One-way Skal

[Kuma]

Fair, I do recall some sweet RP I had with the visiting scholars from the Arcane Tower

Yeah I've always loved going there on research trips or to sell things as one-off diversions. I don't think that should be discouraged at all. It should simply not be trivial, and boat-only half-the-year accessibility seems fine to me. Level caps on property will sort the rest, I reckon.

[Kenji]

Level caps on property will sort the rest, I reckon.

While I can agree this would be great for the new characters in Skaljard, the Dunmarle castle could use some more patrons and providing housing to the epics who really want to dwell on Skal is a good way to complement the cap limit for Skaljard property.

There's also nothing stopping from a lowbie buying up property and handing the keys to the epic character, however.

In a sense, with these restrictions in place (or the lack thereof for Dunmarle), the epic characters who choose to remain on the island will have to "Return to Castle Dunmarlestein" once in a while when they're done visiting Skaljard. I imagine it will do the following

They can always up sticks to Dunmarle castle and breath some life into that location if leaving entirely doesn't suit.

[Kuma]

Last time I was there half the quarters were open and all the shops were for sale. That being said if Dunmarle becomes the only place where epics are able to own stuff, that might create life there without it being at the expense of Skaljard etc.

[AstralUniverse]

Though the -yoink from Sibayad to Skal should still be disabled.

There's also a 'surface' screen in Skal, with a portal source and docks for player ships. That screen should be included as well.

[Kenji]

Yup, I'm well aware of the disused Jetty map. And Kuma has pointed it out, also.

[AstralUniverse]

disabling -yoink to Skal, and preventing any properties ownership above lvl 16-18 except in Dunmarle are really good solutions without screwing up smugglers who use ships. The most important thing is that the shops and quarters will rotate between newer players more. Allowing them a chance to experiment but also forcing them to give the shops away at some point. This would ensure that the stocks in Skal are always rotating and changing and it would allow higher-level smugglers opportunities to use these shops via RP and partnerships with lower lvl characters.

[Dedman1234]

Preventing epics from owning shops and quarters is a good idea. As most people have mentioned, those shops tend to contain nothing but overpriced garbage or items a typical Skal denizen has no use for.

Mind you, sometimes I encountered people who were way over-leveled but handled their RP beautifully. I remember an old smith who had a shop and stacked it with cheap Iron/steel goods, allowing low-level characters to gear up properly, while not overshadowing other, less experienced smiths on the island who could provide damask/greensteel goods.

Another one was a wizard who, despite being in the epics (at least I think he was, never actually seen the guy cast any powerful spells), always insisted on being retired and too old for any adventuring jobs. He never took sides in conflicts, and merely ran a small shop with cheap potions and scrolls, while entertaining himself with sitting by the campfire telling stories and giving people advice about the monsters they might face.

While I would never personally make such a character, since staying on Skal past high teens is boring, interacting with those types of PCs is a joy and I think that throwing those guys off the island entirely would be a bad idea. Maybe disallow epics from owning stuff on Skal by default, while allowing for some outstanding players to make an application to the DMs to be exempt from it? Those passive kinds of "NPC-like" players I described, I mean. Nobody wants a lvl 30 LG pally running around the island smiting low lvl warlocks, or an epic necromancer parading his undead in front of good PCs, knowing they can't do anything about them.

Another matter is the issue of epic swat teams, as someone accurately called them, making their way to the island on a whim, or when anything interesting is going on.

The best way to prevent those guys from coming? Make it bothersome and difficult to reach the island. More than it already is.

Want to yoink in a team of epics? Well, yoinking to skal now has a 1 RL day cooldown, costs XP, and tons of spell components. People who were yoinked in would also have a 1 day CD applied to their own ability to yoink, so a team of wizards cannot just summon one another on short notice.

Want to make it to the island through the sea? Well, nobody is willing to sail those treacherous waters, except a particularly crazy and greedy captain. This unsettling character would charge people big money for the trip, the pricing changing according to his own whims. The higher your level and the value of your equipment, the higher the price. Maybe tie the price to the number of PCs a character has killed last month as well, so a peaceful scholar/trader has an easier time making it in than a paladin with an itchy smitin' arm who kills necros on sight.

Also, if ya made it to Skal with any of the abovementioned methods, you cannot leave the island for an RL day. You better come with a good reason.

People with actual IC reasoning to visit Skal would now need to make some arrangements to make it in, perhaps adding to their experience (traveling to a remote frozen island should feel like a difficult task), while people who want to come and merely show off and terrorize the lowbies would be seriously discouraged from making the trip.

[NPC Logger Number 2]

IMO slapping a MOD on everyone over 15 is not necessarily going to discourage epic characters. Some people will go to Skal and treat it like an Epic PVP Arena where you only get 10 lives but so does everyone else. And that old guy sitting by the campfire making scrolls or that blacksmith making steel swords for new adventurers probably aren't PVPing or even PVEing much to begin with so they don't care about a MOD either. As much as I like the idea of a lawless frozen land where might makes right, it probably isn't what the creative team had in mind for a new player zone. I'm not sure what the solution is, but MOD's are probably doing more harm than good since some people like a challenge and others like knowing they can actually kill off other characters while others simply don't care.

