Invie

On day 13 of the year 19 we have met Willow to interrogate him concerning the gifts that were found in his storage room.
Present at the time of the conversation were Invie and I, later joined by Ledah and Aamon, and Aia and Jakubhi when the meeting was running towards it end.
You can find the transcription below
 
TLDR
Willow is renting out his storage room to the confused one.
He spotted an elf returning gifts from the tree to the storage room, he confirmed it is the elf that had a shovel related incident that lead to his early passing
He doesn't know how the elven magic works that protects the gifts but might tinker a little with it.
He says our best bet to contact the confused one is to speak to the elves in the archives.

I fear I may be absent for this, but fortune may think otherwise.
 
1. Hast thou knowledge of any beings who did place the presents within the Willow's Shop storage? If so, what were the identity of them, and what were the appearance?
2. Knowst thou of any motive of such beings? Did they communicate in any manner to thee and if so, what spake them to thee? Were there a reason that the location for the presents were chosen, and what wer't?
3. Knowst thou of the magic that renders the presents inert, or a remedy that may dissipate of their inertia without also affecting their contents? If so, what wer't?
4. How art thou? Were there aught we may do for thee in return for thine aid in this matter?
5. When may one expect Willow's Shop to receive new items, for one who hath previously purchased of the entire inventory?

- Invie

Nice quest with a unique reward, I want even more of the reward.

These issues should be fixed.
Please let me know if any persist.

I will take a Spotted Easter Hunt Egg.

On day 364 year 17, a delegation ventured inside Necrovion for an unprecedented offering to the Shades.
Three individuals (Ledah, Nep and The Puppeteer) were taken to the Eternal Toiler, where they sacrificed altogether 50 creatures.
111 fenths were created and left for time to erode.
This outstanding sacrifice was awarded with a spell-doc page for each participant.
Below the full log of the event:
 

I will take the Loreroot Marksman.

It's the fully leveled Worry of Wanderers.

I want them all.
Max level preferred, but I also accept lower levels.

Done
Done
 
Sorry all, I need to go to sleep. I will work on the next load tomorrow. ❤️ 

Its fixed now. This is a very valuable page btw, thanks for reporting it

These should all be fixed.

Everyone should have their rewards  

Thanks all.
So story time!
 
Yesterday quite late after I had been busy I was informed that Petrify was not working properly and it had been earlier that day. So I spent some time immediately checking into the code as it was deemed important in the HC. As I was rushing I was checking the petrify item and not the petrify spell. The petrify Item runs for 30 minutes although the code, structure, etc, is very similar. This is important later.
Digging into the casting code I found an odd feature where any spells that run set up a trigger, but then if they are cast on others they are then deleted and re-created using a different set of parameters. Because of name shadowing and a few different variable names this actually caused a bug whereby:
Petrify runs, trigger created with X minutes Petrify deleted from triggers Petrify trigger re-created, with different params and using a new variable This is pretty deep into the code and it looks like it has been around for a while but I have now fixed it. However after fixing it I still didn't see petrify being cast for 30 minutes. This is where I left it as I didn't have time to debug and it was already much past midnight for me.
 
Today I investigated again and noticed that I had the wrong spell file, finding the correct spell file did indeed show me that the petrify spell follows the same pattern for spell casting. So the petrify spell has never lasted for 30 minutes.
 
Long story short, Petrify spell level 1 has the standard 8 minute cast duration, it has always been the case. There was a bug that was affecting some items which have a special "longer" duration, but these are now fixed again.
If you have any questions, feel free to post or message me!

Count me in.

Good quest, definitly tested my perserverance. I can recommend everyone to complete this quest as there are many rewards in the form of a WP, RP items and stats.

Good quest, definitly tested my perserverance. I can recommend everyone to complete this quest as there are many rewards in the form of a WP, RP items and stats.

Good quest, definitly tested my perserverance. I can recommend everyone to complete this quest as there are many rewards in the form of a WP, RP items and stats.

The manager of the Three Coin Hotel in the tribunal (Lands of the East) has been called away and wants YOU to cover for him.  There is no salary, but you can get various rewards as tips from the hotel guests (mostly skills) and a even a wish point if you stick with it long enough.  Besides - what could be more fun?!
If interested, read the message left by the manager on the wall at the Three Coin Hotel.

