It's in an open-beta-state. You can sign up for a 15 day trial for no cost at Goblinworks. If you want to stay live after that, it's about 12-15 a month depending on how you choose to pay. If not, you can simply let the character go inactive after 15 days, and try again later, if you want, by paying for 1 month, or (theoretically) by trying a new 15-day trial account if you have a different email address (but that original trial will have about 35k xp by the time it goes inactive, which you'd have to wait for all over again.).

There isn't a large population yet. Depending on when you are in, you might be the only person (or at least the others are not responding in general chat) or there might be 10 or 20 or a hundred. If there's more than that, most of them are keeping their heads down.

There are some basic mobs to fight near the starter shrine, and mats to gather, and you can craft gear in the starter town if you care to put xp into crafting skills. You start with only a little XP, and get 2400 more per day during your trial, or any time you have paid time active.

There is a new company that has shown a commitment to the game (They're currently paying for half the costs of keeping the game active) They've indicated they hope to be finalizing over the summer, but it probably won't change the game much for a few months anyway (it's currently on a skeleton staff, with bug fixes plus a few new features once every couple of months)

Personally, I'd suggest creating an account, logging in to start a character, run around for a few minutes, kill a half dozen goblins (or more if you enjoy it) to get a rough feel, then park it for a few days until it has a few thousand XP so you can more easily run the quests for your preferred roles, and maybe do a little extra training before tackling a more thorough trial. If you start a toon today, by Sunday it will have about 10k xp. You interact with quest givers by right-clicking. Attacking anyone near a thornguard will get you killed, but they have a short memory. Right by the shrine is an extremely basic movement quest to get you started (look for a glowing woman).

There are some basic info docs in linked in the starter app, and you can see the controls at the PFO wiki

Everything is more fun if you have a group of people to work with, especially if they have a little experience. Various alliances have various voice rooms for chatting. If you have Mumble installed, there's an open mumble at golarion.mumble.com see goblinworks post here. Most North America evenings there are at least a couple of people there you can chat with while playing. At random times, there might or might not be anyone visiting.

The Goblinworks forums (link above) are a good place to find people, who can guide you to where they are hanging out. You can read the public areas, but can't post until you have an account (active or trial).

Is it essentially dead or what? I read an article about the devs firing all but three of their staff and if that isnt a death knell for a game I dont know what is.

What the hell happened O.o

It didn't get the uptake they were hoping for, so they ran low on funds. At the moment, it's primarily in a holding pattern while they look for options, with only one more significant update scheduled for the next week or two, then a focus on polish. They're bringing in enough to keep the servers on and a skeleton staff going, but it's pretty quiet in game, currently. If you can connect with an active group, or like exploring by yourself, there's some stuff to do that may make it worth checking out. Otherwise, you might consider checking back in a couple of months.

I would like to claim the entire map.

Too late. Xeilias prior claim

You have reached the correct conclusion. I was trying to indicate (in response to Bringslite) that while Bluddwolf has plenty of his own abrasion, the bulk of the nasty stuff targeting Brighthaven and her allies did not come from him. I will exit your thread, now, with apologies that this took up so much space.

I do wonder why the EBA came out ready to rumble. Probably has nothing to do with two plus years of forum fun in which they were assured that they would fail, be outclassed in PVP, and in general be unable to "survive" in this deadly game.

To be fair, I think the majority of that came from Andius.

So if Golgotha and Stoneroot have an NAP, and Golgotha agrees not to to interfere between Stoneroot and Callambea, but later decides something is different and Golgotha helps Callambea take a tower, that's okay, not a violation of the NAP, and any attempt to take the tower back would be an act of war. But if Brighthaven and Golgotha have an NAP, and Brighthaven decides something has changed and helps Phaeros take some towers from Golgotha, that's a violation of the NAP and punishable by random murder.

Have I got this right?

Citizens from a number of settlements in the North and West of Golarion recently held council and elected to work together on Trade, Training, and Environmental Threats as "The Coal Road." The Road begins in the Bulwark Hills, and goes wherever the need for coal takes us.

Many of us will co-operate on a new place of socialization. We have begun gathering at coalroad.com.

Those interested in finding like minded gatherings are welcome to sign up at any time. Please identify yourself to the site as a resident of a Coal Road community, and which settlement you are in or plan on joining, or as a Friend, or Trading partner.

There are several administrators from each of the participating settlements so that new participants can feel welcome with all speed.

Up-to-date info on the Goblinworks Forums

I've turned to out-of-game distractions, mostly, waiting on changes. Fortunately for me, the forums are almost as entertaining as the game (Perhaps not so fortunate for the game.)

