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Talked to Benson lately?

Benson sent a message to Brit today when I was goofing off in Despise. Sent the message by cannon apparently, so he later apologized for anyone he might have frightened or dismembered. I didnt hear what it was, but I hurried to his place anyway.

Luckily I did, I was the only one! Benson explained to me that he heard of an ancient (you guessed it was ancient right?) book in the Wind Library pertaining to advnced Metalurgy. Always one for the advancement of knowledge I said I would see to it the book was found.

After as many declines as people on the shard Thag, Sholeh and Cove decided they wanted to join the quest. The library in Wind huh? We set off through Winds tunnels. We fought the standard Wind denizens and made our way to the library: a room with bookcases wall to wall.

Killed some necromancers (librarians?) and searched the place like a heroin addict breaking into a dealer's home. We found a cookbook: "This cant be it". I looked at the sign near the door and it read "Robert's Bargain Books Bonanza". Opps! We are about to look all over, when we cam across Hell's Librarian.

Should known from the name, put he was no pushover. He killed half our force in a few seconds, but eventually fell. I should have been more alert, but he didnt look strong as an ancient on the outside.

Searched the room (actually called The Library this time) to no avail and another cookbook. Then suddenly a book fell off one of the shelves. Gotta love when that happens. It was the book we were looking for! "Properties of heavy elements in such and such wish I remembered" it was called. Awesome.

Just headed back to Benson's after that. And I think its a place everyone will be visiting from now on. SE of Yew Abbey if you didnt know. Careful when you go in though, we accidently disrupted Benson's alchemy work and caused a small explosion. Now since I know you are all very curious about the upcoming changes Drocket announced so here it is...

drum roll please..

the new feature is... another gold sink!

Benson felt he had to reward us for some reason, so he gave us some Essence of Magic Oils. This is an item Benson can make for us now, and it imbues an exceptional player made item with magic. Could be nice.

This is what I can tell so far. You need 100 units of magic to get an oil. The units you get from any junk magic you give Benson is random, but about 5. The magics resulting from oil are random in their properties. Also you need gold apparantly, Benson said 10k per oil. I could be wrong on any of these points.

Also right now you cant give Benson magics that are older than, I guess, a week. I dont know why that is, you'd think Drocket would want to encourage people to get rid of their countless accumulated junk.

Heh, I wonder if Benson has been waiting for our magics all week. Maybe it was hubris of me to think it would a player tequnique. Never thought we'd have to go through an intermediary.

So goodbye to junk magic =]. Hello to junk magic of the type of your choosing.

Lyl wrote:And I think its a place everyone will be visiting from now on. SE of Yew Abbey if you didnt know.

Could you be a bit more clear on that location please? SE of Yew is a bit vague.

The location should be added to the .map files at the next update which should be ready soon. Blame Windows for corrupting one of the files

I'm feeling mean so I'm not going to give many details about Benson quite yet - you just have to work on them out on your own

Lyl wrote:Also right now you cant give Benson magics that are older than, I guess, a week. I dont know why that is, you'd think Drocket would want to encourage people to get rid of their countless accumulated junk.

I just thought I'd respond to this point, though: Benson will take pretty much any magic item spawned from this point on (regardless of age.) Actually, he'll take anything back to when I said on the changes page that you should start saving your crappy magic items - that was when I made a change needed for the system. That was back on the 2nd - I'm always slow, I guess

Anyway, the reason that Benson won't take older stuff is mostly because it didn't seem right to me to reward hoarders. There's a lot of 'good' players who try to keep itemcount down, which keeps worldsaves short, which is, I think, the polite thing to do. There are, on the other hand, some people who seem to hoard every single freaking club of macefighting they come across. It isn't really a major problem at the moment (we don't really have all that many players right now, plus the new server has quite a bit more RAM than the old one) but it does kind of bug me (Plus I'd like the server to grow some more, so it could potentially be a problem in the future.) So, as I said, I didn't want to reward that kind of behavior, which is why he won't take your old junk.

drocket wrote:
Anyway, the reason that Benson won't take older stuff is mostly because it didn't seem right to me to reward hoarders. There's a lot of 'good' players who try to keep itemcount down, which keeps worldsaves short, which is, I think, the polite thing to do. There are, on the other hand, some people who seem to hoard every single freaking club of macefighting they come across.

If I found a 'Freaking Club of Macefighting' I think I would keep it, especially if it was silver

Might I suggest that possibly it may help reduce the item count for those older magics if maybe we could talk Benson into taking them at a reduced rate say 1/5 or even 1/10 of what the new ones are worth, for at least a period of time (after all the magic properties in them are not as fresh as the newer magics ).

