Current Storylines and Roleplays

[Koi-Shadow]

Dreamers,

As many of you know, about a month ago the GM team had some rearranging. We had a few people leave us, a few position changes, and a couple who are still apart of the team, but currently away. Koi-Comet and I were added to help fill the vacancies, Koi-Drama stepped up and became assistant managing director to aid Koi-Raven, and Koi-Anise took over Koi-Drama’s previous position as Roleplay lead and is monitoring and responding to your @roleplaying emails. Kanto’s controller's is still around and contributing but his time available is currently reduced so Koi-Comet has stepped in with Akkadian to help fill that role.

We have introduced several new storylines and roleplays over the past month:

Grok Firebeard has hosted 4 different “Undergames” so far. The Undergames are typically 30-60 minutes challenges which are usually balanced so that being higher sphere is not much of an advantage. He also is available for gambling. Give him an item and random against him. If you win, he gives you your item back and gives you a copy of that item. Lose and your item gets destroyed. There has been some crazy randoms so far like him beating somebody’s 99 with a 100 and winning 7 times in a row, but that’s all been luck. His random is the same as everybody elses.

There have been darkmare raids done by DoL and HC on Kruugaar and his Kotoke horde at the KoES house and Yazashinar’s Hotas at the UoC house. We would like to continue offering these, but we would like you to find a way IC for your houses to gain access to these houses instead of sending in a roleplaying email saying you would like to raid X house at Y time. Zar’tenya, Grok Firebeard, Belzora, or any other non-MT GM would probably all be good resources to ask for their aid in gaining access. In these raids a party of 4 dreamers chosen by the raiding house’s ruler enters one of these strongholds and attempts to defeat the darkmares there or carry out some purpose while inside.

Agonarius has lead the Datoken against the city, attempting to claim it for himself. Players are being granted pmare credits on a daily basis to assist with this. He has been empowering the Datoken and increasing their nightmare forms when he is around. He will usually increase a datoken 1 form higher, if you start as a Shamblix, he will make you a horron. Start as a Bogrom and he will make your pmare an Agoknight. If your Datoke attempts to attack him, or engages in excessive portal hoping, suiciding into sanctuaries, or other problematic conduct, he will either awaken them or not increase their form until their conduct improves. Datoken are chaotic creatures and should not try to purposefully deny other players XP. If you do get tired of being attacked by Datoken, remember that sanctuaries, threshold, the library, thresh pits, house member areas, thresh caves, and the unknown are all either impossible or very difficult for pmares to enter.

Agonarius does not usually openly attack people, preferring to aid his Datoken army and let them do the work for him. He does sometimes hang around Caudal Rift or other areas allowing groups of dreamers to try to come defeat him. He uses lvl 46 and 50 chakrams and 12-40 or +25 dreamsoul elemens. He has a 70% reflect and will occasionally use firestorm or other arts. He is designed this way so that he can fight a group of 5+ dreamers and still be a challenge. Attempting to go after him with 2-3 dreamers is very risky, but has had some limited success. He frequently drops clues or other items that could aid dreamers in defeating him during these encounters.

There are several active GM MTs available for tasks you should keep an eye out for: Keilara, Kal'lankissa, Akkadian, Herbert, and occasionally Kanto who will hopefully be around more in the future. Remember that a task from any GM MT can be reported to any other GM MT so if you like one of these character’s style of tasks, don’t be afraid of getting it and not being able to find someone to report it to.

Our amazing Dev team has been hard at work and there is a patch planned for February 21st that will make several requested improvements add some exciting new features. Details can be found here: http://forums.clashofdreams.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=934. We are also in the process of making the frontpage for Clashofdreams more inviting to new players who we will be stepping up efforts to attract.

Anyway, that’s *some* of what we’ve been working on the past month and there’s some fun stuff we have in the works for you guys coming up soon. Where we go with these role plays and what we focus our attention on really depends on what the players enjoy and get involved in.

So please, respond back to this post and let us know what you have enjoyed over the past month since the transition but more importantly get your character involved in some of these things or start something new up yourself. Underlight is the only game where the players really *do* directly affect and determine the game’s story.

