Takasi's page

Please ask for a status on Aristocrat-Freeholder-Expert class feature feats. Even if the expendables aren't ready to match them we have xp unspent to increase attributes for dowsing, foresting, mining and scavenging. Our dowsers would like the freedom to purchase personality without being forced to refine crystals or rank cantrips.

@Kradlum,

When I came to chat the other day, I was told that is where you got some of your recipes from. Specifically, the home hex that is near your location.

We get some of our recipes from there. And the Molloch monster home. None from the Skullcrusher Ogre monster home. Most of our drops come from escalations spawning near the lion hexes by Tavernhold, Alderwag, Talonguard and Guardheim.

Do we know when special events will be turned on? The home hexes are currently at a weaker monster state than their escalations. For example the Skullcrusher is only white goblins and wolves with a few yellows. Even the Ustalav hex only has a few groups scattered far between.

Stoneroot is the closest settlement to three of the game's twelve home hexes and not far from half a dozen lion hexes. It's a great place to enjoy a variety of reliable PvE if anyone wants to join in.

In Stoneroot Glade highlands, Pipeweed Patio seizes control of you!

ACE class features would solve attribute gating issues.

A gatherer should not have to resort to slotting adventuring class features.

Sages and mages should not be the only ones who can do high level dowsing.

If you find some on the AH or if someone is willing to sell them to you for coin or service please keep me in mind.

Haven't seen any tier 2 recipes on the market and that's what I'm looking for from adventurers.

If you have the materials feel free to contact me for pickup in Rathglen. Will also provide for Tier 2 recipes.

Confirmed, still not working.

Also, a round seems to be 4.5 seconds.

Does a round include the attack seconds and/or cooldown for consumables?

My Alpha melee caster build used melee arcane attacks that do not do provoke (though with cloth armor the build wasn't very effective in pvp): Eel's Touch, Sonic Thrust and Windrider.

Are facility ratings tied to Towers yet?

Stoneroot should have a higher rating than Guardheim at this point but that does not appear to be the case. What is the calculation method, is it working and if not when will it?

Company Tre of Stoneroot has graduated all members from Rathglen to Guardheim.

All Tier 1 refining and crafting is now available upon request. A wide variety of finished goods will appear in the auction house by month's end.

Dispelling touch orison stops energetic field.

As a neighbor from Stoneroot who intends to setup a permanent shop in Guardheim I humbly implore you to wait until Wednesday and follow the NAP agreement.

Same.

Is there a measurement of abandonment?

A guild may choose not to login until the end of the month and cut a deal with a neighboring settlement. Shouldn't the WoT solve this issue?

I'm figuring that at some point the art will change, we'll have more options, and my character might be able to get a haircut someplace.

Haagen had a bald head in Alpha 8 but later they gave him a mohawk. I gave him a mohawk for EE because it grew on me, but I'm sure it will change again.

Hoody hoo!

Gathering, refining and crafting skills no longer increase attributes? And they do not do so more efficiently (cheaper cost) than training various weapon skills to four or five?

What is factual is that you have to waste training, by your own admission, in skills you may not wish to use, but only doing so to get some secondary advantage. The same does not hold true for LiF in comparison.

Your statement disregards efficiency and the likelihood that most will use the more efficient methods to raise attributes.

Using crafting skills is highly inefficient.

A dedicated character should spend their XP on role features like domains and schools. And yes, weapon skills for adventurers will need to be at least four to qualify for Tier 2 item usage.

When was the last time you created a new character Bluddwolf? I bought a few accounts a few patches ago and the attribute gates were not a problem for me at all.

Not only is crafting or gathering no longer required, with the increase in crafting xp costs and lowered gathering ability boosts it's now suboptimal. Having multiple features, armor and attacks trained gives you far more options as an adventurer to swap out feats. The exponential increase in the cost of each of those skills means by Tier 2 you're making tough choices on how many days to wait to boost one option over another even within a subset of role training, and by Tier 3 it takes months of xp patience to specialize in any given feat.

I think there's an overemphasis on how important the 'Tier 1 economy' should be during the first month of play.

