Purchasing Poultices

[Elystole]

My time is becoming increasingly precious to me, so when I play CLOK I would actually like to play CLOK. Unfortunately, the current state of healing means that at least half, if not more, of my CLOK time is spent in another window while waiting for my wounds to heal. This morning it took over ten minutes for a set of light wounds to heal, and it did not take me that long to get those wounds. I know because I got hit with the idle timeout warning while waiting. If I am going to spend that much time not-playing the game, I would honestly be better off playing something else.

While I would like to see the First Aid skill expanded to be useful, another option (and it isn't mutually exclusive) for addressing the inadequacies of the healing system is for infirmaries or apothecaries to start selling treated bandages or poultices. We already have the shops. We already have the items in the database. The items just need to be added to the shops and priced. If you're not sure what to price them at, you could match them to the infirmary treatment prices.

This addresses the woeful state of the healing system (I consider anything that makes me spend more time waiting than playing to be broken) and creates an additional riln sink. Plus it just makes sense: There's no real reason that these business owners haven't already started selling treated bandages or poultices to a market clamoring for them.

[Lavi]

I'm not sure if you are aware of this, but since your leave of absence there have been three additions to The Monastic order, and 1 addition to theKnights Templar. in total, that makes eight monks who are active fairly regularly, and out of those eight, five of them can perform the beacon, six can heal serious wounds, most can and would make poultices for you, and all of them have healing capabilities in one way or another. Also, poultices, while useful, aren't necessary to play the game. You can go to an infirmary and be patched up for a price. It's not the best option, but it is one all the same. The Herbalism skill can be updated, but I don't think that it is really broken other than you don't want to take time making your own poultices which is fine. But, I don't see it as something broken. I see it as an issue of personal convenience.

[Elystole]

I'm not sure if you are aware of this, but since your leave of absence there have been three additions to The Monastic order, and 1 addition to theKnights Templar. in total, that makes eight monks who are active fairly regularly, and out of those eight, five of them can perform the beacon, six can heal serious wounds, most can and would make poultices for you, and all of them have healing capabilities in one way or another. Also, poultices, while useful, aren't necessary to play the game. You can go to an infirmary and be patched up for a price. It's not the best option, but it is one all the same. The Herbalism skill can be updated, but I don't think that it is really broken other than you don't want to take time making your own poultices which is fine. But, I don't see it as something broken. I see it as an issue of personal convenience.

Unless one of those monks is willing to tag along every time I train and sit there, bored, waiting for me to be wounded, the fact that there are more monk alts isn't relevant. I don't expect another player to cater to me. I didn't even ask Jill to be my heal bot, and I like Jill. Never mind that those monks aren't online all the time so saying that someone should just rely on a monk for all of their healing isn't practical.

On the work pine table you see a black linen poultice-treated bandage (x40), a red linen poultice-treated bandage (x37), an oak herb box, a red cotton package, a lead shot (x14), an iron shot (x6), a small mortar and pestle (x3) and a large wicker box.

I make poultices. I've made poultices for a long time, though I admit it's lost some of its charm since we no longer get herbalism from grinding herbs despite a herbalism check determining what quality of ground herbs we get. The problem remains that herbs are one of the few finite resources on CLOK and that they take hours to go collect with no guarantee that you'll find what it is your looking for. If someone went foraging before you or foraged incorrectly then you are out of luck. Therefore, I use what limited herbs and poultices I have to make 102s and 104s, which I use for severe and moderate/bad wounds respectively, and not waste the resources making 101s or 103s which are for light wounds.

I try hard not to dip into my poultice reserve unless I have to because it is time-consuming work to make them. Work as in "not fun" on what is supposed to be a game that I play during limited leisure time. Making poultices or treated bandages purchasable doesn't hurt anyone and would make things more enjoyable for many people while also addressing the tendency for players to hoard riln.

[jilliana]

Ever since I started playing CLOK less, I more understand Elystole's feelings on this matter.
I can't just log in and fight, but I have to take everything else into consideration, and it's that "everything else" that deters me and keeps me planted in the spot I log in until I manage to find some interesting roleplay.
Taking a member of the order along on every trip to wherever I want to fight isn't a great solution. It helps, sure, and the company is great, but it's not a great solution. They're not always logged in/alert, but then that has already been pointed out.

Infirmaries are great, but if I'm way out in the goonies and really only want to focus on training, having to go back and forth between the nearest healer and then the nearest town for lessons gets really old, really fast...especially now with the way traveling is now.
I'd rather stock up on poultices when I go fight, but like Elystole said, it takes a lot of time and a lot of energy to make poultices, and making poultices is really, really boring. I have also noticed a pretty nasty trend among people who go around making poultices and other people try to purchase/obtain herbs from them, but I won't get into it here as it's an IC issue.

Basically my point is that we need more options, especially for those players who don't feel up to dealing with all the minutia when all they want to do is play for an hour.

[Araus]

Unless one of those monks is willing to tag along every time I train and sit there, bored, waiting for me to be wounded, the fact that there are more monk alts isn't relevant. I don't expect another player to cater to me. I didn't even ask Jill to be my heal bot, and I like Jill. Never mind that those monks aren't online all the time so saying that someone should just rely on a monk for all of their healing isn't practical.

