Why all the complaining about the vaults?

[Aamer Khan]

Let's take a deep breath and think about it for a second.

Before the merge, we built 4 mine shafts, the rainbow bridge, Lerena bridge, the one between Greater and Lesser Aradoth, and a multitude of work stations and shops in the field ...

ALL, without a huge vault.

Now, after merge, we were helped out in rebuilding our lost holdings by the gift of a large vault.

Did you forget what you did before? Or the techiniques you used to accomplish those mighty feats? Or the fact that now, we have specialized cargo disks, that can hold double what we used to. Even my tarbash holds 10500 bulk. And you still get road bonus with it attached.

So turn on the "way back" machine, go back in time and remember how ya did it before. Even with the vaults returned back to pre-merge stats, we STILL have it better than before.

To have accomplisment, you must have challenge and sacrifice and effort. Anything else is mindless, trivial, and boring. I thought you didn't want to be bored?

[Serat]

While I agree with your basic point, there are some minor differences that hinder what we used to be able to do pre-merge. Resources are much more guarded than they used to be. Crafting machines are less convenient than they used to be. I do think the vaults had to return to their original size, but then again I'm in favor of Horizons being slightly harder than it was in the beginning because I think it's better for the long term health of the game that people not run up to 100 so quickly. It is the transitions that are painful. Once a new equilibrium is reached, the revised set of expectations of what is "normal" advancement will be accepted. I remember how loud the screaming was when the artificially high advancement rates in beta would get reduced to their intended rates. Eventually,people accepted the new norm and went about their business. We'll have some adjustment, then continue on.

[Phillip]

"Even with the vaults returned back to pre-merge stats, we STILL have it better than before. "

[Martal Bau]

Except back then you didn't need to go back to town to craft things because the fields had stations with both machines. So there was no need to acquiring a large supply of resources for crafting with later on. But now some resources (iron for example) spawn in a location that has just the processing machine and are a significant distance away from any town. So filling up a disc and running to a town to work with them just isn't pratical.

Also we didn't have to get mass amounts of resources to islands with only one way to get to them or one way to get off. In other words you didn't have this excessive recall/porting.

Finally, a lot of people thought the old vaults were ridiculously low anyways. The bulk allowed was and has always been too low the in opinion of a lot of players. And the amount of money paid to get those small little increases was just pouring salt into the wound.

For the first time vaults were actually useful to crafters and it's going to be a bitter pill to swallow going back to their old state.

[AA0]

You also have to add that the # of tech comps has massively increased. Trophies were added, and have added large amounts of numbers to our vaults. Many new forms and techs are dropping, making us store more in the vaults.

Construction is not near finished and novians are still stockpiled.
The world has changed, our vaults should too.

[Senkeleron Fell]

So everyone will go back to using alts as mules to hold stuff, using consigners
to overstuff vaults, and using locked off consigners on plots to hold stuff.
All because we have returned to a vault size that was absurdly too small
to begin with.

[Aamer Khan]

On the issue of the finishing machines not being in the field...

The technique we use to work on the substantiator at Feladan, was to carry stage two resources... ( boards/orbs/bars ) to Harton Valley, where they were turned into construction items. This method will again serve us well, even in far flung guild towns without portals.

Once the finishing shop is built in whatever town, then you move to the next type of finishing shop you need until you have everything you need. Will it take some running? Sure, it's totally unavoidable in some places. Will it take longer that pre-merge? Of course... we didnt even have guild towns then nor so many hard to reach islands and areas.

As to resources being guarded...

I have found resources of ALL types that are not guarded. ( if my wife who never fights can gather there, anyone can ) If you look you will find them too. I will never buy the argument that things are so guarded that you can't gather resources. You just have to look. Even the guarded resources can easily be gathered in cargo gear IF you are patient and wait till the mobs move off.

Too many seem to want it easy and with out effort. Yes it's a game. Yes it should be fun. But so far, none of the reasons given for wanting the HUGE vaults back are more then minor annoyances or adjustments in techinique. I had great fun running joints to the kira mine, 20 at a time, by first mining at kion, recalling to New Rachival, porting to Kira, running to the mine, recalling back to New Rachival, porting to Parsinia and repeat the process over and over. How exciting to be running in the last 8 units to see it pop and be one of the first to port to Dahibi!

Perhaps you were not in on all that, perhaps your too new. I'm sorry you missed out on all the fun. :(

[Ikfel]

Yup we've got it easy now with these big one slot disks. And we even get construction work beyond tier 3. My plot has 420 cobalt sheets and 420 colbalt joints that need finishing. So I guess I'll just head down to Chiconis and fill my disk with iron bars and then simply drag it to Aug for nickle and then to Kirasanct for cobalt and then back to my plot so I can apply 40 or so of those. Repeat 20 times and I've got it made. The challenge of turning a Tarbash one slot disk full of iron into steel or cobalt is a bonus.

