Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Scribes [Discussion - Gameplay/Lore/Story]
FinisSapientiae
Member, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
This feedback/discussion/idea whatever you want to call it will be about making the scribe more interesting as an Artisan class (AC), as I always felt that this AC was lacking in some ways.
I, for example, do not know if designing freeholds (layouts?) or making enhancements is something the name describes well or fits with the AC, at least at the moment those are my thoughts and feelings about it.
Now enough talk ahead let's get started here, and my first point is that the scribe should have special interactions with your other ACs. These special interactions in my opinion are for example being able to copy crafting recipes that can be sold/traded with other people. This might not be very important for common recipes but I think it could be very interesting for rare or even unique recipes.
It might be abusable in that case, if the cost of creating is high or if there was a limit to how many copies you can make it might help. That is only important for crafters but it could be applied to other professions with being able to make books for those professions that give you more resources from gathering or something like that.
I think you should be able to discover more obscure things about certain things that you can write down, for example how certain species evolved and such could be something for animal husbandry or taming.
I think such interactions with other mechanics would make it more interesting for some to pick as their AC. But something more obscure I came up with was if you were doing Arcane Engineering or your main class was the mage, why shouldn't you have the ability to make scrolls with magic spells on them? These would be one-time-use items that then cast a spell. That would add to castle sieges, and raids to make preparations more meaningful for scribes.
Just some of my thoughts on some additions that might help the class while still staying true to what it is, I want to continue with something that focuses more on the story or lore aspect.
From my understanding, it is unknown if scribes will still be responsible for recording history I think it is the best thing about the AC although it feels incomplete. So I thought about the game's ideology, risk vs reward, and came up with some things that might help make it feel complete.
To begin with, I am curious if we will have a system that allows for sketches of murals, magic circles, or even Runes. That would elevate the scribe's potential to find a way to decode and uncover hidden lore.
Next would be what came to mind when thinking about risk vs reward.
What if you write about forbidden knowledge or higher beings and, the void? Should you just be able to do so without any risk to it? Why shouldn't your book suddenly burst into flames, or leak blood? I think it would add to the immersion if you were to write about them and at the mention of keywords or events things might go wrong. The danger can range from harmless to deadly situations, like triggering a horde event or something.
Of course, if you are knowledgeable enough about runes maybe there is a way to reduce the threat level of an event. There is also the idea of madness stacks, which may make you hallucinate auditory or visual, leading to unlocking a dungeon/raid of a void creature in a server. They can also add to intrigue and immersion into the world.
Now that we have talked about risks, rewards should follow. The rewards would scale with the danger of the events. New lore titbits for less threatening events and for more dangerous ones artifacts that lack in stats but have unique effects might be good rewards.
Thank you for reading it all, I would also appreciate your opinions. I also wish all of you a happy new year.
I, for example, do not know if designing freeholds (layouts?) or making enhancements is something the name describes well or fits with the AC, at least at the moment those are my thoughts and feelings about it.
Now enough talk ahead let's get started here, and my first point is that the scribe should have special interactions with your other ACs. These special interactions in my opinion are for example being able to copy crafting recipes that can be sold/traded with other people. This might not be very important for common recipes but I think it could be very interesting for rare or even unique recipes.
It might be abusable in that case, if the cost of creating is high or if there was a limit to how many copies you can make it might help. That is only important for crafters but it could be applied to other professions with being able to make books for those professions that give you more resources from gathering or something like that.
I think you should be able to discover more obscure things about certain things that you can write down, for example how certain species evolved and such could be something for animal husbandry or taming.
I think such interactions with other mechanics would make it more interesting for some to pick as their AC. But something more obscure I came up with was if you were doing Arcane Engineering or your main class was the mage, why shouldn't you have the ability to make scrolls with magic spells on them? These would be one-time-use items that then cast a spell. That would add to castle sieges, and raids to make preparations more meaningful for scribes.
Just some of my thoughts on some additions that might help the class while still staying true to what it is, I want to continue with something that focuses more on the story or lore aspect.
From my understanding, it is unknown if scribes will still be responsible for recording history I think it is the best thing about the AC although it feels incomplete. So I thought about the game's ideology, risk vs reward, and came up with some things that might help make it feel complete.
To begin with, I am curious if we will have a system that allows for sketches of murals, magic circles, or even Runes. That would elevate the scribe's potential to find a way to decode and uncover hidden lore.
Next would be what came to mind when thinking about risk vs reward.
What if you write about forbidden knowledge or higher beings and, the void? Should you just be able to do so without any risk to it? Why shouldn't your book suddenly burst into flames, or leak blood? I think it would add to the immersion if you were to write about them and at the mention of keywords or events things might go wrong. The danger can range from harmless to deadly situations, like triggering a horde event or something.
Of course, if you are knowledgeable enough about runes maybe there is a way to reduce the threat level of an event. There is also the idea of madness stacks, which may make you hallucinate auditory or visual, leading to unlocking a dungeon/raid of a void creature in a server. They can also add to intrigue and immersion into the world.
