A weapon to be used in combat needs to be easily repaired, for the very reason that it's likely to be damaged, and unlikely to have the ideal workspace. This essentially translates to a simple, easily-maintained blade geometry: one to two bevels, chisel- or flat-ground, plain non-serrated edge. With this, you can sharpen a blade with nothing more than a whetstone. Complex blade construction such as laminated steel, differential quenching, etc are not a problem since the physical properties of the steel don't change with battle or grinding.

You're right, preventative maintenance is the wrong term. But for any tool that requires constant maintenance, that maintenance must be easily performed otherwise the tool simply isn't useful.

If it's going to be split into maintenance and repair though, then the formulae that determine the resulting quality need to be reworked. There's no way that even a beginner could do such a bad job of sharpening a blade that it goes from Q213 to Q205 for example. This happened to me, with 19 in my Repair Weapons. In RL, I've begun to sharpen my own kitchen knives. Freehand, with a stone. Took me about 3 tries before I could actually improve on the factory blade's sharpness. More generally, I have not heard of any (appropriate) preventative maintenance regime that is liable to seriously damage the equipment being maintained because of a small error. A large error, yes, but that's why you get training.

[OOC from now on]

We do not want nonsense and pointless “RPs” from criminals we would like to be happy and celebrate our great first year, and for RP reasons if you are a criminal don’t bother, we will have high security. For this we will not be afraid to get GMs involved. If you want to RP as a criminal do it out side of the Ojaveda map.

That seems a little heavy-handed, don't you think? If someone RPs a criminal, then RP his/her/kras running afoul of you. Especially since you're celebrating "protecting the streets of Ojaveda". In fact, if my character were the proud head of a criminal organization, I'd make it a point to do something. Maybe not incredibly disruptive, but something noticeable. This isn't a threat, I don't have such a character, but I think that putting such restrictions defeats RP instead of enhancing it. Have you spoken to GMs about your intentions to get them involved? What did they say?

I really enjoy the riddle quests, but then again I've got more than just a slight intellectual bent. I particularly enjoyed the riddle posed by the captain of the guard in Gugrontid (forget the name) where I gave an answer I was sure was the one, and he says something like "Actually, the I was looking for answer is <x>, but your answer <y> is also appropriate and correct".

Travel/fetch quests are typically boring to me, except where the story makes it worthwhile. For example, the Starhammer quest where we see Trasok's animosity and learn the cause for it, recruiting Grimal Bloodaxe, him then realizing how old he is, the build-up and humorous let-down of Aerayau's "Great Adventure" quest (funny that carrying an order of food typically requires seasoned troops).

I'm not as bothered by hunt quests as some others are, they typically give me another reason to train my (currently pathetic) combat skills. Still working on being able to kill an ulbernaut for its heart, I know it'll take a while but I'm ok with that.

I agree that multiplayer-enabled quests would bring a lot of interest, as well as more complex plot structures -- having choices available, some clear but some not immediately obvious. There is one in the rare disease quest, but because I am so used to quests being completely linear I didn't think of the obvious fact that I didn't have time to dawdle by going to the BD on another fetch/carry. I think that if there were more such quests, it would become common practice to wonder whether there is another way of completing the quest rather than agreeing to every NPC's request.

EDIT: I think that for quests that require player-crafted items (like the sabre quest), quest rewards might be given based on the quality of the item. If poor ones are given, "You call these sabres? My hammer has a sharper edge! Still, I've got to make this delivery and I suppose these'll do" (you get a minimal amount of tria). If superior/extraordinary, "My, these are fine blades indeed! I'm sure I'll be able to get a bonus from these. Here's a little extra for you!". If finest sabres are given, maybe even toss in an item, like an uncommon glyph or other item. A golden ring, for example, would allow you to advance in a quest that needs it without having to go through the trouble of collecting tefusang hides. There you've made the quest itself more interesting (and actually make me want to give the NPC good sabres), while at the same time providing an alternative way of completing another quest.