I was insane not to get the coblt work done before the vault shrink, but I was working hard on all the tier 2 and 3 needs. Oh well. I wonder what the going rate for cobalt work is?

[LaughingOtter]

I will never buy the argument that things are so guarded that you can't gather resources. You just have to look. Even the guarded resources can easily be gathered in cargo gear IF you are patient and wait till the mobs move off.

Agreed. Just last night I was gathering geostone clay in cargo gear,60m from a Veteran Blight Spectre, his homies, and the usual assortment of marble golems. You have to me aware of your surroundings and stay on your toes, but it can be done.

[Tantalyr]

Oh well. I wonder what the going rate for cobalt work is?

Prior to the vault shrink today, you could get cobalt construction work done on Order for 3 to 3.5 silver per unit. My guess it will be at least double now.

You have done a grand job of pointing out two of the most daunting tasks facing construction crafters now, Ikfel--making cobalt bars for sheeting and jointing and the portal chain--but let me expand a bit if I may with a simple and not unusual illustration for thosewhom it appears are not quite understanding the ramifications of the vault shrink problem.

Let's say that someone wants to hire you to install 125 cobalt joints on one of their plot structures, and let's assume further that (a) you are at maximum mining efficiency in digging up iron, nickel and cobalt, (b) you are at maximum 1:1 efficiency in turning iron bars into steel bars, and steel bars into cobalt bars, (c) you are at maximum 20:1 efficiency in turning cobalt bars into cobalt joints, and (d) you are at maximum 2:1 efficiency in installing cobalt joints on a structure. Finally, let's assume that the plot you are asked to work on is located in one of the easier to reach places like Shepherd's Home.

First, let's do the math. With your maximum efficiency in every aspect of making and installing cobalt jointing, you are going to need 5000 cobalt bars (125 cobalt joints x 2 joints per construction unit x 20 bars per joint). That in turn means that you will have to dig up a total of 10,000 iron ore to make into 5000 iron bars, and then 5000 nickel ore to turn those bars into steel, and finally 5000 cobalt ore to turn those steel bars into cobalt.

Before the vault shrink today, with my trusty Tarbash's Obsidian Cargo disk and my silk cargo armor on it would take me right at about an hour to mine and smelt and tote back to Aughundell about 1750 iron bars, or about3 hours just to mine the iron ore and smelt them into 5000 iron bars. After storing all those bars in my vault, it would take abouttwo more hours to mine up 5000 nickel ore and then smelt all those iron bars into steel bars. After storing my newly minted steel bars in my vault, it was off to Heather and the 5-10 minute jog to the cobalt field (about 5 minutes outbound and 10 minutes inbound dragging a full disk back to Heather). Given the distance to the cobalt field from Heather, it would take me around four hours to mine up 5000 cobalt ore and turn those steel bars in my vault into cobalt bars (thanks in large part to a wonderful plot owner who built a vault and a beginner blacksmith shop in Heather). So right now we're looking at 9 to 10 hours just to make all the cobalt bars necessary for the jointing work.

Now the fun part--porting to and from the destination plot. Alas, no one on Order has completed a bank vault in Bristugo yet, so the most "efficient" method would be binding in the town of your choice, porting to Bristugo, then porting to Shepherd's Home, then running to the destination plot (assuming there is no vault completed in that area--if there is you're set!), then recalling back to town. Figure 10 minutes portaling, running and recalling timeeach trip, then couple that with only being able to carry a maximum of 29 joints with full cargo gear. That's another 1.5 hours spentportaling and installing the joints, so we're right around 12 hours to do all that jointing work with the ability to store all those bars and joints in your vault.

Now take away that vault capacity. Keep in mind that while the Tarbash's Obsidian Disk has a healthy 10,500 bulk capacity (which equates to 1050 ore/slabs/logs, and 1312 bars/bricks/boards), it only has a one-slot unit capacity. And that means you can not split a stack of items in your disk to move some of them to your inventory. What to do when you've got 1312 iron bars in your disk and you can't store those in your bank vault? Well, the fastest route would seem to be to now drag that disk from the iron field in the Aughundell mines to the nickel field so you can dig up and hold a whopping 410 nickel ore in your inventory, then drag the disk back to Aughundell to smelt all of 410 iron bars into steel bars.

