Nep

First off, a submission by @Demonic God. This guy is very thorough with his explanations Although the submission is very long, it did not receive first place for that alone, as you will soon see: Memory stone possess the ability to store "thoughts" and specifically, spells. A compressed memory stone can store spells with less cast amount. Studying further interactions: A spell can't be stored with insufficient casts The cutoff point is 5 spells - any less casts and you'd need a compressed stone. The stone stores but a small amount of casts, 2 to 3. This does not seem to correlate with how many casts you have - even a spell with 50 casts will give just 2-3 upon enchantment. The condensed tablet is capable of storing even spells with just 4 casts The condensed tablet can only store the same amount of casts as a stone One needs 80% of their cast count left to make a stone A failed store does not degrade the stone From these behaviors, I theorize that memory stones have a fixed capacity - and the compressed version simply enhances its "writability". Writing a thought to a memory stone would require repeated exposure to the spell itself - with repeated casts required to imprint a single cast. The process to determine a stone as a memory stone Trying to store a spell to it, and successfully, would certainly prove a stone to be a memory stone. This simple concept is not very useful - we want to obtain raw, untainted memory stones. However, certain things could be done to improve upon this method. Particularly, we require improvement in these aspects: The method may not alter nor degrade the quality of the stone The method must be able to fully determine if a stone is a memory stone, with high confidence The method must miss as little memory stone as possible The method needs to be fast and convenient We can break these requirement into two separate methods working in conjunction: A method to quickly eliminate normal stones and detect potential stones The method needs to have as low false negative rate as possible The method needs to be able to scan extremely fast, ruling out as many stones as possible The method needs to have a reasonable false positive rate, to reduce work load for method 2 The method needs to alter the stones as little as possible A method to conclude if a stone is a memory stone, with high confidence The method needs to be able to confirm a stone as a memory stone The method needs to not miss any memory stones The method needs to not alter the stone in any way These two methods, in conjunction, should be able to efficiently scan for memory stones. An indefinite numbers of intermediary methods could be added as further filtering steps for efficient mass production, if needed. A conceptual design: We rely on these two main characteristic of a memory stone to design the detector: Memory stones are meant to store thoughts Failure to store casts will not ruin a memory stone This allows the possibility to purposefully try to badly store a thought into the memory stones, and observing the result. I'll take the liberty to skip over the exact interactions, different "thought" experiments (hehe, pun intended), and go into the immediate results: The heat spell, granted by heat stones, is capable of slightly heating up memory stones. The locate spell is capable of making the memory stones echo a strong signal that quickly degrade with distance The heat spell will be used in conjunction with a sensitive heat detector to quickly determine stones that responded on a large scale. The locate spell could then be used to ping each stone, and recording if there's a strong response. Components These major components forms the core working mechanism needed for a memory stone detector: A thought broadcasting matrix capable of mimic the effect of spells. A matrix capable of sending out a thought wave resembling the heat spell This cannot be considered a functional spell The matrix needs to elicit a heat response as strong as possible on memory stones By designing a thought highly incompatible with the stones itself, the "thought" attribute lessen in favor of the "heat" effect, improving efficiency A matrix capable of sending out a thought wave resembling the locate spell This cannot be considered a functional spell The matrix needs to be able to "locate" the stones itself By altering the idea behind "locate" to an inanimate object, the spell causes a stronger "bounce" against memory stone, useful for detection Sensory devices capable of analyzing the stones' response: A heat detecting sensor A signal analyzer Amplification devices to enhance the matrixes Focal devices to control the thought-broadcasting area A passive heat collector, capable of gathering heat used to cast the spells Feedback devices to alarm user of potential spell stones. Various housing and interconnecting component Mechanism: Upon activation, the heat matrix sends out a pulse directly in front of the emitting matrix The heat sensor will capture the immediate heat response - with stronger heat feedback indicating a potential memory stone The feedback device will emit sound based on the captured heat response The user collects stones with high probability Each stone is tested individually Each test consist of placing the stones on a pedestal The pedestal is the focal point of the locate spell The sensor is placed right below the surface of the pedestal to prevent signal decay The focused spell is casted The sensor records the response, and outputs a high confidence audio feedback. Commentary As all stones were originally memory stones decayed by the elements, many exhibit behaviors similar to memory stones under tests As such, the components of a memory stone detector are highly sensitive, as well as a lot of data were gathered to improve testing accuracy Needless to say, they are very complex and delicate!

