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[Suggestion]

Ah, the Level 3/4/5/6 Spell, a notorious bugger to balance because of that.
Currently it's kind of useless. PfX blocks Phantasmal Killer, Clarity blocks PhK and Colour Spray. It's just a super expensive See Invis. For a L4-5 spellslot, you may as well just quaff potions.

Suggestion: Treat this as a L4 spell, and balance it accordingly. It's hugely expensive as a L5, and only worth it off Animal Domain really.

Provides See Invisibility, Ultravision and immmunity to Illusion spells. Grants +2 Spot and Search.
SF: Divination: Adds +2 Spot and Search
GSF: Divination: Applies to caster as well as target, Adds the Blind-Fight fight if the character does not already have it.

This would let Clerics make Search checks, which are an incredibly common PVE obstacle in CoR.  Blind-fight is a powerful feat, but 99% of melee and ranged PCs have that already. Which means granting it would be powerful, but only really for full-caster builds who want to hit with their melee and touch attacks. And for PvP or long fights, it is a buff, and can be dispelled.

[Negative Energy Ray]

These are basically pointless for PCs, as healing is so common on EFU. Which is a good thing, but means that the only point of CSW on a bard is "making potions" for example. I would doubt any Ranger has cast the Cure Light Wounds spell in the entire chapter. Interestingly, while playing a kobold necromancer, I got an idea for how to make player cast heals see the light of day.

Negative Energy Ray
The following two changes only come in to play the spell is not cast from an item.

• If a wizard has Spell School Necromancy or a Sorcerer has Spell Focus Necromancy, casting the spell deals an additional 1d6 negative energy damage to the target.
• Greater Spell Focus Necromancy also gives a targeted undead creature +2 regeneration for 1 round per caster level.

Inflict Spells now reduce healing received from Cure Spells by 10% per level of the Inflict Spell.

These were great changes and meant my yippy little boneboi held a couple of rays in reserve for topping up his skeletons.

I propose the following changes. Not linked to a Spell School or Focus, though.  Given how Cures aren't also a useful attack against most things, and are incredibly common as loot.

All of these only occur if not cast from an item:

• Cure Light Wounds: Applies +2 Regeneration for one round per level on a living target. Applies 10% physical damage vulnerability to an undead for 1 round per level (Will negates, does not stack)
• Cure Moderate Wounds: Applies +3 Regeneration for one round per level on a living target. Applies 15% physical damage vulnerability to an undead for 1 round per level (Will negates, does not stack)
• Cure Serious Wounds: Applies +3 Regeneration for one round per level on a living target. Applies 20% physical damage vulnerability to an undead for 1 round per level (Will negates, does not stack)
• Cure Critical Wounds: Applies +4 Regeneration for one round per level on a living target. Applies 25% physical damage vulnerability to an undead for 1 round per level ((Will negates, does not stack)
• Healing Circle  Available as a L3 Spell (it's the inverse of Negative burst, why is it L5 by default?).  Deals an extra +1d8 healing/damage with SF Abjuration. Applies +2 Regeneration for one round per level on all living allies. Applies 10% physical damage vulnerability to all target undead for 1 round per level (Will negates).

In line with the Negative Ray changes, they could also get an additional +1d6 from player casts.

Regen is pretty easy to apply off herbs in the short term now, and Monstrous Regeneration has been buffed to turn per level not round. Which means this change to player cast cures won't make it obsolete. Since a lot of undead have DI, lowering that seems like a useful utility to add to the Undead-smiting side of the spell. Meaning the spells become useful to slap boss monsters with, and for example CSW can compete with just defaulting to Magic Vestment (Cleric)  or Haste (Bard).

From my experience of using 3 Regen herbs, I find you rarely get the full benefit of regeneration with an effective team anyway, as they'll slap ash on you before the regen has a chance to patch up the damage. So I feel this is a change most likely to benefit less mechanically-adept players rather than massively force-multiply strong ones.

