Leafiara (prime)/Mechanical Musings/Project Gear

Project Gear

The Blink: a perfect white ora slasher with a handle wrapped in autumn-hued silk

+40, blink flares, T3 Ensorcell, plasma flares, 110 services crit weighting, perfect forged.

My pride and joy, this thing can clean house when the Divine Fury, Fire Spirit, or Condemn flares go off! What else is there to say? It's very straightforward, but a powerhouse of a weapon. Over time I hope to eventually get to a minimum 150 services of crit weighting.

The Briar: a perfect white ora kunai with a hilt wrapped in vine-patterned silk

+35, T3 briar flares, disruption flares, 80 services crit weighting, perfect forged.

This is my offhand weapon and has all kinds of interesting features like knockdowns, inflicting poison, and feeding it enemy blood to charge up a +25-AS-for-two-minutes feature. The only problem is, though, that it ultimately doesn't compare to a blink weapon. Ideally I'd replace it and go dual blink one day, and when that happens I don't know if I'll keep or sell this; however, I do thematically love the idea of my half-sylvan character using a plant-based weapon, but it truly doesn't compare to blink. If I ever finish a set of +50 Two Weapon Combat enhancives then I suspect I'll like it more, for invasions if nothing else, but being a cleric and having it in my offhand, with only 101 TWC ranks I can't keep the AS boost up forever against post-cap enemies.

The Sprite: a pure white / radiant white katar with a handle wrapped in ruby silk

+40, sanctified, T3 sprite weapon, plasma sprite flares, disintegrate flares, 50 services crit weighting.

I've enjoyed playing around with this and loving the absurdity of a tiny ruby sprite melting heads! It's a distant third behind the blink and briar weapons, but since it's +40 it's one of my only two anti-demon weapons and I fully intend to one day see a sprite zap a vathor to death!

The Iasha: a perfect white ora kunai with a handle wrapped in red silk

+30, T3 Iasha, 50 services crit weighting, perfect forged.

I'm not 100% sure, but this might be the only perfect forged T3 Iasha weapon in the game! Even if not, it's still very rare. It's a highly unique and sentimental weapon because of my crafting mark, to say nothing of how much I love the flares--the Iasha flare text is hilariously over the top.

Having said that, compared to the three weapons above it's pretty useless due to Iasha taking up both slots for some reason and T3 Iasha (specifically T3) being unenchantable and unensorcellable. I really don't know why Iasha is this way; pure black ora can have a second flare, so just on principle one would think pure white ora should be able to also.

(Note: the charts of clarity do say pure black ora takes up Category B, which would mean it can't have a second flare... But that can't be since the black ora no-dachi from the 2016 auction has black ora and acid flares.)

The Ghezyte: a finely honed ghezyte balestarius with a silk-wrapped mithril haft

+35, 40 services crit weighting.

Currently used by my ranger, this weapon has tons of long-term potential despite its innocuous appearance now. Ghezyte has innate flares that reduce enemy DS and TD without even taking up the flare slot (unlike, say, low steel flares, so my long-term plan is to take it to +40, sanctify it, add flares, and add a coraesine relic to create a demon-hacking masterpiece that Leafi can use against some of the higher DS demons when dual katars just won't cut it.

To the best of my knowledge there are only three ghezyte weapons in the game right now, with the others being a kaskara (longsword) and a moon axe (handaxe). The handaxe came from Ebon Gate '18 while the other two came from the first run of the Duskruin Treasure Trove.

The Zelnorn: some shiny red zelnorn chain mail emblazoned with a large white leaf

+18 AS/+17 DS, 80 services crit padding.

The famous offense-boosting metal. Eventually I'll take this all the way to +25/+25, but it can only be enchanted with premium points or by merchants, so that might take a long time. But I don't mind; the additional +8 DS is basically immaterial and there's no rush for +7 AS.

The Shield: a shiny red leaf-shaped zelnorn targe painted with white musical notes

+10 AS/+10 DS.

Another piece of zelnorn, this time a shield. In probably 95% of situations or more I think it's better to use two weapons (and I'd say so even with a warrior or paladin, never mind a cleric), so I'll take my time enchanting this one, but it's there for things like (rare) enemies that are very hard to hit or ward but easy to bolt.

The Ironwright: a perfect mithril-shafted white ora lance

+35, Ironwright flares of fire/plasma/web, 10 services crit weighting, perfect forged.