The results are in! I'd like to thank everyone for their participation. Without further ado, here is the result I came up with: Allow me to explain the logic behind the scores. The winner is determined by total points. The "detail" column represents how well you explained your concept. Everyone starts from 10 points, the subtractions represent details I was missing (in most cases this was because you explained "how" a certain thing works, but not "why"). I also took into consideration how well you explained your concept relative to the other submissions. The "lore / realism" column also starts from 10 points, but in this case you get points subtracted for inaccuracies regarding how things work in MD, OR if the mechanism you describe is somewhat questionable in my opinion. Since nobody really knows how a memory stone detector works, this is a very grey area. And because of that, it's nearly impossible to get max points for this, so keep that in mind. The "Uniqueness" column has 5 points as a maximum (equal to the number of entries, so 1 point per entry). How it works is that you get 1 point subtracted for every other player who submitted a similar concept. There were only 2 cases like this, both of them used heat signals but other than that they are pretty different too... Also, please keep in mind that these things are very subjective. Just because you did not win this time, doesn't mean I do not like your design. Anyway. I will start posting the submissions in short order. You have until tomorrow 23:00 server time to contest the result (11th of May). If nobody complains until then, the result will be final and I'll submit it to Chewett and I'll begin handing out rewards as soon as I can. Those of you who did not make it to the top 3 will get a 10 silver note each from me for your efforts. As for the submissions. When I came up with this quest. I was hoping for one of two things: Either some kind of common theme in the submissions that would hopefully help us determine how the damn thing works. OR A different idea for each submission. The latter happened basically Even though 2 of the submissions use heat signals for detection, that's about the only things they have in common... What this means I do not know, but it was a fun experiment regardless.

Sign me up pls.

I may be interested too, depending on the price.

You can check our current and past WPs in the wish shop menu, and also what you spent them on. Maybe that could help figuring this out.

I'm rather busy at the moment, so I probably won't be evaluating your submissions until next week. Because of that, I'm extending the deadline until the end of this week (2nd of May, which is Sunday). So, if you wanted to do this quest but failed to do so, now is your chance!

What makes you think abilities won't be random?

I'm so sorry

I'm looking to add a colorless drach into my repertoire, or maybe a wind drachorn. Let me know if you happen to have one for sale

The weird thing about the heat cap is that it disproportionally affects new people, while others who have been around for a while can shrug it off like nothing. I remember it took hours with 3-4 people helping me to get back to 0 when I first started. Which really shouldn't be the case in my opinion, or at least it is really weird from a game design perspective. Therefore, additional ways to lose heat are always welcome. It could either take coins, or other resources, finally adding some use to them.

The 14th anniv hollow warrior does have some purple in it, as well as the first level of the joker (though it's a pretty minor spot on its hat).

I'll try to be there too ~

Eh, why not.

Will definitely join ????

Sign me up ;o

This looks pretty much settled. If no new bids are made until then, I'll close the auction on Friday (9th of April).

It is.

The offer still stands, except now I have more gold to barter with. Hit me up if you have one for sale and we can figure something out.

I want to sell a fully grown Shmsh - you don't have to age or level it as long as you are willing to spend a silver when we transfer it. Since I don't really know how much it's worth nowadays, I'll put it up for auction. You can place your bid in this thread, and I'll close the auction in a week or 2, or when I feel like nobody wants to bid anymore. The Shmsh is untokened. Good luck!

A stack system you say??

Daily login bonus comes to mind. Would be inconvenient to lose that (both stats and coins) just because the day rolled over as you were doing stuff in illusion form. And what about shared tools? What happens to the tools that a person in illusion form picks up? Or what if it's passed to them? If it simply returns to its original place then it isn't a huge issue though.

Ok, here be the noob questions. I know next to nothing about illusions so get something to drink First of all, how does someone gain the ability to use illusions? Is it a wish shop thing like most spells, or do you get it as a quest reward, or maybe a reward for a role? Is it limited to running quests, or can you use it in day to day life too? If so, what are its limits? Does it have a set number of casts every 2 weeks like regular spells? Can you put them into memory stones? How customizable are they? Do you get a free hand between certain boundaries, or do you get a set number of options you can choose from? How long are illusions in duration? Are you limited to changing your own appearance, or can you cast them on others too? If you can, is there a way for them to get out of it? What happens to the items / stats / crits you gain while affected by an illusion? Do you lose them or carry them over to your normal form when the illusion is over? This is it for now... If anything else comes to mind I'll post it.

Sign me up!