Hey there! I'm one of the newer players on the mud and, while I'm not a monk player myself, I'd like to relay my experiences of the last two weeks or so. I play two characters and one of them is a front line bruiser in combat while the other is a squishy elemancer who gets hurt really bad when he is hurt, so I find myself asking for help from the monks quite often and for the most part they're more then glad to travel across the map to give me a hand, or even follow my characters around for their grinding sessions.

It might help with how I handle it, I try to make as much conversation as possible, encourage character development and all that fun sort of thing. Still, I've never seen a monk to happy to bound into action and help people out like that, so maybe you should try asking around more?

[jilliana]

Unless one of those monks is willing to tag along every time I train and sit there, bored, waiting for me to be wounded, the fact that there are more monk alts isn't relevant. I don't expect another player to cater to me. I didn't even ask Jill to be my heal bot, and I like Jill. Never mind that those monks aren't online all the time so saying that someone should just rely on a monk for all of their healing isn't practical.

Hey there! I'm one of the newer players on the mud and, while I'm not a monk player myself, I'd like to relay my experiences of the last two weeks or so. I play two characters and one of them is a front line bruiser in combat while the other is a squishy elemancer who gets hurt really bad when he is hurt, so I find myself asking for help from the monks quite often and for the most part they're more then glad to travel across the map to give me a hand, or even follow my characters around for their grinding sessions.

It might help with how I handle it, I try to make as much conversation as possible, encourage character development and all that fun sort of thing. Still, I've never seen a monk to happy to bound into action and help people out like that, so maybe you should try asking around more?

This isn't really about not asking, because the asking has been done. There are just those players who would rather keep to themselves, can't accept Thaumaturgy for IC/personal reasons, among other things. A monk is great, but not a reliable option 100 percent of the time.

[Araus]

Unless one of those monks is willing to tag along every time I train and sit there, bored, waiting for me to be wounded, the fact that there are more monk alts isn't relevant. I don't expect another player to cater to me. I didn't even ask Jill to be my heal bot, and I like Jill. Never mind that those monks aren't online all the time so saying that someone should just rely on a monk for all of their healing isn't practical.

Hey there! I'm one of the newer players on the mud and, while I'm not a monk player myself, I'd like to relay my experiences of the last two weeks or so. I play two characters and one of them is a front line bruiser in combat while the other is a squishy elemancer who gets hurt really bad when he is hurt, so I find myself asking for help from the monks quite often and for the most part they're more then glad to travel across the map to give me a hand, or even follow my characters around for their grinding sessions.

It might help with how I handle it, I try to make as much conversation as possible, encourage character development and all that fun sort of thing. Still, I've never seen a monk to happy to bound into action and help people out like that, so maybe you should try asking around more?

This isn't really about not asking, because the asking has been done. There are just those players who would rather keep to themselves, can't accept Thaumaturgy for IC/personal reasons, among other things. A monk is great, but not a reliable option 100 percent of the time.

The way I see it, if you're going to completely bar off a set of options- either through personal preference or IC reasons like taint or whatever, you should be prepared to face the consequences. Yes, making poultices is slow, hard work but you should be prepared for that if that's what your choices lead you to.

[Lavi]

again, I'm not seeing the problem, you are saying that it's not convenient for you to get healed. I have plenty of characters who can't make poultices, if I need them I go ask a monk or pay for them like mentioned. Some people take their Poultice making as an IC trait of their character and sell them, others give them away. What I'm hearing is that you want it to be easier to ground and hack things. there are plent of other muds that are made for Hack and slash, i'm not sure why this mud has to change to fit that need. It would be one thing if it was expanding to the Herbalism skills, making new types of poultices, different things that could be whipped up, but what you are saying is you want to go off on your own. not take another person where there could be RP done, and grind or kill for the fun of it. While I understand you don't want to have to grind herbs for an hour, it may be that it is necessary for your character, saying that you are grumpy because it's a necessary evil is just complaining that it takes time.

[Rias]

This isn't necessarily an excuse or anything, but just kind of a help to understand where I'm coming from regarding this stuff.

I want there to be downtime. I don't want people to be able to just grind grind grind combat endlessly on their own. In the previous game I played, Gemstone, there were two main things that enforced downtime between hunts. First was wounds, but that could be alleviated by bringing an empath (healer) along with you or having one nearby, as we can do here with monks. The second was this weird sort of "mind fatigue" concept where, after getting so much experience in your "bucket" it would be full, and the only thing that made this "bucket" drain down was time, so you -had- to take downtime, or else continue on doing your thing with minimal, if any, benefit due to the filled bucket.

Here in CLOK we have wounds and energy. The wounds things can be alleviated similarly (bring a monk with you or have one nearby). The energy thing is far less an issue than the mind fatigue, as you can recover your energy extremely quickly by simply sitting down for a minute or two. Oh, I suppose there's also food, but anyone can just tote a bunch of rations around with them.

