Fixing the Hallifax power quest

Daraius

Maybe this bothers only me, since I don't think anybody does this quest without Fraesic, but here goes.

There are 21 joules available on the Transphenortex Grid: 5 red, 5 blue, 5 yellow, 3 white, and 3 black.

The Primary Generator resets to carmine and cycles through the following colors:

carmine -> lavender  -> saffron -> indigo -> alabaster -> heliotrope

2red       1red         1red       1red      2white       n/a

1blue      2blue        2yellow    1blue

                                   1black

I say the spheres required for heliotrope are not applicable because once you reach this point in the cycle, you have 0 red, 1 blue, 3 yellow, 1 white, and 2 black spheres left, which is not enough to make heliotrope. Besides, heliotrope and the subsequent 'advanced' colors require five spheres, which is a poor rate of exchange since Fraesic can make a golden sphere with 4.

But! Since you only have seven spheres left one you reach heliotrope, Fraesic can only make you one, and your remaining three go to waste. Here's my super simple solution.

Move chartreuse up in the cycle to any place before heliotrope. This will use up 2 yellow and 1 blue spheres, and leave 4 more for Fraesic to turn into a gold one. Bingo-bango, all 21 spheres accounted for. You could even make the final color gold, which would change back to carmine, and cut out all the less sphere-efficient 'advanced' colors. This also has the benefit of netting seven spheres for the Primary Generator, as opposed to the five you can get by exchanging them all with Fraesic.

But what to do about the Lab B researchers? No idea. They're never visited anyway. Maybe an alternate use for the advanced color combinations that doesn't have anything to do with the primary generator?

Elanorwen

Technically, the entire process is heavily underused, essentially why the whole golden spheres thing came to be in the first place. If memory serves, that was added on later. With that in mind, nowadays people just do enough spheres to get the honors line so they can convert to golden spheres and then don't bother with any questing at all.

Daraius

Yes, I guess folks complained about the tedium of combining spheres with the researchers. It's really not that tough to do it the old fashioned way, especially now that the PG resets to carmine. 

I figure if you're going to bother collecting the joules in the first place, why not get the full bang for your buck and minimize waste?

Saran

Daraius said:

Yes, I guess folks complained about the tedium of combining spheres with the researchers. It's really not that tough to do it the old fashioned way, especially now that the PG resets to carmine. 

I figure if you're going to bother collecting the joules in the first place, why not get the full bang for your buck and minimize waste?

I believe it was this as well as the difficulty getting a reliable amount. 

There were tweaks to make the joules respawn consistently enough to make the generation on par with other orgs, and then the issues with the changing colours and not having the right spheres. 

Then yeah, it was tedious and fiddly. If you screw up a sphere you've probably got a problem. When you compare it to other similar quests, it just came up so poorly.

Shaddus

The fact that you caught this is mindboggling. Well done, sir.

Daraius

Saran said:

I believe it was this as well as the difficulty getting a reliable amount. 

There were tweaks to make the joules respawn consistently enough to make the generation on par with other orgs, and then the issues with the changing colours and not having the right spheres. 

Then yeah, it was tedious and fiddly. If you screw up a sphere you've probably got a problem. When you compare it to other similar quests, it just came up so poorly.

The issue of getting a reliable amount has been addressed. I've been doing this quest a lot lately and the number and colors of the spheres is the same every time. The generator also starts on carmine. There's a rare instance where somebody has advanced the color cycle before I get there and it hasn't reset to carmine, but it's only happened to me once or twice.

As for the fiddliness, that can be easily addressed as well, by not having Shufi combine spheres that won't make a secondary color. I think the researchers will only accept the colors they need, but Shufi will take anything in any order, smash them together, and say "It's ruined!!" if they aren't the correct ones. Or maybe it's just the nature of the beast for Shufi to be fiddly, because she has to be able to accept red, blue, and yellow at any time?

Anyway, bumping chartreuse up in the cycle makes so much sense to me I can't even stand it. Poor Daraius is just trying to do his civic duty and it kills him to let three spheres go to waste each time.

Shedrin

I have another tangential complaint.

Empowering the polyhedra on Continuum requires the ability to fly. Not all Hallifax Citizens have that ability innately. This is a problem mostly for younger citizens that aren't trill or an Aeromancer that wishes to participate in this aspect of helping the city.