Much like the Bard Song random mecrhants, all the random seed merchants do is make a player spend inordinate amounts of gp on stuff that isn't useful or fun for their character. The only reason you're likely to need to buy seeds is that someone is ripping up your plants faster than you can regrow them. Which sucks anyway, as they can do it while you\re offline/elsewhere. And staking out gardens is not an exciting way to spend all your EfU time. You need a specific seed to replant, but you can't choose to buy that one.

Can we get a "store" option for the seed merchants. So you can buy a random seed for 10gp or whatever, or a specific seed for 40gp? it would allow you to actually replant without constantly wasting money.

Currently it wants the Ring 84 Key and the Ring 86 Keystone. It's possible to be robbed of or otherwise lose the 84 Key, and regaining that key requires a full party to do the ring challenge. It doesn't make sense for the Captain to not accept the Keystone of Ring 80 as proof you can reach 82.

Started playing a kobold alt due to being alone in a deep ring. I can earn money from rat hunting in the lair but I don't have anywhere to spend it. It would be useful if there was a basic merchant selling the same sort of things you can get in the Ponds if you're playing a goblin. As your bolthole is quite a long way from anywhere useful, and you can't even buy ammo. I understand Kobolds are supposed to be hard but "dead because I ran out of food/ammo despite having plenty of gold" isn't particularly interesting.

I assumeI can trade with Ponds merchants, but I don't know what's OK to trade with in 99. Other than the Rat Raft.

I've noticed that since Ticker got invaded, the number of non-human PCs has took a nosedive.  Associations have been whittled down to 5 Human-Only (with some exceptions for Velstra) Houses, the Recondite (Recondite only, outlaws) and the druids (outlaws).  And the Prospectors, but they don't appear to have a goal beyond "hoard planar junk to fix up our hall". There's not a clear rival to the Peerage any more. Given that, it's just so much easier to get in on DM plot or political conflict as a human because you can openly work with any of the Peerage factions. Whereas there's a much smaller number of PCs likely to think that working with the Recondite or Druids is a good idea.

Thing is, there's lore to build on here. A big draw of playing a non-human character in an RPG is in playing with an alien perspective on the world. Without that, halflings just work out as short humans and elves as skinny humans with pointy ears:

• The Recondite are fresh and amazing and well done to Arc for a brief that feels solid and interesting to interact with whenever I cross paths with a Recondite PC.
• The Dwarf lore is now accessible without a keystone, which is good. But there's not much there beyond the paladin oath and the names. Their religion brief is, however excellent as it contains mysticism, encouragement to action, and reasons for followers to disagree. "All Ancestors are worthy but not all Ancestors are Good" indeed!
• Elf lore is there but all I've seen is pretty damn deep, so you don't start out with much to build your characterisation with. It's excellent, but rather inaccessible.
• Halfling lore is... IDK pirates?
• There's definitely something going on with Gnomes between the Toyfolly and the mysterious lack of any old-age gnomes in the city.
• Half orcs can wonder about Gnasharim, although with the Crossroads gone it doesn't seem to show up as much.

All of this has massive potential,  but I think it needs a bit more of a push. I don't think that more X Race Only factions are the way to go, as it makes them fragile. It's hard to recruit IC, and it limits you to one PC minority. "Human only" only works because human is very flexible on builds and the default pick. I do think that factions with a moderate prejudice towards a couple of character races could work. So it's not just a cae of "sudden bursts of dwarf or elf groups then nothing when they TPK"

As an example, halflings.

• Given that Vunco was as an infamous pirate, what about pushing halflings with a nautical culture?
  
• Replacing most of the Canal Mariner NPCs with halflings and working that in more would give an area that's dominated by a strong nonhuman group that the Peerage can't just stomp on as they need the trade.
• You get an incentive to ring run and you could promote a set of values based on exploration and discovery
• Halflings in the Mariner's Guild get an automatic positive bias from faction NPCs, but there's no straight-up ban on anyone else. Life's just unfairly easier when you're a halfling. Meaning there's a strong incentive to play a halfling if you want to be a sailor but it's not enough to ditch your preferred concept if you really want to play a dwarven master of the boarding axe.