Anyway, overall the "enforced downtime" thing, to me, doesn't feel foreign at all since I'm so used to it from that other game I played for years, so that may well be why it doesn't bother me as much as it does other people. I know it can be frustrating to have to end your grind and get healing. The hope is that you'll RP around town, or maybe work on your non-combat skills a bit, while you wait for those poulticed wounds to heal. Or worst-case scenario, you just go to a private area or hide and go AFK while your character heals up. It happens. I did it in Gemstone, I do it in CLOK. I know it can be an inconvenience to have to cut your training grind short and wait to heal up sometimes, but I don't think that inconvenience justifies some new fast-and-convenient-do-it-all-yourself methods of healing.

I'll monitor herb availability and see if it appears to be prohibitive to poultice production. I'd also love to expand herbal healing/poultice options.

[qinweiqi]

I know there was some talk of an alchemy like skill in the past. I'd love to see some form of potion making option as an additional way to heal. Of course, adding a new system is a lot of coding work and requires lots of balancing, but I like to imagine it could be used as a nice mid-ground in healing (faster than poultice, slower than monk power), perhaps with some increased ingredient costs and energy costs compared to poultice making.

[Elystole]

It might help with how I handle it, I try to make as much conversation as possible, encourage character development and all that fun sort of thing. Still, I've never seen a monk to happy to bound into action and help people out like that, so maybe you should try asking around more?

Araus, like you said, you're new so I don't expect you to know this: Elystole is on pretty good terms with the Church. Or at least was before the new guidelines and changing of the guard as there's a lot of new blood he hasn't interacted with. He did a bunch of stuff with Church members that was before your time. He was on the short list of non-Church people who were trusted with Church issues because he knew when to keep his mouth shut and he knew when to break things.

I say that not to brag but to make the point that as a new character who has never seen my character before, never seen him interact with Church characters, and never even heard him speak, you probably shouldn't be coming here and saying, "The problem is just that you aren't friendly enough." You know nothing about my character.

For example, you don't know that Elystole will ask a monk for help when he is severely wounded or especially when his horse is wounded because he can't just take his horse to the infirmary. You also don't know that he genuinely likes monks and is quick to come to their defense or that he doesn't like bothering them with light wounds and scrapes because they are really busy taking care of people who are actually hurt. Nor would you know that by not bothering monks except when necessary he is actually following the teachings of Serafina who says that people should help themselves first and call for help when they are beyond helping themselves (check her article on the wiki).

You also don't know that guilds and alts in CLOK tend to be cyclical so even if there are a lot of monks right now, which is still no guarantee that there will be a monk online to cater to my needs while I'm getting wounded every five minutes, give it a couple of weeks and we'll probably be short on thaumaturges again.

again, I'm not seeing the problem, you are saying that it's not convenient for you to get healed. I have plenty of characters who can't make poultices, if I need them I go ask a monk or pay for them like mentioned. Some people take their Poultice making as an IC trait of their character and sell them, others give them away. What I'm hearing is that you want it to be easier to ground and hack things. there are plent of other muds that are made for Hack and slash, i'm not sure why this mud has to change to fit that need. It would be one thing if it was expanding to the Herbalism skills, making new types of poultices, different things that could be whipped up, but what you are saying is you want to go off on your own. not take another person where there could be RP done, and grind or kill for the fun of it. While I understand you don't want to have to grind herbs for an hour, it may be that it is necessary for your character, saying that you are grumpy because it's a necessary evil is just complaining that it takes time.

Lavi, do you actually have a reason as to why purchasing poultices or treated bandages is a bad idea? Or are you just arguing with me for the sake of arguing because at some point in the past you decided you have a problem with me and rather than say as much you're doing this passive-aggressive bull[crap]? So you haven't had a problem with the healing system: Fantastic. Good for you. I have, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. I'm proposing a solution to a problem that is negatively impacting a game that I enjoyed, am trying to enjoy, and have financially supported, so unless you have a legitimate grievance, shut up. Heaven forbid someone play the MUD and enjoy it for a different reason than you do.

Here's a mind-bender for you: Going to the infirmary is buying a treated bandage! It's true. I go in, lie down, and the nice healer gives me a treated bandage plus the service of putting it on for me. All I am suggesting is that I would like to be able to walk into the infirmary and say, "May I please buy some of your nice bandages from you?"

"Would you like me to put it on for you?" Hildibrand will ask.

"Oh, no thank you. I need a few for the road," I'll say.

"No problem. Here you go. That will be a crapton of riln," he'll say.

"Is that all? I just so happen to have three craptons of riln just burning a hole in my pouch thanks to the genocidal amounts of killing and looting bodies that I engage in on a regular basis. It's a bit bloody, but I'm sure you don't mind given your chosen profession," I'll say.

"Not at all," he'll say. "That's what the barrel of water is for."

And then I'll give him a crapton of riln for the privilege of getting a treated bandage without him putting it on me himself because capitalism.

[Araus]

It might help with how I handle it, I try to make as much conversation as possible, encourage character development and all that fun sort of thing. Still, I've never seen a monk to happy to bound into action and help people out like that, so maybe you should try asking around more?