As far as I know, no other equitable city power quest has such requirements. It would be nice if this could be rectified.

Daraius

How about Fraesic gives out free flight-granting artifacts to citizens who ask, but they only work on the Nexus world, they only grant flight, and they work for no more than an hour (likely much less)?

Saran

Daraius said:

Saran said:

I believe it was this as well as the difficulty getting a reliable amount. 

There were tweaks to make the joules respawn consistently enough to make the generation on par with other orgs, and then the issues with the changing colours and not having the right spheres. 

Then yeah, it was tedious and fiddly. If you screw up a sphere you've probably got a problem. When you compare it to other similar quests, it just came up so poorly.

The issue of getting a reliable amount has been addressed. I've been doing this quest a lot lately and the number and colors of the spheres is the same every time. The generator also starts on carmine. There's a rare instance where somebody has advanced the color cycle before I get there and it hasn't reset to carmine, but it's only happened to me once or twice.

As for the fiddliness, that can be easily addressed as well, by not having Shufi combine spheres that won't make a secondary color. I think the researchers will only accept the colors they need, but Shufi will take anything in any order, smash them together, and say "It's ruined!!" if they aren't the correct ones. Or maybe it's just the nature of the beast for Shufi to be fiddly, because she has to be able to accept red, blue, and yellow at any time?

Anyway, bumping chartreuse up in the cycle makes so much sense to me I can't even stand it. Poor Daraius is just trying to do his civic duty and it kills him to let three spheres go to waste each time.

Yeah, sorry those were just the issues that we had when the city first came out. I think the spawn rate was lower and I'm not sure if the colour required was random.

And we could only definitely do about five or six every hour because the colours required just weren't working, Then the spawn rate was doubled I think. and then a couple small changes to this. I wasn't even aware you could reset the generator.

Malayn

The question is how much power does your power quest generate per run?

Fae on ethereal can be flying or in trees, that is our version of the cosmic influencing thing, so no you are not alone on that.

Talan

I always thought the fiddliness of Hallifax's power quest, and the fact that it takes more than 1 run to complete a full sequence was the reason the quest has an honors line attached to it.

@Malarious : The fae are not the commune version of the cosmic quests. All orgs can turn in fae, and were probably meant to be doing so a lot more often than our player-enforced treaties permit. In fact, the cities get more power than the communes for turning in the fae (though we don't get the creatures you can kill for essence afterward), and we have the cosmic quests on top of that.

However, the commune power quests are significantly less complicated than the city ones. Mag and Halli require killing things, which means they're not doable by brand-newbies. I'm not sure about Celest, but I vaguely recall that Gaudi's is influencing and a lot of running around. Definitely not on par with Glom or Seren, where you can get 10 pixies or shadows in less than 5 minutes.

The only time the current Halli quest is really unfair would be in the rare situation of trying to stave off destruction of the nexus shield as we obviously can't replenish the numbers as fast as other orgs. I'm actually okay with that though. It's part of the whole different-but-arguably-equal-who-knows-we-can-debate-this-for-literally-years-did-someone-say-statues/totems thing that is so characteristic of Lusternia.

Ssaliss

Talan said:

...did-someone-say-statues/totems...

Clearly, this is the Lusternian equivalent of Godwin's law. Thus, this argument is now over.

Kiradawea

Pretty sure that originally the sphere quest were random. The cycle is one of the many improvements that the quest has enjoyed since then as originally it required more effort for less rewards than all other power quests. it is in a much better state, and doing all gold gives power comparable to Celest or Gaudiguch, or 4 more 1/4 times.

That said. NEVER have the generators require gold. Since in order to gain the ability to make gold, you need to empower the generator 10 times. Which you can't if you get stuck on gold.

And the crystals we use to empower our polyhedron are more akin to hunting spiders/plants in the commune trees and putting them into the nexus. Celest and Mag are a bit better off since they get to both hunt nexus creatures and empower angels/demons, where we and Gaudi only get to do one.

That said, yes there really need to be a way for non-trill youngsters to be able to get those crystals. And perhaps make it so that when a continuum/vortex being is fed crystal/flesh, it changes appearance somehow. I'd say it's especially important for the continuum mobs as they move around in an area where everywhere is connected to everywhere else, so to speak.

