[SIZE="4"]Spirit Weapon System[/SIZE]
Read the changes in the spoiler below before my reasoning:
[SPOILER="Spirit Weapon Changes"]
- Spirit Weapons
- Almost all existing weapons can now be made into a Spirit Weapon. New weapons will become Egoable immediately on release (such as Celtic Bow(s) when they come out in the Archery Renovation update).
- Spirit weapon's base stats are altered to accommodate for base stats.
- For example, a regular Gladius has 15~32 damage and 13 durability. The base stats of an unleveled Spirit Gladius is 24~40 damage and 30 durability. This is an increase of 9 min damage, 8 max damage, and 17 durability. An X-grade Gladius has 2 more min damage, 2 more max damage, and 5 more durability than a regular Gladius. Currently, if your Gladius is regular or X-Grade doesn't matter, the spirit will have the same stats. After this update, an X-Grade Gladius made into a Spirit Weapon will have 26~40 damage and 36 durability, base.
- Enchant, upgrades, special upgrades, etc no longer conflict with making a Spirit Weapon. If a weapon with these is made into a Spirit Weapon, it will still have them afterwards.
- Existing Spirit Weapons can now be enchanted/upgraded/special upgraded, etc.
- The appearance of your Spirit Weapon is no longer tied to your weapon type. Instead of having "Male Blunt Spirit Stone" you'll have "Male Spirit Stone #2"
- The personality of your Spirit Weapon is no longer tied to its appearance (a little prejudice. . .). Now when making a Spirit Weapon, Tarlach/Berched asks you to touch the weapon and this brings up the options to choose its personality type in the NPC window.
- What gems and other items a Spirit prefers to eat is now determined by the Personality and not the Appearance.
- A Spirit Weapon's stats can now grow from talking to the Spirit, with a limit to how much you can get how often.
- Spirit Weapons are expanded as an NPC. More keywords work with them, and sometimes you'll be prompted questions with answers you need to pick. This will help shape their personality. Sometimes they may mention something to you, and much later on you'll be given a few prompts, and if you remember and pick the right prompt, your spirits' stats will benefit more.
- A Spirit Weapon's stats can now grow from being used in combat.
- I'll leave your imagination to balance this. It just has to be something that accommodates multiple stats. Be it random which stat it gives, depend on how you use it, etc.
- The amount of stat experience given from feeding is not altered.
- Higher grade weapons get more experience for the same activities as lower grade weapons.
- The experience formula for the Stat Levels are reduced.
- Transferring a Spirit from one Weapon to another IF they are the same weapon type cannot reduce in Stat Levels anymore.
- The original weapon left behind will still have its upgrades/enchants/special upgrades/grades/etc. This does not transfer with the Spirit, like how Reforges don't transfer right now. (For those of you who didn't know, transferring the same weapon type gives you back the original weapon, but this doesn't apply for transferring to another weapon type.)
- Transferring a Spirit from one Weapon type to another still has a chance of reducing Stat's Levels.
- Spirit's Appearance and Personality are not altered on Weapon Transfer.
- Players who had a Spirit Weapon prior to this update would be given the chance to choose a new Appearance/Personality. If they want, they can leave it alone. But once they decide one way or the either, it cannot be changed afterwards.
- Restorative Liqueur and Spirit Liqueur of Blessing can now be obtained ingame somehow. But it should be a long process and a pain to get in comparison to buying it.
- Cancelling the contract with your Spirit returns you your initial weapon, like how Transferring to the same weapon type does. But the Spirit is lost of course, as is all the effort you spent leveling its Stats. Currently cancelling the contract makes you lose the spirit AND the weapon.
[/SPOILER]
People often misunderstand what I want out of Spirit Weapons, and it's hard to explain. So I made this list so hopefully it is easier to understand. My main gripe with Spirit Weapons is that's its too much about developing an item, and it's too heavily feeding-based in order for it to grow. It also lets you interact with the Spirit but gives you no incentive to do so. This satisfies growth, as well as making it less about weapon development. Mabinogi to me has always been about character development, it hasn't been until C3 and C4 that it became so focused on items, and item development. Spirit Weapons are also either overpowered (Spirit Fire Wands + Firebolt Spam, though that's mainly due to Firebolt) or underpowered (demonic weapons, dragon weapons, divine weapons, celtic weapons), this allows them to go on the new weapons so all the effort you spent isn't completely useless. So it's back to a level moreso of character development. Some other issues I have with spirit weapons is that they aren't very customizable and most of the Spirits are little b***hes. This satisfies that requirement by letting you choose appearances and choose personalities. If you want your Spirit to be a b***h, it can. If you want it to be moody, it can. If you want it to be shy, it can. This update also encourages using high grade weapons and not just any shitty weapon you find. Grind for the materials and do business with a blacksmith to create an excellent vessel for your spirit. So although I made it more about the Spirit development and less about item development, you can still work on the weapon itself, and transfer the weapon through the same methods as before.