Araus, like you said, you're new so I don't expect you to know this: Elystole is on pretty good terms with the Church. Or at least was before the new guidelines and changing of the guard as there's a lot of new blood he hasn't interacted with. He did a bunch of stuff with Church members that was before your time. He was on the short list of non-Church people who were trusted with Church issues because he knew when to keep his mouth shut and he knew when to break things.

I say that not to brag but to make the point that as a new character who has never seen my character before, never seen him interact with Church characters, and never even heard him speak, you probably shouldn't be coming here and saying, "The problem is just that you aren't friendly enough." You know nothing about my character.

For example, you don't know that Elystole will ask a monk for help when he is severely wounded or especially when his horse is wounded because he can't just take his horse to the infirmary. You also don't know that he genuinely likes monks and is quick to come to their defense or that he doesn't like bothering them with light wounds and scrapes because they are really busy taking care of people who are actually hurt. Nor would you know that by not bothering monks except when necessary he is actually following the teachings of Serafina who says that people should help themselves first and call for help when they are beyond helping themselves (check her article on the wiki).

You also don't know that guilds and alts in CLOK tend to be cyclical so even if there are a lot of monks right now, which is still no guarantee that there will be a monk online to cater to my needs while I'm getting wounded every five minutes, give it a couple of weeks and we'll probably be short on thaumaturges again.

Now, now, there's no need to make this so personal. I was just relaying my experiences and responding to the 'Gosh, I can't ask them to come with me, it would be so boring to them!' remark. I never once tried to imply that you personally were unfriendly with the church, so please don't jump at me like that.

Anyway, if capitalism is what you want, why don't you just head onto the esp network and say 'Hey, I need X bandages of Y quantity, I'm willing to pay Z riln for them if they're up to snuff'. Just a thought.

[Sneaky]

I haven't decided one way or another on this, I don't much like the idea of being able to buy poultaces no matter how much they cost. People work hard to find those herbs and make the poultaces, so to just be able to bypass that whole system and to buy poultaces whenever you need them seems a little broken to me. I also think it's a little rude to assume that the new thaumatergists are going to fade away in the coming weeks. They've stuck around for quite a bit, and I'm glad to see it. I feel that they will all stick with their choices and I've enjoyed rping with all of them lately. I do think that it would be nice to know what kind of poultice you make when you use random herbs. I use to just toss in some random herbs and make poultaces and use them whenever I needed a bandage and they worked for most things, but knowing what kinds of wounds they would be best to apply to would be an added benefit. To be able to discover new combinations of poultaces would be nice.

[Elystole]

This isn't necessarily an excuse or anything, but just kind of a help to understand where I'm coming from regarding this stuff.

I want there to be downtime. I don't want people to be able to just grind grind grind combat endlessly on their own. In the previous game I played, Gemstone, there were two main things that enforced downtime between hunts. First was wounds, but that could be alleviated by bringing an empath (healer) along with you or having one nearby, as we can do here with monks. The second was this weird sort of "mind fatigue" concept where, after getting so much experience in your "bucket" it would be full, and the only thing that made this "bucket" drain down was time, so you -had- to take downtime, or else continue on doing your thing with minimal, if any, benefit due to the filled bucket.

Here in CLOK we have wounds and energy. The wounds things can be alleviated similarly (bring a monk with you or have one nearby). The energy thing is far less an issue than the mind fatigue, as you can recover your energy extremely quickly by simply sitting down for a minute or two. Oh, I suppose there's also food, but anyone can just tote a bunch of rations around with them.

Anyway, overall the "enforced downtime" thing, to me, doesn't feel foreign at all since I'm so used to it from that other game I played for years, so that may well be why it doesn't bother me as much as it does other people. I know it can be frustrating to have to end your grind and get healing. The hope is that you'll RP around town, or maybe work on your non-combat skills a bit, while you wait for those poulticed wounds to heal. Or worst-case scenario, you just go to a private area or hide and go AFK while your character heals up. It happens. I did it in Gemstone, I do it in CLOK. I know it can be an inconvenience to have to cut your training grind short and wait to heal up sometimes, but I don't think that inconvenience justifies some new fast-and-convenient-do-it-all-yourself methods of healing.

I'll monitor herb availability and see if it appears to be prohibitive to poultice production. I'd also love to expand herbal healing/poultice options.

Rias, thank you for the explanation. I used to play Dragonrealms so I'm also familiar with the enforced downtime and even the mind pool, and I'm not even objecting to the idea of downtime. What I am talking about isn't the fact that there is downtime, but that there is significantly more downtime than uptime. I can spend five minutes fighting, get some light wounds, and then spend ten minutes waiting to heal. If I get a bad roll, I'll be up for only a minute or two then back down. And that is despite my best efforts to mitigate how much I get hurt: I'm wearing armor, I've trimmed my encumbrance down as much as I can to somewhat burdened, I'm in a defensive tactic, and my defenses seriously outclass my opponent's offenses (though I'm working on rectifying that as it gets me into other trouble). Again, those are just light wounds. I'm not even talking about a near-death experience.

