smalul

I think that program of yours is a great idea, Entropy. I too like those kind of statistics. However, I did notice something in your posts - you said there are 101,000 players registered, but at most there are only 800 players playing the game at any given moment. This means there are a lot of inactive players, and I personally don't think it would be fair to count those in any list. In fact, I think you should only include in your list the players who were active in the past 30-180 days only. I think this would reflect things much better, and it might change your mind about changing the break rate/chance of creating rare items/drop rates as well. For example - if 10% of the 13K EFEs in the game are held by inactive players, you will never be able to get rid of them, as there is no way for other players, active players, to take them from the inactive players. On a more personal note, I would very much like to have the option to run those queries from the web site (custom SQL queries), but I'm guessing it would cause too much load on the server, so this would probably never going to happen, and we'll only get the lists your decided to post.

1. I agree about the leather helms thing - they should be stackable. That's because you need to make hundreds of them to gain a manufacturing level, but you can only get rid of them 35 helms at a time (selling to Trik, you can't sell if you have all 36 slots full). Maybe you could find someone who would buy 10 or 20 helms in the market channel, but that's it - the rest must be sold to Trik. On that note, I would also be happy if the other low level items would be stackable, like the fur set items, but not items like swords (you need those to mine, and it would be unfair to players with low EMU). 2. Talking about other thing that I would like to see change - the price of some of the books. The biggest problem is the iron platemail book - it costs 40Kgc, and it's not a monster drop, while the steel and titanium platemails' books cost 6Kgc. The other thing is the bronze books - I would be happy if they would be made droppable, because it's very difficult to raise so much money for those books (6 basic + 5 items, @ 20Kgc each = 220Kgc). Both 1 & 2 are up to the admins to decide (I hope they would implement my ideas, but if they don't - it's OK). 3. Talking about the cost of making items, I opened a thread about it once, and even made this excel file: http://www.geocities.com/smalul/ItemCosts.xls It just shows how much an item is worth from the ingredients point of view (no food, no books, no time included). This shows there could be profit from most items, but people just keep "under-selling" items. This is up for the players to figure out, and I don't see how this can be solved. 4. About that cartel - good idea in theory, but it will never work, because you don't have any way to punish any players who break the cartel. 5. About that manufacturing vs. crafting issue - I like to think of myself an a manufacturer, and I needed money to buy all the high level books (steel and titanium sets), so ironically I turned to crafting, and the end result was that I've ended up with all those books (after weeks of work) and a higher crafting level (41 right now) than manufacturing level (33 right now). 6. The main problem with manufacturing (and other skills, but it's more obvious if you look at manufacturing) is the ingredients requirement - at high levels, the low level items (like leather helms) are just not enough to train your skill on, and getting your hands on the much needed high level ingredients (like hydro and wolfram bars, EFE, binding stones and even large amounts of iron, steel and titanium bars) is very difficult. If you use manufacturing schools to train your skill, you'll lose the item, and a lot of money with it, so it's not worth it. If you buy all the ingredients you need from other players, you'll just end up losing money, so you have to make those ingredients yourself to have a chance of earning a profit. Basically, training skills at high levels is like going to work... I think there should be a better solution, like gaining exp from making items relative to the skill level (similar to the a/d exp system), but again this is, like all my post, just a suggestion.

The tutorial NPC says "On this island, there are 5 types of flowers", actually - there are 8 types of flowers on IP (that I could find). Those are: Lilacs, Red Snapdragons, Tiger Lilly, Blue Lupine, Chrysanthemum, White Asiatic Lilly, Blue Star Flower, and Impatiens. This was checked on the test server. Edit: Well, it seems some of the coordinates leading to the flowers are wrong - I got the first 5 flowers and wasn't able to complete the quest. Only after I got some of the other flowers, that quest was completed. I guess this is part of the quest and not a bug.

