Plant Life around Allanak

[Feco]

I would personally despise a bunch of vegetation in the south.  I prefer it to be a barren wasteland, and would in fact prefer it to be more barren and more wastelandy.  Realism be damned.

If I had to add vegetation, I would want it to be cacti and vines with scary spikes.  Some of them preferably dangerous.

If they had to have gather-able resources, I'd want them to be pungent, useless flowers.

If those resources had to be "nice," I'd make it water.  But I'd also have other water spots totally removed, in particular a certain water spot that is "hidden," but everyone and their mom visits twice a week.

Actually, I like this idea.  Keep the same amount of water in the southlands by taking it away from pools, adding it to plants, and giving those plants a bad attitude.  Newbs and squishies looking for water can buy it like the rest of the poor people (see: everyone) in Allanak.

I also like the idea of wood in the Silt Sea, but I guess we aren't talking about that.

[Socko]

While we're on the topic of silt, wouldn't silt be pretty good for plants, too?  I could envision a lot of stuff growing along the Silt Sea's shoreline, and maybe some weird bobbing pods on the Silt's surface.

[Ath]

So I agree, we need it to be low vegetation in the sense that it's barren and nasty.  I agree with you, don't think I'm looking to add anything further, as that isn't the questions.  So here... the idea is that it is a grasslands, a pretty nasty one at that.  So should be make these grasses harvestable, should we make a few more plants that are harvestable.  In reality, each of these rooms you're look are massive, big area of land... realistically there should be a potential for plants in each room.  We have a lot of players around these areas, and typical right now, plenty of useless plants down there.  Making plants useful in -some- way could be nice in my thoughts.  Useful should be non-virtual, unless should be virtual, do you agree?

Now onto the Scoria... yes, volcanic lands are very nutrient rich... but we're a nasty barren wasteland world where a volcano didn't really follow normal physics.  The scoria is more like a rocky wasteland.  Maybe down the like we could see more there.  Let's pull focus away from the scoria.

As for the desert, the sands... yes, there could be cacti, I think that is feasible.  The though though is a desert does have "patches" of vegetation at times.  So lets look at gameplay, some are saying they really want to keep it barren... which I agree, and right now, I think it is.  Now what if we could make it so that vegetation appeared randomly in areas, based on if it's a rocky wasteland, desert sands, barren grasslands, etc...  based on biome you could say.  Would this add more to the game you think?  Allowing for control of how many of these plants are in area at a time, would this be more feasible?  Or should we leave it at static placement?  Or maybe a mixture of the two?

I commend you all for staying on topic pretty much, this is greatly appreciated.

[Jihelu]

I think more plant life, either actual 'item' plants in the room or just mentioned in the descs, would be a nicer change.

[nauta]

Now what if we could make it so that vegetation appeared randomly in areas, based on if it's a rocky wasteland, desert sands, barren grasslands, etc...  based on biome you could say.  Would this add more to the game you think?  Allowing for control of how many of these plants are in area at a time, would this be more feasible?  Or should we leave it at static placement?  Or maybe a mixture of the two?

Ohhhhhh yes!  Please, please, please.  This would make plant gathering amazing, not just in the south.   You could have a big database of plants associated with a terrain, and only make one or two of them non-virtual on a given reboot.  You'd know that, say, jherweed is generally found in the sandy wastes, but you wouldn't know which room precisely it is.  Moreover, it'd give people a reason to go out more on hunts -- this hunt you didn't turn up any alecost, but maybe next hunt you'll find some.

As it is now, once you learn the spots and the animal spawn spots, it's pretty much done.  But if the plants aren't where you expect them to be, that would just make everything so much more dynamic and awesome.

[Dar]

Has anyone ever considered utilizing the UnderAllanak for vegetation?

The caverns have natural methods of trapping moisture from the air and with enough support of the gemmed under supervision of Jal and Rennik, entire mushroom plantations could be created. At the same time, the area is easy to control, so the exact nature of the gemmed participation could be unknown.

