It would  disturb the immersion when you are in a crowd that is supposed to be quiet(temple, listening audience) or making other noises like a cheering crowd.  Generally I agree with you that there should be more ambient sounds, but they should no9t be triggered by the ammount of players nearby ...

Motivation

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What is the first thing a new player most probably do when he enters the world of Yliakum? Exactly, he goes down to the sewers and kills some rats. Why? Because it's the main source of PPs. For me this is kinda depressing and(Yes, I know we are talking about fantasy here) unrealistic. Did all people in the middle age kill rats and gobbles in the sewers to earn their bread and butter? I am not a historian, but I doubt it. It is just an altered and exaggerated reality, a concept of RP games we are used to. Kill monsters and get experience, which you can invest in stats that enables you to kill bigger monsters. The skill mining in its current form gives you some PPs, but it is nothing compared with those from fighting. That's reasonable when you think that fighting can hurt or even kill you. Rocks do not fight back, do they?



Miner, take care !

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It's a dangerous job! Think about it, there are annoying, dangerous and deadly things waiting for the thoughtless miner. Rockfalls, toxic gas, gas explosions, water inrush, stuffy air, heat, dust, splinters, sharp rocks or the possibillty of hurting yourself in the dim light of the tunnel. And in a fantasy world, there are endless posibilities for dangers awaiting the one who digs to deep into the bones of the earth, the rocks themself can be malicious. If you find this is exaguareted and unrealistic, remmeber that the same is true for the fighting system. Why not integrate this in the game experience? The idea is this:

• There are events called accidents, whenever you mine a deposit
• An accident decrease the players HP by a certain ammount
• The damage done by an accident is based on the accident type
• The damage done by an accident is altered by the players mining skill
• The player has a certain chance to completly evade the damage done by an accident, based on his mining skill
• An evaded accident adds experience to the player, determined by the accidents type
• The player has a certain chance to predict an accident, determined by sccident type and his mining skill
• The player will be informed when he predicts an accident in sufficient time to react
• A predicted accident adds experience to the player, determined by the accidents type

Accidents types go from splinters, accidents with your mining tools, smaller stones from the ceiling to greater rockfalls, toxic gases leaking from where you hit the rock and genuine gas explosions. The propabilty and ammount of an accident is determinated by the deposit spot. Each mine would have a "level of danger". This could look like this:

Mine level	Description	Danger
0 - open-cast mine	A quary on the surface.Minerals are rare and hard to find	Accidents are mostly splinters from too enthusiastic hammering and hurting thumbs
1 - ordinary mine	Well, it's a mine. You find more Minerals here then on the surface	Just be careful with your head. It rains stones here.
2 - old mine	This mine is old, but more and more valueble deposits are discovered here.	Be careful! Through time, a lot of tunnels have been cut into the rock irraticly. There are dangerous rockfalls here.
3 - abonded mine	This mine was abonded but not because it's exhausted. On the contrary, you will find precious gems and metals here.	It's abonded for a good reason. Toxic gases and explosions are order of buisness. This mine has its pittfalls
4 - haunted mine	You have to be this small and bearded to enter here. Here you will find the most valueble and rare minerals	Dont ask, pray!

The native language of Yliakum is turkish ? Somehow I like that ...

Thanks for the comments guys. But it's infact no big deal, just a recolored version of the originial skin. My time effort for this was about half an hour, while most time was spent on finding out where to find the textures and how to get dds files open with gimp. All praise goes to the original designer. However I was surprised that something acceptable came out of this. About the eyes, I like them this way . Makes them look more like the kran on the loading screen and mysterious. And dont forget: This creatures have been made directly by the god talad. Their  lifeenergy, taken of the azure crystal, is shining through their eyes. 

P.S. The spice must flow!

edit:
I also tried to make another skin for the Dermorian race. This time I done a bit more than just recolor. Well .. the result is not really convincing, but you can take a look if you like:

I did not like the Kran to be bright blue, so I changed the skin to make them look more like the one on  the loadingscreen. If you want have it, post here. I'll upload the files somewhere if there are enough people interested.

BTW: I red some of the articles concearning skinning and modeling. I do not want to get my skin(It's just recolored after all) into the game, it's just something I like better than the original and I like to share it with others.

Shops ... Welcome customer!

• 1.Additionally to the current way, Items can be dropped into the world, flagged as "owned"
• 2."Owned" items do not vanish after a while
• 3."Owend" items can only be picked up normally by the owner
• 4.If the owner moves away from his items by a certain radius, the "owned" flag is disabled and they become normal dropped items again
• 5.The owner can assign a "pricevalue" to the dropped items, which can be seen by other players via /targetinfo
• 6.Other players can buy the "owned item", either via a command like /buytarget or/and a icon interface
• 7.The defined "pricevalue" is AUTOMATICLY transfered to the owner, the owned item is transfered to the buyers inventory
• 8. If the owner has lost serverconnection or leaves game, all "owned items" will be moved into his chars inventory.