Now that we have talked about risks, rewards should follow. The rewards would scale with the danger of the events. New lore titbits for less threatening events and for more dangerous ones artifacts that lack in stats but have unique effects might be good rewards.
Thank you for reading it all, I would also appreciate your opinions. I also wish all of you a happy new year.
2
Comments
As a lot of what we think so far is theory-crafting, I would like to wait and see how those areas of the game are fleshed out.
But having said that I do think some of your ideas are interesting, especially the idea of scribes being able to discover more obscure things within the game. It definitely goes hand-in-hand with the old definition of what a scribe means.
I completely agree with that sentiment, I just wanted to put my thoughts out there and see what others think. I am just worried that it might be possible that they have scraped the idea that scribes can write about the story/lore of the game.
I am referring to this:
Of course, there is the possibility of it being tracked by using the books written by scribes but it still got me worried if the artisans class will now only be enchanting and freehold building blueprints.
I completely agree, but I still thought I would put my thoughts out and see if others have similar opinions or maybe completely different ones.
The other reason I made it was because I have become unsure if we will have the ability to record history as scribes. Which would make me lose all interest in that Artisian class.
Here is what I am referring to:
I hope that it just means that they keep track of just the bare minimum or that they keep track with the help of the books written by scribes.
I am curious when we will see more about the class.
Every weapon in the game that is actually used will want to be enchanted - or at least every weapon used at the level cap. Thus, every weapon crafted by a weaponsmith and sold to a player would result in 5 or so sales from a scribe in order to enchant that same weapon.
Same with shields, armor and what ever else we can enchant.
Scribes will be the purveyors of lower profit, high volume products.
As to the node history aspect, I would expect that to be an automated game system, not something that requires player input at all.
I am not saying that enchanting will be or will not be profitable. Or if it has its place in the game, my point is that I believe it is not what a scribe describes. Currently, it reads like a chimera of different professions (Enchanter for enchanting, Architect for freehold design thing, and a Scholar with writing books).
This made me think about how to make it more like a scholar/scribe who looks for obscure lore and stuff and makes books about it. Which in my opinion would make it more of a scribe than it is currently described as.
For me how the AC interacts with Lore, History, and similar things will make me choose it or not. But maybe I am the only one that feels that way.
Yeah sadly I think that is the direction Intrepid seems to be heading in, which makes me question the existence of the scribe even more, just rename it to Enchater or Architect at that point. But to be sure about that we will have to see what Intrepid made with the AC, so we will either have to wait for it to be mentioned/shown in a stream or for Alpha 2 I guess.
A scribe doesn't research, they write. They take information that they have been given, and they write it. More than anything, being a scribe is an artistic persuit, as the point of having a scribe write something down is to have it look good. The practical benefit of this is that it is easier to understand.
If you are in a world where there is no digital technology, and you want a copy of a blueprint for a building made so that carpenters, stonemasons and all manner of other craftsman can understand easily, you would want to spend the time and money getting a scribe to create said blueprint for you.
Same can be said of a fictional world where you have magic scrolls that disappear on use (or attempted use). You would want this written out as clearly as possible in order to make it as easy to understand as possible.
That is what a scribe does. They take information and write it out nicely. They don't find the information - they just write it out.
This is something you could potentially do as a player - but going out and looking for information is already going against what a scribe actually is.
I think it would be interesting if each node only created records of its own history. Then scribes could, maybe as an early exp farm or a rank advancement quest, make a copy of some chapters of a node's history and deliver it to another node's library. Exp/gold rewards could be based on how far you deliver the records with bonuses if you are the first (or first few) to deliver that specific record to a library.
This would incentivize scribes to travel all around the world to collect a complete server history. Having a complete record of server history would certainly be a feather in the cap of a powerful metropolis.
Scribes would also be drawn to new nodes with empty libraries in order to fill them.
Obviously, this doesn't tie into the greater combat-based economy that most players will participate in, but I think it would be an interesting way to make the players feel like they are building the world around them.
Yeah, it seems like the logical conclusion, but I am not sure if it would be interesting gameplay for scribes. Just constantly running over the map just to copy some books, but hey maybe that is what scribes want to do.
Or something like a Game of Thrones faceless men thing. Where the scribe while writing about this ancient god unlocks a powerful knowledge that has limited uses. To imbue a character with an additional disguise skill.
Economic treatises that enhance and buff a nodes economic features. Political treatises that can assist the citizens and mayor in some ways. Constitutions or agreements.
Even something like writing down and documenting an ancient relic in the reliquary. As Finis talks about in the post. While writing down what this relic is, the scribe is quietly whispering some words written in ancient language engraved on this artifact. And they unlock a recipe for a book that spawns a demonic slayer in the catacombs or a monster coin or something.
Scribes can be thought of as interpreters. Something gained through their scribing career is learning different languages and lore. After enough writing about a type of combat that is documented on a relic, or in a religious text, or whatever like that. They unlock a knowledge of defending oneself that (a recipe) for a book that could grant a character a +1 permanent skill bonus to dodging/blocking. Balanced or course that a character based on their wisdom, intelligence, strength can only read and understand a limited number of the permanent buff books.