At one point in time, there was a senate meeting, where someone proposed to eradicate all gemmed. At which point a Black Robe showed up and was like, "We could do that. But the loss of revenue from the use of the gemmed will fall upon the Nobility and will make you all bankrupt." So the gemmed are being used for the city's infrastructure. It is merely done in ways that the general populace is not too keenly aware of. 

In all honesty, I think it would be better for the setting to limit the ease of vegetation in close proximity of Allanak since them having a good agricultural base feels soo non-Allanaki. Inventive methods like moss/mushrooms is okey. Purchasing foodstuffs from Red Storm that risk their lives by living near the shore is fine. But if we make Allanak stable in terms of agriculture in close proximity of the city, I think it will defeat the whole point of sand blasted defiled area that spreads around the Black City.

Food City
Bullet City
Spice City

And periodic armored car caravans inbetween.

[solera]

To be the most ecologically correct, "pioneer plants" would need to be introduced to terraform the area. A host of low-growing clovers and thorns, what we normally would consider weeds, would be introduced to fix nitrogen in the soil and break down scoria into actual soil.

Insect people eating plants can fix N as well.

Thornbush  windbreaks and shade providers  would be a good way as a first step to getting some sort of soil formation started. Or gumtrees.

Plants for scoria? Trama, scathecraw? 

[Socko]

I think one could gather some dry grasses for grass weaving projects -- grass baskets, mats, crude grass clogs, and the like.  You wouldn't even need very tall grasses, but some 'biomes' may have them, others would have low scraggy grasses.  Maybe look to arctic or mountain environments for inspiration.  The plants of those landscapes simply grow very slowly on poor soil, and the landscape is quite desolate.

[gotdamnmiracle]

Now what if we could make it so that vegetation appeared randomly in areas, based on if it's a rocky wasteland, desert sands, barren grasslands, etc...  based on biome you could say.  Would this add more to the game you think?  Allowing for control of how many of these plants are in area at a time, would this be more feasible?  Or should we leave it at static placement?  Or maybe a mixture of the two?

Ohhhhhh yes!  Please, please, please.  This would make plant gathering amazing, not just in the south.   You could have a big database of plants associated with a terrain, and only make one or two of them non-virtual on a given reboot.  You'd know that, say, jherweed is generally found in the sandy wastes, but you wouldn't know which room precisely it is.  Moreover, it'd give people a reason to go out more on hunts -- this hunt you didn't turn up any alecost, but maybe next hunt you'll find some.

As it is now, once you learn the spots and the animal spawn spots, it's pretty much done.  But if the plants aren't where you expect them to be, that would just make everything so much more dynamic and awesome.

Wholely agree with this! I was just about to comment on how both of the bimbal plants closest to Allanak manage to keep the ENTIRE population of healers in the city employed, along with whoever else was picking them. Would love to see some rooms weighted higher than others for a couple of the more interesting plants though. Other than that the idea sounds perfect.

[Ath]

Nothing I at all am talking about is adding plants for purposes of food... that's already found with forage.  I'm merely asking questions that I am looking for opinions on, that is all.  I am information gathering for something that may or may not be worked on, this feedback is helping that.  So don't get caught up on what could or couldn't happen, or changes that might be made... that's not what we're getting at here.

Vegetation exists via descriptions of room or virtual implications.  I'm trying to figure out if the existing placement of plants are really worth it?  I know of plants around Allanak, personally... I can't think of any uses for many of them.  Can any of you?  (You don't have to say what those uses are.)

And yes, that single bimbal plant... to think, maybe it's not in the same place as it was before.  So we've touched on another part of the information gathering... would it be a pain to actually go search for plants or would that add to immersion?

[dravage]

would it be a pain to actually go search for plants or would that add to immersion?

Absolutely. And it should be. Especially in a climate like this.

What would be cooler, is if there was some way those with the right skills were better at finding them out based on the landscape, or environmental conditions.

[Dar]

Wouldnt it be cool if plants would show up and dissapear, much like obsidian/salt/spice deposits do. Except perhaps on a more common/stable basis.