Well that seems unlikely, even if the hour wasn't up.

I just want to be able to stab people my character is standing right next to. Is that to much to ask for?

I could not stab them here or there.

Here is a solution, put some way to contact GW through the settlement UI, and you have to be part of that settlement to send a message/press the button. This will limit it being spammed, and they know exactly which person/community is using it.

Or a "/chatreport" type command that captures the last page or two of the chat and emails it to a team. Then they know who reported and what account was the problem without any further work.

By "quick access" I only mean a way to signal. All they need is to have a trigger that informs everyone in a group who then know that something is happening in game that needs a look. They don't need to be able to talk to them at all. And for that matter, Bluddwolf is right, it doesn't have to be restricted, though if anyone can trigger it, there's a chance for some annoying abuse, but that's a bridge that can be crossed if it becomes necessary.

The key is not value, or over-site, but buy-in. When two things are identical, but you have a designated role in one (i.e., a seat on a board, even if the board does very little) it is a point in favour of continuing to support that entity. Having groups know that they have a role, and a voice, whether anything is done or not, is a valuable incentive for support. It's the reason some of us are still playing PFO.

I'm not talking out of my ass, here. I've been involved in multiple non profit boards in the arts and health-care for more than a decade and having a specified connection invariably improves buy-in for external entities. Even if the entirety of their actual participation is getting an annual report and a thank-you plaque.

A player belongs to a settlement which is officially at war with my settlement.

And not just to be converse, what if he should be white to me but successfully bluffs that he is red? Do I lose rep for killing him? Do I get flagged red for hitting him? Bandits could make good money from pretending to be Golgothans/Brighthavenites until the first blows are struck.

Consigliere is an actual word, which translates "Adviser" and in the popular mythos of the mafia is an adviser/lieutenant to a particular individual, not an acquisitions specialist for anyone that wants something.

Procurer, or Broker are more accurate for those that don't like Concierge.

Hi folks, a generous donation to supporting the Golarion Mumble on behalf of the Emerald Lodge came in this morning. It is almost enough to:
1) increase users from 50 to 75
2) stretch the mumble from two years to three with the existing users.

Whatever EL members feels is most useful, I will probably underwrite the extra unless more donations come in.

The eventual intent is that looting from a body where you don't have "rights"* will cause a criminal flag. One thing they've talked about (in the blog "Blood on the Tracks" and "Gypsies Tramps and Thieves" is a "Thief" flag. A little more recently, in "Some Good Reason for Your Little Black Backpack" they dropped the redundant "thief" flag and referred to only a generic "criminal" flag.

*I'm guessing if you took a rep hit for the kill, you'll have rights, plus things like fatal blow, most damage, maybe in the company that got the kill and did some damage, but at the moment it's all speculation.

Caldeathe Baequiannia wrote:

take up threads

heh- did you mean soul threads or forum threads?

Since it's impossible for anything to not take up forum threads, I'm going with both.

In a recent Thornkeep fireside chat there was talk of the knowledge of players with 10 to even 40 accounts.

Those players have no realistic way of utilizing territory any more than a player with one account, but they can certainly swell a settlement's population numbers.

If an organized settlement has even distribution of gatherers among active players, while a small number of people play a large number of crafter alts that continually keep their crafting queues full, they can easily make more efficient use of territory (hexes/account) than a group made of single account holders that rarely play.

I also like them. Some consolidation into perhaps 1-3 clusters per hex would make them more substantial and landmarkish.

Yes, but now that it has been moved out of the Pathfinder Forums, and into the Pathfinder Online forums, none of the people who discovered it who actually have unused accounts will ever see it again. All of the posts that appeared before yours were from people who never visit the PFO forums, and it was successful in directing several of them here. Now it is dead.

I think most PvP'ers understand that mentality. They just don't care.

Which is one of the things that reinforces....

@Summersnow, your extreme anger that the game is not what you want has been made clear in the past, but does not make it okay to invent motivations for other people's actions.

because every real world glorious military victory that led to dancing in the streets was a tragedy for someone else.

Real world, or not, actually.

We could all stand to remember that every time someone wins, someone else loses. Whether it's a bandit encounter, or a forum encounter. And sometimes (all too frequently) there's a third loser, in the form of the game population.

@Midnight, A toon can't activate more than one premium structure at a time.

I agree that 15 days feels too long, but I'm not sure what they are concerned about. They have to balance a relatively inexpensive premium item against the game, and are obviously worried about some game mechanic failing to too quick a redeployment.

