User talk:LEAFIARA

Here I write about Gemstone Life, The Gemstone Universe, and Gemstone Everything!

Thoughts on Alchemy

Alchemy is a great idea. For execution, though... Other than the [[::Enchanting_potion#Pre-tempering_Potions|pre-tempering potions]] and fancy new titles, is anything from alchemy worth it?

Look at a [[::Wisdom_potion#Greater_wisdom_potion|greater wisdom potion]], for example... It's +10 Wisdom for two sips of 30 minutes each. That sounds great, but you have to throw tens of millions of silvers into mastering potions and then still have to give up like 50k of materials to make one.

Compare that with forging, which can improve every attack for the rest of your life forever and is less time consuming to master and only costs one or two million silver to master! Or even compare it to recharging [[::Enhancive_item|enhancives]].

The payoff to alchemy is just really lacking.

Wishlist

• Decrease difficulty (e.g. lighting cauldrons)
• Decrease RTs
• Make the stat-boosting potions last longer, maybe even having Magic Item Use add duration on top of the basic thirty minutes

Note: I'd call improving alchemy by far one of the lower priorities of changes I'd like to see, but I definitely won't object if some GM takes it up as a pet project!

Thoughts on Bards

First the bad news: level 0 to 34 as a bard was probably the most bored I've been playing a profession. Even at level 35 I think I would have bored for a while longer if not for my wizard supplying near-endless mana for [[::Song of Tonis (1035)|Song of Tonis]] the moment she learned it. Either that or I'd have to burn deeds on Symbol of Mana. (To be fair, that's one of the better reasons to burn deeds!)

But after bards get going they're really a blast--at least up to level 62, where mine is right now! They have a wide, fun variety of tools like [[::Vibration Chant (1002)|Vibration Chant]], [[::Lullabye (1005)|Lullabye]], [[::Stunning Shout (1008)|Stunning Shout]], Feint, and Trip or Hamstring (depending on weapon type), among other things.

At high levels I hear that bards can more or less spam [[::Song of Sonic Disruption (1030)|Song of Sonic Disruption]], which definitely isn't my style and won't be what I do when I get there, but I'm sure power hunters love it.

Also, I consider bards a must for any multi-accounter, and I'm not even saying that because of their group buffs--after all, some professions and builds won't even care about [[::Song of Luck (1006)|Song of Luck]] or [[::Kai's Triumph Song (1007)|Kai's Triumph Song]] and a few might not even care about Song of Tonis. But everyone cares about silvers and loot and that's where bards pay off huge because of [[::Purification Song (1004)|Purification Song]] and loresinging.

Wishlist

Since those early levels are so rough and bards are supposed to be the purest of the semis, maybe bards could get something like empaths have with [[::Bone Shatter (1106)|Bone Shatter]] where they get TD pushdown early on. It can be crazily frustrating trying to hit with bard base against TDs that seem like they're defending against, I dunno, maybe wizards' [[::Elemental Strike (415)|Elemental Strike]]. Either that or I just didn't know what I was doing. Totally possible!

Thoughts on Cobbling

One of my favorite ideas in Gemstone and I absolutely love GM Elidi's dedication to it! Making custom shoes for everyone you know, with your own hallmark and design, is just one of the greatest things.

Wishlist

• A new cobbling punch that lets me [[::WIGGLE_(verb)|wiggle my toes]] while wearing sandals and everyone else will see!!!
• A way to make cobbled shoes [[::Unarmed_combat_system|UAC]] compatible, possibly even with a bonus to MM
• Decrease RTs

Thoughts on Empaths

Easily the profession I'd recommend soonest to anyone, empaths are masters of all trades and jacks of none.

They're amazing at warding, amazing at [[::Bolt_spell|bolting]], amazing at swinging, amazing at utility, amazing at [[::SKIN_(verb)|skinning]], amazing at foraging, amazing at leveling (because they don't even need to leave town), amazing against creatures one on one, amazing against swarms with [[::Empathic Link (1117)|Empathic Link]], amazing at rescuing, amazing in Guardians of Sunfist, amazing in the Order of Voln, amazing in the Council of Light...

