Salem

Some of you may remember that when Jorb/Loftar first conceived of 'the dark' their was a counterpart 'the light', while darkness acts broadly as they initially described (humor draining and full of dangerous but valuable animals) the light was supposed to be a kind of 'civilization bacon' aka it was going to make everything man-made better, better random drops when crafting, better crops, you name it light was going to do it and Churches were going to be the source of light.

But churches as they exist now are a pale shadow of that original vision, they simply remove darkness and the manor in which they do it is quite boring, you build it once and it's done, no upkeep no expansion potential, no bragging over having the best shiniest church. I think our new developers should examine resurrecting this glorious church-centric game-play idea. I would also propose that churches be a bit more like Town Bells in the sense that they need an upkeep to do what they do, but rather then throwing silver into them they do something more interesting, they consume 'sacred' items.

Sacredness would be a whole new class of items much like Curios or Socketables, they can be placed inside churches and are slowly 'burned down' to fuel the church, some kind of diversity bonus applies such that you want to mix a lot of different items and the more fuel is currently in the church the 'brighter' it is aka more light benefit over a larger area. All professions should be able to make things which are sacred, carpenters could make pews and altars, Weavers could make wall tapestries, Cooks could make food offerings maybe holy wine, metal crafters could make wrought-iron candelabras. A few existing curios could also become sacred, simple Crusifix is a must along with the Bricks of Bable, Jerico and Sodom & Gomora, Concordant of Worms, Cross shaped splinter. And naturally you've have yet another reason to sink silver into thouse oh-so-uncraftable pieces of glass to make hugely expensive stained-glass-windows along with a whole pile of Pilgram's Bibles to round it out, the resource sinking potential is enormous.

Everyone gets to get in on the action and not just for the tangible benefits of light which rain down on all, the present light level of your church should go up on a top 10 scoreboard viewable in Boston (maybe from a new NPC in the church) to show to all the world the glory that is your town.

You sold me on the majority of this, except the benefit being a leaderboard and "more light".

Surely there are better things for a 'high level' church to do than just push the darkness farther yes?

Indeed, I'd imagine that the bonus effects just get stronger as the church gets brighter, the expansion of the affected area was more for thematic consistency then it was intended to be the primary benefit. Those improved drops drop more often, the crops grow even better, basically every light benefit is being graded on a curve so much like purity we have a little marginal improvement all the way up.

Coming up with all the possible improvements mechanics is a huge design space and I'm sure a lot of other things could occur outside of the two instances I mentioned, more random drops when crafting is probably an easy one to implement and it's got potential to impact nearly everyone, and agriculture I specifically remember reading years ago.

I think that the over-arching theme is darkness makes 'raw' stuff gathered from nature better, and light makes only man-made stuff better. It might even be possible for light to do something good for humors as a foil to how darkness drains them?

It'd also be nice if the church effect was limitted to the town itself, the radius is so large nothing darkness related is anywhere nearby with one.

Feone wrote:It'd also be nice if the church effect was limitted to the town itself, the radius is so large nothing darkness related is anywhere nearby with one.

Noooo that's the greatest way to find towns in darkness!

for starters the church could give a small passive regen to characters within a certain radius, for that matter there should be a "first aid tent" or something at dock club with a regen so folks don't have to go grab a cracker every fight.

Thor wrote:

Feone wrote:It'd also be nice if the church effect was limitted to the town itself, the radius is so large nothing darkness related is anywhere nearby with one.

Noooo that's the greatest way to find towns in darkness!

Having them be detectable would be fine I suppose.

I just think things like argopelters, marchhares etc shouldn't just vanish just because of a little light.
Bunch of sorry excuses for demon-ish beings, running away from the nearest church permanently. Tssk.

Enjoyed reading this! BTW, have you looked at what it now takes to build a church??? So yes I think it should have more uses. And I totally agree with Darwoth. It's hard to have fun and use your week supply of foods for regen at the dock club.

Darwoth wrote:for starters the church could give a small passive regen to characters within a certain radius, for that matter there should be a "first aid tent" or something at dock club with a regen so folks don't have to go grab a cracker every fight.

For someone who didn't like the dock club cuz it made the game too easy and was badmouthing it all over the place - Now you want free healing too. LOL
There should be another tent for char restoration I suppose. LOL

ukraChild wrote:

Darwoth wrote:for starters the church could give a small passive regen to characters within a certain radius, for that matter there should be a "first aid tent" or something at dock club with a regen so folks don't have to go grab a cracker every fight.

For someone who didn't like the dock club cuz it made the game too easy and was badmouthing it all over the place - Now you want free healing too. LOL
There should be another tent for char restoration I suppose. LOL

since i have been pushing for an arena in the game for a year and a half on these very forums i guess that just means you are one stupid ***** without a clue like usual doesn't it?