Dream on.


~Koi-Shadow

[Lu Chaos]

I've gotta say I'm loving where the game is headed right now. I feel like I can literally put my hands into the game and change it to how I see fit! That's great I love how in depth we've all become in our characters.. I've been loving the GM interactions as of lately and helping everyone with their roleplays and curiousitys.

-Thanks Koi-Team for a job well done.

[Dina]

I feel stupid....I didn't realize Agonarius is like a "raid boss". LOL Yeah I can't get mad at getting two shot on my 4th sphere hah.

Good job with the new RPs!

[Noidea]

I just wanted to say, as the person who'd been doing a lot of the moaning about the home page, that it's a whole lot better already and I'm very happy with what you've done. Say we want to recommend Underlight to a pal on another forum, we now have something we can simply give them a link to and say "This is what it's about". A very appealing and snazzy something too. Many PP to whoever made the changes!

[Shoury]

I feel stupid....I didn't realize Agonarius is like a "raid boss". LOL Yeah I can't get mad at getting two shot on my 4th sphere hah.

Good job with the new RPs!

Yep, agreed. We're dealing with Asmodan re-incarnate, or are we? Loving the character and the entire Datoken RP; kudos to everyone involved on all sides.

-S

[Dina]

One thing I recommend is finding a way to reward everyone that helps. Throwing out chaks is great...but you have ppl going nuts over items. Dina was asked last night if the GK chak was a good one. Dina didn't pick up anything lol. Happens all the time when things are dropped. It is annoying. Some of us could use some xp though!!!!

[Sidas]

It would be great if some of these things could start earlier. Events -starting- at 11pm EST or later is painful for people that live on the East Coast (and probably Central time as well).

Also, since Agonarius is akin to a Raid Boss, it would be great if the rewards were dished out based on contribution. Last night Dreiko and Krodoc fought Agonarius and one of the Horron Pmares for around 12-15 minutes alone (with Dina restoring), but missed out on any reward because a flock of dreamers showed up right at the end. That makes it a bit of a turn off to bother engaging in such a tough and difficult fight.

[Koi-Shadow]

Dreiko and Krodoc would have been better off getting help before charging in to fight Agonarius. It's certainly possible to collapse him with just two people, you had him down to less than 10 dreamsouls a few times, but it is very difficult like you saw. If you did the exact same thing again, who knows, you could get a little bit luckier and collapse him next time. But it's not like you two "wore him down" then everybody else came in and stole the kill. The two of you may not have ever been able to collapse him and everybody coming in may have saved you from wasting more items and being collapsed. You took a risk, and you almost got the collapse several times, but it didn't pay off this time.

When DMs/Agonarius drop "loot", we spread it randomly around the room to try to prevent 1 person from being able to pick it all up. Anybody not collapsed should have about an equal chance of picking some of it up. I'm not sure of any game that awards loot based on who contributed the most. You kill a boss and you might get something good for your character or you might not. It doesn't matter if you did the most damage to him or the least.

Spreading loot in this way is the fairest way we've been able to come up with so far. Even collapsed GMs are unable to *give* items when collapsed. We could have an Invis GM standing around that gave items afterwards, but that is not always possible or practical. I would also be worried people would cry foul about favoritism then as well. Do you have a suggestion in mind that would be more fair than the spreading method we use?

In the next patch, items will be spread upon a DM collapsing automatically so hopefully that will help some.

[Sidas]

Unfortunately I don't since the only real way to do it would be a major change to game mechanics. That was probably a rather rare case since the group of dreamers WERE supposed to be close behind. I'm not sure why it took that long to "gather supplies" but it is what it is.

My bigger concern from my post was the time of events, though, and is something that does prevent as much participation in the events as I could normally provide. For instance, I still have no definitive idea what was covered in the teaching meeting the other day even though I've been asking dreamers and messaging GMs.

[Kage]

Unfortunately I don't since the only real way to do it would be a major change to game mechanics. That was probably a rather rare case since the group of dreamers WERE supposed to be close behind. I'm not sure why it took that long to "gather supplies" but it is what it is.