What would make you play a dwarf next? Or a halfling? an Elf? Even... A GNOME?

I'll post the screen later, but while I remember it:
You can make allegedly reusable jumping boots in Tinkering, using a rare reagent. They have a 1/day power that crosses a ravine or fires you up a cliff.
Despite the description, they are removed from your inventory when you trigger them.
It seems they are mistakenly using the same script as for the disposable ones.
This is a real shame, as I've seen them be sold for a fair bit of money because that power is super useful.

[Issues:]

As I understand it, the idea of moving crafting tables was both to force crafters to explore more risky areas and to prevent the case of "oh look there's a Balor outside town again".

It's almost, but not quite worked. I've got 3 crafting skills maxed, and it's incredibly rare for me to find a useful lab unless a DM has announced a hatch-spawning spree. What usually happens is everyone does their research on the persistent +0 or +8 tables, then hoards up their rare resources for that once-in-a-blue-moon chance of a +20 bench.

This is a shame, because I love the crafting system. The random recipe generation means that different crafters can specialise in different products. And there's cool emergent outcomes like people trading Herbalism reagents made in Alchemy to a Herbalist who can use them. It's a system where factual knowledge and individual PC expertise can make two characters with the same levels and skills totally unique from each other. And where people genuinely have no idea OC if I can make something or not. But that sense of mystery doesn't extend to finding the labs.

Issues:

• Many of the labs in explorables don't have any bonuses. Why use them when there's persistent labs in more convenient locations? Since they're an explorable, it's more likely you'll run into a PC in them anyway.  This wouldn't be a problem if hatches spawned more often, but it means there's good odds on the only lab you'll see this week being useless.
• I have never seen a generic crafting bench hatch any deeper than 97. There appears to be little reason to push deeper on your regular scouting for random craft tables. I've got through a lot of deeper rings in the past week, and have high Search. I've still only found some persistent +0s.
• The easiest place to find herb table spawns is literally the next zone over from a persistent herb table.
• Previously, a cheaply accessible minor faction had a secure +15 alchemy table. This was better than everything, and led to a glut of Peerage alchemy masters.
• On the other side of things, the rentable property in Ticker with a herb table was +0. And a huge investment for that +0.

Herbalism specific:

• Both of these are a frustration on the reagent supply side. Herbalism items tend to be weaker or single-use and so are balanced around a steady supply of reagents.
  Greedy PCs looting plants. It's terrible because there's no meaningful conflict generated by someone using up your entire patch. You can't hunt them down and enact some payback, as it's impossible to find who did it.
• The Herb Seed Lucky Dip. A herbalist is going to want a specific plant for their work. The only reason to be buying seeds is because some PC has looted out your  herbs and you ran out of backup seeds. Given that, it's annoying to have to buy random seeds you don't want.

Suggestions:

• Tweak the explorable labs to all be at least a +5 bonus. This means they're automatically worth finding and using.  Bearing in mind there's persistent +8 tables for Tinkering and Alchemy that aren't too hard to find.
• Massively increase the spawn rate of labs, but decrease the spawn rate of +15 and +20 labs to compensate.
• Spawn hatches in some of those more empty deeper rings that people just sprint through rather than explore. Encourage players to slow down more. And maybe then notice some more of the hidden stuff ;).
• Alternatively, put "a random +5 lab" in the guaranteed spawn table for somewhere like 96-97. Ensure there's always a reason to go looking each reset. E.g. there used to be a +0 herb in 95, where it wouldn't have a druid passing through every 5 minutes.
• Put in a couple more persistent +0 labs. There's now two +0 Tinker benches in the starting Rings, which is great as you can't be sure where someone might be doing tinkering. But with only one Herb table and that in a well-trafficked area, I've met a lot of PCs down there :P.
• Provide a Seed merchant selling named seeds at 30gp each. So you can pay 10gp for A Seed, or 30gp for that one you actually want. Much like the Burgage song merchant, it'll remove a lot of frustration.