Part of the problem is that CLOK simply does not have the playerbase that Dragonrealms or Gemstone have. In CLOK, there are oftentimes no monks on duty, and if they are on duty they're clear across the map. There are times when I'm the only person online. In the Simutronics games, we had hundreds of people playing at any given time and there were always empaths on duty. There was a central rallying point in every town that you could go to and get healed. The Northeast gate was a happening place, so getting some empathic healing wasn't even a challenge. It was routine.

I have, in desperation, considered bringing my violin and practicing it while I'm sitting there so at least my time isn't wasted, but that's weird. You don't bring violins on outings like that. I've considered learning and bringing a harmonica, but there literally isn't a teacher available and there's that whole "multiple instrument penalty" that we know nothing about. And it still seems a little weird but not as weird. It's just cheesy. It's cheesy like my paladin in Dragonrealms standing there and juggling outside a graveyard while waiting to go kill more zombies because I needed more perception to quit getting my pockets picked every time I walked past the bank. And it's a real problem when you're also telling me I need to shave every excess pound I have to keep my encumbrance penalty low.

Again, I'm not asking for the elimination of downtime: Buying a poulticed bandage still means waiting for it to work. I am not asking for automatic health regeneration or instant-healing potions or anything like that. I am asking to take some of the riln I've earned and apply it towards reducing the downtime by exchanging the time spent making that riln for the time it would take to run back to the infirmary every time I get lightly wounded or time spent running all over the map trying to get the herbs needed to make even more poultices than I already have.

• Examples of remaining downtime:
• Waiting for the bandages to work
• Waiting for my horse to heal (who has defenses far below mine)
• Recovering my energy
• Travelling back to town to buy more bandages
• Travelling back to town for more lessons
• Travelling back to town to unload my loot (which happens a lot more thanks to the encumbrance penalty)
• Travelling back to town to get more food
• Travelling back to town to buy more ammunition
• Repairing my equipment

Do you know how many times I have seen someone offer to buy poultices for quite a lot of riln only to have no one respond? They're too valuable because of how long it takes to make them. When I was a newbie trying to afford a house I fleeced a few players for tens of thousands of riln because I was willing to sell them comfry, but all I did when I played was foraged comfry for hours.

At the rate I get wounded, I would literally spend almost all of my time on CLOK foraging for herbs (and not even getting any skill gain for it!) just to do a little bit of fighting. And considering how slowly we gain skills, that little bit of fighting would add up to a whole lot of nothing. If you consider the fact that we have jobs, classes, or other commitments that makes our game time precious, the ratio of work/fun that is involved in what is supposed to be a game makes CLOK a less appealing option for anyone except the kind of people who can play all day, every day.

As far as herb availability, how quickly do herbs grow back? Is it true that if someone forages a specific herb without clearing out the room then that herb won't grow back because the other herbs crowd it out?

And for anyone who thinks I'm focusing too much on grinding and not RPing: First, I do RP. I attend events and have made a few myself. Second, grinding is part of my RP because Elystole's RP demands an above-average level of competence from him. What is his job? Shadgard Outrider. What does that mean? It is his job to go out there and bring villains to justice. His guild was literally created to fight players. PvP isn't just in the charter, it is the charter. It's how you join. That means that if I am going to RP a half-decent Outrider then I need to be able to fight some big names out there. Since those people are veteran players with years of experience over me who benefited from, quite frankly, an easier system, I need to work my butt off if I'm going to do anything but embarrass myself.

Now, now, there's no need to make this so personal. I was just relaying my experiences and responding to the 'Gosh, I can't ask them to come with me, it would be so boring to them!' remark. I never once tried to imply that you personally were unfriendly with the church, so please don't jump at me like that.

Anyway, if capitalism is what you want, why don't you just head onto the esp network and say 'Hey, I need X bandages of Y quantity, I'm willing to pay Z riln for them if they're up to snuff'. Just a thought.

Alright, I apologize. Please see my above remark about orders for poultices going unanswered. The demand is far greater than the supply because of the cost of providing poultices.

I haven't decided one way or another on this, I don't much like the idea of being able to buy poultaces no matter how much they cost. People work hard to find those herbs and make the poultaces, so to just be able to bypass that whole system and to buy poultaces whenever you need them seems a little broken to me.

Do you object to the infirmaries then? What you're doing when you go to the infirmary is buying a treated bandage and having the healer apply it to you.

[Sneaky]

Ok, so can you explain what the balance is between all this. making your own poultaces versus buying poultaces, reasons why someone would make a poultice rather than buy them etc, why people would ask for healing rather than use a poultice, reasons why people would rather use a poultice than a monk etc. Make everything balanced out, and I'd be willing to agree because right now the way I see it it would be rather unbalanced.
If I could buy poultaces I would probably never seek out a monk again other than to raise a corpse, or for rp.

[Kent]

Elystole is right. There's no way that dressed light wounds (or even moderate wounds) should not be completely healed in the ten-minute period it takes to be auto logged out.

And he's right about having the communism removed from the game's economy.

[Elystole]

Ok, so can you explain what the balance is between all this. making your own poultaces versus buying poultaces, reasons why someone would make a poultice rather than buy them etc, why people would ask for healing rather than use a poultice, reasons why people would rather use a poultice than a monk etc. Make everything balanced out, and I'd be willing to agree because right now the way I see it it would be rather unbalanced.
If I could buy poultaces I would probably never seek out a monk again other than to raise a corpse, or for rp.