Add to it that any npc like scrab/chalton would be attracted to them, or at the very least scripted to graze there should they pass by/have the plant deposit unveil itself in the same room.  Maybe even have the chalton/scrabs scripted to search for that vegetation and unveil it that way.

[gotdamnmiracle]

Wouldnt it be cool if plants would show up and dissapear, much like obsidian/salt/spice deposits do. Except perhaps on a more common/stable basis.

Add to it that any npc like scrab/chalton would be attracted to them, or at the very least scripted to graze there should they pass by/have the plant deposit unveil itself in the same room.  Maybe even have the chalton/scrabs scripted to search for that vegetation and unveil it that way.

I was thinking something similar to the salt patches and would sprout up (nearly) randomly as opposed to forage spamming. I like the idea of animals being attracted to the different plants though. That's pretty cool.

As far as if it's a hassle... I suppose that all depends on how commonly each plant crops up. I'd imagine it would require some level of tweaking as it gets implemented to get it just right.

[Jihelu]

Change the code so instead of animals eating bodies instantly they eat plants instantly.
Done and done

Also the whole, random plants everywhere thing

[Ath]

would it be a pain to actually go search for plants or would that add to immersion?

Absolutely. And it should be. Especially in a climate like this.

What would be cooler, is if there was some way those with the right skills were better at finding them out based on the landscape, or environmental conditions.

That is a neat idea.  Not sure how possible it is, but I do like the thought behind it.

Change the code so instead of animals eating bodies instantly they eat plants instantly.
Done and done

Also the whole, random plants everywhere thing

Problem with this is that the NPCs are out there more often on a consistent basis than PCs, so all the plants would just get eaten up by NPCs.  Would be a more difficult thing to balance.  Though it would be interesting (as mentioned) to have NPCs that are herbivores to be attracted to plants.  Kinda off topic, but neat to say the least.

Let focus on bit more... so if we were to look at the Plant Life around Allanak, there are a few plants, all of them are static.  Some of the plants have use, but if I had to take a crack at it... I would say most of those plants are useless except for brewing.  I'm now saying we need to really add more plants, but look at what we have... and see what we can do with them.  Every culture finds a use for many of the plants that are around them, I could also see Zalanthians to be able to do this.  So if we gave plants a use in the area, this would make the current existing plants more often to be picked... do you think we would need to add more plants around Allanak if we gave these plants more of a use?

[valeria]

Well, there is already an IG use for grasses/sedge at least--baskets and mats.

I'd love to see plants that spawn randomly.  It would reflect things like those hordes of chalton eating them down and them growing back.  I wouldn't like to see the area around Allanak heavily plant-populated.  But if spawns were random, I'd love to see more desert-variety plants (I listed my choices already!).

[valeria]

Also, people in desert areas have been using woven grass mats to keep the dust down since prehistory.

[nauta]

Let focus on bit more... so if we were to look at the Plant Life around Allanak, there are a few plants, all of them are static.  Some of the plants have use, but if I had to take a crack at it... I would say most of those plants are useless except for brewing.  I'm now saying we need to really add more plants, but look at what we have... and see what we can do with them.  Every culture finds a use for many of the plants that are around them, I could also see Zalanthians to be able to do this.  So if we gave plants a use in the area, this would make the current existing plants more often to be picked... do you think we would need to add more plants around Allanak if we gave these plants more of a use?

I'd say: 'yes'.

In my limited experience, people have made up go-fetch quests for plants for a couple reasons:

1. Vanity (Moon Roses)
2. Teas.
3. Perfumes/Soaps/Incense/Seasonings.

I'd like to see more subguilds with plant-related stuff: floristry, basketweaving, dyeing.  In particular:

a) brew allowed to mastercraft (so we can mastercraft incenses and candles)
b) General Crafter given floristry
c) get rid of 'large bags' and make people use baskets!

You could also make hemp a plant -- there are hemp items -- and make bags craftable.

[Ath]

Also, people in desert areas have been using woven grass mats to keep the dust down since prehistory.

