I just explained to my guildies what "ephemeral" means...

...and they all left the Void Pool.

lol

Reckon you didn't explain it very well. Seems a misconception going around that it takes as much 'fighting' to get the item as it takes to wear it out. Untrue.

As I posted in another thread:

As the 'ephemeral' tags give you 25 hrs of 'battling' then I still have at least 22 hours left before my first one wears out and now I already have the 'replacement' waiting for when it does. I expect to do a few more 'waves' of the void pool each month so should never 'run' out of shield use. If it takes less than three hours to earn the replacement doesn't seem much to do over the course of a week.

Seems to me a pretty good deal given it isn't the 'real one' and that getting the 'real one' may take forever to get given how cora is such a drag to kill. And even then you have to actually 'get a drop' even if they do drop off the lvl 3/4 critters. Having spent a couple of hours killing them (cora and critters) for nothing, at least I can use my Ephemeral Shield and get the benefits of it until the rng decides to play nice.

Oh I made sure to explain it correctly. Everyone was still disappointed to find out that the point-bought arties are "fake" though. When we left there was one whole guy doing the void pool. On Atlantic.

What's to explain..the durability is on a timer. What more needs to be said? It's laughable and even more laughable is players who are defending this as being okay. All I can do is roll my eyes...however to each his own. Myself and I imagine many others won't be participating.

The ephemeral tag is an horrible idea and the fact that this is a recent introduction to UO is worrisome. This is not a bright idea by any means. Can the Dev that came up with it as this is not the type of 'brain' we need working on UO. Times the points required to get the item by 10,100 or even a 1000 and make it non- POF'able but throw 'Ephemeral' in the garbage.

(coincidentally, I don't think I've had a cursed item looted). I'm one of the ones OK with this tag, and until someone shows more than speculations, I'm staying with my opinion. Tested in combat, in my regular haunts, is what matters, regardless of tag (legendary, arte, etc), How well does it work and last, how hard is a replacement to acquire? that's what matters, to me

"ephemeral" - item eventually goes POOF after a fixed amount of time, same for everyone
"non-POFable" - item eventually goes POOF after a variable amount of time, which depends on the character's skillset. E.g. fastest for melee-type characters with high swing speed, slowest for tamers

As far as I can tell, the "ephemeral" tag was introduced in response to a common player complaint about "non-POFable" items: that warriors need to replace them more frequently than other characters.
Maybe the decay timer isn't properly balanced, but the concept makes sense.

Is Communism coming towards us again?
All craftables? All scribe's pens, all shields, all fishing poles, all fletching tools, everything? Ok, then let's start with Valorite Runic Hammer charges, normal smithy hammers, barbed runic kits and those runic dovetails. They shall last 25 hours from now on, no matter how often I use them. Don't forget the ever elusive Forged Metal Of Artifacts - and the Shard Transfer Shields, too, of course! Sounds like the next best thing after my idea of reintroducing daily virtue and city loyalty decay (which would be a very nice installment for all craftables, too!)
I know I am exaggerating, but not nearly as much as you, Frarc! I'd suggest closing this thread.

Did I mention that I exaggerated? Possibly. My point was - apparently I was not good at making that clear: You did not make your point clear. In my humble opinion. You said that they should make "all items" like that. That's what you wrote or what I understood from your few words. That's not very precise and it was my very unfortunate way of pointing that out to you that it could be understood as that you propose this system should be applied to everything and anything in the UO world. Including craftables of any kind, as you proposed. And yet again your answer is nothing short of a personal insult. Shame on you, Frarc. Shame on you.

I told them the items have durability that decays and that they're good for 25 hours of actual combat before they go poof. It's not a super hard concept to explain, nor is it difficult to understand why they didn't feel like grinding to earn temporary items.

I mean maybe if the items were really awesome it might be worth it, but most of them are the usual worthless nonsense. Oh boy a bracelet with 10 HP regen and some other random junk. Oh boy a PVE sword with no leeches.

The devs expanding their current obsession with "decay" over to items is something we ought not to encourage anyway.

Exactly what she ^^^^ said....

Some people must like being bored with the game, seems they want to farm the newest arties the first week then never have to replace them, thereby making the revamps pointless. Honestly, what is wrong with the weak players these days? They want new items, new fights yet once they receive them, they complain that they have to replace the items after a while. I could understand it if the items were tough to get but seriously the void pool items are just about the easiest to acquire arties since the stealables.

I'd care if the items didn't suck. And these are the NEW AND IMPROVED artifacts. It's frankly frightening that the first batch even got proposed.

I knew what it meant from the start.... hence my having NOT spent 1 min doing the Void Pool since it went live.

and remember that not every addition to the game has to please every person and every play style. So the void pool and the perfectly fine arties dont trip your trigger?, then its not for you, so propose something that you would like for the next revamp and stop trying to have them break things they just added.

As for some people thinking the new arties are junk, imagine if they had added arties that were really good.... we would have just as many players on here crying about how they unbalance the game etc etc. The new arties have uses, they fit into a variety of suits, just because they wont fit into your overpriced suit doesnt mean they are worthless. They wanted to add new arties without making old items obsolete.

ppl from Sonoma are doing it for fun mainly but not for reward...at least thats what I get from general chat.... sometimes ppl just want to play with a group of player, even unmet. at the end of the day it's a mmorpg!!

