The shard system has received a substantial facelift today. We are hoping that these changes will make the system more attractive once again. The main change is the inability to stockpile shards.

- All existing shards, except those in generators, have been removed from the game

- Shards are no longer riftable

- Shards now decay 7 RL days after being harvested, regardless of location. Shards placed into the generator do not decay.

- Newly harvested shards now fall out your inventory on death - they stop doing this after 10 minutes

- SHARD ANATOMY, SHARD ADRENALINE, and SHARD WILDLIFE are now defences activated using a blue shard; they give the effect for 2 hours

- SHARD ATTUNE X (level 5 obelisk research) now lasts 3 minutes (down from 60)

- Inking Hood tattoos now requires a red shard

- Decay messages are now grouped where appropriate - if multiple items decay at once in the same container/inventory, you only get a single message listing all the decayed items (note that this does not apply to non-empty vials)

- New artifact shard pouches are now available, these can hold a limited number of red or blue shards - the special shards cannot be stored in these. Shards in a pouch do not decay. Only one pouch per player will work.


New shard types
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- Two new shard types have been created, Green and Yellow.

- Both types are very rare

- They cannot be stored in shard pouches and will decay after 7 game months.

- The yellow shard can be used to cause massive faith damage to a shrine. SHARD STRIKE <shrine>

- Green shards can be used on a player to take them into a 1v1, instanced combat arena. SHARD STAB <player>

- Players are still required to have a RP reason for the killing.

- The instance arena is not a normal arena, so you will still have starburst and other revive mechanisms in place while fighting in it.

- The arena will close upon death, with the victorious player returning to the entry point and the defeated visiting Charon. The arena is also closed after 15 minutes.


Special shards
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- Six new special shards exist. These spawn rarely, and only one shard of a type can exist at a time - while a shard exists, another of that type won't spawn.

- The special shards cannot be given to another player or placed into a container. They can be dropped.

- The special shards always fall out of inventory on death or logout.

- *** Important - being in possession of any of these shards is considered a valid PK reason - that is, you are open PK to anyone ***

- Each of these special shards grants a unique, and fairly potent, power - we will be monitoring these and altering as needed

- Each of these shards will disappear if it is outside of a player inventory for 20 minutes

- New command: SHARD SPECIALS, tells you who has each of the special shards.

The following special shards exist:

* an emerald cluster of crystals
- +20% damage resistance in non-urban environments
* a prismatic geode
- Improves the SHARD SPECIALS command in two ways - removes the balance cost, and includes the location of each player who has a special shard, bypassing all concealment methods
* 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
- gives an ability that sets your health and mana to a random value, on a 30-second cooldown
- SHARD FLUCTUATE
* a bloody-red cabochon
- SHARD DISRUPT does not take equilibrium

- Please note that the HARVEST SHARD syntax is still used with these shards, even though their actual names differ


Shard instances
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- At a generator shard cost of 1000 shards, individual cities/councils will be able to access an instanced bashing area for one game year.

- City Command: CITY SHARD OPEN INSTANCE

- Cities can do an org request to create a custom version of this instance.

- Unlike other instances, this one will allow up to 5 people to enter it via a player created portal.

- To access the generated instance, citizens can do SHARD SUMMON PORTAL, at the cost of a blue shard.



Penned by my hand on the 7th of Bellum, in the year 114 AM.