My bigger concern from my post was the time of events, though, and is something that does prevent as much participation in the events as I could normally provide. For instance, I still have no definitive idea what was covered in the teaching meeting the other day even though I've been asking dreamers and messaging GMs.

Regarding delay - I think people who have faced Agonarius a bunch of times realize that it's going to generally be a knock down drag out fight if there are mares around, so they will definitely take time to prepare if they've already been fighting for a while.

As far as the teacher meeting, the main change that was discussed was that Sphere tasks should now be done using Quest, targeting the art of Random, instead of using Inscribe. I think most of the other discussion was just bundling clarification again.

There was definitely a significant shift recently in when major things occur in game (generally much later) that has been difficult to adapt to (EST here as well).

To the original topic here - I've definitely enjoyed the Undergames and the rise of the datoken events. As I've expressed privately, there are some pain points for those that were working on other storylines that were put on the backburner in favor of the Agonarius/Datoken event (mostly the house mares stories), but I'm thinking that's both temporary and a result of the # of available resources. Right now the only thing that makes sense IC (for many characters) is focusing on Agonarius until some sort of activity actually happens with other aspects like the house mares to warrant paying attention to them.

We're all making due with available resources (I'm talking both available players and GMs), and I think everyone is doing a good job of that. Creating games within the game, as well as raid/boss type encounters goes a long way in keeping things interesting - kudos to everyone involved in making those things happen on the GM side and to the players helping drive them as well.

[Jiovanni]

Seems like we need an update for all the new and returning players.

/e "activates Shadow Signal."

[Golah]

I hate updates but in the case of role-playing I guess its needed at times. My char is working on 2 paths Sentinal a Pre Forge art, which would allow creation of items with no effects imbued onto them, a tool used by Smiths to mentor those in the art of forge, and for those seeking the mark in the future. The concept is to give the few forms lyrans have to dreamers, maps, blades, flags with no ability to make them prime, or indestructible.

For the most part Golah is freeballing this with as little script as possible, I am also adding some items from another RP to spice up my own game a bit.

[Koi-Spark]

Moved this topic to the Roleplay Discussion forum as it fits better than in the Suggestions forum. Suggestions are typically geared toward technical game suggestions.

[Yambe-Akka]

Anything new planned?

[Koi-Drama]

Anything new planned?

The gears have already been set in motion.

[Rafael]

I like some of the story lines and specifically Agonarius. As teachers many of us forget that history we have taken who knows how many to lost caves and related too showing the drawings and giving new interested dreamers the whole story of the brothers and how we really came to be fighting. As some have noticed my name now here is in part to reflect the story line i am doing with Rafe. to share with all what i only send to roleplay to begin. In the past gender changes were nightmares to victem. the story line of Raefa is simpler, wrong form in the dream to start was the nightmare, so using specific water portals she washed off the bad dream for the good dream. I thought being utterly different it reflects what goes through minds of all that feel they were born the wrong gender and current real life events has put the knowledge loosely out for anyone to see. So i thought it makes for a very good story line in reverse. achieving a dream somewhat opposite to others in finding her true-self in dreams unattainable waking. It needed no fancy arts, just the help of one understanding Soul Mistress MT. now she is living the dream wanted and doing all she can to preserve it, and a good many apparently respect her change going only by what reactions she has seen and making no assumptions. It is a challenge to behave and appreciate the little side help getting IC. I just thought here was the best place to share. As if it wasn't plain enough, my mind type is bluntly honest and not too politically correct in doing it. The good roleplay is by not hiding it, but by being bluntly honest and watching all reactions is a lesson all by itself on how we react to people in general

((For the laugh about my mind type:: ... AND some may recall the soapbox i once made, we can be so long winded we put people to sleep reading and ourelves.

BEING edge of autistic spectrum with aspergers and our difficulties of every sort socially in life, all our doctors say online games is our best social as it were, just look my comments in social media)) so it makes us .. certified weird

[Dakkoth]

Is this post going to be updated to reflect what's happening now? I loved that this post was put out but it needs an update.

~Mike