Book Cover Questions

LOL You got that right Bowen, Shuttered Eye here I come!

 

ok, Im gonna head out into the Epitaph today and also load up on them.

But, someone noted that they salvaged 600 books and didnt get any. My thought is that is probably working as intended. It should probably be 1 in 1000 or more. Think about how easy it is to just load up your entire backpack in just 1 room in some places. Im ok with these being really rare so they dont hammer the economy. We have had a few situations now (artifacts, recipes, templates) where for the first few days or weeks, the economy is flooded with things (mostly gained by less then 1% or the population who get 99% of the drops). I hope they keep them really rare from the git-go so they have value! Look at the plummeting value of wep templates and potion recipes right now and how valueless they are now.

Please @DarkStarr keep them rare!

 

Rarity: Player books are already a scarce commodity. Having levels of book covers would seem more appropriate, some being uncommon, others being rare, and still other requiring gold foil or silver foil to make an even rare and prized edition.

We have flying ships and neon dyes... book covers should not be as scarce as a patient book writer.

 

Really, it depends on how they're used. If they're rare, and a pattern can only be used on one book, and copies return to the blank cover, then why bother? Might as well not implement it. If copies take the cover, then perhaps some sort of rarity would be fine for special book covers, but I think in general book cover patterns shouldn't be that difficult to get.

As an author, I would expect that book covers be a useful tool in setting the tone of the book and not something that is too rare as to take up too much time to acquire or something that is so limited that you can't provide identical copies to your customers and readers. Remember, we're content creators.

I would suggest the following implementation:

1. Blank book covers can be modified by applying a pattern.
2. Patterns are applied to all copies of the book, but generally cannot be salvaged from either the original or the copy.
3. Patterns are inserted into the loot table.
4. Patterns are obtained by salvaging books. Rarity of the book vs difficulty of salvaging the pattern should be balanced, but none of this 1:1000 stuff.
5. Patterns can be crafted by using existing symbols from crafting merchants (as you would for signs).

Some of this might be predicated by adding newly designed covers on special books that aren't part of the generic bookshelf prefabs, perhaps only found along quest lines or in dungeons. A tier of availability from general to rare could be expected.

As an aside, perhaps we could have a contest to create myriad new book covers. Portalarium could release a blank book PSD and allow the community to use it to create new covers for submission. I think something like this, which is less complicated than tech reviewing a model, could be very doable with some community help.

 

UPDATE: We have tracked this down. World items have zero value so they cannot be farmed and exploited. Unfortunately this means they also link to the lowest level loot packages meaning they do not link to the loot packages containing patterns. Only the loot packages found on NPCs or on merchants have patterns. We cannot change that systemically without major repercussions to the economy.

So in R42 we will be moving all the book patterns to NPC merchants as pattern packs.

 

Thank you for the update.

I would like to add a request that perchance a COTO vendor of book covers with perhaps a gold and silver foil versions of the serpent symbol and chaos star?

 

Well, I can now stop my scavenging for books. I look forward to the pattern pack update in R42.

 

All in all I think it's better that book covers are sold.

Still.. a book binding skill at some point would be very cool.

 

Stinks to have to wait another month to publish my book, but glad there is a solution in sight.... thanks @DarkStarr !

Now I can stop hoarding book covers from the dungeons with the cover I want.... LOL

 

TBH, we still don't have an answer about whether copies will keep the book cover pattern.

 

In my original set of questions, sounds like they didn't know and didn't consider it yet. Darkstarr said he was going to test it...

 

But that should mean that books with a gold value >0 should potentially yield patterns, right?
So the ones looted from crates, barrels and containers in the wild , or the ones gained from the Wishing well would as well.
(Outside of the purchased ones).