Wild magic (concept)

There are other pages that use the name "Wild Magic." Follow the link for more details.

On 449-05-184 (June 15, 2024), after several years of buildup messaging, adventurers briefly lost access to magic. When it returned, spellcasters were confronted with a new concept to deal with when casting spells: wild magic. See: Wild magic (event) for more on the events surrounding the release.

Announcement

Wild Magic is active!
There are a variety of effects.  So far people have discovered:
+ Increased TM accuracy
+ Increased TM damage
+ 1-second preparation
+ Full attunement refill

- Chance to "break glass" and cause no magic in the room for a short period of time (less than 1 minute)
- Increased backlash chance
- "Mana burn" - weaken your attunement!  quickly!
- Chance to spawn a mini-mana storm

There is a new RESEARCH option!  It could be dangerous!  This is on a lengthy global cooldown, but can be completed several times a day.
When you perform the new RESEARCH, several things happen.
1. You will lose your memorized spell scrolls.  You will gain some magic experience - sometimes more than other times.
2. If you have the Magic Theorist, you will gain new spell scrolls.  
3. There's a chance to learn a brand new spell (being previewed here before it finds its permanent home).
4. There's a chance to earn a spell customizer for certain spells, if you know them.

Update Announcement

On June 22nd, 2024, an update to wild magic happened:

Ongoing Event: Wild Magic Updates

The phase change tonight saw characters' efforts rewarded.  Someone or something .. did something.  We heard a wolf howl, we saw a lightning bolt.  And things feel a little .. better.

The Gods are tryin' to do what they do!  Because of their intervention, two effects have been dropped from wild magic:  You will no longer experience Mana burn, and you will no longer experience a full attunement refill.

With this release, we also added a few more spell customizations.  Thank you to the players of @Hamuk  @Imroth  and @Valynn  for their help with designs!

Effects

Increased TM accuracy

An additional message after casting a targeted magic spell indicating a bonus to accuracy:

The spell surges with wild precision!

Increased TM damage

An additional message after casting a targeted magic spell indicating a bonus to potency:

The spell surges with wild potency!

1 Second Preparation

The prep time for the spell is reduced to just one second.

Your spell pattern snaps into shape with little preparation!

Full Attunement Refill

Your attunement pool is instantly refilled.

Somehow you feel fully attuned to the mana streams already.

June 22, 2024</b - As the result of player efforts, attunement refill is no longer one of the effects of wild magic.

Anti-Magic Room

For a brief period of time (less than a minute) it becomes impossible to use magic in the room for anyone there.

A crash of shattering glass echoes through the area.  You are overcome by a sense of wrongness.

Mana Surges

Noted in the announcement as a "mini-mana storm". A mana surge forms and moves about the area, causing minor damage and potentially knocking people down.

A swirling vortex of brilliant light spins across the area.
Raw energies rupture near Navesi, leaving her looking pale and drained.
A weak mana surge slowly makes its way to the north, leaving a path of destruction in its wake.

> look surge
Roaring winds shot through with blinding rainbows spin and turn wildly within a weak mana surge as it tears a path of destruction through the area.  Chaotic manifestations caught in the rampaging vortex spiral violently within its terrible embrace.

A weak mana surge slowly makes its way into the area, leaving a path of destruction in its wake.

The howling wind pounds against you, making it very difficult to maintain your balance.
Pilot Sarahkyth staggers slightly as wind pummels it.

A swirling vortex of brilliant light spins across the area.
Raw energies rupture near Thanataar, leaving him looking pale and drained.

A swirling vortex of brilliant light spins across the area.
A wave of energy passes through, invisible except for the obscene ways the world stretches and pulls around you!  Though it seemed as though Elanthia was going to rip itself apart, the wave passes without causing bodily harm. 
Dasheek collapses to the ground as the world seems to stretch and pull around him briefly.
Pilot Sarahkyth staggers slightly as the world seems to stretch and pull around it briefly.

> peer forward
You peer forward and see ...