Moi

Kiradawea said:

where we and Gaudi only get to do one.

Not so! Gaudiguch gets nexus power for turning in entities in to fleshpots at the same rate that Celest/Mag/Seren/Glom gets for putting their nexus creatures into the nexus world exit. This is in addition to the power they get for giving the resulting flesh wads to Vortex critters. This is compensated for by the fact that Gaudiguch only has 10 Initiates for the Drachou Power Quest, making it a bit slower than Kinsmen or Beggers.

Kiradawea

There are ten globes at a time in Celest, last I checked, so no. Not compensated. Just different.

Xenthos

Talan said:

However, the commune power quests are significantly less complicated than the city ones. Mag and Halli require killing things, which means they're not doable by brand-newbies. I'm not sure about Celest, but I vaguely recall that Gaudi's is influencing and a lot of running around. Definitely not on par with Glom or Seren, where you can get 10 pixies or shadows in less than 5 minutes.

I'm unsure about Halli's, never having tried it- but I was able to roll up a brand-newbie a while back to murder spectre boys-and-girls for the Mag power quest.  A brand newbie might have a little bit of trouble getting the hang of it, but I think it's possible, especially given the achievements now for those first few levels.

It doesn't take many of those things to level up a newbie, either.  I actually used the Mag power quest to level up to 80 on Xenthos, way back when.

I've always felt that was part of the benefit to the "more work" part; you get a huge amount more back from it.  (Which is kind of where you're going with your post's theme in general, too- I just wanted to comment on this specific part since I have experience with it)

Karlach

Just to go back to the OP. Is this similar to how you get 15 bowls of soup for only 12 beggars in Magnagora? (not to mention there's enough spectres for near 20 bowls of soup)

Daraius

Sorry Xenthos. Didn't mean to flag that as off topic. Things hop around all over the place when the forums load on my phone.

Morkarion said:

Just to go back to the OP. Is this similar to how you get 15 bowls of soup for only 12 beggars in Magnagora? (not to mention there's enough spectres for near 20 bowls of soup)

Could be! I have no idea how any of the other power quests work. The Primary Generator accepts only one color sphere at a time, or a golden sphere. Our 21 spheres have to be combined by Fraesic at the Matrix for a golden sphere (4-to-1), or by one of the junior researchers for a specific color (2-to1, 3-to-1, or even 5-to-1). So in one cycle you can either get 5 golden spheres for the generator and waste 1, or 5 specific colors and 1 golden sphere and waste 3.

As far as how much actual power this nets, I have no idea whether its comparable to other power quests. The waste just drives me a little bonkers 

Enyalida

How much power do you get per sphere?

Daraius

Not sure. I'll have to check when I get home.

Kiradawea

4 motes of power.

Kio

Feathers placed in the Master Ravenwood are worth 2 motes of power.

Ssaliss

I think Glom has 12 shadows though, so it evens out.

Karlach

Beggar spikes are also worth 2 and there's 12. Makes sense...

Except what the hell are you suppose to do with the 3 extra soup?

Moi

Give them to novices and brandish a whip.

Zvoltz

You should think of the extra as a buffer in case someone decides to pick up a couple soup/joules and then log out, rather than getting in a huff about having wasteful extras. It's a bonus.

Enyalida

If they logged out, they'd drop them anyways!

Daraius

Zvoltz said:

You should think of the extra as a buffer in case someone decides to pick up a couple soup/joules and then log out, rather than getting in a huff about having wasteful extras. It's a bonus.

How is this part of the design!  ~X(   :-L    :o3

Kiradawea

All power quests but Hallifax give 2 motes per object last I checked. Hallifax gets 4 motes, but has about half the items to hand in. So in that manner, yeah the quests are balanced but different.

Zouviqil

Daraius said:

Zvoltz said:

You should think of the extra as a buffer in case someone decides to pick up a couple soup/joules and then log out, rather than getting in a huff about having wasteful extras. It's a bonus.

How is this part of the design!  ~X(   :-L    :o3

It's not a bug, it's a feature!

Malayn

Likr zvoltz said about the spheres, the 3 extra soup are buffer (and means you can skip paladin spectres if you are small).