One thing to note though, this update did NOT buff the amount of benefit you get from leveling a Spirit, or uncap it. If anything, it should be left alone, or nerfed. This update actually makes weapons potentially more OP than before possible if you spend the effort, they don't need to be buffed up even more.
[SIZE="4"]Upgade System[/SIZE]
Read the changes in the spoiler below before my reasoning:
[SPOILER="Upgrade Changes"]
- Enchant
- Enchant is now in the Blacksmith Talent.
- New Skill: Disfortification
- This skill is in the blacksmith talent.
- This skill may be used on items that are upgraded.
- This skill destroys an item and creates a "Phantom Items" (for a lack of a better term) with its upgrades.
- Gladius has the 0~0 upgrade "Nicca's Gladius Enhancement". This upgrade gives 15 min and max damage, with a penalty of -5 durability and -10 critical. You can use the Phantom Item created by the destruction of this weapon on a preferred weapon of the same type (1-handed sword), such as Pilgrim's Sword, if the Pilgrim's Sword does not yet have a 0~0 upgrade. This comes with the good and the bad, so the Pilgrim's Sword still gets the -5 durability.
- Upgrades must be in order. You cannot just extract that 0~0 and the 2~2 upgrade without the 1~1. It's all upgrades or none.
- So if Gladius has a good 0~0 and 2~2 upgrade you want, but you want a 1~1 upgrade from a Fluted Short Sword, you must use a Gladius, destroy it with this skill, put it on Fluted Short Sword, destroy it with this skill, then putting it back on a different Gladius.
- You can extract from Special Upgraded Weapons, but only the 0~4 upgrades will be extracted and not gem upgrades nor special upgrades.
- People who don't have this skill ranked may entrust other players to use this skill for them, similar to Enchant entrusting.
- Ideally, there should be a way to do this and enchant burn at the same time.
- If you guys don't know what Entrusting is, it lets another player do the action for you without actually giving them the item, and there's also a little trade window you can use to pay them in the transaction in exchange for the service.
- Phantom Items cannot be used on items that cannot be upgraded at all (Beam Swords).
- Upgrades
- Existing weapons and armor, especially the obscure ones made with blacksmithing and tailoring, get new upgrades unique to that specific item and different from each other.
- Ideally, high blacksmith/tailoring grade items have better upgrades than their NPC-grade siblings. This doesn't apply to Magic Craft/Engineering, but lets be honest, you're going to be using these Phantom Items on weapons made with Magic Craft/Engineering anyways.
[/SPOILER]
This system sounds so simple in my head but people always have trouble getting what I mean. If you weren't able to tell yet, this is based on pokemon breeding. If you still didn't understand what this was, I hope that helped explain it.
This is how pokemon breeding works. For those people who complained about my ideas for Spirit Weapons ruined Item Progression in favor of Character Progression. This is especially for those of you who get pissed off each time a new weapon comes out and you give up your old weapon in favor of it. This is also for all those blacksmiths who make really quality obscure items that nobody wants whilst training. (Not to mention manuals that are really rare but the product is shit, so their rarity is previously pointless.) When playing Pokemon, my favorite part was always chain breeding pokemon, especially when transferring moves from a certain egg group and type to another completely unrelated one. I kind of think raising a good wand, and ending it with a chaincast upgrade, then transferring that onto a Phoenix Feather Sword, then transferring that to other swords would be fun, but the potential of cross-typing upgrades could potentially get OP so it might just be better to disable that specifically for weapons with more than one type (Shyllien Knuckles).
The first step, like in Pokemon, is envisioning what it is you want. Do you want the best Pilgrim's Sword possible? Start by figuring out what upgrades you want, some upgrades on blacksmithed items are better than on nonblacksmithed items, and higher grade blacksmith items are even better. Figure out which item you need for what step, create deals with your blacksmith, or tailor if your chaining clothing upgrades, perhaps for magic attack? Spend effort getting the materials for each weapon, raising their prof, upgrading them, destroying them, repeat the process and put it on a new high quality item you blacksmithed that has another upgrade you want, and follow this system until you are prepared to put it on your final, highgrade/statroll item. Personalize this item, dye it, enchant it, reforge it, special upgrade it, ego it? And when there's a new weapon you'd rather have, transfer your ego onto a different weapon, burn this weapon for its enchants and upgrades, and prepare your new highgrade/statroll weapon to have them transferred in. This system sounds genuinely fun to me.
On a balancing note, I'm not sure if "Phantom Items" should be untradable or not. And yes I'm bad at naming things, but Fragmentation was already a thing so. . . I doubt devcat will
ever do something like this, but it's fun to imagine. I also hope this clears up what people thought about my spirit weapon system idea. Some things that should be mentioned, my post did not address Spirit Weapon Awakening, and I'm not sure what really needs to be done to it. People I've talked to about this also suggested making a "Magic Upgrades" form, there takes up the same slots as but work differently than regular Upgrades, but this post is just my ideas in the most basic sense. In addition, I didn't talk about the upgrade system to that many people, but I talked about the Spirit Weapon ideas to a LOT of people, and almost everyone unanimously agree with all or 70% of those changes.