Jolanthe

Estarra said:

I should clarify that the first level that makes trading possible is 100 commodities BUT the skill level of the crafter is also taken into account. (I can look at jewelery again though to make sure nothing strange is going on.)

Would Beauteous Working be having some sort of effect on it? Maybe if prestige has some tie-in, that'd explain it.

Estarra

Thanks for suggestions for forging ideas! I'm wondering if people want something more utility based rather than combat based (since that's always a stickler). Or whatabout special stones or rivets or whatever to fill armour slots that do something neat?

Shango

Estarra said:

Thanks for suggestions for forging ideas! I'm wondering if people want something more utility based rather than combat based (since that's always a stickler). Or whatabout special stones or rivets or whatever to fill armour slots that do something neat?

Thoughts as to what, would constitute as 'neat' in this context?