Sure. I see the balance in a few ways:

When you make your own poultices versus buying poultices, you are saving a lot of riln. Untreated bandages and scraps of cloth are much cheaper than purchasing a treated bandage.

Player-created poultices may be of higher quality (potent herbs) than store-bought poultices (average herbs), just like player-made weapons and armor are of higher quality than store-bought ones. Our players invest a lot of time, energy, and riln into their crafting skills (like I have with my leatherworking) like they do their poultices (as I have also done), but who thinks we should get rid of NPC shops?

Monks will always provide better healing than poultices. If they didn't, why do town criers bother announcing the arrival of monks to the infirmaries and why do players scramble to get there when they do? Monk healing is both quicker and more sustainable. I remember the story of Alexander taking on Corvus and his invasion force virtually single-handed because Lae was behind him keeping him healed. You will never get that with a poultice. No matter how good a poultice is you still have to wait for it to work and you have to carry it with you. Your poultice supply is always limited, whereas all a monk has to do in order to keep healing is sit down and rest.

Monks can also heal in the middle of combat. Poultices can not. If you try to bandage yourself while enemies are in the room, even if they aren't attacking you, you'll get a message along the lines of, "While hostiles are in the room? I don't think so!"

Now, I would purchase a poultice instead of make one myself simply because of how long it takes to make a poultice compared to how quickly I go through them. Even then, I might continue making my 102s and 104s, the heavy hitters, and just buy the light-wound poultices from the infirmary because I literally go through dozens of bandages every hunting trip. The exchange between the amount of time and energy invested into making a single poultice versus how much of a benefit I get from using it is really poor.

The simplest reason I would use a poultice instead of seeing a monk is simply that monks aren't always available. Usually that is because there isn't a monk online, but it is also because oftentimes when a monk is online they are either far removed from me or busy with people who are seriously injured. If I am in the boonies somewhere, far from civilization and deep in some dangerous region, I'm not really in a position to extract myself and trek all the way across the map to reach a monk for every light wound. Especially when you consider that traveling has been made more difficult with increased energy costs and round time, increased food consumption, and the addition of horse fatigue to reflect the fact that a league is actually a large distance that we shouldn't be speedwalking through on a whim.

There are also people who can't or won't receive thaumaturgic healing. You might say "Well, that's their problem," but they play the game too.

I personally don't like bothering monks with light wounds because it really disgusted me as a new player when I would see other players demand thaumaturgic healing when all they had were scrapes or light wounds. It drains a monk to heal people. It's not as bad as Dragonrealms or Gemstone where empaths would literally vaporize their own limbs or just die trying to heal people, but I have a healthy respect for the healing arts and that means not abusing it or acting like I'm entitled to it. So when I see a monk for something I like to make sure there is a serious need, something in line with Serafina's teachings that we should try to help ourselves first and ask for help only when the problem is our beyond our capabilities, and not just because I'm being cheap. I feel even more strongly that I shouldn't abuse our monks when I think about how most of them insist on walking to their patients with all of the hassle and expense that entails while simultaneously refusing tips. It's why I was always giving our monks first shot at whatever herbs I foraged.

Now, that said, being able to purchase poultices or treated bandages is just another option. I've never said it should be the only option, and I am generally always in favor of more choices instead of fewer choices. There are some people who will always see a monk or go to the infirmary. There are some people who value their riln more than their time, which is perfectly fine and I've been there myself, who will want to make all of their own poultices. There are other people, like myself, who place a higher value on our time than our riln and will buy some poultices.

Also, Rias, I had another thought about the whole forced downtime thing: Combat is the only part of CLOK with that kind of restriction beyond energy loss. I can grind literally any other skill, whether that be musical instruments, trade skills, or even channeling (assuming I had it), without extra forced downtime while getting better gains. There's a reason why my leatherworking is higher than virtually all of my combat skills despite the fact that Elystole is primarily a combat character and has invested significantly more time into combat than crafting. That seems really odd to me. It also seems really odd to me when your advice to someone who wants to play your game is to go AFK and not play the game.

[Rias]

I'm not so much encouraging AFK behavior as I am admitting that sometimes it happens. Sometimes you just want to do one thing and nothing else, and if you need to wait on something, you just AFK a while and come back when you're able to do what you want to do again. Sometimes I don't want to roleplay, or gather my own crafting materials, or whatever.

Sometimes I only want to grind combat. When I get hurt I'll slap on some bandages and AFK till I heal (if no monks are available).
Sometimes I only want to grind forging. When I need more metal I AFK and wait for miners to go get some for me, or for some to show up at the market.
Heck, sometimes I only want to RP with others. If the others I'm RPing with want to go out on a hunt or a logging trip or whatever, and I'm not feeling up to going to the effort/danger, I'll AFK until they get back.

Crafting activities have the "downtime" of gathering the materials. I can't just keep forging or leatherworking or poultice-making indefinitely; I need to stop and get more supplies eventually. I can do that gathering myself, or I can ask/pay for someone else to do it for me.