I went once for one round, went and looked at the rewards, and never went back. I suppose it's ok if you don't have any crafting resources...

Same here on Drachenfels...

Yes, I can witness it!

I tend to think it's as described in this post (#2),above. I'd hear a lot of nay-sayers, I'd like to hear more from people that can say "I used one, here's my results...".
I'm one of the ones that will fully imbue a weapon for my personal use that may have a starting durability of 60-70. Why? Won't the dang thing just wear out fast? Well, usually, long before that, I've usually found found maybe it could have been made different, Better, more practical in combat, where it counts, and I'll have plans ready for the Next one. Sometimes I wished they'd wear faster so I can start on to that next generation. When Mesanna said you can craft better stuff, hands down, than any 'arte', she threw a hint, use it. Perhaps some of our creations are Artifact level, where do you think they come from?

Went looking for a thread on this topic to necro and chose this one for the Uus Corp. Seven months after the last post here and I've never seen anyone wearing ephemeral items or talking about them in-game. Last time someone discussed them on this forum looked like it was back in November when some newb wanted to know what it meant.

Thumbs up on your total failure of an idea, devs.

Agreed KLOMP.

I would never buy or use and Ephemeral item in UO.

Ephemeral was a terrible idea and waste of Devs resources.

What do you want to bet that if you went to the void pool on every shard on every facet it would be empty this very minute?

It's a shame really all because of one stinking tag ..."Ephemeral".

I would probably visit the Void Pool from time to time if Ephemeral was removed.

Maybe it wasn't "explained right". LOL

I always saw it as a helper for people who DIDN'T want to grind endless hours to get the real thing. It's at least an option. Not something that can be said for any other set of artifact type items in the game.

Since its a grind why not just grind out Covetous level 3 and get the real ones? I don`t know how many Heph shields,sandals and wings I got outa there.

I personally hate the mentality of todays pixel hunters. Tis why I dropped my LS place and moved back to Siege. I never saw a problem with a bad ass drop that was otherwise clean,but was tagged cursed. So what,ya can do everything else,just not insure. Ya got 15 minutes to get back to your body. Laziness. I never saw a problem with the Ephemeral tag either. At first when guildies told me about it I was like: Thats stupid! But than after realizing how long 25 hours of actual battle is...... Please. Their not bad,its just UO has gone down a dark road when catering to the screams and rants of todays playerbase no matter how absurd some of them are.

%90 of it boils down to laziness IMO.

I only want to do this once,than never have to do it again! Than I want to complain that nothing changes in UO.

There's more important things going on now than Ephemeral items.

-Galen's player

I am uncertain as to why my objection to thread necromancy in the midst of dealing with major game changes deserved even mild ridicule.

-Galen's player

This thread was brought back up to prove a point since of pub 81 being announced and on TC. They are just comparing bad ideas. If you think this was a non important issue then why reply to it at all and let it die eventually as all threads do.


Plus I agree with Kelmo. Something else will occur after this and then something else after that. Eventually devs will add some new new shinies and all this will be forgotten. I'm under and over it.

Your point would make sense if I was the one who resurrected the thread.

I wasn't, however.

Rather I suggested that there were more-fundamental changes to the game currently at issue that superseded in importance, to a considerable degree, the issue of ephemeral items from the void pool, and by implication I suggested that resurrecting the thread is more hurtful than helpful.

For this, a moderator mocked me, and you sided with the poster with more power, when you could just as easily have said nothing at all.

Oh well.

-Galen's player

Troll paste needed?

I did not say you did bring this thread back to life. As usual you failed again on some issue with me.

Second I made a statement to your silly issue with it.


You are more e-hurt that a mod supposedly mocked you. I really hate to see you pain angel if this upsets you.

For your information I was a Managing Editor for Stratics GW2 until recently when I was offered an opportunity with another site. I out ranked a mod. I didnt side with kelmo because he has more power than me at this time since I am a regular poster again. I agreed with him because he was right.


Troll me more and you still wont win.

Ah, but this particular thread was given the Uus Corp for a reason, namely to remind people that ideas which WERE in fact giant failures still had their cheerleaders.

Worst part of the void was that you can't loot the monsters or so it seems the few times I've done it. I could see some trade off for getting the empemeral if you also stood a chance at looting some random items but that doesn't seem to be the case. I don't know if it ever was the case but when I tried working a few levels it's clearly not.

Funny how the same fanboys who thought this was a good idea are the same ones blowing the current trumpet.

Also you know what man, there are like 400 threads on the debacle which is Publish 81 and I've been one of the loudest critics. We're still allowed to post in threads about other things in the meantime.

Anyway, on topic, you know what I hate? This cycle of conversation:

What was that one boss they added that no one ever did? The one that only dropped that weird epiphany armor that nobody wanted? I can't remember the name. Someone tell me and a couple weeks from now I'll bump some thread about how we were all scum for expecting it to have loot we cared about. I'm not going off on a necro frenzy, but I think it would be amusing now and then.