The most difficult obstacle in Ringrunning isn't the game difficulty, but trying to coordinate play times. If you can't all make the perfect time, someone gets left out. Which is fine for key rings, as you can give them a key later. But for keystone rings, it means you have to run the thing two or three times, especially if someone dies and you need to recruit a replacement.  This means that some rings stop being interesting and start being tiresome.Especially as you have to avoid spoilering your reinforcement PC.

I've seen DM loot items which have been tagged with "Only useable by a member of ???? Ringrunning crew. Applying that rule to keystones would be a huge quality of life upgrade. As it would mean you weren't constantly held back by the OC concern of "when can we all make it?".

I'm not suggesting that all keystones should be transferable, but only the ones where you have a massive boss fight or other big risk that you need to take on as a team.  If it's a puzzle ring you can do with 1-2 PCs, there's no issue of OC cat-herding. This would let you preserve momentum and avoid being stuck forever or your crew splitting for OC reasons. Because provided most of you could get on to do a big ring challenge, you'd have a couple of spare keystones for your other faction members.

We've been hearing a lot of PCs making antagonistic or "hello yes I am a monster PC" sendings these days . If the Doorkeepers were grey, it would avoid the need to get a DM in order to try chasing these characters in otherwise uninhabited sections of the server.

Since Barbs were being discussed on #main, I realised something about Berzerker Rage. This doesn't really have a downside, despite claiming one.

Provides an additional +1d4 strength and constitution for the duration of the rage, rolled separately, but also induces a fatigue period for one turn after the rage which causes -2 strength, constitution, armor class, and will save.

If your enemy is still alive after 10-12 rounds of Big Strength Walloping, you've either lost anyway, or you're down to cleaning up the last couple of monsters. Rather than -2 STR after the fact, I suggest moving the penalties to occur during the rage. AC isn't a barbarian's real defence anyway, that's the big HP and DI. Which Berzerking does nothing to penalise.

Provides an additional +1d4 strength and constitution for the duration of the rage, rolled separately. Applies 5% vulnerability to all damage per bonus point of Strength, and a flat -2 AC and saves

Applying the penalties while you have it active means it's more akin to a combat mode. You're trading your barbarian DI for more HP, AB and damage in an unpredictable manner, and the save penalty cances out the +Fort and +Will benefits of raging. You're going to dish out more damage but also take more, as you're more vulnerable to damage spells too.  The +CON will help you soak that extra damage but you might have a bad day when it runs out.

It's possible to plant seeds (both normal and druid) in locations where it's physically impossible to reach, destroy or harvest the plants. If the power could only be used where you are standing, these accidents and exploits would be preventable.

Someone asked in Discord if it was OK to attack city golems, as they are blue NPCs.

They're a living, sentient, sapient being that isn't harming you.
Therefore it's a vile act on the level of randomly deciding to murder a bystander in a tavern and rip out their heart.

To which I did a massive double take.  They're sentient? They don't generally behave like anything but uncommunicative automatons. I'd always percieved killing a city golem as a Chaotic act, like smashing up a part of the City infrastructure. And advised against it IC on the basis of "don't vandalise important machines" not "HOLY SHIT DON'T RANDOMLY MURDER SOME DUDE". The only reason I'd even suspect they might be intelligent is I found RWG posting a screenshot of one talking to him.  There's a hint of "some form of intelligence" in the description, but based on them not ever talking or doing anything, I assumed it was at the level of "guard dog" not "people".

Could they maybe have some more indication the city golems *are* sentient? As generally golems aren't, and the city ones don't show signs of person-level intelligence. I've come across three so far and they just all stand around ignoring you. There's the Sad Dead Golem encounter but all that indicates is they can be friendly. A dog can be friendly. If you want PCs to treat them like people, not machines, they need to behave like people, not machines. Which  probably means giving them some conversations that show signs of a personality.  Which means not only are people more considered about whether to attack them, they might try interacting with them rather than treating them as furniture.

