Living off the Land

[FoxBat]

*Not* too uber? Aren't they max?

It wouldn't matter when you're level 20 I'm sure, but when your a younging that dumps all their attributes into scythe mastery... it's about as good as any twink. Maybe require ascension before use?

P.S. I'd be interested in joining a team eventually, but as a ritualist, who would have to start life in factions. Maybe when the team is past all the elonian-noob stuff? OK I'd have a few more skill points advantage over ya, but the hero point pickings for rits are pretty slim.

[Zed-F]

I'm thinking in the intermediate term. It doesn't take that long to get to 20.

[Lurker Wyrm]

I am highly unlikely to make another Dervish character, so I would not have another opportunity to use my nifty pre-order scythe.

Remember when we agreed that you don't have to use the character strictly for variant purposes. Once we all hit level 20 we're free to go wherever we want with the chars and craft armor and buy skills for them, just as long as we don't use any of that stuff when we play the variant.

They are decent enough but certainly not uber and we will definitely find equally good or better swag along the way.

That scythe is definitely one of the better weapons for a dervish in the game. There are some skills in the game (tied to Wind Prayers) that either require or work a lot better with a cold weapon and the +20% enchanting mod really makes a difference. My dervish used it exclusively until after beating the game, so it's definitely a feasable end-game weapon. The Spiritbinder from Factions pre-order is also a bit of an upper having +15 energy built in to it and also having the half cast/recharge on spells modifiers that aren't specific to an attribute.

It wouldn't matter when you're level 20 I'm sure, but when your a younging that dumps all their attributes into scythe mastery... it's about as good as any twink.

That's part of the reason I was thinking to make this change. Using a max damage weapon when you're not even into the double digits as far as level goes seems a little overpowered. I'm not saying they can never be used (ok, so I was kinda leaning that way) but, the more I think about it, it just seems to go against the grain of the variant to start with maxed out damage.

Maybe require ascension before use?

Well, only problem with that one is there's no such thing as an Elonian Ascension. I'm not sure when Elonian chars are able to access UW/FoW but yeah. Maybe the Sunspear General mark could be good/close enough, that's when you start getting maxed out stuff at collectors anyway.

P.S. I'd be interested in joining a team eventually, but as a ritualist, who would have to start life in factions. Maybe when the team is past all the elonian-noob stuff? OK I'd have a few more skill points advantage over ya, but the hero point pickings for rits are pretty slim.

Once you leave Istan (aka noob isle) it doesn't take very long at all to hit level 20 (and I don't think many people are level 20 when they leave Shing Jea either). Besides, skill points don't really matter since buying skills from trainers isn't allowed. And yes, there are plenty (well, 15 or so) of Ritualist skills available from hero skill trainers. I don't think making a feasable char will be that much of a challenge at all. Especially since you get more starter skills in Factions if you do all the insignia quests after you choose a secondary.

Another thing to discuss: One little minor problematic detail Seijin's found (or not found, depending on how you look at it) is that there don't appear to be max armor collectors out there. That could make things interesting. While I'd have no problem finishing the game with slightly less than max armor, I doubt the people on the front lines would enjoy that very much. If the armor remains unavailable we might have to make an exception to the rule and allow 1 set of armor to be purchased at the Command Post as long as it's not the 15k set.

[FoxBat]

Besides, skill points don't really matter since buying skills from trainers isn't allowed. And yes, there are plenty (well, 15 or so) of Ritualist skills available from hero skill trainers. I don't think making a feasable char will be that much of a challenge at all. Especially since you get more starter skills in Factions if you do all the insignia quests after you choose a secondary.

Well, what I meant was yes, I get more skills thanks to the factions quests. A bit of an "unfair advantage" (Elonian natives really got shafted in this department.) It seems asns/rits have less hero skill choices than the other classes though, so I was arguing that this would be a compensating disadvantage.

I noticed you guys seem to be lacking in healers, and I'd rather not just monk yet again for the variant team. There's certainly enough skills to make a decent rit, but my concern is more making a protective/healing rit to mitigate damage. On paper the dervish looks like a Wammo on steroids, so maybe they play better self-healing tanks and mitigate that healing need somewhat, but still. Looking over the factions skills, it does seem that I can pull an OK protector off, though the better defensive hero-point rit skills seem to come later in the game. (And I suppose I can go monk secondary to get me up to there)

Another thing to discuss: One little minor problematic detail Seijin's found (or not found, depending on how you look at it) is that there don't appear to be max armor collectors out there. That could make things interesting. While I'd have no problem finishing the game with slightly less than max armor, I doubt the people on the front lines would enjoy that very much. If the armor remains unavailable we might have to make an exception to the rule and allow 1 set of armor to be purchased at the Command Post as long as it's not the 15k set.

Bah, they should try nudists. When I first looked at the LoL rules, I thought "big deal, I don't twink much anyway, and I'll just be forced into cookie-cutter builds with so few skill points. Why bother?" (Course I didn't realize how limited hero points were...) I think sub-max armor is one thing that provides a challenge to this variant, without being quite the suicide that nudity was. (You can stick found insignias into collector armor, yeah?)

I'd say you could hop over to cantha if you wanted to scavange max armor, but it seems rits/paragons can't do that. Similarly, asns/rits can't get collector armor in elona, so I'd have to pick something up from Cantha. I'd stick to Shing Jae collectors if we go the collector-only route, since they max out at 45 on a caster just like in Istani. I guess I'd be facing an insignia disadvantage, but that's not a big deal when you aren't the front-line anyway.

[Hawkmoon]

Better late than never, I posted a writeup of our LoL team's "exploits" from last Tuesday over on RB Guild Wars. Our team consisted of myself, Wyrm and Zed. We made it up to getting the Jokanur Diggings mission (meaning that the mission is now accessible to us; we didn't actually do the mission). I suspect we'll start with that mission next Tuesday.

KoP, I looked for a "Voices in the Wilderness" category when I added the story via CuteNews, but I couldn't see it - can you add it there? Is there some reason why I couldn't see that category?

Thanks!
Hawkmoon

[KingOfPain]

Just post to public as you did, since I am not adding any new category. I've added a VitW (html) section where I will archive the writeup

KoP

[Lurker Wyrm]

As far as I know, everyone has passed Jokanur (with the exception of the absentees) and has started Isle of the Dead, getting up to Beknur Harbor. That's great because with the party size increased to 8, we should be able to go out with 1 team next week. There are still a few more quests where we have to go back to the 4 man teams, but there shouldn't be that many of them.

[Seijin]

Since Lahtenda Bog is open to everyone, here's the link again for the location of the armor collectors

2 swamproots - leggings
3 skree wings - shoes
3 copper shillings- headgear
3 silver bullion coins - body armor
3 insect appendages - armguards

[Lurker Wyrm]

I think I'll just edit that stuff into the first post to make it easier for people to find, along with the weapon collectors.

We forgot to figure out who was going to do the writeups for last week and this one, so any volunteers? I can do last week's since there were so few of us for various reasons, but there were plenty of people on yesterday, so someone else should do that.

[Zed-F]

Not sure I will be able to make it tonight. We shall see.