Yet more uneeded porting?? What gives?

[Akuluxtraxas]

After looking over the recent live changes i was pretty happy til i hit the change in Lattices using a Crystal machine. Another change i see no point too and that makes lattices even worse then before. I dont understand why you continu to make this class more tedious and more unpleasant.

Any Devs want to answer this?? you refuse to put Crystal machines anywhere and then force yet more disk dragging and porting than before. where tier III Lattices werent too bad now they suck just like the rest.

I just wonder what gives with even more grind when the change seems to serve no purpose but more frustration and tedium for us

[Akuluxtraxas]

Dont see or own a lair in or right near aug mines and thats the only good spot for tier III gems really. Just another change with no good reason to make a class more annoying.

[Death-knell]

Well looking at the lairshaping system before the change its fairly obvious they are doing their best to slow down leveling. The increased complexity unreasonable combinations of resources.

Now they're just adding everything they can possibly find to slow it down even more.

[PJ]

Um correct me if i'm wrong (but i'm not). Isn't there a nice Lunus Crystal Shaper, right next to a decent sized field of Amber Azulyte Crystals. Seems to make sense to have Crystal Shapers, near crystals and gemcutters near gems.

Make those tricuts in Aug then truck them over to Taz crater and convert them into lattices.

[Akuluxtraxas]

Be nice if they FINISHED the school before nerfing and further complicating it. peace!

[Fourwinds]

Be nice if they FINISHED the school before nerfing and further complicating it. peace!

What have they not finished in the Lairshaping school?

[Death-knell]

Um correct me if i'm wrong (but i'm not). Isn't there a nice Lunus Crystal Shaper, right next to a decent sized field of Amber Azulyte Crystals. Seems to make sense to have Crystal Shapers, near crystals and gemcutters near gems.

Make those tricuts in Aug then truck them over to Taz crater and convert them into lattices.

ummm, thats great. you can name 1 amber field with a crystalshaper next to it. Now name me other tier fields with machines nearby. Tier 1, umm...nope, tier 2 ummm...well there is a crystalshaper a short flight away from the chiconis load. Tier 3....Tazoon lair, yeppers. Trandar field, none that I've seen. Tier 4 nope again, now the dralk field has a crystalshaper downtown which pretty much matches the difficulty of other dralk resources. Tier 5.....dream on.

The other tier resources as a general rule have a machine nearby, with the exception of shining essense. Ironsilk can longer be added to this list(at least on order) theres a machine nearby now that was rebuilt by the players.

[Deth]

T1- want to say yes. I want to say I have heard of a mine around the Per blight mountain.

T2- Not Sure.

T3- Tazoon Crater

T4- Yes -"there's a new titian (t4) crystal mine at 25040 29700 SE of mahagra that has a crystal shaper. again, it's mostly tier 1 work. details later." http://community.istaria.com/Web/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=115290

T5- Yes -"19735 23240

this incredibly inconvenient project has:

3-way
t1 storage.
-
straight spiral
bend
t1 crystal shaper.

this project is flight accessible only.. or if it isn't, the walking path there is pretty rough.
the crystal nodes appear to be around the mountainside and in the deadlands.
not only does that make it a bit of a pain and clearly exlcude hatchlings, it's nowhere near gems.. which does us absolutely no good.
with the new change that requires a crystal shaper instead of a gemcutter to make lattices.. you need to drag cargo from gems to a crystal shaper. if you can't walk to this shaper.. it's useless." And you can walk up to this as found and posted later. http://community.istaria.com/Web/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=117936

So the only one I have not heard of found yet is T2 and with the other 3, 4 if some one can confirm the T1 out by Per then yes there should be a T2 in. Maybe it is the Lair up behind the upper craft cave and it is not a massive lair like under Dralk.

[Death-knell]

Thanks Deth. Never heard of any that, will have to check it out!

[PJ]

I only named 1 because that's all the OP asked for.

Now in general, not all fields have machines near by. Some have have 1, others have 2, some have none. The ones that don't have any machines near by usually have plots near by where machines can be built.