You can't buy fish in the store. You can't go fishing. Could the water plane have some more fish please?

Can the relics available in the stores please have the domains added in the main item text? The Relic-specific grey text doesn't show up until you buy it, so it's possible to buy an unusable Relic. Especially for something like the 9-Faced which can have basically any domain. These are relics you can basically build a priest around if you know what domain works with them, and it would be awesome to see visible, thematic things like the Ankh of Sa'i and the Light-In-Darkness see more use.

On a similar note, some of the Particular Small God Only ones could possibly do with being accessible to more domains. E.g. Light-In-Darkness. It's Sun only, Promise Priest only. Putting Death domain on there would mean it had a suitable Primary Domain associated with it. Death Domain is really weak compared to Good, for example. With the Great Light Item Nerf, torch wielding clerics got a lot more obvious and cool.

[Suggestions:]

When I came back to EfU, I was impressed by the wider variety of quests, as it meant we had a lot of variety in what we got to do. Especially as the level range on most quests was much wider than in back in C3. This was great as it meant you had a wide choice of what to do with a large team, so questing was really fun and varied. I've noticed a trend since I joined that quests are having level caps reduced, but nothing's replacing them. All the new quests seem to be <L9. So we have incredible variety going from 3-6, a good range of 3-8s, then a big reliance on hunting seams for the long quests or scouring ring 95 for random lairs. Getting L9 can feel like a bit of a poisoned chalice, as if you need supplies or cash, you can't just do the nearest fun quest.

This is benefiting close knit crush squads to the detriment of anyone who got beyond L8 more casually. Quests like Ash Alley and Trash Island are nice short resupply runs for those of us without access to faction stores. They're don't have spectacular loot but they don't have spectacular Fuck You enemies either. Having them as high level quests was valuable as it meant high level PCs could restock on basic supplies for ringrunning or schemes. Everything doesn't need to be EPIC all the time just because you avoided dying.

3-8 is fun. There's lots of quests that let you take risks and try wacky builds, because the enemies aren't minmaxed. Trying to do Storm's Eye or the 94 quests on a suboptimal team is a quick road to the Fugue. And although a caster PC can buff their lower level mates then go for a Wizardly Pipe-Smoking Break outside the quest, it's not exactly exciting. If you hit L9 on a mixed team, you're now likely to spend a lot of time either vetoing quests, carrying the lower level PCs through a high-risk quest, or sitting around outside waiting for the 3-8s to finish.

I've spent a lot of time recently scouting 95 for quests that 1-2 of the party then have to sit out.  It's a Not-Questing Train! Furthermore, nerfing the level range on 95 quests makes the 95 challenge even more of a grind when you need to do it. And it's not going to stop optimal teams grinding up supplies because they'll be off 3-manning Ghylherl and dunking on the Fire Seam anyway.  Sometimes I just want to have a short session of EfU.  Log in, do some RP and exploring, kick over a few monsters' sandcastles, then log off. It's why I was playing an alt while I was L10. Because unless I found a random, or we were doing ringrunning today, I rarely had much to do. Then I lost L10 and suddenly had money and the ability to go out on quests again.  This is also the reason I doubt I'd app for L11 on anything other than a caster class, Merchant Lord Rogue etc. Because the character would likely go bankrupt.

Suggestions:
More short, high-level quests, please. Either by rolling back a few level-range nerfs or writing some short quests. For example, Orphanage is 100% perfect. It's short, fun, and surprisingly dangerous if you underestimate it, without relying on cheesy tricks like dispel spamming or mega-crits.

One of the really good things about Trash Island is a lot of the loot is good-quality weapons and armour. Stuff that is valuable when you need a decent weapon or armour, but doesn't have great resale potential compared to its weight. So the effective payout is much higher for under-equipped PCs. Biasing loot to be equipment, 0.5lb single use devices etc, is one way to make these quests less profitable for highly-equipped PCs. Because they can't just add to their Fat Stacks Of Haste if it doesn't drop Haste potions.