I don't think it should matter if it's the first few weeks or a year from now. Tier 1 recipes and crafting should be easy whether a person wants to stick around a starter town or head into the wild. We'll outgrow this after a month, and the only 'benefit' of the starter goblins for a Tier 2 character would be diversifying into other class roles through easily targeted achievements and not for the gold/gear/recipes.

The 'race' to be the first person to craft a steel greatsword +2 or whatever is really insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I would hate to see a major change to the build we've been playing for months end up causing some other problem. Remember the crafting tweak? How would it feel to have the same issue happen during the first few weeks of EE. Seriously, is it worth the possibility that no recipes drop at all?

There are not that many areas to fight starter goblins. Just wait until the game starts and you'll see people fighting over them. It's a good place to socialize starting out too, for better or worse. Leave it as is for now, please.

At least part of this is a short term anomaly waiting on the growth of the system. In the long term, if you had done exactly as you did, you'd have gotten nothing for your time, because the eventual death would have left a husk behind and everything you harvested would be gone.

Yes! Goblinworks, PLEASE put in husks and player looting. The sooner the better.

Hmm. Thinking about it, after a month a would put all the Tier 1 recipes back on the gobs, so they are easy drops and that would give new players a chance to try out low level tradeskills to figure out what they would like their characters to do.

Why not let us, who are playing the game in a very early state, also have this option when we start out? Let us have the same satisfaction.

The last time they tinkered with the gathering drop rates it tooks weeks to fix.

And who cares if someone farms 100,000 coppers in the first month. They can just change the drop rates later, for all monsters, to scale with the economy. They're going to need to do that anyway. Tweaking the value of copper is going to be an ongoing task for at least the first year or two. We'll be trading in gold and platinum then and all of this will seem silly.

The rare T1 resources in alpha have been green, beast pelts, weak adhesive, amongst a few others. Substitutes for these three come from goblin loot. They'll not be the decisive thing in a few months, but at the very start, they (and their uneven distribution and relative scarcity) are of vital importance to developing an economy. If everyone just has access to everything easily, there will be no trade.

And I disagree. I think the economy needs goods in people's hands first and removing the starter goblins will only make the economy even weaker.

Flood the market with tier 1 recipes and goods to begin with. As new players join the game this faucet will dry up quickly, and the veterans will be moving on to Tier 2 and 3. I don't think we need to worry too much about the state of the economy during the first few months when the game is going to radically change during that time.

This is valuable to point out. What is possible to do, will be done. If not for loot then simply the coin by gold sellers. The starter goblins were placed in alpha when people complained it was hard to find 3 goblins to complete the intro quest due to competition/low spawn rates. They don't have to leave them there as loot piñatas.

The complaint will still be valid, and I don't see them as game breaking.

They haven't been an issue in Alpha.

I'll argue that loot piñatas are useful for stimulating the economy during the beginning of EE. When the auction houses fulfill Ryan's promise that 'everything we need will be for sale' then they should revisit loot drops like this.

Although I'm sure they might have plans to change it anyway, as the guides said that even the loot drops out in the wild are already overinflated compared to their long term plans. I see it as a benefit to early enrollment. We already have to deal with the MINIMUM viable product, at least let us have the basic tier 1 recipes easily accessible for those patient enough to fight over them outside starter settlements.

This is also a good opportunity for Goblinworks to test their ban hammers. Get the cheaters out of the game early while they're centrally located, easy to spot and obviously breaking the rules.

The way he explained the macro set-up, the character doesn't choose targets and attack them. It autotargets whatever attacks it - and the Thornguards won't attack him unless he's super low rep.

Another 'sandbox' player driven solution: Just cast something with knockback on him until he's out of range of the goblin's aggro.

Also I'm sure Haagen and Atheory will be fighting each other over those starter goblins.

The real solution to this "problem", is to not create inherent conditions that require or subtly coerce players into doing things that aren't fun.

I find the loot collection RNG fun. Skinner box slot machine fun, but fun nonetheless. The question here is whether starter goblin loot is 'economy breaking'. I don't think it's worth that much.