Gathering activities tend to be more dangerous and tiring, and the wounds/energy downtime aspects apply, and travel is often a thing as well.

Instrument-playing, meh. It should have some kind of moderation/downtime factor, but it's not important enough for me to worry about at the moment.

[Lavi]

again, I'm not seeing the problem, you are saying that it's not convenient for you to get healed. I have plenty of characters who can't make poultices, if I need them I go ask a monk or pay for them like mentioned. Some people take their Poultice making as an IC trait of their character and sell them, others give them away. What I'm hearing is that you want it to be easier to ground and hack things. there are plent of other muds that are made for Hack and slash, i'm not sure why this mud has to change to fit that need. It would be one thing if it was expanding to the Herbalism skills, making new types of poultices, different things that could be whipped up, but what you are saying is you want to go off on your own. not take another person where there could be RP done, and grind or kill for the fun of it. While I understand you don't want to have to grind herbs for an hour, it may be that it is necessary for your character, saying that you are grumpy because it's a necessary evil is just complaining that it takes time.

Lavi, do you actually have a reason as to why purchasing poultices or treated bandages is a bad idea? Or are you just arguing with me for the sake of arguing because at some point in the past you decided you have a problem with me and rather than say as much you're doing this passive-aggressive bull[crap]? So you haven't had a problem with the healing system: Fantastic. Good for you. I have, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. I'm proposing a solution to a problem that is negatively impacting a game that I enjoyed, am trying to enjoy, and have financially supported, so unless you have a legitimate grievance, shut up. Heaven forbid someone play the MUD and enjoy it for a different reason than you do.

Here's a mind-bender for you: Going to the infirmary is buying a treated bandage! It's true. I go in, lie down, and the nice healer gives me a treated bandage plus the service of putting it on for me. All I am suggesting is that I would like to be able to walk into the infirmary and say, "May I please buy some of your nice bandages from you?"

"Would you like me to put it on for you?" Hildibrand will ask.

"Oh, no thank you. I need a few for the road," I'll say.

"No problem. Here you go. That will be a crapton of riln," he'll say.

"Is that all? I just so happen to have three craptons of riln just burning a hole in my pouch thanks to the genocidal amounts of killing and looting bodies that I engage in on a regular basis. It's a bit bloody, but I'm sure you don't mind given your chosen profession," I'll say.

"Not at all," he'll say. "That's what the barrel of water is for."

And then I'll give him a crapton of riln for the privilege of getting a treated bandage without him putting it on me himself because capitalism.

[/quote]

While I don't really understand why you think I have some personal vendetta against you--which I don't--my reasoning was stated above, and Rias affirmed it. I don't think that we should be changing things so we can do one thing for hours and hours on end. If it were about leveling it wouldn't matter so much, but this game is about character interactions.

As for my personal feelings towards you as a person, I don't know you, so I don't know how you could assume I have some passive aggressive thing against you. I can say however, that you calling me out here on the BBS for something that is clearly an assumption, is not helping. You spoke plainly about your points on why you don't think this is a good idea; therefore, I spoke plainly as well. Saying I am in some way being passive aggressive is reading further into my post than what it should be.

With that being said, I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell me to shut up or whatever because you are upset at what I posted, it's kind of rude, and I really don't think it has anything to do with my argument.

If you have a problem with me, bring it up directly with me instead of bad mouthing me and talking down to me on the boards over a response that you received.

[Zoiya]

I play a character where I have to grind certain combat skills and I use the infirmary and don't have a lot of downtime in between tasks.

This has been requested before and it was said that we have PC monks. NPC monks. Bandages that you can buy in the infirmary and healing you can get in the infirmary for a price. Just because those options don't appeal to *you* doesn't mean that they aren't good options. I'm sorry that this aspect of CLOK doesn't appeal to you, but if you want to go a harder route and not interact with other PC's or NPC's, then I think it should take a little longer to accomplish what you want.

Also, I think the general tone of this thread has kind of deteriorated and if we can't discuss things in a rational and adult way without attacking each other, it will likely be closed.

Lets agree to disagree politely.

[Elystole]

I'm not so much encouraging AFK behavior as I am admitting that sometimes it happens. Sometimes you just want to do one thing and nothing else, and if you need to wait on something, you just AFK a while and come back when you're able to do what you want to do again. Sometimes I don't want to roleplay, or gather my own crafting materials, or whatever.

Sometimes I only want to grind combat. When I get hurt I'll slap on some bandages and AFK till I heal (if no monks are available).
Sometimes I only want to grind forging. When I need more metal I AFK and wait for miners to go get some for me, or for some to show up at the market.
Heck, sometimes I only want to RP with others. If the others I'm RPing with want to go out on a hunt or a logging trip or whatever, and I'm not feeling up to going to the effort/danger, I'll AFK until they get back.

Crafting activities have the "downtime" of gathering the materials. I can't just keep forging or leatherworking or poultice-making indefinitely; I need to stop and get more supplies eventually. I can do that gathering myself, or I can ask/pay for someone else to do it for me.

