[dev1027 - sort of] Recreating Crystal Clusters

[Alhanelem]

The only real problem i see is with the explanation of reintegrating crystals. It's only because when you use a crystal, you make an animation where the crystal breaks apart. How do we put it back together again? glue?

(It's a rhetorical question, and not completely serious.)

I think clusters were originally introduced simply as a way to allow certain monsters e.g. elementals to drop large numbers of crystals with the limited size treasure pool. That said, It's a good idea, it doesn't hurt anything, it's only a matter of if the devs have time for it or not.

[Zagen]

The only real problem i see is with the explanation of reintegrating crystals. It's only because when you use a crystal, you make an animation where the crystal breaks apart. How do we put it back together again? glue?

Not glue, Duct Tape!

[Korpg]

Well, let's just take the obvious case: you're doing ~100 synths.

After the update, you'll be able to hold this as a stack of clusters and just break clusters as needed, rather than buying up multiple stacks of crystals. Fine so far, right?

Ok, I will admit, that would be helpful. But then people will buy clusters for this aspect, or buy a stack of crystals at a time, which is what I do when I spam synth stuff.

[Seriha]

How they recombine doesn't really matter. From the functional standpoint, it's 144 crystals in 1 slot versus 144 in 12. Nobody should have to sell off excess, only to need some later and find the AH out or 2x more expensive than when they initially sold them. If someone wants to be a pack rat, let them.

[Alhanelem]

Do you ever really need 144 crystals in a single sitting or need to have that many in reserve is really the question I guess.

I suppose if we're going to enable stackability then we should be able to apply that to the crystals we get from normal monsters and not just the clusters from elementals.

[Gallus]

Recombining crystals: A level 0 synth that takes 1 of the 12 crystals and is used on the remaining ones to create the cluster. Problem solved with having it make sense.

[Kysaiana]

I always kinda wished you could convert crystals back into a cluster. Even if it's uses are fairly limited.

As for how? "A wizard did it," http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AWizardDidIt, should suffice for a Fantasy game.

[Economizer]

Personally, I love the suggestion to merge crystals into clusters. Perhaps this could be possible with one of the Rank 1 Conquest NPCs who sit in the top ranked city. However, being able to store crystals is a horrifically bad idea.

Alternatively, here is a good idea I almost missed:

Recombining crystals: A level 0 synth that takes 1 of the 12 crystals and is used on the remaining ones to create the cluster. Problem solved with having it make sense.

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there is no logical argument against this suggestion

It's the economy, stupid. (No offense here, just quoting some saying, again, I'm not trying to name call.)

There will already be a massive effect on the game economy by making these things stackable, but I think this can be handled. Crystals are a lot like oil. Imagine if you could store oil indefinitely and at no cost to you. People would horde it instead of selling it, and the cost would get massive up and downturns.

Being able to store crystals in this way would be incredibly destructive to the game economy - the availability of crystals would go down, since there would be no cost to holding them until you could get a better price.

[Kimble]

Really would be no harm in doing this, not sure why anyone would so adamantly argue against it.

[MDenham]

Being able to store crystals in this way would be incredibly destructive to the game economy - the availability of crystals would go down, since there would be no cost to holding them until you could get a better price.

The difference here is that anyone can get crystals, whereas it takes a significant financial investment to get oil. So the "crystals are like oil" analogy isn't a very good one. (The worst-case scenario under this is "everybody farms their own crystals because there's never any on the AH", which is both unlikely and really not that far from what Korpg is suggesting people do in the first place anyway.)

I have no problem with it being just a simple "trade a stack of crystals to this NPC, get a cluster" method, though. (Having it as a synth requires reworking the synthesis system, because currently it doesn't support synths with more than 8 ingredients. If this limitation were removed, I'd make it a level-0 Synergy production instead - with the idea being that it's the fewell being used to rebind the cluster.)