wax refiner

[+Arden]

If the machine runs out of durability it should stop working and you need to repair it. (repair kits will be available with next restart)

[+Colibri]

Regarding old wax pots, you can buy and stockpile them, but after this overhaul is complete (coal available by mining, and wax will be renderable with the wax tool as well), they will no longer work. You'll however be able to sell them back to the vendor for the same price.

[ForrestElf]

If the machine runs out of durability it should stop working and you need to repair it. (repair kits will be available with next restart)

Allright, thanks for the info

[Maze Scarlethart]

I actually like this update, I always hated rendering bees wax. I would stock pile it into the thousands for when I feel like torturing myself. So this is pretty cool, although I understand the frustrations if you don't have a personal bee keeper it might be annoying.

[Blathzar]

the machines are here to be used afk so you guys don't have to babysit your resource production, and can go do other things in the meantime,

I am just wondering if this goes against this rule. Since most people sell their wax to make gold which make this a rpofit gain and may come against this rule. As i said, i'm just owndering if anything else would be legal if this is legal. I've never done bees and wax so if this is a shot in the dark... so be it.

** c. You have to actively monitor the game while running a macro that results in any gain of wealth or resources. Skill gain is excluded from this rule if using a particular skill doesn't give any resources.

Cheers !

[Miranda Ventrata]

It isnt gathering though. You already have the wax. Also it isnt an infinite amount like if you were to afk an actual gatherable like ore. You only have what you have already earned with your bees.

[Blathzar]

All clear now.

Thank you for the information.

[+Colibri]

About the AFK dilemma, yes it's a valid concern.

Basically resource refining such as raw wax -> pure wax, is intended to be defined as a craft. Wax will also be added to waxcrafting (well, the tool is too expensive for that - maybe more suitable for alchemy?). And for example, we'll make so that cotton/flax/wool can be turned into spools of thread in the tailoring craft menu, and you have to stand next to a spinning wheel like you have to stand next to a heatsource. As an alternative, there will also be a spinning wheel machine.

Benefits of machines:
- can be done without you being engaged in the activity
- can be leveled and come with cool upgrades

Drawbacks of machines:
- they need coal to operate
- they need to be repaired
- take much longer to process the same amount of resources

Now, for a loom machine for example, it is intended that they will only be available thru BODs, and therefor not as easily obtainable as the wax machine. Still, eventually someone is going to have a lot of machines, and if they can all operate with a bit smaller profit margin, that's still potentially a problem.

The simplest fix for this dilemma that i see, is to keep it allowed-while-afk, but tweak the amount of input resources (or just coal) it can hold. If it can hold just 1 hour worth of coal, then loading it up to the max and going to sleep doesn't really do you much good.

[lnickos]

Thx for the explanation about machines and the clarification on AFK rules. Common sense tells me that making a macro that automatically adds coal to the machines would be something not allowed since it bypasses the intentions of a low-coal capacity machine. Now, when machines come into full play, will the fast options, the traditional craft means, still be available? Or will things like wax pots be removed from the game?

[+Arden]

Common sense tells me that making a macro that automatically adds coal to the machines would be something not allowed since it bypasses the intentions of a low-coal capacity machine

Your commons sense would be correct

will the fast options, the traditional craft means, still be available?

There will be a faster self-craft option available for all currently planed machines, it won't be instant but it will be faster by at least 100% and require no coal but again you wont be alowed to afk with it.

[Blathzar]

Well this project seems to be really cool. All in all i guess i will try to start understanding the bees and making wax to try those machine one day. As for the automated spinning wheel machine this i couldnt love this more. I do alot of cloth from time to time and it's a tedious work.

Thank both of you and whoever else is included in this project. Lots of hard work i'm sure.

Cheers !

[fixxer1963]

After getting more info on this, I am actually pleased with the system. I had a script for doing the wax, but it would crash the game every so often. And I was never AFK with my script. Now we have a system that WON'T crash the client, and that we can AFK.

[+Nyx]

The simplest fix for this dilemma that i see, is to keep it allowed-while-afk, but tweak the amount of input resources (or just coal) it can hold. If it can hold just 1 hour worth of coal, then loading it up to the max and going to sleep doesn't really do you much good.

This won't really fix the problem. Any player can easily create a razor macro to fill the machine, then simply set it on a 1h5m repeat delay. They'd still be doing this completely afk while they sleep. Having these machines be able to be run completely 100% afk is really going to damage the shard economics long-term, even if some of the machines are harder to get than others, even though they go much slower than doing it by hand.

Remember, we've had people craft shirts to sell for only 1-2gp profit, completely afk, for months until they finally got caught. We had players spinning flax AFK for huge profit long term. We had players casting create-food to sell to the npcs for barely any profit, but profit they did, and in the long term it was not small numbers. This will be more significant an impact on the shard in the long term because every player will be able to do it.

Not only that, I can already see we are going to have more drama with players arguing about the afk rules since "well you let us afk the machines for profit so why not this".

Additionally, this will affect the base value of all future crafting updates and additions. If a player can have 10+ of each type of machine, all processing at once, completely afk then that negates the processing speed and over time it would cause the market value of those resources to decrease significantly. Then, when the new craftable items are added, their starting value is automatically less than it would otherwise have been, because the base resources needed for those crafts have little to no value on the shard. Which means we would have to design craftable items to require other stuff that is very hard or expensive to get, which isn't a clever or fun way to freshen these systems up and will only be frustrating for the player.

I think that allowing these machines to be widely available and to fully afk them is a mistake. When I thought up the machines that will be used in Elysium, they were meant to be hosted in towns, not owned by the players, and the processing time on the machines for brewing is in the days and weeks rather than moments, and they have a chance of partial or full failure.

[Miranda Ventrata]

Perhaps I am missing something. 22 hives per account is max amount before serious issues with production. Meaning that raw wax production is very limited. Afk or not, is it not going to produce the same limited amount of wax per account? Having 100 machines all afk is going to produce the same amount of wax as 1 machine.

[+Nyx]

Indeed, but now anybody who didn't bother to do bees before for whatever reason, will have more motivation to run bees, so overall the amount of bees and thus wax going into the economy will be higher. Folks already have scripts and largely afk managing their bees, and now with this part of the process being allowed AFK, it's not a positive change for the shard economy.

In the end though it isn't the wax that is the major issue I see here, it is the future machines that they are (apparently) planning to release for smelting ore, spinning cloth, and so on. It is a bad precedent to set, particularly when this is going to be rolled out for other crafting systems that can more directly and significantly affect the economy. Imagine what the prices of ore and cloth will be a year after these machines are made available to the players, when you can run many of them at once (and upgrade them to give extra resources etc), while afk? Last year, one of the staff ran a test over the course of a few weeks to see how much gold they could make by mining for 6+ hours a day, and selling the ingots. The numbers were quite high, and the crafting resources aren't very highly priced as it stands now. Make it so it's easier to do in an even lazier fashion than usual, and more people will do it, affecting the overall value of the items over time.