Kero I think the tone of this post is a bit alarmist.

This has been a known option for months now. Tier 1 recipes are not that 'rare' or valuable. Let the economy grow during EE.

What people need are characters with XP to buy the crafting skills to use the recipes. The actual rare items are the gathered materials you cannot farm off the starter goblins.

And yeah if I see someone standing in one spot in one of the four starter areas farming goblins I will personally kill them and their macro will autotarget the Thornguards and ruin their character permanently. Isn't that an acceptable safeguard?

When EE starts I think there's won't be ENOUGH starter goblins. If anything I'd like to see them in player made settlements too.

I say don't change ANYTHING before EE.

The last change to gathering tables wasn't fixed for weeks.

It's been working for Alpha like this for months. Even if you could harvest every possible Tier 1 recipe outside of town and get all of your achievements a few days into the game, so what?

Let them fix it later, and preferably after some type of test server is setup where players can check these types of changes.

When talking about how it will interact with settlement warfare and politics you're dipping into a mixture of what you've been told is coming and speculation.

I believe the product you'll eventually see won't be near as fun as what you currently have envisioned.

This is currently in place. Building an effective Tier 2 character requires positive diplomacy, teamwork, dedication and luck.

Andius, this is evident right now for something as seemingly basic as trying to cast a 4th level spell (not cantrip). Crafting and its relationship with character advancement is more complicated than you're giving it credit for.

If you want to play with conditional effects then Thousand Cuts plays off distress and False Edge and Understrike can cause distress. False Edge can't be interrupted but the damage is very low. Whirlwind is your best choice for PvE.

The longsword acts as Tier 2 if you have proficiency 2 trained but you won't see any added base damage unless the attack is rank 4.

As far as I'm aware PFO is never planning to approach that level of detail. Ever.

I don't see many people on the Paizo boards complaining that the tabletop game isn't as engaging as Dragon Age TT or D&D or Warhammer FRPG or Shadowrun or some other ruleset. I also don't see anyone on here complaining about PFO because there's no third person isometric point and click option, or first person targeting mode.

Some people prefer RPGs with multiple layers of damage points; one set of hit points vs vitality/wounds is one common split in d20. Some games have hit locations and others have no points at all and use condition tracks instead. To each his own.

Using chess as an analogy sometimes having a simpler limited base of rules makes a more engaging long term game. Crafting, for me personally, feels much more engaging as we're reaching tier 2 items now, several months into the game. I'm sure with tier 3 the choices will be even more strategic. The linear xp track that everyone in the game follows has an important impact on the overall progression of the world. The system provides a very strong socioeconomic link.

Ten years ago my local hobby shop closed its doors. Our community of ~100K people in Northern California did not have a local retail place to play within an hour drive.

Every few months in letters to Dungeon, Dragon, Knights of the Dinner Table, the WotC site and on EN World I would see the topic of 'how do I recruit players'. Fortunately I just put up a website and a few flyers around town and within a month I had over 100 members joining us at a local cub scout hall to play games.

Over the years I have learned that the best players, the ones that I'm most attracted to intellectually, the ones I want to spend my time with, are those who seek my interests and not those who I try to 'convert'. If someone is into Magic the Gathering, then I'm not going to even try to convince them to play D&D. If that same person reads about D&D and approaches me I will gladly try to fit them into my game schedule or find a table for them to play.

When 4th edition came out it splintered our group. I tried to be on board, running daily games of Living Forgotten Realms. I am not a salesman. No matter how logical my arguments might seem to me, ultimately people had to do the research on their own and decide if it was right for them or not. Ultimately it was not right for me, and I converted back to 3.5 (Pathfinder).

If I had one thing to say to someone to try PFO I would say 'goblinworks.com'.

I can't think of any scenario where I would want to stop someone from trying PFO. At a convention last year the Pathfinder Society GM next to our table stopped a husband and wife from joining their group because his game style was very intense and their characters were sub optimal. He told them they would not have fun. I'm not the type of GM who would share an opinion like that. I host my games and let players decide through an actual play session how the game makes them feel. If they are unhappy then so be it, but I'd rather have them experience first and make their own conclusions.

