Possibilities with shards

Dreacor

I don't know if there's already a thread like this. I couldn't find, so I decided to make a new one

So. I've been harvesting shards for quite some time and I really wonder what should I do with them. Of course I can use them in combat, but I just don't know how to spend them so much. I get into a shardfall and harvest about 30 shards, recently I've been able to harvest whole shardfalls without any interruptions. Now that (I guess) every city or council has researches done, there's no actual place to put them for any good reason.

I was wondering if it would be possible to use shards as currency. Shards could be sold for in-game gold, just like now you can, but you could buy some things that you can't buy with gold. I don't know what the items would be or would they be like temporary buffs like from sects/cults, but you don't need to be part of anything to get the buffs. Just something. Having some real use for shards would encourage people to participate to shardfalls, more combat that way, more merchant activity etc.

I hope I made my idea there clear. It just looks cool in my head.

Kryss

Shards can be used to power the airships. You might be wondering, 'what airships?' but the answer is simple: the airships that should be added into the game as the start of a new era of shardpunk goodness.

The future Demonic flagship could be something like this for example...

Luthyr

Research Shannara.  Plenty of uses for shards.  City defense cannons, airships, etc...

Jules

I would love ships, but I am guessing we don't have them because there is so much else to do.  What I don't get though, is why couldn't just basically steal them from another IRE game (preferably the one with the most awesome ships, which I'm not sure but I'm guessing might be Lusternia).  

Sarrius

Aetherships, last I played, were basically for bashing to Demigod and accessing some demiplanes. Hardly cool.

Jules

Yeah, now that you mention that I think someone else said something similar.  But at least part of that may be that I've also heard people say they've managed to almost completely kill conflict in Lusternia.  Possibly in part because they still have pretty punishing XP loss (I know I would never PK if we had that), combined with some very powerful mechanics that mean lots of dying if you're not on the winning side.  Everyone seems to agree that Achaea's weren't carried to term, so hrm.  But ships!  The thing I like about ship combat is that, at least in Achaea, it really is a bit simpler than most other things, so I can have some hope of grasping it more than I do PvP.  

Luthyr

Just saying, if I could build and operate a laser cannon in Stavenn to shoot city enemies in a next door area, I would totally be behind this.

Ozreas

Sorry, Nemesis burned all the blueprints for laser tech before she died.

Kabaal

SHARD LAUNCH (direction)- Detonate a shard underneath you, launching you in the direction and bypassing obstacles. Red version bypasses more things!

Dreacor

Kabaal said:

SHARD LAUNCH (direction)- Detonate a shard underneath you, launching you in the direction and bypassing obstacles. Red version bypasses more things!

Actually, I really like this one.

Anyways, what people think if shards could be used as currency in some funky way? Or some other ways to use them? I think adding shard skills is nice, but I don't believe it's going to cover the fact that almost all of us, who actively participate to shardfalls, have a lot of shards just waiting for some opportunity to use them some good way.

Kryss

The Shard Launch idea just seems like backflip/frontflip so getting something like that when there's already an artifact for it is pretty unlikely and meh. Really, shards can already be used for lots of things like walls, extra herbs, clotting, restoring health...even just incorporating those things into everyday combat keeps you using your supplies.

Kabaal

@Kryss

It's not just "seems like" backflip/frontflip; It is! And the "An artifact is available so they'll never do it" argument is horrible and awful and bad and leaves a disgusting feeling in my mouth. The better argument is "FFS we don't need everyone with flipboots," which was the entire (very obscure and needing <sarcasm> tags) point. So I'm glad we agree there!

I am also a lazy person who mostly AFKs, and if *I* have more shards than I know what to do with, then I doubt others are really burning their supplies.

Wysrias

A few months ago, I probably would have agreed. But I've made an effort to look at all of the possible uses for shards and incorporate them more into my fighting, and as it stands, I think there are enough in-combat uses for shards. Definitely no to the flipboots replica.

I wouldn't mind more ways to invest larger amounts of shards; possibly something with sects? Relics have been a complete and utter failure, so maybe some uses for shards with shrines to give them temporary effects. Maybe some temporary/transient constructs for cities/councils... but then again, beacons exist and those are also less than optimal.