Enchanting is not worth it anymore

[Nova]

Based on the descriptions of it on the wiki, enchanting is not worth it and "enchanter" as a character concept is so dead that we'd have been better off if the mechanic was removed so that those classes could have been given something else instead. In fact, Dark Oppressor and Advocate did get something instead in the form of pacts and blessings, while conduit got buff food and the ability to give their AP to other people as well as one of their skills getting moved to mortal.

Anyway this is about enchanting, not griping about conduit, so let me get into why it's not worth it.

First of all, seal magic got absolutely neutered. It was essentially DO, Conduit and Advocate's innate armor skill, now it is not. Enchanted armor is completely worthless outside of active combat situations or when you're raiding a faction and need to soak pets because you won't know what damage types you're going to get hit with when you go to sleep and keeping up more than a handful of enchants will quickly eat through your entire daily MP even with the discount.

Additionally, all spells had their CP to learn normalized. This made it far far more expensive to buy the weakest of each school just to be able to enchant with it. Coupled with the lowered badge CP cap and more hurdles for getting badge CP to begin with, and this is quite a burden on a build for something that you will not be getting any other use out of since you're not a wizard with eldritch mixing and can't benefit much from a spell you have no other spells in the same school as. You also need deep/sanctify/tainted spellcraft to get your alignment's element too, totaling 90 CP in total just to get these enchants.

On top of this, you now need fonts to enchant stuff to begin with. But only the petmaster classes got the ability to make those. Which means hunting around and hoping you find the font you're looking for, or bugging another character. Another character who also has to have 50 CP invested into spells they probably don't plan to use to make the elemental fonts, and multiple days worth of MP just to make the thing since they can't even work together to make those happen faster.

And then, after all this trouble you went through, you get... Armor that you can't use effectively, or a weapon that your innates can probably already outdo and even if they can't an oil of fire or something (just a mere 40 CP for the enchanter to get the ability to make in any element, and would need it to effectively enchant anyway), can probably give it a run for its money.

And as a side note, even if enchanting was worth it, now that they can only decay on death for anyone, you're left with absolutely nothing to do most of the time since you had to spend your entire CP allotment just being able to enchant.

I have no specific suggestions for how to fix this, but it's just such a glaring problem that I felt I had to point it out. Being an enchanter just doesn't seem worth it.

[kylinn]

My ferret has been a smith-enchanter as long as he's been in the Nexus, but I'm seriously re-considering what to do with him this Breath as the enchanting looking like it will be so much more expensive (and ferret always was right up to the limit on CP before) and so much less worth it. Rather bummed about it.

[Goliath]

Enchanting could use a major overhaul... or two.

Would suggest the number of enchants per item and flattening the costs (ie: first enchant costs the same than last).

Would also suggest having the enchants types known be based off various child skills of Enchant Item (which would already grant some enchant types).
A possible enchant distribution could look like this (very much a first draft):

• Enchant Item: Aligned & semi-restricted damage types
• Elemental Enchanting: Fire, Cold, Death
• Utility Enchanting: Accuracy/Dodge, Lighten, Dura, Conceal, Poison

This should mean a CP cost similar to B4 enchanting, or possibly lower, as it comes from T3 skills.

Would also suggest for enchants to give some passive bonus regardless of activation, particularly for armor enchants.

Clothing enchants, raw damage enchants (rather than supplemental), lighten enchants and a few more features would still need an overhaul.

[Meric]

Ive always run an Advo/holy enchanter and was going to also have a DO/unholy this breath as well.

But looking over the changes, the increased CP investment for spells, the activation cost, location requirements and the limitations placed on the Enchant Skill vs Seal Magic I do not believe either char will being getting this skill-set now.

There are just way better things to spend ~110 to 170 cp on. Especially for classes that have received a lot of attention like the Advo/DO.

[littleglassflowers]

I haven't played for a long time, so sorry if I'm wrong. I'm also not good at actually getting a handle on how things play without, well, playing them.

Magic in general seems... Kinda bad, you invest a lot of time and energy doing things poorly that could be spent on innates. I think a better, more elegant solution that allows for better branching would be to give physical/mixed/specialist classes non-innate abilities to spend CP on, and decrease these 'global' abilities' CP cost. Scrolls of martial arts techniques, ability to build rare ammunitions/poisons for throwing weapons, stuff that interfaces with other skills that are underutilised like athleticism/swim (cavaliers' technique - your movement cost is reduced by one every three tiles when moving in a straight line!) or so on.

So that every character, even if you have two 'casters', with similar picks, feels like they might be packing a secret or two. Maybe not combat oriented, but just a trick up their sleeves.

Editing to add, I'd honestly lock these abilities at 1, 2, or 3 CP per purchase. Making them really good should involve hunting them down, synchronising the right ones and your class abilities, and generally feel like a journey, something that fills in the gap and grind between days. I think that'd make this 'breath' much stronger as a whole. Anyway. If enchant needs to be expensive for - reasons, I don't recall it feeling particularly broken, have it unrelated to spell memorisation, 6 CP per element. Also also, I'd really like to have evil-types using holy enchants and vice versa, but that one doesn't make too much sense within the world, huh? A pity.

[Kandarin]

This is an ongoing topic and some things have been changed since it was started, but this thread doesn't really have action items.

[Fellis]

Just want to add that non-specific commentary on skills and game mechanics are very good for the Mechanics Discussion forum, the suggestion forum should really be used for very narrow and hopefully well thought out specific suggestions. Stuff like this is very welcome there, a suggestion thread for enchanting should have very specific numbers and mechanics outlined.

Take it from someone who just crossed over from being a player into dev, there are not as many secrets as you think. Everyone who plays has access to the information they need to suggest something as large as a complete class rework, whether or not you understand this annoyingly complex game well enough to do so is another matter. And personally, having worked with Nayru the last two months, I don't have it either

[Nayru]

cuties04b.png (9.56 KiB) Viewed 14500 times

also not for lack of trying on my part, chonts will be worthwhile again