Now if someone is being a jerk in the game the one honest thing I would say to them is 'EN GARDE!' :)

OK I can confirm the change. I had two temporary outreach accounts that did not have Early Enrollment. I added Early Enrollment to one; I couldn't let my level 10 wizard die in Alpha prematurely. I logged in this morning and the account I upgraded was fine and I can no longer log into the one I did not upgrade.

If you have Early or Alpha Enrollment status listed in your account then you should not have a problem connecting to the system after the permissions change. If you do, email customer.support@goblinworks.com

OK, will do if I see any issues. Thanks Ryan!

Thanks Ryan. Some of my accounts say 'Temporary Outreach Enrollment' yet in the rewards details I have Early Enrollment and gametime. Which one is the criteria for allowing access to continue?

Ryan, if people want to upgrade temporary outreach accounts to early enrollment accounts will we keep our characters for the remainder of Alpha or is it being wiped immediately? Will upgraded accounts retain Alpha login?

So again I will suggest a "Free Alpha Weekend" where they give away thousands of keys on a big MMO site.

Remember that Paizo didn't ask us to stress test this weekend. They did not organize it, and they did not attend (aside from GW Bob in Rotter's Hole). It was quoted before that they are aware of what they need to do to improve stability and they are working on the code right now. Now amount of stress testing or overexposure of players will help them with their solutions.

If and when Goblinworks wants current accounts to stress test they will have several methods before inviting people in from a big MMO site.

They could promote an event here on the boards. Having their official support and encouragement might have boosted numbers slightly last weekend.

They could send out an email to everyone. Not everyone follows the message boards and an email that says 'we need you to start EE' would give people an incentive.

They could also offer rewards to existing players. These could be as simple as Tier 3 gear for the last week of Alpha, something that would be relatively free and easy for them but would be treated as a 'major award' to those who can attend.

I haven't tested the tower capture window lately, but I was able to rack up some points from a Settlement captured tower a few builds ago. I will try again today.

For teams, I think we should have a few rival companies get together for a friendly free for all. If we can capture the tower that would be the easiest game and there's no limit to the number of companies that can compete. If we can't capture the tower then I'm sure we can come up with a few ideas.

I agree with Takasi: An actual tower battle would be a nice step up from PVP in Rotter's Hole or a wilderness hex. Maybe two of the companies that still have a good number of active players could stage a tower fight.

If a company could just sacrifice one tower and post an event in a new thread in a few days or this weekend I will be there.

It doesn't have to be staged or mock. Just have everyone with a company come and battle for the tower in a free for all engagement. I will donate tier 2 wands and staves to the company leaders who win the tower every day. It would be nice to choose a tower central to the map, and for companies to be attached to active settlements that can change their window to the same timeframe every day.

I've had a few duels in the tower two east of Rathglen. It was originally owned by the Gemstone Mining Company but I'm not sure who has it now. We can fight for hours (with a good window hopefully) without any rep loss.

Ya I agree there. For example, if a focus only has 50 charges, a player could burn through all 50 charges in less than a minute spamming fire bolt- and still not kill anything.

Fighters and melee weapons will also have some type of upkeep eventually. There will be an economy sink for everyone.

For balance purposes of 'what should I play' not all adventurers are created equal nor should they be. We have a wide range of options to choose from and so many xp training variations even within one 'role'. All characters can pick up all of the weapon options in Tier 1. I'm not less of a wizard just because I spent 81 xp to try out Cleave.

I originally wanted Haagen to be an 'ice dwarf' flavored cleric. I started out with a focus and used Icicle without trying many other options. I soon found that, from a pure damage perspective, that it was weak and moved on.

