Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
The Great Pumpkin Heist of 202X: Theft and Farming in Ashes of Creation
JustVine
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Farming is currently the only low risk rewarding activity in ashes. This is bad.
Unlike the gatherer, a farmer starts from a safe space, makes no indication of when they are carrying materials, and probably makes the trip to their node without any materials fairly often.
Players should have a method (with considerable difficulty) to steal a portion of a farmer's harvest. Doing this should lead to corruption.
This Corruption should be gained when the thief breaks the farm area fence, or incapacitates a guard mount/pet. All non-owner players who enter a breached field gain some Corruption.
All actions taken by any player in that field add Corruption to any other non-owner players in that field. Stealing crops adds Corruption, and takes some meaningful time (treated as gathering)
Immature crops cannot generally be stolen. Crops in the lockbox/farm wagon/etc cannot be stolen.
Bounty Hunters in the nearby Node can handle crop thieves. Those thieves also need to escape. Low level characters can be easily deterred by a guard mount/pet (esp since you can't gather in combat)
If you try to hide your farm at the fringes of the node's Zone of Influence, you are more vulnerable. Prime real estate is much nearer to the node, where players and guards can catch the thieves.
Farmers who ignore all these defenses and investments are put at risk, but the high Corruption (calculated by the size of the field vs how much the thief takes) makes it a negative.
Harassing small farmers starting out with small fields and low yields leads to big corruption, so everyone can farm a little, but not everyone can just abuse this low-risk activity.
High level farmers with rare and exotic crops will need to invest some effort to avoid being targeted.
Large scale raids on known high yields would be similar to caravan activity, except that at least some of the attackers actually gain Corruption. The rare crops are the objective in emergent PvP.
No opinion on if this should be easier for Rogues to do, or not.
Unlike the gatherer, a farmer starts from a safe space, makes no indication of when they are carrying materials, and probably makes the trip to their node without any materials fairly often.
Players should have a method (with considerable difficulty) to steal a portion of a farmer's harvest. Doing this should lead to corruption.
This Corruption should be gained when the thief breaks the farm area fence, or incapacitates a guard mount/pet. All non-owner players who enter a breached field gain some Corruption.
All actions taken by any player in that field add Corruption to any other non-owner players in that field. Stealing crops adds Corruption, and takes some meaningful time (treated as gathering)
Immature crops cannot generally be stolen. Crops in the lockbox/farm wagon/etc cannot be stolen.
Bounty Hunters in the nearby Node can handle crop thieves. Those thieves also need to escape. Low level characters can be easily deterred by a guard mount/pet (esp since you can't gather in combat)
If you try to hide your farm at the fringes of the node's Zone of Influence, you are more vulnerable. Prime real estate is much nearer to the node, where players and guards can catch the thieves.
Farmers who ignore all these defenses and investments are put at risk, but the high Corruption (calculated by the size of the field vs how much the thief takes) makes it a negative.
Harassing small farmers starting out with small fields and low yields leads to big corruption, so everyone can farm a little, but not everyone can just abuse this low-risk activity.
High level farmers with rare and exotic crops will need to invest some effort to avoid being targeted.
Large scale raids on known high yields would be similar to caravan activity, except that at least some of the attackers actually gain Corruption. The rare crops are the objective in emergent PvP.
No opinion on if this should be easier for Rogues to do, or not.
Node coffers: Single Payer Capitalism in action
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