As an example, the Webber outfits  are popular and often extremely expensive bits of kit.  The fact that you can't dye them means you can't apply player faction colours to them and get a unified look. I appreciate the benefit of Plot tags on stuff like "Stinky Goblin Armour" that's meant to look stupid and not be refurbishable. But when you've paid a cool ten thousand for a wizard robe, finding out that you can't make it match the group look is a bit of a kick in the teeth.

I feel it would be worth either making these not Plot, or offering an slightly expensive (~200gp) way to remove the Plot tag from armour and allow them to be dyed. Player factions don't innately get cool uniforms, so being able to construct your own colour scheme is very valuable for having an identity.

I did this a couple of times with large parties, and the loot is really bad with anything other than a small crush team. Because there's not very much loot, the good stuff is in crates, not monsters, and the crates have small numbers of things.

It's got occasional amazing loot and a guaranteed relic, but what this tends to mean is one person gets a valuable thing and everyone else gets a few bits of junk. A couple of supply crates and/or a gold pile would mean this quest isn't a supply sink, or a reason to OC refuse characters because you know it would just be an overall loss.

I'm really not sure the Ticker Guildhalls are doing what they are intended to, not least as they've been largely unused through most of the time I've played. They now have a massive deposit on them which means you can't use them as a launchpad to get rich, you have to be rich before you can use them. Whereas the Burgage offers no-deposit rentable property that offers most of the functionality.  It's ironically far better for starting a business or faction, despite not being the business hub and being loaded with 5 Associations already.

In Ticker, you have to put down a 20k deposit on a Guildhall (Not sure if this is refundable or pays your rent or what) and for 1k a week you get:

• Storage (5-10 spaces)
• A lockable meeting space.
• Free resting
• Enough space to run events (though not combat ones as you risk AoEs hitting NPCs there)
• Some form of benefit like a buff-vendor sorcerer, a pub, or a crafting bench. But you don't know what until you hire the place

Plus you make yourself well known enough it's harder to just skip out on the 1k a month tax.
I've seen four of the Ticker spaces so far.

In the Burgage you need to put down no deposit and pay 400 a week for:

• Storage (5 spaces)
• A lockable meeting space
• Free resting

I definitely don't feel the Burgage is underpriced, if you aren't making use of the storage and resting, you'll lose money. But there's 20+ rooms there, and none in Ticker.

One of the running problems I've seen with Ticker is it lacks much of an identity. I think that a number of rentable rooms in Ticker would allow smaller Guilds and other PC factions to have a "starter HQ" and get themselves off the ground beforeing renting a bigger HQ with specialist facilites.

Many of the stacks of ammo that you get out of Tinkering are generally so small as to be useless. To the point I don't even advertise IC that I can make them as they are a bad use of my limited Missile schematics.  There's lots of cool stuff in there, so it's sad that it's not a good way for ranged PCs to supply themselves with ammo. I understand there's probably some really good stuff in there, but the basic stuff's pointless to make. Which is a bit sad as being able to build basic useful things is a good way to start out on crafting.

You can make stacks of 99 bullets in Herbalism, but the only ones I've found in tinkering are:

• 50 +1 damage arrows, which are a common drop anyway.
• Stacks of 3 bullets or arrows with a low level onhit AOE spell, CL1. However the bullets drop in stacks of 24 on the Lizardman quest anyway.
• Single powerful bolts with onhit AOE spell, CL1.

I'm sure there are plenty more i haven't discovered, however these recipes are pointless IMO. I might be able to make 3 shots every 24 hours, but if I do that, I'm not writing schematics to invent something more interesting. I can't supply myself with ammo because it simply doesn't generate enough. In a couple of weeks of crafting, I might get enough to see me through a single fight.  In terms of pure firepower, I'm better off churning out Alchemist's Fire and tossing them than I am messing about with arrows that can miss.

Suggestion:
Make the stacks of 3 ammo be stacks of 10-15 and the stacks of 1 ammo be stacks of 3.  That would give you enough that these would be worth using or selling.