Illarion.org

Its unfortunate that its impossible for merchants to travel on the road with any chance of reaching other towns.
I find the hordes of bandits ,monsters and beasts rather overwhelming even for a tough merchant from Gobaith,
I shudder to think of a new merchant taking to the road (a one way trip to the cross is all he or she will be making),
or you are forced to take the boring teleporters(not an option for new merchants) and therefore not enjoy the wandering
roads of Illarion.


Yes bandits and monsters should prey on the road in places, but having to run arcade game style along the roads through
masses of horrors is just not going to allow a merchant loaded with trade good's to have anychance of success.Nor is there
much chance for some rollplaying on the road, one is often far too hyperalert for horrors jumping on you.
I also miss the quieter woods where you may discover something terrifying,now you know you will! Adrenalin all the time
becomes tedious .

My point being ,trade at the moment on the roads unless your faster than the wind and as tough as a rock is just not possible.

Other thing about merchants is that you can not always access all towns. Some ban non citizen from entering for some reason. Though perhaps this is on purpose so that merchants have to choose a town? :S (A bit unfair for runewick citizen though, people come from other towns and use their resources and static tools, but they can not do vice versa. Though that I suspect might be an issue to take up IG with the archmage?)

I had at first tried to be an escort for travelers but because of lag I can only walk and need to relog often. Others find this too slow to enjoy. For those that can move freely, travel in groups. Hire a guard. This is a co-operative game.

Qeewee wrote:Other thing about merchants is that you can not always access all towns. Some ban non citizen from entering for some reason. Though perhaps this is on purpose so that merchants have to choose a town? :S (A bit unfair for runewick citizen though, people come from other towns and use their resources and static tools, but they can not do vice versa. Though that I suspect might be an issue to take up IG with the archmage?)

Good luck running that one past the archmage. "It's not fair! They won't let us use their stuff! Can't you passive aggressively ban all their citizens from our town?!

There will be times when Runewick will be unavailable to other factions, but now there is no reason not to grant them access, especially something to petty.

If you're going with an escort - given the large amount of stuff which is everywhere, you're going to move very slowly indeed. And since some areas are full of archers, mages or both - you'll probably end up without an escort before long.

I do agree the roads to certain places are too dangerous. Cadomyr is complete and utter suicide. Galmair, not that bad if you can run. Never tried runewick.

The current spawns are much better than a 99% empty map with a few well known powergaming spots with 2-3 monsters. But I think it's gone a little too extreme in the other direction ... the map is amazing but RP won't happen in most of it.

Flux wrote:
Good luck running that one past the archmage. "It's not fair! They won't let us use their stuff! Can't you passive aggressively ban all their citizens from our town?!

There will be times when Runewick will be unavailable to other factions, but now there is no reason not to grant them access, especially something to petty.

Actually this is a problem though, as if you live in runewick, you get to be a tailor, cook, carpenter or farmer, not counting rped professions, while if you live in galmair/cadomyr, you have access to your towns resources and crafts plus runewicks crafts and resources. It is already very visible how people from galmair and cadomyr come to runewick to do crafts/gather resources they can't get elsewhere, even when their main trade is say tailoring, while people who actually decided to live in runewick have no options of doing crafts that the town does not permit, and they can not easily go somewhere and mine ores and then smelt them into ingots. They cant even buy ingots from npcs, which means they have to buy ingots at a possibly higher price than the ones of npcs, and they don't even have one of their towns resources that they can sell to other towns for an equal price, because runewick resources are free to all unlike the other towns. Of course, this isn't a problem if no one lives in runewick. Most people are already living other places, even though they spend most of their time in runewick to do their crafts.

@ the original topic about traveling merchants:

> Mercenaries
> Portals

The road out there IMO should be dangerous and unpredictable.

Qeewee wrote:

Flux wrote:
Good luck running that one past the archmage. "It's not fair! They won't let us use their stuff! Can't you passive aggressively ban all their citizens from our town?!

There will be times when Runewick will be unavailable to other factions, but now there is no reason not to grant them access, especially something to petty.

Actually this is a problem though, as if you live in runewick, you get to be a tailor, cook, carpenter or farmer, not counting rped professions, while if you live in galmair/cadomyr, you have access to your towns resources and crafts plus runewicks crafts and resources. It is already very visible how people from galmair and cadomyr come to runewick to do crafts/gather resources they can't get elsewhere, even when their main trade is say tailoring, while people who actually decided to live in runewick have no options of doing crafts that the town does not permit, and they can not easily go somewhere and mine ores and then smelt them into ingots. They cant even buy ingots from npcs, which means they have to buy ingots at a possibly higher price than the ones of npcs, and they don't even have one of their towns resources that they can sell to other towns for an equal price, because runewick resources are free to all unlike the other towns. Of course, this isn't a problem if no one lives in runewick. Most people are already living other places, even though they spend most of their time in runewick to do their crafts.