The idea behind this should be obvious: Players could open their own shops. Imagine the posibilities! An Adventurer can place his precious looted artefacts around him on the placa and people can come and buy them. Because of 7., you can even go afk for a while. Miners can drop their ore on the ground , assign a price to them and keep on mining. Traders could buy this ore , bring them to the city, and sell them with profit(a good possibility for noobs to earn some tria). If there ever will be tailors and the other jobskills implemented, they can have their own shops where they can present their wares to the customer. 4. ensures, that this system is not misused to pollute the world with permanent items. This system can also be used for special events, like weddings or parades, for decoration(Just assign a pricevalue of 40k to it, if people buy the away, you want care int this case). Additionally to 1.-8. there could be a "counteroffer" option for the customer. This could look like: /counteroffer <target> <price>. The owner of the item will be prompted with a Dialoguebox like this:"<Player> has made a counteroffer to <object>(<pricevalue>). He offers <counteroffer>. Do you accept? [yes] [No]". I dont want to replace the current tradesystem, this should be an additional option. You ask why someone should use the current tradesystem when this one is more comfortable? Well for every advantage ...



... there is a disadvantage

• 9. Players can use the command /trysteal on an "owned item" (here can be also a iconinterface for this)
• 10. The chance of sucessfully stealing the "owned item" is based on the players pickpocket skill
• 11. The chance of sucessfully stealing the "owned item" is altered by the items "pricevalue"
• 12. If the player fails to steal the "owned item" he becomes attackable by the items owner AND the members of the items owner group(the group will be prompted with a message like "<player> tried to steal <owned item>")
• 13. The item owner must be the groupleader
• 14. The thief can attack the owner and his group only if they attack him
• 15. The right to attack the thief expires after a while(30 min for example)
• 16. A thief can only try to steal from the same owner when he was hunted down by the owner and his group, or when the right to attack expires
• 17. "owned items" can only be droped in city areas or mines.

So everyone who is using the shopsystem takes part in "the game". 10. will prevent noobs from stealing all stuff. 11. will make it nearly impossible to steal really expensive wares.  With 12. a Shopkeeper can hire guards to protect himself if he is not a good fighter. 13. can prevent shopkeepers from just grouping with everyone in the city, because every shopkeeper would do so but you can be part of only one group. 14. prevents players from forcing duels with shopkeepers. 15. Gives the thief the chance to escape. The guards wont chase him for 30 min just because of a stolen rathide. And he might evalute if it's not simpler to be hunted down and go to the death realm than to run for 30 min. He can also try to surrender and beg for mercy, and the guards could decide what to do with him(there is alot of RP potential here). Finally 16. will prevent thiefs from training their pickpocket skill with friends. it's still possible but time consumming. And why not? Thief's can teach each other this way. But at a cost of course ... there can be criminal organisations which watch their monoply in thiefscholarship, 17. will help to watch over their "terretory"(again great RP stuff).

 I think in the game, the chances should be in favour of the owner. He can decide to not chasing a thief because it's not worth the effort. But he should be able to get back his possesion or at least make the thief pay for his crime. So what happens if a highskilled pickpocketer with uber fighting skills steals something? That can be handeled ..


Wanted: Dead or alive! The license to kill.

• 18. If the owner or a member of his group has currently a "owned item" selected as target and the thief steals it with sucess, the theft will be noticed.  Noticed thefts will be prompted to the owner and his group, the thief becomes attackable
• 21. If the thief is killed they are allowed to loot his inventory
• 22. The right to attack expires when the thief dies
• 23. It expires after a (long) time (some relatime days)
• 24. It expires if the owner decides to forgive the thief(command like /forgive <player>)
• 25. (Now it gets interesting) If the thief kills a member of the group, the owner has the right to put a bounty on the thiefs head
• 26. The owner has to specify the bounty ammount, he must have this ammount currently in his inventory(... /setbounty <player> <bounty>)
• 27. The specified ammount will be "frozen" for the owner, he will not have access to it
• 28. The owner can give the bounty order to every player, which makes them bounty hunters, which they have to accept
• 29. Bounty hunters have the right to kill the specific person and to loot their inventory
• 30. The hunt expires with the thiefs death
• 31. The hunt expires when the owner decide to forgive the player

With 18. you have a certain control over the situation as a shopkeeper. You can only target one item at once so you have to hire one guard for each item to watch them all. If you find people willing to do this and if you can pay them you are free to do it. The thief cant see which item you have selected, so he has to take a risk. If he is cought he risks to loose his invetory(of course he can go naked without any tria into your shop, but that will make him suspicious. Besides, he will be an easy target without armor and wepons). Even if he escapes he cant go near your shop for several days without beeing attacked on sight, so you wont be robed frequently. If he is more a brigand-like and he kills you or your guards you can make his life hell. You even have not to put a big bounty on his head, because you will find enough people who will kill the criminal for free. The possibilities for RP here a endless. What hero brought the bandit to justice? How high is the bounty on your head? Who is this shameless thief who stole the dwarfs diamond last week? et cetera et cetera ....



I hope you like my ideas. Please discuss them.