The problem with invasions is they are for high level fighters only. I tried to go one of those maps, and then it was invaded by fluffies and I died, dropping some low level items. After that I figured it would be better if I just log off... Don't get me wrong - I think invasions is a nice thing, but like most of this game, they target the high level fighters, and those with enough money to afford dying (either by using a rostogol stone or just by replacing the equipment they lost). The non-fighters or the low level fighters have very little chance to do something during an invasion, as there are always high level monsters invading (most of those people just log off, go to IP, or try to get some of the death bags left by the fighters). I think, as suggested here, you should limit the level of the invading creature in some map, to allow all players to enjoy the invasion. At the same time, you should put high level monsters in other maps, so the high level players would have somewhere to go and they won't kill the low level invading creatures that the low level players are fighting. In fact, maybe there should be a few such "invading levels", like this: 1. Rabbits to Boars. 2. Pumas to unarmed female orcs. 3. Unarmed male orcs to ogres. 4. Hobgoblins, cyclops, fluffies, armed orcs, and tigers. 5. All chims types. 6. Yetis and giants. I think this is the best solution to the problem, and this would allow all players to enjoy invasions.

The knowledge list is old, and it's not updating - last item on the list - Emerald Valley Ring. Last item in the normal client - Medallion of life building.

Download speed ~190KB/s, which is my max (1.5Mbps cable connection).

How much HP does it add? Does it add/change anything else?

Just go to your \languages\en directory and look in the knowledge.lst file.

Why not just it like it was meant to be used? Just set the max bonus to 20% (20% more money to sell something to the NPCs and 20% less to buy something from the NPCs). If the max charm level is 178, and that would give the 20% bonus, that would mean you would get 1% price bonus for every 8.9 points of charm. Since I don't think many people would raise charm over 20 (that's 40 ppts), the normal price bonus would be about 2.2%. If you really want, you might set the initial bonus to -1% or even lower (-2%) to prevent that kind of abuse. I also like the luck idea - the higher the luck value, the better chance to get drops, but I don't think it should effect the making the rare items rate. However, I suspect there is already a hidden luck attribute for all characters (set when they were created). Worst case - just transfer the charm points to another cross-attribute. Oh, and by the way - the Player Stats page doesn't show the Perception cross-attribute (but it does show the charm cross-attribute).

Just of of curiosity, I would like to know the rates or making rare items (not that is would change anything).

Had you set the price to 3K, I would have bought them, mainly as an investment. I'm guessing the EFEs' price would raise soon, as there would be less of them in the game.

From what I understood from some of Entropy's posts, the base roll for everything is 10K, and the rate for EFE used to be 3 in 10000 (one in 3333). Since he said he lowered the rate of EFEs, I guess it's now 2/10K or even 1/10K.

I already did a search in the forum but didn't come up with anything, so I thought I might post this here. I think it would be nice to know some of the motives this game is based upon. So far I've noticed Babylon 5, Monty Python, and even Alice in Wonderland (a mushroom that makes you small and big). Are there others, and if so - what are they?

I guess I was wrong then.

You download an ISO file, about 650-700MB in size. Then you burn it on a CD, but not as "drag and drop" - you need to open it with your burning software, and then tell it to burn the CD.

True, but it's amazing the number of hints that are being dropped all along the way, stuff that will come up later as things get moving. Ok, this is off-topic, but B5 is just very well written - everything was meant to fall into place at the end. It was actually planed to run for 4 seasons (the episode which showed what would happen in the future - 500, 1000 and 1000000 years into the future was meant to be the last), but people liked it so much, they've decided to add the fifth season. On the other hand, the spin off, Crusade, didn't do so well, and only lasted for 13 episodes (it wasn't aired here, so I didn't even see it).

Just watch any episode from season 4 and then return to the wine NPC.

Oh, I've also seen a sword in a rock somewhere... So what other references are there, or at least to what shows/movies/books do the other "Easter Eggs" refer to? I think it would be nice to know, so if we find such an "Easter Egg", we could understand the context (please remember the players here come from all over the world, and not everyone has the same cultural background).

What don't you get? The reference or the existence of such a mushroom in the game (it's there, it takes you to a secret place, the text reads you eat the mushroom and become small and then big again).

Thanks, I'll try that.