So on that note:

t1: ummmm yes. There's an imperial lair underneath the parsinia crystal field. Maybe there's a crystal shaper in there. On the odd chance that its some random lair near a crystal field with no crystals, there are a couple of player lairs just to the north.

t2: t2 crystal fields near player lairs

t3: already covered the tazoon crater field, can't fly so never seen the trandalar one.

t4: t4 would seem to be the worst, as there are crystal fieldsin dralk and feladan, but while there are lairs in the approximate neighborhood, they're further then normal. Maybe you could suggest that they add a crystal shaper to the Dralk Obsidian crafting cave, as its close to t4 crystals. And it is a crafting cave.

t5: t5 crystals on fire island (close to player lairs), and last stand (again close to player lairs)

I'm not even a lairshaper, I'm sure if you asked one of those, you might find that i've missed some fields, or crystal shapers.

[Deth]

No problem Just trying to squash all the miss info out there so we can rant and rave about true problems and not incorrect one. *toothy grin*

[LaughingOtter]

Where is the azulyte near Last Stand?

[Akuluxtraxas]

Interestingly all are missing the actual issue

tri cuts dont go well with a tarbash disk. at least making em. Meaning you now have to either silo em or drag disk back to dralk or a nearby lair if you find one then get crystals. Crystals are easy to deal with. just in past with making tri cuts you made em and gathered cryustals and used a gem machine (near almost all gems). made things less grind and less porting then now.

As far as finishing the school i mean tier VI. i dont see bipeds relying on "bonus" resourcves to build expert shops. Also just have seen ever LS change except storage one increase and cause further porting/grind. And Lairshaping needs so many things but grind it has the trophy for so i dont think it needs anymore.

Also we were told about a hoard chamber and their were talks about new disks that are now both either scrapped,forgotten or on the endless when we get there list.

The real point here is they can consistently change things like machine req that annoys some but they cant find time to add Styone quests or add a hoard chamber or focus on things that actually are beneficial and positive. maybe even

[Death-knell]

I
t5: t5 crystals on fire island (close to player lairs),.

What lairs are close to fire island? Never seen any on the island and there is nothing else even remotely what I would call close. Now that machine cave has many machines in it. Theres room for a crystalshaper.

[Goriax]

I don't consider tri-cuts any less compatible with tarbash disks then most laircrafting construction materials. In fact tier 1 lattices are one of the few things for which I use a tarbash. I fill the tarbash up with tri-cuts, go to the azulyte field in the volcano, move the tricuts to inventory and fill the tarbash up with unfocussed crystals, then drag everything to Kion and the portal toDralk using roads most of the way. Works out quite well. About the only thing which would be better is if there were a crystal shaper right by the gem field and even then I probably wouldn't save much time over the existing setup (essentially the time to drag a tarbash along the road from the volcano to the teleporter -- which is only a couple minutesl).

I agree that they shouldn't keep changing stuff around. Decide on something and then freeze it. They may feel they're still in some sort of extended bug fixing and game tweaking phase since lairs are only a couple months old.

If they're putting machines near representatives of all the other resource fields (not all fields but at least one field of each type has a machine)then fire island should have a crystal shaper. Or some other comparable field.

The hoard chamber may be a LONG time coming. They mentioned they currently have no way for any residence (biped or dragon) to reflect the chracteristics of the owner (such ashoard size) so they have to put that in first. Also, a hoard chamber would require art work which puts a huge brake on it. Plus, they've said repeatedly they're going to be spending most of their time on other things for awhile.

I think a better approach -- especially if furniture looks to happen sooner -- would be to have a piece of dragon furniture that looks likea hoard. TG would make several corresponding to different hoard levels (perhaps have themalignwith the different hoard pictures on ourequipment window)and the dragon can only get the one corresponding to his hoard level. A dragon can only have one hoard-furniture at a time but can get that one for free somehow (ideally with some inate ability). That would give us our hoards with the additional advantage that we could put them wherever we wanted and wouldn't require a new feature that they weren't going to put in anyway. Although this only works if furniture is a real possibility in this lifetime.

