23.4 Shards
Seismic instabilities of the continent of Aetherius frequently cause small shards to be launched to the surface. While the exact origin of these is not known, it is widely assumed that these shards contain the same source of energy that powers the mighty obelisks as well.
Every now and then, shards fall down upon the continent. Isolated shards fall every few minutes, and bigger groups of shards fall every few hours. Shards can only fall into outdoors rooms on the main continent, outside of influence of any organization or affinity.
Note: Players are open to PK from other players while in areas with an active Shardfall in them, participating or not. If another character engages you in combat while you are in the area, and you flee, attacking characters are permitted to continue their assault for a reasonable amount of time. If you are the attacker in this situation, we expect to see that you engaged the other character while they were in the area and continued to chase and press the attack as they fled.
Players who are sufficiently learned in the art of Survival have the ability to harvest these shards. This process takes 20 seconds and is interrupted when any aggressive action is performed, or when any damage is received.
All shards have a 7 game month decay rate. This is about 7 real life days. You can keep a limited number of shards from decaying in your inventory with the use of token shard pouches. See artifacts 435, 436, and 437.
Known Shard Types
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Blue Shards
Blue ones are the most common of the shards and are used in your generator to store up obelisk energy and for some skills.
Red Shards
Red are slightly more rare then blue. When used in a generator, they are worth 5 blue shards. They are also used for some skills.
Yellow Shards
The yellow shard is significantly more rare than blue and red shards. It can be used to cause massive faith damage to a shrine with the command SHARD STRIKE <shrine>.
Green Shards
The green shard is significantly more rare than blue and red shards. Green shards can be used on a player banish them to the Rashirmir for about 30 seconds. The command is SHARD STAB <player>.
Special Shards
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Six new special shards exist. Only one shard of a type can exist at a time. While a shard exists, another of that same type won't spawn.
- The special shards cannot be given to another player or placed into a container. If dropped, they will disappear.
- If you kill someone that has a special shard, it will be transferred to you. This does not work in the arena.
- The special shards always fall out of inventory on death or logout.
- Each of these special shards grants a unique, and fairly potent, power - we will be monitoring these and altering as needed
- Please note that the HARVEST SHARD syntax is still used with these shards, even though their actual names differ
- New command: SHARD SPECIALS, tells you who has each of the special shards.
- If you're holding more than one of these special items, you will take periodic damage.
- If you are in a "safe" room for longer periods of time, your shard will disappear. That implies rooms in houses, cities, townes, guildhalls, temples, special rooms reachable by abilities.
*** Important: Being in possession of any of these shards is considered a valid PK reason - that is, you are open PK to anyone ***
Special Shard Powers
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An emerald cluster of crystals
- +20% damage resistance in non-urban environments
A prismatic geode
- Reduces the amount of time necessary to regain herb balance by roughly 15% (although this depends on other things affecting your herb balance)
A slab of copper
- 10% faster balance and equilibrium
A piece of enigmatic shale
- gives a channeled ability that causes all incoming damage to heal you instead; this lasts 15 seconds and has a 2-minute cooldown
- SHARD ENSHROUD
A fractured macadam
- Increases your total health and mana by 5%
A bloody-red cabochon
- SHARD DISRUPT does not take equilibrium
General Shard Commands
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HARVEST SHARD
Allows you to harvest the shard out of the ground. The shard will remain unstable for 10 minutes. During this time, if you are killed, you will drop the shard from you inventory. This command is also used for harvesting the special shards listed above.
SHARDLOG <city/council> <start> <day>
Lists shards placed into the generator
CITY SHARD SKILLS
Displays a list of all unlock-able skills currently visible to you, along with their current levels
CITY SHARD SKILL <name>
Displays more information about a skill, as well as currently visible abilities within it.
You can only see the skills for which you meet the pre-requisites, and within each skill, you can only see the ability offered at the next level. Everything else is hidden.
City Leader Commands
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To make use of shards stored in your generator, the following commands are available only to the War ministry:
CITY SHARD UNLOCK <name>
Initiates unlocking of a new level within a skill, assuming that you meet all the requirements. This takes 24 hours to complete.
CITY SHARD ABORT
Aborts previously initiated unlocking, if any.
CITY SHARD OPEN INSTANCE
At a generator shard cost of 1000 shards, individual cities/councils will be able to access an instanced bashing area for one game year. See below for more details on this instance.
Shard Instances
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- To access the generated instance, citizens can do SHARD SUMMON PORTAL, at the cost of a blue shard.
- Unlike other instances, this one will allow up to 5 people to enter it via a player created portal.
- Cities can do an org request to create a custom version of this instance. You can edit the random room descriptions and mob types.