Not Used: Dye kits and character appearance.

i been playin for a bit now...and ive played on many other servers. One thing i noticed here is the dye kit costs a fortune to buy it. Now im a huge fan of character appearance...and i know a lot of people who are. On most servers the character dye kits are just plopped in your inventory on character creation.

Id like to suggest that that be done here...it dont unbalance play any and allows folks to customize and make thier character they way they envision him/her.

Another suggestion is to implement what we have over on athas reborn and on deeping dale. There is a script/erf on the vault that makes crafting dummies you can put in your game. You talk to it and get a menu/conversation. you can copy your armor/weapon/shield/helm over to it...then edit/modify its apearance to what you want and then copy it back for free or for only a little coin. This way not everyone at low levels look like carbon copies of each other and would add some unique-ness to everyone on the server.

Kefrem,

Your suggestions have some solid roots - i know that Amethyst is thinking about additions to Aenea/working on additions to Aenea, so perhaps he will reflect on these thoughts while he works on the PC crafting system. I know that he usually reads over/responds to most suggestions posted, and I'm 100% sure that we'll hear his $2 on the matter.

Kefrem wrote:This way not everyone at low levels look like carbon copies of each other and would add some unique-ness to everyone on the server.

Think of it this way not as everyone as a carbon-copy of everyone else, but instead as a reflection on economics. When you are a beginner you generally do not have much operational fundage, and therefore will be forced to shop at the local Adventurers-R-Us economy chain store, much like all the other starting adventurers in town. Whereas, when you've put in some time, developed a contact network and gathered a lotta loot, you can afford to go waaaaay down the coast to the upscale armoring shops where the hottest celebs were seen last week.

In the meanwhile, keep posting those suggestions! Player input is one of the reasons that Aenea is such a good world to play in!

Or to avoid being a "carbon -copy" put some ranks into the various craft skills and craft your armour and weapon appearances...(using that top radial menu - and a certain tower in He'Leven)..
.. Jay has a very good sword that was just a common "Silver Sword" long ago...
... use that first 8hr 20k token to make one exactly how you want to look (I did this and still use my 20k armour now - if done correctly this armour can last ye your whole life)...
... Put a request forward to the little dwarf fellow (found in the In-Charac Forum sticky "A large painted sign") and have him make a non-standard blueprint armour/weapon... ...

... and the magical dye pot is expensive because it never runs out... normal dye pots (the bioware standard type) are also availiable in the city of Macedone and are relatively cheap... ...

... until then consider the economics of the world.. until you amass enough power,gold and respect you will have the same as everyone else.. alternatively I also see many different PC's with a whole host of normally found items (from cloaks to helms, amours and weapons).. and I believe no two PC's I've ever come across look excactly the same... ...

I can respect all the comments but on the regard of the dye pot. Realisticly, if/when youd enter a shop for clothing...say sears or j.c.penny...are all the clothing there all brown?

No there are multitudes of different colors of the same shirt/pants and thats my point with the dye kit...its not a magically dye kit...its just a tool for players to say...i bought this shirt and its just like yours....but its green not brown.

If that makes sense.

Another reason i was saying for the armor/weapon crafting dummies, is...sometimes a player has a *design* for thier character...the look...feel and so on. Yet if you try to do the standard crafting bioware built in thing...some of these items...for a silly appearance change to look like you want it run into tens of thousands of coin. Beyond even the range of high level players.

Hmm.. okay yes maybe you have a point with the standard bioware crafting system with respect to the gold needed to do some of the simplist of changes and there is no guarantee the change will take place after you've spent the money , you may fail your crafting check... ...

.. with respect to the item known as "The Magical Dye Pot"... it is a magical dye pot in a very PnP feel world.. saying "its just a tool for players" is a very metagaming way of thinking... I would guess that aenea is set in a more fantasy - medieval time period (like most good RPG settings) and the common availiablity we have now of different colours and dyes and just base materials is nothing in comparison to back then.... ... most clothes were wool or leather or animal skin.. dying a cloth a new colour was a long and complex process for most colours other then brown, tan or bloodred.. most clothes never got dyed at all from the base colours of the materials they were made from... I think the price of the dye pot is justified in that it's more a magical miracle of the time.. not "just a player tool"...

... I've noticed in aenea that things are put in places to make logical sense.. its a world that works -- not just a game...

.. of course if this is too immersive for you then be a bit patient and lets see what comes up with in his "Player Enchantment System"... I'll bet there is a way to colour and alter the appearance of many different items in that, at low cost and easily accessable to many classes and levels... ...

... I hope this doesn't sound to harsh.. I just re-read it and I think it can be taken from that point of view.. although that is not my intention... ...

The enchantments system will not include changing item appearances. It's being designed to enable PCs to use a combination of base items + gp + xp + spell(s) to create existing magical items. The system will also let you add enhancement bonuses to existing items.

The crafting system will be altered slightly in the near future. Changes in appearance will be easier to do (lower DC) and much cheaper.

I will eventually (when the item enchantment system goes in) be changing the crafting scripts to only work when within a certain type of well-stocked "workshop", which will charge an entrance/usage fee. After that fee, any item appearance changes will be free (unless you leave and re-enter the workshop), so you can keep trying even if you failed the DC check.

As far as using someone else's script package for the dummies...that probably won't happen for a couple of reasons. First, it's guanteed to add a bunch of scripts to the module (which take up resource space). Second, I really don't like using scripts written by others...not that they don't do good work, but I don't learn the inner workings or logic of the scripts easily if I didn't write them, so it takes much more work to integrate into the module than if I just write them myself.

Oh, and the magical dye pot. That one will remain the same. It's only about 5,000 gp for unlimited uses, and it kind of breaks the immersion just a little bit if every starting character suddenly has mundane armor that is (let's face it) un-"realistically" colored. Sure, it's a fantasy game, but I try for a little bit more "immersive fantasy".