View source for Post:New Flare Mechanics - 11/01/2018 - 18:07

{{Post
|a=DR-KODIUS
|t=New Flare Mechanics
|d=11/01/2018 18:07
|n=1595
|f=Discussions with DragonRealms Staff and Players / Game Master and Official Announcements
|c=m,d
|p=Hello everyone. With HE out and the Corn Maze about to open, you may notice some new Flare items as prizes. Just wanted to comment on them a bit so you know what is what.

Fire, Frost, Electric and now a new Nature flare will allow your weapon a chance to add a damaging effect to each attack. Each flare has a tier (general magnitude) and a grade (skillcheck to use). The skillchecks for Minor, Lesser, Greater and Major enchantments are typically about 200, 500, 1000 and 1750 ranks to master, and the skillcheck factors in Arcana and the weapon skill, giving a greater weighting to the skill you are better in. I hope to have some ability for you to check how effectively you'll be able to use enchanted items here soon, but that should get you started. 

Flares can be specialized for durability, magnitude or chance to take effect. They do slowly wear out, but it takes 9-12 months of heavy use and they can be recharged with infusion stones. They don't lose effectiveness until they stop working and the enchantment is never removed from the item.


Armor flares are a new type of flare this year and at the moment, only a Fire flare version exists. Frost and Electric varieties might make an appearance by Auction time, depending on how much time I can find to work on the messaging.


These flares work very similar to weapon flares. They have a tier and a grade, and Armor skill / Arcana determines how effectively you use them. Every time you are attacked the armor has a small % chance to flare. When they flare, an attack is made by the armor against the attacker. These attacks are generally meant to work like damage auras or thorns effects you'd see in other MMOs. Kind of a guaranteed return hit (though there is a critical miss chance built in, and they can be attenuated by armor and barriers). 

They are balanced for PvP using separate equations, but we will keep an eye on it and tweak as necessary. For PvE they should hit like a claymore slice when they do fire off, plus or minus a bit depending on the Tier, Grade, specialization, enemy type, etc etc....

Wearing multiple flare items stacks the % chance to fire up to a soft cap. The coverage of an item does not affect the flare in any way, as the armor piece that actually flares (assuming multiple are capable of flaring) is then selected randomly each time. This was a mechanical nightmare to implement and so I had to take some shortcuts. We can evaluate how important it might be to weight items based on coverage area or something at some point when time allows. When armor flares can perform CC type effects I anticipate it being expanded upon.


All flares can have a custom color set, and most of these prizes do. They are currently limited to the available DYE colors (about 140 colors in total) and we'll add more as time goes along. 

I think that covers the basics. Hope ya'll enjoy them! Please bring any discussions of the mechanics over into the Lore Enchanting folder. 



- Kodius


"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."<br/>
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes
|sub=Armor Flare, Weapon Flare, Enchantments,
}}