Would be great to see some PCs doing some crafts on this idea.

nauta -- Some great ideas there.  I've always liked Seasonings, and I know of Teas, but never really used it in game.  Huh, I just realized we don't have a helpfile on tea, the teapot goes to still helpfile, though we do have one on seasonings.  Might have to look at adding a TEA helpfile at some point.

[Ath]

Looks like this is puttering out, so I'll tag it here that I'll close this up by the end of the day if there isn't any other further discussion.  Thank you to those that have provided feedback to the many questions I have asked.

[Norcal]

Hi Ath. I was only just able to log on.

In arid environments you would find euphorbes (not true cacti yet like them in some ways). Some like Calotropis Procera and others have sticky milky sap that is slightly poisonous. Also trees can do well in arid environments, if they are slow growing and deep rooted.An example you might want to look at would be Balinites or some acacia. Some really cool trees with sap that can be used for lots of things. Think gum arabic.  Some of the oldest living things on earth are the Bristlecone pines up in the white mountains of California and Nevada. A few of these around the south would provide at least a bit of wood, although not much.

True cacti would also be good as well as lichen and hardy grass.

[nauta]

I'd like to add: if we encourage / expand the skills that use plants, we might encourage / expand the amount of interest in go-fetch quests for plants.  This would be two-fold: in some cases, it is far, far easier (and even cheaper) to purchase items from NPC vendors (e.g., dyes).  So closing that off would encourage things.  But also: giving more access to skills like 'floristry' -- I was thinking merging it with the 'brew' skill -- would also encourage more plant usage -- and more plant-based mastercrafts!

Here are the skills that use plants (AFAIK):

Dyeing.  In this case in particular it seems a lot cheaper and easier to just buy dyes from the market.  Perhaps one or two rare dyes get introduced, or make dyes more expensive in the market, encouraging more fetch quests.

Basketweaving.  This skill gets you your grass mats too.  I'd love to move away from everyone in game wearing backpacks and carrying large bags and towards more people carrying around baskets (on their heads even).  Backpacks are borderline 'sandwich' for me, hehe.

Floristry.  This gets you the basic material for dyeing, so I think if you have dyeing (General Crafter, e.g.) you should also get floristry.  It also is so close to Brew that it is sometimes jarring to be able to do so many amazing things with plants with Brew (soaps, incense, fancy candles, and cures) and yet be unable to dry a flower or grind a leaf up.  I also think perfumes (or attas) are amazing flavor props, but far too OOC onerous to make -- I had a thread on this a while ago.  I think more people would wear perfumes or attas if it were easier to make, but I could be wrong.

Cooking.  There are a lot of seasonings out there!

Brew.

There may be other skills -- I've never played an actual Merchant.

[Delirium]

Tagging on to what nauta said, I honestly feel that floristry and brew should be packaged together.

I like the idea of tough grasses, thorny vines, more de-virtualized cacti - I agree with the idea of making virtual plants harvestable, and with the sentiment that the south should still be the south. Inhospitable and sucked dry of lush vitality, but with hidden areas of surprising - if strange and poisonous - beauty.

[Ath]

Yeah, those skills are a bit odd, I will admit that.  Not sure what all can be done, but I'll tuck that bit away for later. 

I think I have most of the feedback that I need.  People really don't want to see "more" plants, but making the virtual, non-virtual, wouldn't be much of an issue.  Skills that are associated heavily with plants could need a look at, and making the harsh area around Allanak still harsh, would be good also.  Main thing is, don't break the balance of making Allanak area harsh... it's an unforgiving terrain.  So food objects should be hard to come by from said plants, but plants that could be used in other fashions would be useful to have in the non-virtual.

I also got some feedback via the request tool, so that was nice to see.  In all, I think this thread was very successful.

[Cabooze]

Y'all should organize a major world event, where a bunch of new plant life starts growing in different places. Like..  Discreetly, but it'd be noticed.

And then open submissions for the new plant-life. Y'all could make some of this plant-life unnatural and elementally inclined... Like a fruit or flower that constantly burns.