[You are aboard a four-masted galleon with twelve sails and a fierce dragon figurehead named the Dragon's Slave which is afloat in Segoltha Bay facing south.]
[The Dragon's Slave, Aft Waist]
Here the silver-hinged gangway is ever ready to release and secure the heavy mistwood boarding plank.  The railings are carved with detailed scenes of dragons along their length, while overhead the vivid blue and white sails obscure the view to the top of the mizzen mast far above.  A honeysuckle vine grows from a banded barrel placed out of the way, the plant flourishing despite the harsh elements it encounters.
You also see a weak mana surge, some sufil sap, a piece of black flint, the crossjack, the mizzen lower topsail and the mizzen upper topsail.
Ship paths: forward, aft, down.
Nearby in the water you see: Arthe Bay (at horizon: east), the Boot (far: north), the north shore (at horizon: east), the south shore (rather far: south), the Segoltha estuary (far: south).

You can cast a spell at the storm to have a chance to destroy it.

If you HARNESS the SURGE you will receive a short-term boost to guaranteed positive positive wild magic outcomes and destroy the surge.

> harness surge
You tap into the energies of the mana surge in an attempt to bend it to your purpose.  As you take all you can from the mana surge, you begin to feel strangely empowered.
A strong mana surge is abruptly erased from existence!
Roundtime: 10 sec.

When the bonus ends, you receive:

The empowerment from the mana surge leaves you.

You can also TOUCH, and possibly HUG, KICK, SLAP, or KISS the mana surge. It will send a blast to the room, causing skin damage to people and knocking them prone.

Mana Burn

People could also die from "mana burn." Sometimes when casting you would feel:

Excruciating pain sets your nervous system afire!  Something is wrong with your mana attunement and you must weaken it!

At this point you begin dropping vitality (you receive that same message every time you experience a vitality hit). You have ~2 minutes to harness and release mana to lower your attunement so that it is below 50%. On the next pulse of mana burn, if your attunement is below 50%, the effect is cleansed with the message:

Your attunement to the caustic mana streams is severed at last.

You can also clear this effect by running to a no-magic room:

With magic suppressed altogether, your mana-related affliction subsides.

If not cleared, you will die from vitality loss. For Empaths, Perseverance of Peri'el mitigates the vitality loss until it becomes such that it drops POP completely.

Your efforts to reduce your attunement may be stymied by mana regen items, if you are wearing sufficient enough. During this event, you may consider removing your mana regen items just to make the chance of death by mana burn a little less likely. Conversely, vitality regen items may help maintain your vitality until you can lower your attunement enough!

The death window would reflect mana burn deaths as:

* <Name> was just struck down!
* <Name> was burned out!

June 22, 2024 - As the result of player efforts, mana burn is no longer one of the effects of wild magic.

Research

With the release of Wild Magic, a new Magical Research option was also made available: RESEARCH WILD. On successful completion, you will learn a random amount in all magics except Target Magic and Debilitation and will have a 100% chance to lose any memorized scrolls. Depending on the number of spell scroll slots you then had, you would be granted up to 2 randomly selected spells, which would be temporarily memorized just like regular scroll spells. At this time, this was the only way to gain a NEW spell called Bonegrinder.

You also begin a period of increased chance for Wild Magic effects. When that period ends, you receive the message:

For better or worse, your heightened attunement to wild magic ends.

RESEARCH WILD has an Arcana requirement in the range of 95-104.

Cooldown

Once you finish a Wild Magic research, there is a global cooldown that must trigger before you can research again. The exact time has some randomness, but it happens at least a few times per day. There are multiple different messages to indicate the cooldown is over:

The mana streams freeze in place before haltingly resuming their normal course.
A sudden swell of mana washes through you, setting your nerves atingle.
For no reason you can determine, the mana streams fluctuate wildly for several moments.
Astonishingly, the mana streams twist themselves into knots as they flow.
You sense an odd, unprecedented torsion in the mana streams.  It slowly passes.
The mana streams shift ever so slightly.
You feel as though <insert mana type> mana is behaving differently in ways you cannot quite interpret.