I'd like to see this one through to at least 8x. Originally I wanted to eventually take it to 150 services, but during early testing, the flares wear off and need to be cast again several hundred swings sooner than one of my blessings would have if I'd put Ironwright on a non-sanctified weapon. I'm not sure if weighting has any impact on that, though, since it's not at all the same as a blessing.

I do like this weapon and its versatility--the web flares are cool for anything corporeal, plasma is a generally good flare, and fire is nice for specific creatures. And as a cleric I can switch between any of those any time I want! Winning this for only 43m at Commencement of Coraesine Forest--well, I'd pay that again in a heartbeat. A little higher, actually, and if I ever see another Ironwright auction then I'd love to put it on a faster weapon next time!

Having said that... I want to bring up two things I assumed about Ironwright, where one sadly isn't true and the other might or might not be true and I don't know what to think of it.

First, I thought Ironwright was a script with double flares, but it isn't!

I figured that since it costs 175,000 bloodscrip while greater elemental flares--which do double flare--only cost 50,000, the higher price must be because Ironwright has a selection of non-elemental options. Plus, many years ago Ironwright had been offered with three flare slots--but that's never been done at a Duskruin, so I thought the reason why was that triple flaring would be too powerful to offer no matter the cost.

But nope, you get one flare at a time and switch between them. So I'm guessing that, to dev, the price difference is mostly because greater elemental flares make a weapon unblessable. And while I'd pay 43m again, my original thought at CCF was that I'd be willing to go to 100m--and that's not true anymore now that I've used an Ironwright weapon.

Second, I assumed that since it takes up the script slot (category D) while also requiring an item to be blessable, it must leave the flare slot (category B) open.

For most professions it wouldn't matter whether the flare slot is open--they'd need the blessing to have the item work at all, so the option wouldn't be there to add a defensive bonus or unbalance flares or whatever else. But since clerics and paladins don't need blessings when Ironwright is on a naturally sanctified metal (naturally sanctified only), I thought I could add something in the flare slot.

So I won a minor service to add a common flare and asked to add fire. And... well, the merchant added fire, but not in the way I expected. Instead of having a weapon with double flares, fire became the third Ironwright option. So--can a person have a four-slot Ironwright weapon? Or are three flares the max and now any additional flares do go into the flare slot? Or would a new flare overwrite one of the previous ones? Maybe I'll find out one day!

The Iasha Gloves: some fingerless autumn-hued gloves inset with sylvan sigils in white ora

+30, T2 Iasha, 50 services crit weighting.

Over the long haul I'd eventually like to have these unlocked to T3 for the +3 Wisdom stat bonus.

The Iasha Sandals: a pair of slim autumn-hued sandals inset with sylvan sigils in white ora

+25, T2 Iasha, 50 services crit weighting.

Same situation as the gloves. I personally love the zests on both of these and I was once asked if they were "Girl on Fire Sandals" as a counterpart to the gowns, but... not quite! I do wish they could be turned off like the gowns since they get a bit noisy at times. Leafi gets a lot of comments on the sandals from people worrying about her feet being on fire, but strangely nobody ever asks about her hands being on fire too; I guess maybe everyone's used to that from fire magic and illusion gloves. One day I'll get a Girl on Fire gown and complete the look!

Miscellaneous Lower Priority Things

• A perfect maple-hafted mithril maul - +35, perfect forged. My wizard swings it and I'd like to add knockout flares at some point, but it's a low priority.
• A perfect mithril-shafted mithril lance - +25, perfect forged. I'd kind of like to add polearm flares one day, but my bard already uses a sonic lance, so it's a very low priority.
• A perfect mithril-shafted mithril spear - +20, perfect forged. I might or might not ever do anything with this! Just made it with some spare mithril since I already had enough lances and thought I'd make at least one grippable perfect weapon just in case.
• A perfect white ora warblade with a ribbon-wrapped mithril hilt - +35, perfect forged, 60 services crit weighting. After checking the math and realizing I could mstrike with a falchion and katar with the same speed as two katars with enough agility and dexterity enhancives, I made this weapon with the very long-term goal of adding blink flares to it. It was either this or a broadsword, which hits harder against plate but lighter against chain and soft leather, but falchions having "warblade" as an alternate noun tipped the scales.
• A perfect white ora xiphos - +25, perfect forged, 30 services crit weighting. A backup broadsword just in case I decide to make something of this one too.