Now you've got 410 steel bars in your maxed-out inventory and 902 iron bars in your disk, none of which you can store in your vault. But wait! You still have to dig up 410 cobalt ore to turn those steel bars into cobalt to make the joints. But you can't put the iron bars you have in your disk in the vault, you can't put the steel bars you've made into either the disk or the vault, so you have no room to go dig up cobalt bars. I'll bet you're wishing by now that you'd built 5 or 10 Tier III or IV silos on your plot for just this sort of thing . . . .

And even if you have enough silo space to store first 5000 iron bars, then 5000 nickel ore and then 5000 cobalt ore and then 250 cobalt joints (remember, it takes two joints to make one construction unit), you're going to have to portal and run to your plot every time you fill up your disk . . . .

My guess? Count on tripling the time it will take you pre-vault-shrink to do any kind of cobalt construction work on a plot--and that's a conservative estimate.

Oh, did I mention the portal memory leak? You know the one--after 6 or 7 portals/recalls the lag monster jumps up and bites your arse. Factor that in too.

Sure, we construction crafters will get by with the incredibly minimal vaults we have now, but all of you should, in turn, get used to two "wonderful" side effects: (a) LOTS of just "gorgeous" silo farms, and (2) paying triple to quadruple (or more) what you're paying now for construction work.

[Ikfel]

I'm afraid that my Tarbash's Obsidian Cargo Disk has seen most of it's useful life. I mainly used it to haul things to and from convenient vaults. No way am I going to try and drag it all the way from the resource field to the job site.

A semi-abusive dodge for making cobalt crossed my mind. If there are any player built consigners near the resource fields, stuff them with iron bars, nickel ore and cobalt ore, paying the 10% consignment fee. One week later when it ends up in your overstuffed vault pull it out somewhere you can deal with it all at once. Stacks of 1300 units of cobalt ore wouldn't be that attractive, you wouldn't need to set a really high price to scare folks off. (The iron, nickel and cobalt would be on three separate consigners, it's the return to vault that gets them to the same place.) You could only process 10 disks of bars per week per consigner, but it might be worth it if you're not in a rush.

[LaughingOtter]

Ikfel, it's a lot easier to build your own T1 connie, set it to 'Deny All', load it up to your slot limit, then turn the consigner off.

Everything appears in your vault, regardless of how much is already in there.

No, it's not an exploit. The consigner is simply functioning as designed.

[Ikfel]

Is that the way that works? Wow, that's even more abusive.

But if I could get everything back to my plot I won't need the consignment dodge to combine it. The idea was to drag a disk full to a nearby consigner rather than make four multiple portal trips.

[Smeglor]

A couple quick points on these subjects:

You can't disable a consigner anymore, unless you delete the entire structure.

I made a fix to allow you to split stacks out of full (in the stack sense) vaults and cargo disks. Just do a normalsplit, and when it cannot put the new stack in the vault/cargo disk, it will instead try to put it in your inventory. Give that a try.

[Kwinn]

So turn on the "way back" machine, go back in time and remember how ya did it before. Even with the vaults returned back to pre-merge stats, we STILL have it better than before.

To have accomplisment, you must have challenge and sacrifice and effort. Anything else is mindless, trivial, and boring. I thought you didn't want to be bored?


nuff said...outstanding post! BZ!


Kwinn

Order Server

Lotsa classes and lvls half drunk too :)

Dog: Something but what I cant remember

[Serat]

Just a brief observation about this thread. Opposing arguments without obnoxious flaming or posturing. /takes a deep breath and enjoys the fresh air.

oh, and smeglor..the split change is very nice.

[LaughingOtter]

Interesting change, Smeglor. I don't think it will change anything in the long run, though.

[Vahrokh]

Why not using the "split-stack" command?
I split stuff off my tarabash all the time.

Just press both mouse buttons on the item to drag, then drag to i.e. vault or inventory, then release only left button.

A requester will appear asking the number of items to split. Enter it and voila' you split just XX pieces off a tarabash.

[Tantalyr]

A couple quick points on these subjects:

You can't disable a consigner anymore, unless you delete the entire structure.

I made a fix to allow you to split stacks out of full (in the stack sense) vaults and cargo disks. Just do a normalsplit, and when it cannot put the new stack in the vault/cargo disk, it will instead try to put it in your inventory. Give that a try.

Thanks Smeglor, that will help a bit. But without much larger vault capacity to store ore and bars, cobalt will still be the biggest bear in Istaria to work. Indeed, working mithril construction is now far less time consuming than working cobalt, as odd as that seems.

[Frons Von Frik]

3k is not enough .. I have a sack of tech comps that total 3k --As hard as they were to get and as expensive as they are on the vielo--there is no way that I would delete those...