The whole idea of having the repair kits is so that you can perform the repairs in the field, where it's more useful. You certainly shouldn't need a smith table to repair a weapon, which only consists of sharpening the blade, anyway (OK, this is obviously only true for bladed weapons, but I'd ask you what kind of repair you'd need to perform on a hammer. Smithing hammers do require precise shapes to be maintained, but a nick or dent won't make any difference to the tefusang's face you're smashing in).

I always figured that removing the armor being repaired is RPed. In any case, if you're attacked you immediately slip into a combat stance, which interrupts the repair. It's like how you don't need to equip tongs to put things into and take them out of the forge/furnace, and don't need to wear special leather clothing to withstand the heat of the forge.

If any changes were warranted I would instead suggest that we need to be able to get more uses out of our repair kits, or they should be both cheaper and lighter to reflect their single-use nature.

Tactical in my eyes does mean exploit, at least as far as the enemy's "natural" limitations, though not necessarily the game's. Bring a gun to a fist fight? Yes! Were I to fight, I'd fight to win, not to see who's best in "fair combat". If the dlayo's aren't smart enough to back away from the wall when someone's pelting them with magic willy-nilly, that's their deal. But don't do it and then complain if (when?) they get smarter and come 'round to beat you up, or if something goes wrong like them disappearing -- maybe they finally ran away!

This game is no-where near final, things continue to be improved. A little while ago you could "climb" by repeatedly jumping, and when the glitch finally got fixed, people got mad because the devs fixed a bug. Huh. If you're exploiting a bug and a GM doesn't say anything about it because it generally doesn't harm anyone and it hasn't been fixed yet, fine. It's your choice whether you ignore it, or if you exploit it. Just keep in mind that the current behavior is not the intended one, and won't last. Hopefully it'll be fixed soon but if it isn't it's because the devs have to balance day jobs, a social life, and dealing with programming and design issues that may seem simple to those of us on the outside, but rarely are so once all the little interactions are considered. The beauty of Open Source is that if something really bugs you, you're free to take the code and do something about it. And I'm really not being sarcastic in saying that, though sometimes I think we all need to be reminded of how much work all this represents.

Basically, we're forgetting that the game is still lacking features, such as a (even) better AI, racial modifiers that I'm sure include stat maxima, and many more that are part of a balanced vision for the game. But the game's not yet there, and probably won't be for a while. It's still very playable though, and until the game's mechanics are implemented to a point where they actually have a bearing on these philosophical discussions, I really don't worry too much about it.

There's no way to ask this IC, and I think that is well. The most we should be able to hope for IC is a progression: first you'll be able to repair these items, and then with additional practice/experience this set, and so on. You can also figure it out yourself: equip yourself with a full set of leather armor, and try to repair everything one by one. You'll know which ones you can repair, and which ones you need more training. For weapons, find the wimpiest version of the class of weapons you use (sword, axe, hammer), and move up until you can't repair anymore. That's your limit, keep using and repairing the one before that until you've got the skill to repair the next level.

Seems like an "obvious" suggestion, but couldn't find it on search, so here goes.

I think that each level for each skill should have stat level prerequisites to be able to get training from an NPC, which go up as skill levels do. For example, you should need more strength to learn the more advanced techniques of axe combat. Even just learning advanced dagger handling should require high agility, otherwise you can't even practice those skills. When you try to train without the prerequisite skill, the trainer would say something like, "Well, I can teach it, but you don't look like you have the dexterity needed for these advanced lessons. Come back a little later, when you're more agile."

Some skills would require a combination of stats: swords would be a medium-dexterity and -strength skill, for example, and blacksmith requires agility (to control the hammer blows) and intelligence (to determine where to strike with the hammer); you don't really need strength, you can compensate with more hammering.

I don't know any details of how the skills system is coded so I don't know how much extra complexity this would be for the coding team, but I think it would bring another level of complexity and (I hope) interest to the skills progression system.