In PvP though I am starting to revisit less used orisons for different tactics. Icicle (rank 1) does a tenth of the damage factor per stamina of a longbow basic strike and with almost half the range. However, it can't be interrupted, does cold damage that goes through most armor resistance, adds a slow stack on the target and most importantly as a primary attack it sets up a chance to distress. Now I can move in with a destructive smite and with the distress condition I can lower the physical resistance. Or switch over to an axe for mangle or a mace for shillelagh. That's if I'm trying to base and stop someone range attacking. Another tactic for icicle if someone is rushing you is to switch to a bow and do a parting shot to immobilize the target. There are some cantrips (frost ray specifically) that do more damage and setup a ranged distress (but no slow stack), but there are no physical attacks that do distress at range that are quicker than a 2 second cool down (though the polearm has stab at 1.6 seconds and only 4 m range).

None of this is useful yet in PvE. If anyone would like to duel to test cleric balance factors please let me know. I still need more practice timing attacks, but PvP is really the best way right now to test the utility of low damage factor attack combos. It would be more interesting to see organized group fights like a tower capture.

Trying to wipe out as many mobs as possible to farm recipes in the current state of the AI is not a good method for judging the utility of attacks/cantrips/orisons.

What does that have to do with heals having range?

The proposal to modify existing changes should consider that future stated changes have yet to be implemented.

Personally I would like to see how the current melee system feels when we are more limited in using an orison cure minor before any changes are made to the range of healing.

Not being able to heal flagged players needs to be addressed. As well as healing abilities only useable in melee range. It really isn't fun for clerics to chase down running allies to heal them.

Tell them not to run so much. If they know you're supporting them then they need to change their tactics accordingly and pay attention to us too. It is challenging though, especially trying to support multiple party members at once.

In the long run I don't see spam healing as a viable playstyle option. Charge gems are craftable now, and when they become required for focus ammunition then orison healing will be expensive. This is in line with tabletop wand charge limits; nobody spam heals orisons in combat. Actual spells and power consumption should be the main feature of the cleric, and best when the fight is going south or during important PvP battles. Fighting today is like gathering yesterday. When the 'encumbrance' of combat is turned on then attacks, cantrips and orisons will seem much more like tactical decisions of resource management. Some people might not like it, but I'm looking forward to seeing how it might feel.

I also desynched once while traveling from Rathglen to Rotter's Hole. The entire settlement of Rotter's hole was missing; I've seen an empty hex but never an empty settlement. Relogging fixed the issue and everything else ran smooth. Lots of PvP opportunities and the trivia was fun. Thanks for organizing this!

GUMP!

You are correct. I guess they just don't have them on Trainers yet.

I wonder when they'll go in. For 25 stamina they do a considerable amount of straight damage, what do you think of them on paper?

If you don't see them in both the Cantrips and the Cantrips Advancement sheets, then they're not fully implemented and not in the game.

It looks like they're all in both tabs, can you confirm Nihimon?

I think if they need to get something more than they are currently getting, they will offer the incentives they feel are necessary to accomplish that.

Right, they know when and how to do it if they really needed more activity. No amount of testing will help code their fixes any faster.

Stephen here is an unrelated question. I see these cantrips on the PFO Wiki spreadsheet but I don't see them available either in the Occult or War Wizard trainer. Are these in game? How do I get them?

Burning Flume
Freezing Torrent
Invisible Torrent
Melting Stream
Mental Strike
Midnight Strike
Shocking Strike
Thundering Torrent

I'm still having fun in Alpha. I log in every day for hours. I'm learning little nuances to every combat option, I meet someone old and new, engage in a fight here and there, help a few people out, gather materials, craft pretty much anything Tier 1 I want and make a little progress. Just when I think my goals are complete I find another one to try. I don't see how this will be any different after EE starts. If I had known that Alpha would last for three extra months I would have planned things a little differently, but that's neither here nor there.

Personally I don't care if there's a wipe. I'd rather Goblinworks 'sticks to their guns' though. They said they were going to do something so they should do it. Don't underestimate credibility. Missing a quarter is acceptable; changing plans radically midstream questions competence.

Everyone should log in and help test.

If they REALLY want to get people to play, here is my suggestion:

Offer prizes.

Yes, it sounds silly and shallow but if Goblinworks said 'log into Alpha this weekend for your chance to win some post EE game time, a special temporary perk or boost your Alpha character to level 20' then I think we'd see a population swell. I think it's a better method to achieve what you're trying to accomplish Thod.