Example please? I don't know any names (yet, I'm new to linux), but there are "desktop based programs". Not flaming but, this is a lie. You didn't even need to search the internet, just type "man mount" (it's a manual, so read it). Where is the lie? I did search the Internet and that is the answer I got. The problem here is that you assume a new Linux user knows how to use that man command (or that it's even there). Also - that manual is way too long for most commands, and you can only read it in the terminal, which isn't very "comfortable".

The problem with Linux is there are too many desktop environments (which I call GUIs), and somethings would work with one desktop but not with the other. It's not a question of which one is better, because that's a personal preference, but the fact that some desktops allows you to do things the others won't. The other thing is the lack of GUI interfaces for some of the more needed commands (at least by default) - like a GUI interface for the mount command. I had to search the Internet to find out how to mount my windows partitions, until I found I need to edit a file named fstab. Now since that file is a root file, I had to use the terminal to switch to SU mode and then run an editor to edit that file. The problem is that the answer I found on the Internet didn't say all that - it just said to edit the fstab file, so I had to figure all this myself. Now, I have some understanding about computers and softwares, so I could figure it out myself, but if you give this to someone who only used Windows all his life, I really don't think s/he would have been able to solve the problem. I also have a few other problems (like making my TV-out work without disabling my monitor, or setting the "right" resolution in openSuse/KDE, or making my printer work), but at least I'm trying to use Linux.

I've been reading this post, posted by Entropy, and it seems that in version 0.5.9 Pre Alpha, an help command was added to the game. I've tried using it (I typed #help) and it brings up the help window, but also gives an error message: Unknown: #help. Again, this is very minor bug, but still a bug.

I wrote some of that stuff here, and I have no problem typing commands instead of using a GUI. In fact, I've used DOS since version 3.2 (before there was a "real" Windows OS), and I can handle a command line just fine. The problem with Linux is that it requires a lot (and I mean a lot) of reading and, unlike Windows, there is no option for a GUI for the commands by default. Another thing is that the different versions of Linux are actually different from each other, which mean you need to learn a different OS each time you change a version (or at least a desktop). This is not the case in Windows - all versions of Windows, since Windows 95, looked the same, which mean you know where everything is. As for graphical interfaces - there are just too few of them, and not for the right commands. I personally want a GUI for setting the TV-OUT in my video card, and a GUI to mount NTFS and FAT partitions so I could use my files. I've installed 4 different versions of Linux in the past month just because of it (Mandriva, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and today - OpenSuse 10.2). As for the many versions of the same program - it seems there are even more of this than there are different versions of Linux, so you can never know what to use, since every person would recommend a different program, and you can't just try them all... If I can somehow find a way to run a version of Linux as smoothly as Windows (watching movies using TV-Out, accessing my documents, running the programs I need), then I would be happy to switch to using just Linux. Until some big company or union of companies won't make a good version of Linux, with all the needed tools, a good GUI, and a good and short manual for it, I don't see how Linux would even be able to beat Microsoft.

I want to do the same as Mugwump, only that I already installed a few versions of Linux (on a separate hard drive), including that Ubuntu Linux, and I came to the conclusion that Linux is a mess. See, Linux is written by individuals, and every one of those coders thinks he's smarter than the rest. The result - many versions of the OS itself and many version of similar programs, but only some compatibility between them, as there is no standard for anything. This means you'll have problems with updating drivers and installing different programs. Also, the Linux "idea" dictates separating different types of files into different locations, so in the EL case, you won't be able to find all EL's files in one directory like you can in windows, which is annoying. Another problem with Linux is the GUI. First, there are different types of desktops, and some programs only works with one kind of desktop. Another is the lack of GUI for many things you use to have in Windows, which means you either have to look for the right GUI in the Internet (good luck), or you'll have to spend hours reading the commands' help and manual files in order to set something up. Oh, and I haven't talked about the file system - it's a problem mounting a Windows based partition, mainly NTFS, as it's a proprietary file system, so it could be a problem gaining access to files on your Windows partition (like your documents). My suggestion is to install another hard drive (an old one if you can), disconnect your main hard drive, and install Linux on that drive. Worst case - you can return to your normal OS (windows) without any trouble.