And that's going to completely change when the ingame politics change.

But, indeed, that's how it is right now.

I imagine reimplementation of a magic system may have consequences on the different ratios of civilians too.

There doesnt seem to be a reason to travel on the roads to another town. We dont have mules do we? If we are limited to carrying everything we want to trade, then a 10 silver portal seems entirely optimal. If mules are available or become available, then I'll certainly be involved in cross country traveling in order to transfer resources.

galmair doesnt keep runewick residents from coming, mining, callecting iron annd such to take back with them. as far as i know you can go to cadomyr and use their stuff, you just cant be an 'outlaw' and get in, a rather big difference. runewickians should be able to enter if galmairans can. Sure the teleporter gets tedius, and i've gottenb crossed repeatedly trying to get poor lesska from galmair to runewick and galmair to caodmyr, (she made it to runewick..once, and lost her escort to lag)

Right now it seems living in runewick doesnt offer alot of advantages over the othe rtwo towns, my response is.. MAKE IT!!. forma a farmers union, and restrict access to your grains and stuff, itis winter after all, you never know when Zelphia might decide that cadomyr's lack of respect to her temple might make te fishing poor, or Oldra decides the galmairansa re a bit too stingy in their offerings to her and decides to cripple the harvests there. (( hint hint to GM's btw))

HolyKnight wrote:@ the original topic about traveling merchants:

> Mercenaries
> Portals

The road out there IMO should be dangerous and unpredictable.

I totally agree, however the point of dangerous is most certainly there but unpredictable?? no thats missing entirely
you will die...is not unpredictable ,we are talking traders ,crafters and tinkers here, not heavy armored warrior types with powerful physical abilities.

The point im trying to get over is that the roads are routes between the towns, used only by the odd group of hardy warrior adventurers and thats it ,no merchants ,traders , crafters or otherwise ...and oh yes, use the portals! well thats just it,why do we have roads???
Merchants ,crafters ,traders need to be able to use the roads , im not talking of going into the wilds,that should be very dangerous!

It would be entirely fine if the traders and merchants could have some of our taxes used(i m sure of it) by the towns administration to hire warriors to clear the roads in the respective provinces .But thats no good if the monsters just respawn on the roads .Maybe random bandits and monsters could then at a much reduced rate of spawning slowly creep back to molest travelers if the road patrols are not kept up?.

Is the reason you can't move because of the weight of your load?

I've run all over the map and a monster has never even got close enough to hit me, let alone kill me.

Obviously you've never ran into the undead swampdragon.

Obviously you CAN run

Flux wrote:Is the reason you can't move because of the weight of your load?

I've run all over the map and a monster has never even got close enough to hit me, let alone kill me.

Speed depends on many things ,Connection, computer power,attributes ,load etc
No speed is not at all what in talking of .
Example : after dodging 8 thieves,6 human bandits any number of dwarf hunters,running like heck along the road
straight into a war party of monster trolls (one would think they should attack the towns instead of a paltry travelling alchemist),
Warriors no trouble to dodge,shamans not so, hit by magic while running then oops two troll fire keepers burned me while running then oops slightly wrong turn split second wasted turning around ,oops 2 troll hunters with bows ,dam ghosted! and not even a quarter of the journey done.
And so on it goes for the whole road trip as far as you can get while alive anyway.

Hardly a trip to be undertaken with glee if your a trader or merchant.Those who like this monsterama are those who probably enjoy shoot em up games and other such hack and slash things.Let the wild be dangerous YES! and let the things that dwell there be ready for all commers .Even the most notorious bandit infested roads in medievil europe cannot compare to this.
Bottle neck trade through teleporters is not interesting or challenging,a road journey with a large element of danger is exciting but certain death is not.

I like the dangerous treks between the towns, each time is an adventure and it really pays to know, or have someone who does know, the best way to go.

If anything I would like to see the individual towns become even more isolated, and I would like to see the teleporters disabled. I want seeing a Galmairian in Cadomyr to be a special event, not just 10 silvers on the teleporter.

I think it would foster closer intra-factional ties and help promote more inter-factional rivalries.

Towns would have to co-operate and work together to get supplies of what they really needed, rather than just popping down the teleporter.