I see this as a way of encouraging those "hoarders" to part with those useless items either directly or by encouraging their trade to some of the players that know the items would be worth at least something from Benson.

Aardwolf

Ah Lyll, I was going to be all dramatic in this post. Oh well.

The name of the book we found is "Metallic Heavy Elements in Composite Magical Weaponry."

As I recall from reviewing the logs, Benson said 100 "points" worth of magical items, plus 10k gold, will get you that magic potion. I questioned Benson several times on how to determine how many "points" an item is but he wouldn't tell. I guess he does need to keep some of this stuff to himself, eh?

Benson gave each of us (Lyllwen Green, Thag, Sholeh ( ) and Covenant one of the potions when we retrieved the book. I used mine on some exceptional studded gloves and now I have rugged studded gloves of protection. Sholeh used hers on an exceptional kite shield and now she has a tempered kite shield of defense.

Very similar to mana stones EXCEPT you don't need the magic item to transfer properties to the mundane item. Just double-click the potion, target the player-made exceptional item and voila!

The randomness is kinda cool, I think. I guess I could've turned those gloves into a magery or invocation buff (when the planets align themselves JUST right, of course).

Once again, Drocket proves that he is "da man!"

Here is what I have learned thus far:

1.) Each magic item has varying points. I got from 3-8 points, depending on the item.

2.) The same basic rules from mana stones apply to the potions. Only player-made exceptional items, lich staffs or druid staffs will work.

3.) I got a potion from him today and used it on a lich staff. I ended up with a silver lich staff of power and weakness.

4.) Benson keeps track of your points per account, not per player. Aellius dropped stuff on him and then Covenant did too. They added together, so it doesn't appear to matter which of your "family" drops the items on him.

5.) He will turn down magic shovels (darnit--couldn't they be worth 1 point each? ) and he will accept magic wands.

6.) Last night I used one on some studded gloves and got rugged gloves of protection. I was able to give them to him and he gave me points for them.

Anyone else?

Drocket, this is COOL. I like it, but I wonder if 100 points isn't a bit low?

So, Atei, you cashed in about 20 items to get a bottle of oil. Used it on gloves to get gloves of prot, then gave it to Benson to get another few points? Um sounds really worthwhile to me

Unless there turns out to be a way to control what happens when you use the potion, it doesn`t really sound worthwhile. 20ish items for one bottle which could end up making you a single weapon of quality doesn't really sound like it is worth the effort.

*hands zed the book of chance* what would you rather have 5 trash items or a chance at a good item?

OK, I'll ask again.

Who is Benson? And where exactly is he located??

Is he in the city of Yew? Or somewhere else? Does anyone have automap coordinates? There are alot of things SE of the Yew Abbey.

Gabriella wrote:OK, I'll ask again.

Who is Benson? And where exactly is he located??

Is he in the city of Yew? Or somewhere else? Does anyone have automap coordinates? There are alot of things SE of the Yew Abbey.

he is in a building with a trail leading right up to it. the signs in the middle of the road are a dead giveaway you are in the right spot. drocket could we get the signs moved to the side of the road please? they are stopping me from bringing my wagon load of toys up to his doorstep.

Is this Benson NPC in the latest release of WOD scripts?

Drocket: well at least no one will be hoarding after this right?

Atei: my drum roll wasn't dramatic enough? =P

richard: no we wont see the source for some time

Thought the magic from an oil is random I wonder if it is weighted towards being powerful. Seems like a good way to get a specific item, like the last piece of invul plate in your set.

I wonder if there are any hidden uses to the oil.

stuff is the worst mouthwash in the world. stumbled downstairs and used some by mistake. worst part is god knows how long it's going to take before my tonsils stop glowing.

Well, I don't think it is weighted towards powerful magics... but you be the judge.

I traded in my 20 or so magics +10k gold and used the potion on an exceptional studded jerkin. I had to do a lot of searching, get stuff off my vendor (most of which was too old), and make a few tips to get the 100 points - because I don't hoard this stuff. I keep some of it on my vendor dirt cheap for newbies to use, but that's about it.

I got an Indestructable studded jerkin of defense and magic reflection with 47 charges. Now, the indestructable part would be impressive if it applied to the magic reflection but, unfortunately, I believe the charges apply to that spell effect instead. So, for all that effort, I have a studded tunic of defense with some magic reflect charges. Can't say it was worth it this go round.

Now, if I'd been able to use the potion on an item of clothing, a comparable level of magic might have been worth something to me.

By the way, magic wands found as loot can be traded but not player-crafted wands. I tried this with a new blank from my loot (made a cheap wand) just to see if Drocket caught this possible exploit - he did.

-Augur