And despite jokes about fat empaths, they're even amazing at not being encumbered since they don't have to carry 15+ pounds of herbs. They're amazing at being someone's only account since they never need to track down healing. They're amazing at multi-accounting since other than maybe wizard spells there's nothing more valuable to more professions than healing on demand.

Wishlist

Nothing. I'd never suggest nerfs for anyone and I also can't suggest buffs to a profession I already think is the best in the game. I mean, I'm so enamored with empaths that whenever I think about what I'd like developed for clerics, I usually have to ignore the Major Spiritual circle because anything in it would also have to be balanced around empaths and it's too much of a hurdle for me to have to consider.

Thoughts on Forging

Other than maybe fletching, which I've never tried, this is the least tedious artisan skill and has the biggest payoff. Perfect forged weapons are awesome for upgrading with certificates from the [[::Duskruin_Arena|Duskruin]] high end scrip shop. Also, even though it might seem like such a small thing, having your own crafting mark on your own weapon is hugely important to many characters RP-wise!

Wishlist

Something like a cobbling punch except it adds scripts to toothpicks.

Thoughts on Hunting Grounds

Some special mentions for several of my favorite hunting grounds, in honor of whichever GMs made them!

[[::Category:The_Graveyard_creatures|Wormwood Slough]]

Creatures: death dirges, greater ghouls, greater spiders, hobgoblins

Level range: 3-9

What I like:

• Showcases Gemstone enemy variety very early with a living humanoid, living animal, non-corporeal undead, and corporeal undead all together
• Very swarmy and an excellent place to rush to 5 or even 15 ranks of Multi-Opponent Combat
• Most of the time you get to feel like you're mowing down enemy after enemy...
• ...but it's not without risk since spider webbing is very dangerous...
• ...and yet being webbed isn't necessarily instant death in the way an open roll maneuver can be

[[::Category:Shadow_Valley_creatures|Shadow Valley]]

Creatures: night mares, shadow mares, shadow steeds

Level range: 37-43

What I like:

• An all-undead area is where clerics and paladins love to play
• Very swarmy and an excellent place to have lots of ranks in First Aid or Survival for free and easy silvers from [[::SKIN_verb|skinning]]
• Great favor farming spot for life without leaving a hub for roleplay
• With the wide variety of enemy abilities including [[::Attack_strength|AS]] boosts, [[::Target_defense|TD]] boosts, disappearing, dispelling, ewaves, freezing, and gas clouds, Shadow Valley hunting never feels routine or predictable...
• ...and also doesn't feel overly dangerous nor overly safe
• Unique zone for purposes of [[::Realm_flare|realm flaring]] weapons

[[::Category:Bonespear_Tower_creatures|Bonespear Tower]]

Creatures: dybbuks, eidolons, waerns

Level range: 48-55

What I like:

• An all-undead area is where clerics and paladins love to play
• Bonespear has an unusual, interesting juxtaposition of creatures: dybbuks are incredibly harmless and weak; waerns are mostly harmless but very good at dodging and can do one very dangerous thing, disarming; eidolons are like a colossus of an enemy that's near-untouchable and they're capable of several dangerous things
• It's swarmy, which goes well with the creature variety and keeps you on your toes and changing target priorities

[[::Category:Red_Forest_creatures|Red Forest - Derelict Village]]

Creatures: Ilvari pixies, Ilvari sprites

Level range: 72-74

What I like:

• With the wide variety of enemy abilities including warding, bolts, disappearing, their unique tricks, fake loot, [[::Major Elemental Wave (435)|major ewave]], bark shields, and dispelling, Ilvari hunting never feels routine or predictable...
• ...and also doesn't feel overly dangerous nor overly safe
• The script flips here, as professions like rangers and wizards that normally have more complex hunting take it easy with only two spells each ([[::Sun Burst (608)|Sun Burst]] and [[::Spike Thorn (616)|Spike Thorn]], [[::Elemental Wave (410)|Elemental Wave]] and [[::Earthen Fury (917)|Earthen Fury]]) while professions like clerics and empaths whose archetype builds normally have very straightforward hunting need to pull out unusual things to deal with the tricks (e.g. [[::Fire Spirit (111)|Fire Spirit]] to get rid of bark shields, [[::Censure (316)|Censure]] or [[::Sympathy (1120)|Sympathy]] (even with only one invisible enemy) or Symbol of Sleep to pull out of hiding, potentially even [[::Spirit Dispel (119)|Spirit Dispel]] if trying to uphunt enough or [[::Spiritual Abolition (230)|Spiritual Abolition]] to dispel and bypass their prepared spells)

[[::Category:Wehntoph_creatures|Hidden Plateau]]

Creatures: lesser minotaurs, [[::minotaur magus|minotaur magi]], minotaur warriors

Level range: 74-78

What I like:

Every character I take here has a very different experience of which enemies die quickly and which ones are threatening. (These aren't mutually exclusive things!) And what's key is that it's not only because of profession, but also build, as I'm guessing an empath or paladin with only 1x Physical Fitness wouldn't look on their time with minotaurs as fondly as I did with mine who both had 2x Physical Fitness. I'm sure a bolting wizard who stopped at 50 ranks of wizard base and had no ranks of Combat Maneuvers also wouldn't have a similar time to my [[::war mage|warmage]] who was 1x in wizard base and had four ranks of Feint!

I enjoy Shadow Valley much more than the Hidden Plateau, but with all of my characters Shadow Valley feels like basically the same thing, whereas minotaurs feel rewarding to very specific builds in different ways.

Other than that... I love how minotaur magi save each other and how warriors guard each other. Would love to see more of that interaction among enemies!

Thoughts on Paladins

Paladins are the overkill profession that's great fun for quite a while, and maybe even forever if your main enjoyment is just feeling like a powerhouse. In everything they do, paladins either have sky high numbers or at least look like they have sky high numbers--sure, paladin [[::casting strength|CS]] isn't exactly sorcerer CS, but it can sure feel like it when you compare enemy TDs against paladin base to their TDs against sorcerer base!

Still, eventually they got dull to me when it became apparent that [[::Aura of the Arkati (1614)|Aura of the Arkati]] followed by attacks or [[::MSTRIKE_(verb)|mstrikes]] is all they need to do. Or maybe that's just a consequence of my paladin and empath being a hunting duo throughout their lives, as my warpath did a wider variety of things in almost every level range, which is more fun to me.

They're also a pretty weirdly non-social profession. They do have group spells, sure, but for sharing buffs without joining the hunt they only have a single not-that-great spell in [[::Mantle of Faith (1601)|Mantle of Faith]]. I personally love armored fluidity since I have a trio of mutant pures wearing chain mail or leather breastplate, plus a Tonis bard who doesn't like losing mana, but most people prefer armor support by far.

Paladins do have [[::Divine Word (1640)|Divine Word]] too, but that's like [[::Symbol of the Proselyte (340)|Symbol of the Proselyte]] where I only ever see it given out if the paladin or cleric takes the initiative to offer--nobody ever seems to ask for it.

Wishlist

Mostly I just wish paladins could unlock a superpowered version of [[::Divine Strike (1615)|Divine Strike]] with lores or a really high number of ranks in paladin base. Right now it's silly to me that I'm playing a profession that can take 202 spell ranks and I have no desire to go past 70 or at absolute most 90 (if I decide I still want [[::Wall of Force (140)|Wall of Force]] after getting 202 Dodging).