Can anyone outline a problem scenario if the cooldown were short?

Once you have all that stuff slotted, switch to your implement to populate the hotbar and UNSLOT the Agile Feet and Minor cure with 'charging' in their description, (they can put you under the world)

Although actually, if escape is your only goal, and being

Blue Skies
Toon has gone blue sky
Like a deep blue screen
On a blue blue day
Blue skies
Toon has gone blue sky
When the reset comes
I'll be far away
And I say

Blue sky waiting for reset
Holding back the pain
Toon has gone blue sky
I’m alone
Again

Blue skies
Toon has gone blue sky
Like a clear blue sky
Looming over me
Blue skies
Oooh I hate blue skies
When I'm out of game
So impatiently
I will see

Blue skies filling up the screen
Laughing at my pain
Toon has gone blue sky
When reset comes,
I will be far away

Blue skies filling up the world
Laughing at my pain
Toon has gone blue sky
And I am lost,
Again

I'd hope that GW decides to only have guards near bank and at respawn shrines.

I think that would be a nail in the coffin for a lot of players, myself included. Settlements can set their own thresholds as low as they want. There's no good reason why people should have to expect that they can be easily and readily killed by anyone, any time, while standing in the streets of their home town.

They have Elite Knights, and elite goblins, and elite etc as achievements ….. One could presume once influence is introduced the amount gained is going to be based on the actual achievement and not equal to just the number of the achievement. Goblin slayer 7 is most likely not going to count the same as ogre slayer 7 in regards to the influence you gain…

I think the devs will have to walk a fine line with treating some achievements as more worthy than others, or no company will ever want crafters. You can currently get 10 achievement points for making a single +3 0-level crafted item with mats handed to you by someone else. A 1000xp character, provided with the right materials, could get a large number of achievement points for almost nothing, so presumably crafting achievements will be essentially worthless when it comes to influence?

More direct to this conversation, we're not talking about category points, but weapon points. Someone with the achievement "Longbow 10" for killing 8000 ogres will, in fact, be treated the same as someone with the achievement "Longbow 10" for killing 8000 starter goblins.

Mine was a five (or more) way tie (at least in the first few hundred favourited posts)

General themes likely to get more than half a dozen likes: Cooperation, Role-play within Golarion, and responses to Audoucet.

So, instead, the thread I enjoyed the most "Settling In"

On the other hand, an Ogre Lout tossed me a level 3 fireball spell with it's dying breath yesterday.

Depending whether you want +0 +1 +2 +3, the following are the ingredients necessary to make 6 Azure Crystals (one recipe)

Esoteric Essence-10 / Ordered Essence-5 / Lesser Numinous-3
Esoteric Essence-14 / Ordered Essence-8 / Lesser Numinous-4
Esoteric Essence-21 / Ordered Essence-12 / Lesser Numinous-6 / Copper Ore-1
Esoteric Essence-26 / Ordered Essence-15 / Lesser Numinous-11 / Copper Ore-5

There is a sage in Alderwag that can make them at any level if you need them and are in that area. We can discuss a trade for recipes, or you can provide the input materials +50% extra, or some combination of other materials of similar value.

The Pathfinder Online Developers have officially moved their presence to the Goblinworks Forums.

Any developers that appear here do so out of their own interest, or as a courtesy. They are not looking for ideas here, and are not generally checking these boards for people that need assistance.

I am in no way connected with Goblinworks or Paizo, and this is not an official message from either company.

oh and another late night too-tired thing is the scrolling Circle button is a couple millimeters away from the "TRAIN" button ... that happened to me too but it was Bluff 1XP so no biggie but WOW THAT COULD HAVE BEEN A HUGE mistake rofl

so maybe GW can move the scrolling circle to the left side of the training pages like it is on other screens OR institute a "Are you sure" second screen

There are a number of issues that could be helped by having the windows a bit bigger, but it might also make certain things more difficult if you like keeping windows open during other activity. I'd like to see resizable windows, so you can see the whole name of a recipe or material, instead of having to hover to figure out the details.

Are you tired of not being accused of using exploits? Is it weeks since anyone's accused you of doing weird stuff? Maybe you belong in Stoneroot Glade.

Stoneroot Glade, where having fun is always in vogue.

These claims have not been evaluated by the surgeon General or Goblinworks. Results are not typical. Many of our members go weeks without being accused of anything.

The Golarion mumble server is available to anyone in the game for either individual groups or co-operative ventures. Any settlement or company that wishes a room for their private events is welcome to request one, and anyone that manages a group can be given access to the server for looking after spaces.

