EXPLANATION: Special Lore Locations/Artifacts

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Explanation: Special Magic/Creature Artifacts/Areas

This thread serves as an explanation for our stance on special lore locations/items. A number of magic and creature pieces include things such as magic artifacts (e.g. the Aspect Stones or Blood Stones), special locations (e.g. the Fwitch Altar/respawn area), or how Necromancy had the Black Nexus.

Portable Items/Artifacts

Special lore items are fine for the most part. It’s acceptable if a piece wants to include items that the magic users can obtain, so long as those items are either clearly laid out in the lore or require a MArt. The former should be tracked, such as with the MArt system (it doesn’t need to be reviewed if it’s a lore item with static properties already laid out in the lore) and the latter should not allow for too crazy of an item. The key thing here is for the items to be written down clearly so there is no difficulty ensuring people are utilizing them in a non-PG fashion.

 

The issue with special items/artifacts is when they are unique, one of a kind items with no option for anyone else in that lore’s playerbase obtaining it. There’s no reason for this item to exist except for someone to get special snowflake treatment.

 

Another issue is when they are important items, such as phylacteries, that are then buried at bedrock level or stashed somewhere no one is ever going to access. Things like this essentially negate most (if not all) of the downside that magic/creature item comes with.

 

And finally, there are issues with an artifact that only specific people can access. For example, if your item had an AOE damage area that hit everyone BUT the users of your lore with no way to disable/bypass the AOE damage. A way for this to work would be something like the Aspect Stones. The Aspect Stones are incredibly heavy for non-Druids, but they can still be moved by non-druid users. It is a challenge, but it won’t be an impossibility to move them.

Special Locations

Special locations are spots special to the lore, such as a respawn point or ritual area. Respawn points fall into the same issues that phylacteries or the Black Nexus had. Mechanically it’s a bit iffy since you spawn at CT after dying and then have to soulstone/travel to wherever you were meant to spawn if someone is waiting there or just chill at CT and spawned there. There’s also the thing where people can just stick them wherever they want, whether that be at bedrock level or somewhere no one is going to find it. In addition, most (if not all) can just be remade fairly easily so there’s no real downside to it. As such, a lore fix will be proposed to allow everyone to spawn at CT, as that would make things streamlined.

 

Ritual areas/artifacts, such as the Black Nexus (a special object needed for necromancy disconnection), are problematic in my eyes since they can be hoarded or kept under lock and key for whatever group wants it. These ritual items/areas should be reproducible by those who use the lore. It doesn’t need to be everyone, but it shouldn’t discriminate. The recent Runesmithing altars is a good example of this. In their old iteration they were kept to a small handful which caused issues since even people with TAs were unable to recreate it.