[Kuma]

Want to make it to the island through the sea? Well, nobody is willing to sail those treacherous waters, except a particularly crazy and greedy captain. This unsettling character would charge people big money for the trip, the pricing changing according to his own whims. The higher your level and the value of your equipment, the higher the price. Maybe tie the price to the number of PCs a character has killed last month as well, so a peaceful scholar/trader has an easier time making it in than a paladin with an itchy smitin' arm who kills necros on sight.

Please don't remove a function of PC owned boats. Captains should be willing to take the job as PCs. As long as some restrictions (anti-yoinking, level caps on property and, yes, maybe "app based" for "overleveled" PCs) are present to discourage the problematic style of playing, I think anything more complex than that is overcomplicating it beyond absurdity, and also just removing player agency (captain/trader/smuggling RP).

EDIT: Also, any price you put on getting to Skal as some sort of "epic character tax" will invariably either be so low as to be negligible or so high as to basically just be an OOC "you are too tall for this ride" marker. There is no such thing as a happy medium here that will actually work. And occasional trade should be a legitimate reason to go to Skaljard! Having the trip cost [whatever] will simply erase that entirely. Otherwise you're left with no actual reasons to go to Skal, which I guess is the point but there's more nuanced and simple ways to do that I feel that isn't just slapping "TUTORIAL ISLAND" on the server name and playing Old RuneScape Soundtrack - Newbie Melody.mp4 over it.

[Hobojoe]

The most important thing is that the shops and quarters will rotate between newer players more. Allowing them a chance to experiment but also forcing them to give the shops away at some point. This would ensure that the stocks in Skal are always rotating and changing and it would allow higher-level smugglers opportunities to use these shops via RP and partnerships with lower lvl characters.

It's not even about new players, as I get the impression at least half of Skals population is just the same old people who keep coming back but yeah you can count on one hand how many times the larger properties have changed hands, moving players on should hopefully allow for new ideas and factions to get a crack at using them, because right now you can sit on a property for an eternity and the player base has no agency to move the owner on, even if their shop is gathering dust and their home amounts to nothing more than a personnel dollhouse.

[matheusgraef]

Very good posts, and it's great to see everyone is more or less on the same page. The best suggestions in my opinion have been:

1. Impose a level cap for permanent shops and housing.

2. Disable -yoink to Skal altogether.

And while I still think any access to Skal should be curated by DMs, I agree that it comes across as a very abrupt decision and it might damage the nature of the setting. However, I think everyone agrees that small but impactful changes like the ones cited above are enough to discourage epics from sitting around in Skal, and encourage simple visits instead.

[Scylon]

The big problem here is they have just done this huge upgrade to Skal, adding in the castle that no one uses, or will use. This is because you are already in the teens before you can reach it and you are soon to be booted off the island so why bother buying something up there? Seriously I went for a walk through there last week and every shop and house was up for grabs. I even thought of buying one, but then I thought "its a long walk to back for RP and clearly no one comes up here".

I have a serous distaste for epic characters, especially "good" aligned ones coming into skal, acting like judge dread screeing "I am the law" and smiting every warlock, pale master or blackguard in sight. They were seriously running around just murdering any of the above, even though Skal is supposed to be lawless. At one point the epics were "patrolling" around looking for people.

Shops are another issue. I'd suggest 3 things.

1 - 3-5 day refreshes. And it would need to be policed a bit by DMs to make sure it's not just a high level character keeping the shop forever and never actually logging in. If you are not actively on the island playing that character, you don't get to have a shop. That is fair and the refresh rate will make it so new players can own it, but it will change hands often when they don't look after it.

2 - No yoinks. As someone whos Epic Wizard is still there with yoink, I agree with it. (only there cause I haven't played him since this came into effect, he will be departing shortly )

3 - create an "imports" shop/s. A new system that will be a 2 end shop so mainlanders can still trade with Skal people. The idea being Mainlanders interact with the shop in the Areliths docks place items in there for sale, the items are then "sent" to one in Skal to be viewed. They would hold this sale for a few days and then the item is returned if unsold to the mainland shop, giving a few days for the owner to collect unsold goods. After which they get a CD for a month Realtime before that character can send good again. This could actually be used for a few locations.