Well here is my first attempt, probably not the last regarless of the result.
Before Sac session (with equipment):
attack:  14233
defence: 12894
After sac session:
attack:  123249
defence: 48855
 

Creatures:
Rustgold Madhorn
ID: 877431
Stats
Vital Energy    13000/5000
Heat Scars    300612292
Won battles    26446
Age    660
Rustgold Madhorn
ID: 878519
Vital Energy    10000/5000
Heat Scars    332149771
Won battles    25275
Age    511
Rustgold Madhorn
ID: 878753
Vital Energy    13000/5000
Heat Scars    324267501
Won battles    24005
Age    488
Imperial Aramor Assassin
ID: 706529
Vital Energy    5200/2000
Heat Scars    120707049
Won battles    11013
Age    4167
Imperial Aramor Assassin
ID: 879816
Stats
Vital Energy    2000/2000
Heat Scars    123667646
Won battles    10297
Age    437
Imperial Aramor Assassin
ID: 879817
Stats
Vital Energy    2000/2000
Heat Scars    124111538
Won battles    10311
Age    437

Keep showing them to everyone. Knowledge is power.

Recently I went through Gateway Island as an alt account just to test and get an idea of exactly what it was and what it involved. This topic is just to compile the feedback I had as a returning player who did their best to perceive it from a new players point of view. Firstly I have to say that the island itself is good, and that the tutorial is hitting along a lot of the right tracks in terms of teaching the player to play, about puzzles and facets of the game. Where it stumbled is in the smoothness of the experience and the potential buy in.
 
One of the main things that new players encounter is the tool mechanics, though the tools have a much reduced cooldown to ensure that newbies don't spend all day collecting the required resources, however this emphasises the fact that the inventory menu doesn't refresh itself. While a refresh button is presented in the window it blends in with the text around it and is very easy to miss, and this is especially true on mobile devices. The first solution a player may find is simply refreshing the whole webpage, and not a good experience. If it is possible to make the countdown of time at least happen in real time, and the refresh button was made a slightly brighter orange, this would be remedied. Or better if the panel simply refreshed itself when hitting 0 seconds left, though I assume there are technical limitations with that?

AP Cost is an odd one here and has me somewhat confused. It seems that moving in the main handful of areas can be done even when on 0 AP, not sure whether this is a bug or intended. The other half of the areas however do require AP expenditure as per normal, except as you might imagine with only getting so few newbies the viscosity is usually around 20. Even with the Land Affinity bonus the usual AP for movement around the areas that cost it is roughly 18. Given a starter player has a bank of 200 and regens roughly 16 every 10 minutes this can get to be an issue especially since most new players will backtrack a lot as they try and put things together. This means they might start to get really excited about figuring things out... Only to find themselves out of AP and having to wait twenty minutes to move a single scene. It might be worth giving newbies more affinity for GWI to start with, or at least cap viscosity to being at max triple of the AP the scene would ordinarily cost to move to. IE if an arrow costs 1 to move, the max viscosity cost it can have would be 3, making the total cost 4. That would be much more palatable for the GWI, but probably its own discussion.

Active Days to get off the island... I get why it's there, really. But the island doesn't necessarily take that long to solve, or to exhaust the possible actions on it (depending on the player, of course). MD is a community game and GWI more often than not at this point in time is cut off from the community. Someone there can't interact with the majority of players, and without that MD loses some of its appeal. I don't see all too many players wanting to stay on the island for that amount of time because it is limiting. Left there you can't explore or necessarily find more puzzles and this is before you are able to see the deeper lore of MD... Though, suppose there may be a way off the island with less active days, not certain but the majority I've seen require it.

Finally - The Buy in. Back when I started MD you were greeted by the Story Mode, and it honestly inspired me. The story was the interweaving of lore and gave some snippet of how to think about the realm, it gave flavour and some rather odd context, the kind of thing that was utterly unique. That was what made me, personally, want to investigate and explore, it gave the curiosity to press on into the realm. That and the fascinating creatures and fights were my 'buy in', the point that I was invested enough to push through adversity or any of the rough parts of MD.
This seems to be missing in GWI. There is the introduction with a fair few interesting mentions of what is possible, but it's not really inspiring, just informative. Then the first thing you are greeted with are the tools and collection mechanics which seems like an odd choice. Don't get me wrong the tutorial is good (though the wait for the map was a bit too long), but it's not something that is going to draw people in which is what you need to start with. I'd suggest start with a mystery, some hinting at the lore and have the mystery progress with each step to exiting the island. Meet the creatures and combat second, with a shade in each location to optionally fight. Then the tools.
This way players can at least do something while waiting for things to process or AP to generate, because when most people start looking for a new browser based game, they're bored. Greeting them with a mystery and something to puzzle over as they go is not only more interesting, but also more authentic to at least how I see MD.
 
Anyway, thank you for reading my thoughts. GWI seems like a very good place to start, it just needs that buy in and polish. But the hard part is done, it's intuitive and easy to understand for those who do not leave early. At least by my own reckoning. Hopefully my perspective helps to some extent!

I'm in. Make the prize kill Ledah.