Currently supported mostly by me, it is provided to the players as a open space for cooperation. Donations to support he costs are appreciated, and anything above a minimum will be used to either extend the server (currently covered for two years) or expand the number of slots (currently 25) as appears most useful to people.

Golarion Mumble Server
Address: golarion.mumble.com
Port: 3093
Password: PFOnline

An open accounting of the costs and support is viewable here

I don't want to make light of your pain, because it's real and understandable, but is the suddenness of your frustration because you finally looked up after weeks of being mesmerized by the grass?

Pyronous Rath wrote:

Can my small holding look like a wizard tower?

What you really need as a wizard is a spell that creates temporary campfires and at higher spell levels temporary small holdings.

Using power to build something that restores more power than it uses seems unlikely.

I can imagine spells that create other things that have some common function with freeholds, like perhaps "Wilderness Vault" or "Secure Hold" as a place to leave things for 24 hours, or where people could log out safely for a day and return to the game with a short period of invulnerability in that spot.

Gol Guurzak wrote:

Swiss Mercenary wrote:

I think Ryan was customer service yesterday, now that is implication in your product.

This has been corrugated by several others.

Astute obsession.

My brain hurts.

We might drive you out of the mountains and take all your stuff, but we'll leave a mint on your husk when you check out.

I can only see widespread support for this if it's either at a truly neutral settlement, like Marchmont or Thornkeep, or is a sort of roaming academy, with either various aspects happening in various places, or the whole thing moving on a regular basis.

On further thought, I think it would be far better set-up in Marchmont, where all new Characters will start, and combined with the existing guides to provide as neutral an environment as possible, and as close to the center of the map as can be achieved, and it contains all training facilities, instead of the limited selection available at any Player Settlement. The inability to step through training any wizards or rogues, or certain crafting options at Riverbank would hamper some options for training.

Just to eliminate people wasting their time, I'm not needing money.

They're not giving out any more DT's, and that's two characters with day one XP that both gain XP for one monthly payment. I'm not in a hurry to sell, so an offer of less than the cost of two Early Enrollment accounts ($200.00) isn't even getting warm.

Settlement leaders can tax 98% of that away for access to training and facilities.

I'm pretty sure that settlement leaders will not have the power to tax players differently based on their assets. If they tax everyone in the settlement at 98%, they will have a very tiny settlement of people who had no money in the first place, because it was all hidden on 1000xp alts that don't need training.

From the Goblinworks Boards

I, Airi of the North, of Erastil's Irregulars report that I have occupied the upper level patio of the tavern in Stoneroot Glade and seized control of the Tavern for Elkhaven. There will be a Poutine Cookoff at 4:00 am server time to decide whether Elkhaven can retain control of the tavern. Until then, all drinks and meals are on Sunnfire.

The Highlands!

The Irregulars did not approve this message, but we very much approve of it.

So the Tier 3 level 19 Royal Camp recipe is just a recipe for a bunch of burning twigs?

I thought GW had laid out a principle that everything in the store would be achievable through in-game methods, also.

The actual principle was that nothing you pay money for will provide a meaningful advantage over items you can obtain with in-game resources. How they define "meaningful" is yet to be determined. I presume there has to be something craftable that is equivalent to a smallholding, whether it looks the same or not. "Smallholding" and "Base Camp" are just the specific names tied to two items. I sure hope that the Royal camp looks and behaves like a lot more than burning twigs. At the very least, they could recycle the art from the large bandit camps.

I'm not getting into this in public again. I took this as an opportunity to express philosophies, not to decide who's is more correct, or who requires "conditioning" to have the right frame of mind.

I have no concerns about the mechanic as it exists, I'm simply reporting how I feel about them in response to another person's thoughts. I place no value on things that don't cost me anything when taken.

For me, the way PFO is played right now, stuff has value, life is meaningless. This difference of opinion is the source of much friction.

I find myself at the other end of the value spectrum. I can't imagine thinking that a character's life in the game holds any meaning aside from what it builds. Dying was barely the briefest of inconveniences in alpha until gear decay entered play, and even then only a mild inconvenience though into EE until husks entered play.

A guaranteed endless supply of life pretty much ensures that life itself has no value. The only thing that is ever lost when a character is killed is the time we've invested in it that is lost.

The XP: Preserved. The Feats: Preserved. The Skills: Preserved. Nothing is lost, except durability, what is destroyed or left behind on the body that I can't recover, and constructs that are destroyed. A bandit can kill the unequipped, unencumbered body a hundred times and it bothers me only if I have to spend time getting back to where I was.