Flux wrote:I've run all over the map and a monster has never even got close enough to hit me, let alone kill me.

You ever tried running between Bragon and Zelphia's shrines? Requires running through trolls, dianosaurs, two bridges, a bunch of skeleton archers and a mage or two.

Yeah you can run from most things - except from ranged users and natural bottlenecks.

Nalzaxx wrote:I like the dangerous treks between the towns, each time is an adventure.

While I do agree that the 'adventure' is pretty interesting - not knowing what monsters you're goign to come across today...

...maybe not everyone wants the adventure. Maybe the reason player X became a crafter is because he doesn't want to risk his neck and fight monsters.
Fighters won't complain much because of the monsters on the road - its what they want to do - kill stuff and adventure. Its the crafters who get the stick here though.

Llama wrote:

Flux wrote:I've run all over the map and a monster has never even got close enough to hit me, let alone kill me.

You ever tried running between Bragon and Zelphia's shrines? Requires running through trolls, dianosaurs, two bridges, a bunch of skeleton archers and a mage or two.

Yeah you can run from most things - except from ranged users and natural bottlenecks.

Yes, I've run much further than that.

Probably helps that I run at 1080p though so I can see monsters ages before I am in their range.

And how do you deal with bottlenecks?

What bottlenecks? I run 2 HD 6850s, a quad core clocked up to 4.7GHz on air and 16gb of 2133, my primary drives are SSDs and my internet connection is great.

Do you mean if the server lagged?

No I mean physical bottlenecks. Like bridges. Or doors. Or cave entrances, or other places where mouse control isn't very good.

Llama wrote:No I mean physical bottlenecks. Like bridges. Or doors. Or cave entrances, or other places where mouse control isn't very good.

I don't understand why that should be a problem.

You can run diagonally onto bridges. If a monster follows you onto the bridge from the other side (which he normally won't because you run fast enough), lure him across and then run round him. Same for doors.

Ladders in non dungeons.. I just go up the ladder.

I don't understand why one might find that difficult.

I am, as always referring to mages and archers - where you don't have the magical ability to 'run around them' and if you have a bunch of them somewhere, by the time you run past them your health would have gotten a bit sickly.

Llama wrote:

Nalzaxx wrote:I like the dangerous treks between the towns, each time is an adventure.

While I do agree that the 'adventure' is pretty interesting - not knowing what monsters you're goign to come across today...

...maybe not everyone wants the adventure. Maybe the reason player X became a crafter is because he doesn't want to risk his neck and fight monsters.
Fighters won't complain much because of the monsters on the road - its what they want to do - kill stuff and adventure. Its the crafters who get the stick here though.

To be fair, the game as it is now makes classes dependant on one another, making sure neither crafters nor fighters get what they want scot free, unless they work together.
So yes, while I understand that crafters don't want to fight, and don't want to depend on fighters, by the same token, fighters can't exactly loot brand new excellent armor from monsters. So, if fighters are handicapped by poor quality of gear without crafters, then it is only fair that crafters are handicapped by poor accessibility to resources without fighters.
That being said, I love the current distribution of monsters and find it entertaining. I play a fighter.

Playing both crafter and fighter: At first I was disappointed because even my fighter had to run helter skelter through most instead of stopping to fight. There were too many and all seemed centered around the road and bridges. Maybe I have gotten used to it now, even my crafter goes through some to get to more dangerous mines like the one for coal without too much difficulty however don't expect any roleplay nor even a stop to say a "greetings" from the char which is like most going between places now. To expect to have an escort at any certain time or to walk and roleplay as previous though is not happening now.

On the whole, I like not having a lot of blank non-exciting areas as on Gobaith where all roads were safe and boring. I think if mules are reinstituted however.. they need to move a LOT faster then they used to.

The world is in turmoil.

Enough said.

Plus, this is something that could resolved in game with the factions/ faction leaders, nah?... ie the queen will gather warriors and fight the monsters back to the woods blah blah. Can similarly work with the other faction leaders. Not enough petitions and rp on the boards etc imo.

Kugar wrote:

The world is in turmoil.

Enough said.

Plus, this is something that could resolved in game with the factions/ faction leaders, nah?... ie the queen will gather warriors and fight the monsters back to the woods blah blah. Can similarly work with the other faction leaders. Not enough petitions and rp on the boards etc imo.

This has aready been discussed in a meeting in Galmair(IG) and measures will be taken ,have no idea of other towns troubles.
The topic has more to do with respawning monster armies on the road rather than an apathy IG.