[Kuma]

3 - create an "imports" shop/s. A new system that will be a 2 end shop so mainlanders can still trade with Skal people. The idea being Mainlanders interact with the shop in the Areliths docks place items in there for sale, the items are then "sent" to one in Skal to be viewed. They would hold this sale for a few days and then the item is returned if unsold to the mainland shop, giving a few days for the owner to collect unsold goods. After which they get a CD for a month Realtime before that character can send good again. This could actually be used for a few locations.

this trivialises the distance to a bizarre degree

[Nidea Lynn]

I main a ranger on Skal who's level 13. I have mixed feelings about being booted off the island once my character develops a bit more because, in her RP, she exists to bring and keep balance to the island. Being artificially forced away simply due to being too experienced is distasteful for toons like her. I wonder if there is a way to find balance between encouraging people to leave while offering options for those who stay for various reasons even if they are higher level?

[Gouge Away]

Honestly I'd recommend... just don't level. You don't have to click level up and can freeze your own progress. You can ask a DM to drop you a few levels. You can play in adventure mode to slow down and bank that xp for later. If you want to stay on Skal indefinitely as a level 15 I don't think that's an issue and there are ways to do it.

[AstralUniverse]

Honestly I'd recommend... just don't level.

This thread is not really about it though. I'm sure most people who really want to stay in Skal will just hold their level up or even choose MoD in some cases. That's all good. The problem is the property ownership. People who do not live in Skal but own houses and shops. This is what's been killing Skal lately since the new policy ironically enough.

[Hobojoe]

To quote the OP;

The way things are, however, epic PCs will continue to hang out and eventually interfere - whether purposefully or not - with the intended dynamic of Skal.

Now to be clear this isn't to cast aspersions, but If epics are going to hang around it needs to be with the lightest of touches, a millionaire benefactor selling gear for dirt cheap discourages other players from getting into crafting, an epic level defender of Skal type character is only going to discourage low level characters from attempting villainous acts, unless of course said defender is willing to let things pass, etc etc.

Of course though, there is plenty of nuance. Players in the past have pulled off the background epic well, as others have mentioned.

[Fallout]

Make habor around that part that switches to surface server (with portal) and make it with temo stalls at ships(that would be kewl), all ships can come during summer... But... NO ONE CAN enter village (unless DM approved). This way we keep epics outside but trade floating or invitations to surface factions.

Story is.. LANTAN opened harbor to get trade between Arelith and Mainland but rise security (golems ect) as they see Arelith as very nasty place and wants to keep balance of Skal safe due to their agreement with locals or druids. It goes well with story how they got it and would make their role to run place for 100years?

I think this could work.

[Nidea Lynn]

Ah, sorry for misunderstanding.

I do know that there has seemed to be little access to merchant stalls in Skal and the range of items is ridiculous in either extreme both in price and quality. The way my toon has navigated these waters is through IC relationships with crafters although it makes the stalls less exciting and beneficial to everyone.

I know that simply adding more stalls doesn't solve the problem yet would it alleviate it the scarcity at a noticeable level? That is, of course, assuming less epic non-Skalians rent them.

[Exordius]

I think its fine as it is now, every time i go there every now and then i almost never see any epics or people i know its all low level newbs. And i have never seen large groups of epics running around ganking people so i don't buy that, no offense to the person who mentioned it.

[Xerah]

A series of suggestions that are not necessarily linked.

• No epics should be on Skal. You should be forced off by level 20.
• Shop/quarter ownership shouldn't be allowed if you're not on Skal during the winter.
• Shop/quarter ownership should be reduced to 3 days or limited to characters of 17 or lower.
• Skal should not allow Yoinking.
• Getting off of Skal should be 1 way (can't ever go back).

[-XXX-]

Why not make it a standalone server at that point?
...how's the fixed level server doing btw?

[Anime Sword Fighter]

Why not make it a standalone server at that point?
...how's the fixed level server doing btw?

while i would oppose restricting yoinking, epics from skal, and even the 1-way trip only, to be fair the Arelith FL server wasn't brought to EE.

i like the idea of a skal where an epic that's on the run can go to hide out from the rest of society, as a means of exile or isolation. i also accept that this probably doesn't happen most of the time or at all when epics come to skal. i also would like to see that smuggling path for SOMETHING. desperately want a wide-ranging black market of a variety of things that can create cool trade markets between the settlements and UD.

[-XXX-]

That was sort of the point that I was getting at - the FL didn't make it to EE because the player attendance was very low. It wasn't Skal, but it was a server focused on low levels that boasted many features native to Arelith, so similarities were there.

Long story short, I don't think that Skal would've survived if it wasn't a part of Arelith so let' stop trying to separate it from it.
I believe that Skal would suffer for any such change.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

That was sort of the point that I was getting at - the FL didn't make it to EE because the player attendance was very low. It wasn't Skal, but it was a server focused on low levels that boasted many features native to Arelith, so similarities were there.

Long story short, I don't think that Skal would've survived if it wasn't a part of Arelith so let' stop trying to separate it from it.
I believe that Skal would suffer for any such change.

agreed, I feel like dealing with sheningans as they arise and rolling with the punches and creating stories (DM events if need be even) is the best approach. Especially with new sailing system.

If you want to restict higher lvls for owning property at another place on the Island, i think that is fine too, but I feel they do not deserve MoD for that.