Were currently chugging along the path, just finished Spire of Long Shadows, and we've gotten a pretty solid grasp of what's to come.
Currently, each of us has almost 60 grand in gold to burn, and the cleric is looking at the wonderful world of +6 wisdom boosting, as Zosiel's Circlet is only at +4. However, the cleric's player knows that some of this is metagame, some is not. Metagame wise, she darn well wants a +6, for better DCs, bonus spells, and all other fun perks. In character, she wants to keep the Circlet, as she is raptoran, and feels comfortable wearing the Wind Duke item.
The big problem, is that we have no idea when the circlet evolves again (we know it does, as our DM laid some hints at that via Legend Lore) so she's stuck with the dilemma of buy a booster now, even if it is a bit metagaming, or wait through a whole bunch of levels where it would really be nice to have, and get it later on. At the point we are at (level 15, far more than 36 thousand gold to spare, in a high GP limit city) it seems like finding a +6 booster is totally legitimate. Heck, the sorceror got one off of the spellweaver lich.
And finally, there was talk of it being a Legacy item (which our group likes using), was that ever realised in any way, homebrew or semi-officially?
And yes, I play in Age of Worms, and half of those players, including my wife, play in the Savage Tide I'm currently DMing. The Wormfall festival was.... interesting to run, to say the least.
Zosiol's circlet has single-handedly kept my PC cleric alive in Dawn of a New Age. It's not just a +6 circlet of Wisdom...It gives Mindblank, makes you immune to ALL kyuss worms, and lets the user have a chance to hurt Kyuss. If the issue is the extra +2 wisdom, I would either say,(tough-dm mode)"If you want all of this,you have to wait for the proper time" or (nice dm) give him the extra +2 wis on the circlet early. Grant it through a vision from Zosiol, though I would tie the gift to a quest or require a tiny material sacrifice on the player's part. It is afterall, an artifact. As for the activation of the item's true powers, this occurs when your party kills Dragotha. My PCs faced a similiar dilemma versus the circlet (we could be a more powerful helm/headband/circlet), but my PC cleric ultimately decided to keep the circlet due to its "sentimental meaning" since it'd been there since the end of adventure 1. Its paying off now...
Ah, so we have to beat Dragotha, which means it's basically somewhere around level 19 or so. But those extra powers do make it very, very nice.
I guess it can work in one of two ways for our group.
We could either split the powers up through a few other minor activations, like the Visions in the Spire of Long Shadows that we just finished experiencing. Could work well, and we aren't far into the next arc, if anything more in wrap up of SoLS.
Or we could perhaps temporarily pass the Circlet to the druid/wu jen of the party (me) who's just recently started thinking about getting a stat booster, then when full activation occurs, giving it back to the cleric. Since my PC is the cleric's bodyguard, there would be no in character issues with such a thing, and ultimately the ability to have mind blank on an artifact is a big, big deal to the cleric (entropomancer who never ever wants to even have a remote chance of loosing control of a sphere).
In our campaign, we use a variant on magic items that provide enhancement bonuses. For the most part, if you want to keep using the same item, you can enhance it for the difference in cost. (Yes, I know how much gold this effectively can save a party, and they are grateful.)
I gave the circlet to my own NPC cleric (with permission), and when it hit +4, with extras, she soon after wanted to catch up to speed with the rest of the party carrying +6 stat enhancers. So, she paid the difference, and upgraded it.
When the time comes, near the end of the campaign, that it would become +6, it's going to stay at +6, though it will get all the extras. On one hand, it's throwing away 20000gp, but on the other, you don't have to wait around for it to fully kick start.
In our campaign, we use a variant on magic items that provide enhancement bonuses. For the most part, if you want to keep using the same item, you can enhance it for the difference in cost. (Yes, I know how much gold this effectively can save a party, and they are grateful.)
This is the standard rule for enchanting magic items (see Adding New Abilities, DMG pg. 288). As long as 1) a PC has the appropriate item creation feat and meets the prerequisites or 2) pays an NPC with the appropriate feat who meets the prerequisites, then any magic item can be improved or have abilities added.
This is how one of my wizard characters turned a simple Ring of Sustenance (market price 2,500gp) into his Ring of the Archmage (as Ring of Sustenance with +10 Knowledge (Arcana), +10 Spellcraft, doubles 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level arcane spells; market price 193,750gp).
This is how one of my wizard characters turned a simple Ring of Sustenance (market price 2,500gp) into his Ring of the Archmage (market price 193,750gp).
And narrowly missing the 200,000 gp Epic cutoff to boot! Good job!