Gathering activities tend to be more dangerous and tiring, and the wounds/energy downtime aspects apply, and travel is often a thing as well.

Instrument-playing, meh. It should have some kind of moderation/downtime factor, but it's not important enough for me to worry about at the moment.

I'm not objecting to the presence of down time, but I think you're overestimating the downtime involved in those other tasks and severely underestimating the amount of downtime in combat. A couple hours of gathering, whether it be hunting for pelts or mining for metals, is enough to sustain literally days of nonstop crafting. There have been multiple occasions where I've had to stop crafting because I had too many materials and was feeling overwhelmed. Plus, acquiring new trade materials is something that you can directly address to minimize your downtime and that downtime isn't spent being AFK.

There is nothing that we can do to heal faster (except for drag a monk everywhere we go but they have lives outside of being heal bots for one character which is why I've made that joke about having Bling the Thaumahound follow me around). Even with poultices, you can only heal so quickly. Combat is the only thing that suffers from a truly enforced downtime where your options are to do something completely unrelated or simply AFK, but even then I'm not saying to get rid of that downtime. The fact that healing in CLOK isn't instantaneous or even automatic is important for balance. The problem I am seeing is that the downtime is significantly greater than the uptime.

I am having a really hard time understanding the resistance to purchasing poultices because it still doesn't eliminate that healing downtime. We already have NPCs that will apply treated bandages for a price. Purchasing a poultice just saves people the travel time associated with running all the way back to the infirmary to get one of those poultices, and they get an inferior product because a single infirmary bandage automatically heals any wound to full but a purchased poultice that you apply yourself would use your own first aid skill.

It also creates an option for people who go through bandages so quickly that making their own poultices isn't a realistic option. I easily go through fifty untreated bandages on every hunting trip just treating my light wounds. If I were to upgrade those to 103s, I would need two arnica, two comfrey, and one yora root per bandage. That's 100 arnica, 100 comfrey, and 50 yora root. I'm lucky if I even find that much comfrey on a foraging trip where I literally wander across the entire map foraging all of the spots that I know are good for comfrey. That takes the better part of a day, assuming the herbs are even available, and for all of that effort I get an hour or two of hunting. That's not a good return on anyone's investment, which is why people save their herbs for 102s and 104s which are used less often.

It's a whole lot of work for very little reward, and it exists solely because of a completely arbitrary block on purchasing poultices. I can purchase literally every other item I need in the game, including other player-craftable consumables like ammunition and food, so why not poultices?

I don't think that we should be changing things so we can do one thing for hours and hours on end. If it were about leveling it wouldn't matter so much, but this game is about character interactions.

Your argument fails for two simple reasons.

The first is that you you can do everything else in this game for hours and hours on end without difficulty. You can spend entire days crafting without ever leaving the workroom except to buy new permits. You can mine for hours and hours on end and never come up for air. To say this game isn't designed for doing things hours and hours on end is to ignore the fundamental fact that CLOK is a skill-based MUD and all skill-based MUDs require grinding. It's how they are designed. One of the advantages of the experience-based system is that you can do different things and still get experience, but in skill-based games you only improve by doing that one thing so you do the same thing again and again and again.

The second is that conflict is character interaction, and conflict in CLOK requires preparation which means grinding - especially since combat skills increase so much slower than non-combat skills. Conflict is at the root of all good stories. Not only that, but combat permeates every aspect of CLOK. Do you want more pelts? You better know how to fight. Do you want more metals? There's a chance that something is going to jump out and try to kill you. Have you tried to walk between Mistral and Shadgard? How many things tried to kill you along the way? If you ever want to go exploring you better be really good at combat because the further away you get from town the more dangerous things get. CLOK is not purely a combat MUD, nor is it strictly a social MUD. It's both, I've done both, and I enjoy both. I've attended dances and even hosted one. I've gone on picnics and invited friends out to dinner. I'm also been repeatedly called on to fight villains, repel invasions, and evict cultists.

Some players want to sit in inns all day and play patty cake, and they are well within their right to do so. I have never and will never say that they are playing the game wrong. But it also isn't wrong for other players to enjoy combat, want to be good at combat, and invest their time in it so that when some nethrim crash the party they're able to be the heroes. Considering just how dangerous CLOK is and how many skills, abilities, and guilds have combat applications, you don't have any basis for saying that combat isn't important.

Plus, I know you were grinding out tasks and skills like nobody's business after you joined the Templar.

This has been requested before and it was said that we have PC monks. NPC monks. Bandages that you can buy in the infirmary and healing you can get in the infirmary for a price. Just because those options don't appeal to *you* doesn't mean that they aren't good options. I'm sorry that this aspect of CLOK doesn't appeal to you, but if you want to go a harder route and not interact with other PC's or NPC's, then I think it should take a little longer to accomplish what you want.

I interact with PCs and NPCs plenty. I've visited PC monks, but they aren't always available as I've repeatedly said. I currently use untreated bandages and I've gone to the infirmary for healing when I have been close enough that it has been a good option, but they've also made travel more difficult. If there's an event, I stop grinding and go participate. I quite frankly don't know what you're talking about since purchasing treated bandages still requires going to the infirmary (or apothecary).