CLOK BBS

Now that some druids have had a chance to be surprised, I'll announce this.

Druids will notice an increased connection with the Gaea and the ability to COMMUNE with it. (See druidry on the Wiki for more information).

Just to clarify, a "druid" is anyone who can channel druidry, not a specific Druid guild.

This is pretty fun so far!

As one of the lowest skilled druids in the game, I have no idea what this means.

Ardor has druidry?

Commune is really great, and I really love it. However, there's kind of an issue with it.

It might be intentional, but because of the nature of the Wilderness, using Commune to try to find another person, or to ward people away, doesn't work terribly well. Shadgard Conifer Forest, for instance, spans a fairly large amount of area, that takes a good while to traverse.

I'm not sure if that's intended, or if there's a way to fix it, but it does make it a bit difficult to use Commune.

Yes, this is really cool. It was great to actually be able to use it today.

Much of that is due to how areas work. Right now wilderness areas are too big, so as we work on refining the names of areas, hopefully it will get easier to use.

Just a general though regarding commune, and the faction system currently in place.


It'd be sort of neat if there was a Faction system involved in Gaea, in which a person can lower their reputation for a certain area by logging too much, or potentially foraging too much though I'm not too sure of that since herbs are sort of integral to combat at the moment.

But the general idea is, if you deplete too many of an area's resources too rapidly, the warning messages that come through Commune become more frequent, and perhaps more intense, to the point where if it is lowered enough, the area puts out a distress call if someone even loiters in the area for too long, or if it gets low enough it puts out a distress call if the person in question even enters the area.

The reputation would raise slowly over time. However, the lower your reputation is, the longer it takes to move up. So if the minimum was 0 and your reputation was 0, it would take longer for you to go from 0 to 1 then it would take to go from 99 to 100.

If you introduce a faction system pertaining to Gaea, you might as well add in a faction that promotes decay and destruction. By deforesting an area, the tree hugging faction starts to hate you and the tree hating faction starts to like you. The opposite applies, the more in-tuned you are to the forest, the harder it is to traverse area where the denizens promotes decay like in a swamp or bog.

Well, swamps and bogs aren't inherently against Gaea as far as I know. Though I do think there should be a group of decay/disease based casters (see my Blighters idea in Feature Request), and there could be area tags for unnatural decay and disease. Alternatively, it could somehow tie into the Resen, though they pretty much don't like you from the get go.

But ultimately, the reason I specifically mentioned forests is because there aren't any other places to fell trees, and (as far as I know currently) there are no other ways to invoke the "NPC" distress call except from deforestation.

Gaea is supposed to be the Spirit of the Nature essentially, and decay to a degree is part of nature. Unnaturally decayed or diseased areas though, could work on a similar principle to what I posted above about the faction system.

The distress call that the forest puts out has been updated to be a little less random and a little more based on how many trees have recently been felled in that room. To be clear - it can still trigger on the first tree felled (although there's half the probability as before), but as more trees are cleared away, the more likely it becomes.

Because commune is primarily visual, it has been updated so that instead of a name, an animal image (callsign) will be projected when a druid communes. You have until Thursday evening to pick a callsign. Before this time, if you attempt to commune without one, your name will still be used. After this time, you will not be able to use commune without picking a callsign.

GMs will assign requested callsigns (within lore and reason). It cannot just be an animal, but must have some sort of adjective or descriptor. Use the report or request command in game to set one up, but be patient as GMs are not always online.

You can email clok@contrarium.net if you want to send your callsign idea when no GMs are online.

This is a very cool change, Rithiel. Thank you very much!

This is really cool. Thanks for doing it.

Since we're able to see and send images by communing, it would be cool if calls for a meeting showed an image of the place where the communer is at. So if you commune from the treehouse, it would send people that room as if they were looking at it. Like Symbol of Need from Gemstone.

I ask for this because some areas are very large and searching for where the meeting is can be confusing and take a long time.

I second this idea.

Today's gathering was really cool. Nice to see so many druids. It got me thinking though, sometimes I just want to meet with one of them, so how about a commune that can specify a particular animal representative. So if I want to request a gathering with someone whose animal representative is a large brown bear, it could be something like COMMUNE MEETUP BROWN BEAR. Then it would show an image of my animal representative meeting with the requested animal representative in whatever area the communer is in. All druids would see it but the two animal representatives would indicate which specific people are supposed to be meeting up.

That's a good idea.

Ooo, that would be amazingly awesome!

And I agree, amazing rp today with that gathering, that was a whole heck of a lot of fun. It's so nice to have other druid people around, especially ones who have been around for a while.

Agreed, that would be very helpful.

And the gathering was a lot of fun, and reminded me of how fun Clok can be.

Bumping for my previous ideas. It would be nice if checkin didn't show your location though since it's just a way to say hello. That or have a different one like greeting that doesn't show your location.

If it's changed, I would prefer there to be something separate. Sometimes checkin is also used as a sort of update of where we are if coming from a long way to meet up, or as a way to say hey, I'm here and looking for you. Honestly I don't mind it being there, as I think there are more advantages than issues.

When the gaea is in distress, druids will also be in distress, and more distress if they (supposedly) have a strong connection (based on skill).

Excessive hunting (via the hunt command, although killing mobs will be implemented at some point) also has a chance to cause distress.

Q: Could this distress kill you?
A: Unlikely, but there is the possibility.

Q: But it's so random.
A: That's not a question. And the gaea isn't human. And it's not that random.

Q: Knowing you, I bet there's a little something extra if a druid causes the distress.
A: Why yes, there is, how nice of you to think so.