P.S. There's one other way they could do a hoard chamber although it has some obvious drawbacks. Have a series of hoard chambers for different levels of hoard.All chambers would be the same size and all would have only one attach point.You can only plan the one corresopnding to your hoard. Make it very easy to build because when your hoard increases and you want to show it you'd deconstruct the old hoard chamber and build a new one. If it has only one attach point there won't be any connectivity issues. While it would require artwork for several chambers, they'd all be the same except for the size of the hoard displayedso hopefully it would be little more effort then artwork for one chamber.

Ok, it has some really obvious problems -- like requiring dragons to rebuild their hoard chamber periodically --but it could be done with the existing engine.

[Death-knell]

is anyone else having serious map problems?!?

I brought up my map to look for 19735 23240 that Deth gave us earlier. As I moused over the map looking at coords it says 19735 23240 is in the ocean between leeser aradoth and the mainland. I know this isn't correct, but WTF. Guess this is why I don't use coords and give folks compass directions from the closest port point.

[Mirsathia]

If I ever get my crystalshaping lair done in Elia, it'll be the closest to T5 crystals on Fire Island - just a relatively short hop.


~Mirsathia

[Scree]

Finished a T2 Crystalshaper on level 0 in my lair in Selen, if anyone needs one round there.
The lair is hard to see from the road tho and on the 3.2 map looks like it's a lake... It's the south-eastern most lair there.

[imported_Rhyssa]

Thanks very much for opening your cs shop up for everyone to use Scree. I'm crossing my fingers you're on Chaos. If not, I'll be having a look to see if anyone on Chaos with a lair in Selen is building a CS shop - I'm more than happy to pitch in and help.

[Dhalin]

I think they should have left it the way it was before, where the Machine required for Lattice was Gemcutters.

I have to side with the OP on this one. Sure, content and all, is supposed to last, but there's a point where it becomes needless tedium. When it becomes More Tedious, it becomes Less Fun. Sure, Sure, doing resources the first one run... two runs.... 3 runs.... its kinda fun.

Doing that Long Long disk-dragging run for 1238938338372129th time, that's about the time players start ripping their hair out in frustration. Things are fun the first 1-10 times you do it. After that it starts to get to be "bleh... I've done this a MILLION times already........"

Changing the required machine to Crystal Shaper was a BAD idea, and serves no real purpose, but to lengthen something that's already borderline too long in the first place.

1). There aren't enough Crystalshapers around, and they are certainly, almost never near gemfields/gemcutters.

2). A lot of these locales require FLIGHT to navigate, making disk-dragging impossible without making multiple trips to and from your disk... aka... more annoying backtracking/doing the same menial task 100 billion times.

Instead of making Lairshaping so Long Long LONG, I got a better idea.

Instead of having, what, 4 Total End-Products that are 120bulk each? Let's see, there's Lattice, Excoriation, Maelstone, Flowstone.... and I think there's one more I'm forgetting, I can't remember. So 4-5 different types of resources that go into the same room, right?

I got a better idea.

Triple that.

That's right, you heard me. Triple, heck, Quadruple the different TYPES of end-products required for each room. Let's say each room takes 50 different types of materials to finish. Then, you make Each material easier to get, and less running around for Each material. In the end, it takes the SAME number of Basic Units (same number of Bronze Bars, Orbs, Essence, Sandstone Brick, Sandstone Slab, etc) to make the room, but my method is better.

Why?

Because it breaks up the Monotany a little. Doing the same Formula repeatedly 300 times to finish one room is stupid. Why not divide that up into 10 forumlas, each one needing done 30 times each? Still 300 Units... 30x10. But... each unit is different, requiring slightly different formulas to make, and is less monotanous becuase its DIFFERENT. You're not doing the same Formula 300 times. You're doing 10 different formulas 30 times each. It doesn't seem as bad while you're doing it, even though it takes the same amount of time (roughly) to do.

--Dhalin