Training more spells means giving up redux, which is a very big part of being a paladin to me, so I'd need a huge payoff. But, as far as I know, a 162/40 paladin won't come even close to the magical power of 127/75 bards. And it's not like bards even sacrifice physical ability to get that magical power since they're perfectly on par with paladins thanks to Song of Tonis. Bards do admittedly have worse TD and DS.

Still, to be honest, in a way paladins don't even feel like semis to me. Yes, they have to cast Aura of the Arkati or [[::Judgment (1630)|Judgment]] as setup spells, but many rogues cast [[::Elemental Wave (410)|Elemental Wave]] and nobody says they feel like semis.

Despite people who hear about me asking for buffs to war clerics and say I should have made a paladin (not knowing I have a paladin), I do think my cleric is slightly better at hunting with a weapon than my paladin is at hunting with magic. (It's not saying much!) And it's more enjoyable to me to be able to hunt and switch between the two than go with one or the other, so for a cleric I ask for buffs to melee and for a paladin I ask for buffs to magic.

(Weirdly enough, everyone who's ever heard me talking about war clerics and wanted to dispute it has always brought up paladins--no one's ever said I should have made an empath, wizard, bard, or ranger. If they did, I don't think I'd have any argument to push back with except an RP-based one.)

Thoughts on [[::War_mage|Warmages]]

Warmages are a lot like bards that get rolling at level 6 with [[::Celerity (506)|Celerity]] instead of level 35+, and of all my characters, this is the one I've most enjoyed from 0 to 90s (so far). Clerics have a great run from 11-55 and empaths come into their own once they have enough mana to cast [[::Empathic Link (1117)|Empathic Link]] regularly, but for a profession that was exciting top to bottom, this has been it for me!

[[::Elemental Wave (410)|Elemental Wave]], [[::Tremors (909)|Tremors)]], [[::Call Wind (912)|Call Wind]], [[::Major Elemental Wave (435)|Major Elemental Wave]], and Feint are all fun setups. For the low cost of 0/3 MTPs per level and 10,000 bloodscrip I also made heavy use of a 20x/day [[::Bind (214)|Bind]] item from Duskruin, which with the way Magic Item Use calculates CS was better than what a cleric or empath with 3x spells would have been casting Bind with.

After any of these setups, simple 1 second attacks or [[::Earthen Fury (917)|Earthen Fury]] demolish enemies while basically ignoring the RNG because your sheer number of attacks turns probability in your favor. I never ran into much of anything I couldn't handle, as even things like [[::Category:Foggy_Valley_creatures|shan]] that were major annoyances for all of my other characters got steamrolled by my wizard.

The only thing even kinda troublesome about playing a warmage, and it really isn't, is low AS and that's 100% fixable. In full disclosure, I did have my paladin and cleric give my wizard [[::Zealot (1617)|Zealot]] and full-fledged [[::Benediction (307)|Benediction]] for +51 AS (actually 56, but she's an aelotoi with -5 Strength bonus), but anyone could basically do the same without multi-accounting. [[::Bravery (211)|Bravery]] is available all the time from pure potions, [[::Heroism (215)|Heroism]] isn't difficult to get access to because of Duskruin or Ebon Gate, and clerics can put the base benefits of Benediction into orbs. That's 45 AS, and my wizard also was only using a 4x weapon until around level 83 when she finished her 7x maul.

Wishlist

In combat I'm perfectly happy with my warmage and there's nothing more I could ask for.

For enchanting, I wish the weekly mana pool cap was the full 35,000. Yes, I'm sure there would be super capped wizards who would really push [[::Elemental_Lore,_Water|Water lore]] and rack up 95% temper time reduction every week (plus a little extra). I'd be one of them eventually! But would that even be a bad thing? And I mean that even from Simutronics' perspective--wouldn't it encourage buying more fancy flares from [[::Bloodriven_Village|Duskruin]] or having more accounts or characters to enchant more gear? Not to mention the time and money put in to have those super capped wizards in the first place?

Coming Later

Thoughts on clerics, pay events, post-cap, profession diversification, [[::society|societies]], maybe more!