Breakthrough Messages

There were various "Breakthrough" messages depending on your mana/Guild. These seem to give hints about the ongoing event:

Trader:

Breakthrough!
Lunar mana fizzes out of focus with unknowable, periodic perturbations from the planets in your range.  Oddly enough, it is the Negotiants' unbidden tutelage that nudges you toward the research's endpoint and a wealth of knowledge relating to wild magic.  You are assured that the Contract is still inviolate and binding, and all prohibitions remain.  The Contract is all that matters.

Moon Mage:

Breakthrough!
Lunar mana fizzes out of focus with unknowable, periodic perturbations from the planets in your range.  Oddly enough, your calculations prompt you to think back to a time with Katamba unburnt and Grazhir whole, the golden age of near-effortless Lunar miracles.  All lost now, and the threads are converging on a similarly disastrous trajectory!

Paladin:

Breakthrough!
You have come to an alarming conclusion you attribute the changes in Holy mana's behavior to long-standing and widespread lopsided practices of magic.  An imbalance is shaking the Bulwark loose, which seems bafflingly vulnerable against this menace.

Cleric:

Breakthrough!
You have come to an alarming conclusion you attribute the changes in Holy mana's behavior to an 'upward' lurch in the flow.  Something is stymieing or etiolating the Font of Creation, and Divinity itself is suffering for it!

Bard:

Breakthrough!
Something is broken with the replenishment cycles of Elemental mana.  Even though you have not noticed a decrease in available power, it seems inevitable.  From what your research has evoked, you have the smallest understanding, the barest shape, of an eonic plan that stretches back to the dark histories -- gods and demons, mortals and monsters all helpless before it.

Warrior Mage:

Breakthrough!
Something is broken with the replenishment cycles of Elemental mana.  Even though you have not noticed a decrease in available power, it seems inevitable.  Lessons from long ago prickle at your mind concerning the lore of Sraan Mehath.  You cannot shake a feeling of deep dread.

Empath:

Breakthrough!
Life mana has buckled under vast pressures from what feel like above and below.  Although this instills a fear in you for the fate of the cycle of life, you do not think the repercussions will echo to the natural world just yet.

Ranger:

Breakthrough!
Life mana has buckled under vast pressures from what feel like above and below.  You have an intimation that the Life dragons are keenly aware of the causes, preparing and further isolating their conserved lands.  However, as usual, they have withheld their counsel.

Necromancer:

Breakthrough!
You just concluded the unpleasant task of tracking the continual disruption in Arcane mana, step by minute step.  Some force beyond your ken, nothing short of godly, has been changing the rules with a brutal hand.  The Great Work is tipped on the brink of impossibility as the mana streams become increasingly immiscible, sterile, and foreign textured all at once.

Necromancer (Redeemed):

Breakthrough!
You just concluded the unpleasant task of tracking the continual disruption in Arcane mana, step by minute step.  The grand order ordained by the gods is under attack by... itself?  In ways you cannot approach grasping, the mana spectrum is separating out, each strand resisting attempts to bend it into patterns.

Spell Customizations

Through research, you can also gain a spell customizer for a spell you already know (meaning you will only receive this IF you can use it). The customization comes in token form which is not bonded, so you can be trade or sell it to other adventurers. The following have been found so far have been:

• Circle of Sympathy customization (a sky-blue sufil tree with wispy rills of water flowing up its branches): blue bolus
• Starcrash customization (crystal statue of TRADER NAME HERE): clear white bolus
• Shadowling customization (a sabretooth shadowling with mismatched eyes like Xibar and Yavash): chatoyant bolus
• Osrel Meraud customization (a sunbright orb of even morning light): amber bolus
• Deadfall customization (petrified pink-green egg): mottled bolus
• Moongate customization (triangular moongate): tricolor bolus
• Beckon the Naga customization (a dark lapis-hued lesser naga trailing gold dust): lapis-hued bolus
• Shield of Light customization (a glowing ordinary shield with an ethereal dusting of shadowfrost moth scales): frosty black tablet

Additional customizations added on June 22nd, 2024:

• Magnetic Ballista customization (a wildflower-strewn earthen ballista covered in fresh loam): iridescent brown bolus
• ?