Lets Talk about Reagents for Magic

I don't mind the concept of carrying reagents and certain armor to improve the chance of actually casting - but as things are currently designed, I see two issues with it:

1. - reagents are far too few in the world to make it viable for someone to cast spells unless they have gold to purchase reagents. I would seriously hope that this would change, but I am losing hope that it will change. I also think it would help the "Player Run Economy" if gathering reagents was a viable way for a character to 'make a living' - but it is not. There is a lot of danger involved in gathering reagents, especially for a low level player. I do not object to the fact that it is dangerous. But just try to get by using only Mandrake Root that you have gathered! (i.e. not purchasing any.) We are extremely "resource starved" when it comes to reagents available in the world. I will continue to hope that they vastly increase the amount you can 'find' in any given scene. Also, when you are competing with the rest of the 'known world' [i.e. all the other players - which is going to expand exponentially when the game goes live] there are far too many times when that reagent has already been harvested, and the respawn rate is agonizingly slow, if it happens at all.

2. - the way the system is currently set up, even if one is a "tank" (heavy armor using swords, pole arm, mace, or bow), at lower levels using spells are a necessity. This is because of the way the glyph system is set up. You are forced to either use locked glyphs for a very long time, with the associated lengthy cool-down penalties - swing, pause, wait for glyph, swing, pause, wait for glyph - or you can have a "flowing" deck that has long lags in between times when you are waiting for something to pop up that you can use - i.e., the same swing, pause, wait for glyph - all while the monster you are fighting continues to pound on you. Yes, this improves as your level raises. But it is more manageable if you can also put a few flame fists, heals, and death touches into your deck to try and have something available to use while you are waiting for your next glyph to pop up. I would argue that currently it is simply impossible to run a tank at lower levels without some magic to help you fill in the gaps. And yes, there is 'auto-attack' - but using auto-attack only slows down my gains in the very glyphs that I hope to raise!

So those are my current thoughts on it. I tend to think about the lower level characters because (a) we will all be there when the game launches, and (b) I would hate to see folks leave the game because it is "too hard."

 

Yup, well stated, Raven...

I've enjoyed learning/playing Shroud since the end of R10, which puts me at near a year ingame now.
But, I've played a LOT in that time (Steam says I've log'd 1091 hrs, and I didn't play thru Steam for the first 3 months. So, yea - I've played a lot ) ....
I've been a swordsman, a mage and a polearms guy.

I've stayed in leather for the most part, being willing to sacrifice a bit of fizzle for the added protection, since I do carry a bit of Fire/Earth/Life/Death with me.
I spend as much time working my mage skills as I do on my weapon skills, and enjoy being as good as I can be in everything I use - given the spread in skills.
But when I'm mob'd (which ends up being a lot) I need more than just Polearms, hence the magic in the mage trees (and the regs that go with them) ...

Sometimes I carry regs and sometimes I don't. I understand the penaltys involved and I'm good with it. But when I'm going out with friends and don't want to fail, I carry regs.
Still, no big deal since - one way or another, I've always had sufficient funds to buy all the regs I need.

But, every time I stock up on them I look at the cost and try and imagine my need for regs and what it will take to sustain these needs when we go live.
And right now, more often than not, I find just what you do, Raven - the few nodes that are available in any given area have already been harvested and I need to go to Single Player and check again or go elsewhere.
And I think - "Good grief, we're in Pre-Alpha and I'm on the West coast and it's 9pm my time and some fool has already harvested all my favorite spots.
Wth are we gonna do when we go live and there might be a hundred or more looking for Mandrake Root at any given time ?"

We're going to have a serious problem when we go live if we take our current resource base with us.
Not sure what you dev's have in mind for this, but it won't work like it is now.
That is assuming that you're going to have us gather what we need ourselves..... Which (and please correct me if I'm wrong) I believe is your intent.

Meticulous Collection is gonna need to be relatively quick to raise and the amount gathered beefed up - to make up for the current lack of nodes...
Not telling you anything you don't already know, but when we go live, we're all newbies again.
We'll need lots of nodes that we can live through to gather, as we raise our skills.
And all those who cast, will be needing those regs just to begin casting the good stuff........

Bottom line:
I think most players will not be happy having to spend an hour gathering enough regs for a 10 minute fight.
I can't see how that will work for most people.
It's just not practical or sustainable... People will tire of 60 minutes of gathering for 10 minutes of fun.
I don't mind gathering, but it needs to be much more efficient than it currently is - IMO.

Thanks for reading. I've been meaning to get that off my chest for quite a while now.....