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I'd like to venture a suggestion, that Arcana experience from manipulating cambinth should be toggled from 'suck' to 'not-suck'.
With Enchanting getting its own skill I'm afraid of Arcana being left mostly useless, so I look forward to the DR3 changes. An update would be great, since most of the stuff I can find is over a year old. If the definition of the skill on Elanthipedia (below) is still conceptually accurate, there's a ton of room to grow this skill beyond just magical devices.
This leaves me a little fuzzy as to what exactly Arcana is supposed to be, especially given the new Enchanting skill. It sounds like Enchanting should be the new Magical Devices, and Arcana is something like Magical Lore or Magic Theory. But Enchanting is in the Lore skillset and Arcana in the Magic skillset, sooo... I'm a little confused. The best distinction I can come up with is that Enchanting is the skill to make magic stuff (or components thereof), and Arcana is the skill to use/identify magic stuff. I'd love correction if that's wrong.
Some suggestions (not sure if these are implemented in DR3 already or not):
This ended up being more suggestions than complaints, so I'll cross-post over in "Magic - Suggestions, Discussions and Thoughts." Pretty please come post more ideas there if you have any, cause this skill has too much potential to let it waste away into uselessness!
| The Arcana skill (formerly known as Magical Devices) represents the character's academic knowledge of the concepts of magic. While some applications of this knowledge still requires Attunement (for example, memorizing a spell scroll), the skill itself is purely knowledge based and does not presume any magical talent on the character's part. |
This leaves me a little fuzzy as to what exactly Arcana is supposed to be, especially given the new Enchanting skill. It sounds like Enchanting should be the new Magical Devices, and Arcana is something like Magical Lore or Magic Theory. But Enchanting is in the Lore skillset and Arcana in the Magic skillset, sooo... I'm a little confused. The best distinction I can come up with is that Enchanting is the skill to make magic stuff (or components thereof), and Arcana is the skill to use/identify magic stuff. I'd love correction if that's wrong.
Some suggestions (not sure if these are implemented in DR3 already or not):
| Focusing on a runestone (just to identify the spell, not change the power of the rune) currently takes me 29 seconds with over 500 Arcana. Previous posts have indicated runestones will be changing significantly, so I hope the roundtimes of the new ones will scale well. |
| "Academic knowledge of the concepts of magic" sounds a lot like a lore skill. I'd love to see more lore-oriented Arcana checks in the game. I'm having a hard time coming up with applications for this other than puzzle solving, though. |
| Arcana should give a boost to cross-mana magical pursuits, be they sorcery, identifying spells as they're prepped, or teaching a class. It makes sense that better understanding of magical theory would allow for greater cross-discipline application of magical talent. |
| In a similar vein, high Arcana should make Thieves/Necros (and anyone else IMO) better magical impostors. |
| Arcana should let you identify/learn more about magical creatures. This would include player-summoned creatures as well as mobs out in the world. |
| All the weird fiddly magic devices out there should be updated to work with Arcana. There are a lot of items in game that tell you nothing other than "yup, it's magical." People with high Arcana should be able to identify these in detail, and people with high Enchanting should be able to make/improve/repair them. |
| I like the current uses of Arcana to control ongoing spell effects (such as Fire Rain and OM) and would love to see this expanded. |
| How about Arcana + mining to find magical minerals? That would be neato. |
This ended up being more suggestions than complaints, so I'll cross-post over in "Magic - Suggestions, Discussions and Thoughts." Pretty please come post more ideas there if you have any, cause this skill has too much potential to let it waste away into uselessness!
As Arcana will be used in the activation of (many, IIRC) devices created with Enchanting (which you are correct for) I'm not sure why you think Arcana will be useless in 3.0.
TG, TG, GL, et al.
"Disagreement with the fundamental plan at this point is akin to supporting Richard III vs the Tudors."
-Raesh
TG, TG, GL, et al.
"Disagreement with the fundamental plan at this point is akin to supporting Richard III vs the Tudors."
-Raesh
How often do you use magical devices? For me, the answer is almost never, with the exception of camb and gweths. And my character is an enchanter. Hopefully this will change with 3.0 and we'll have a slew of more useful and interesting devices to play with, but without knowing what's coming, it's hard to get excited about.
>>How often do you use magical devices? [...] Hopefully this will change with 3.0 and we'll have a slew of more useful and interesting devices to play with, but without knowing what's coming, it's hard to get excited about.
Depends. In Assassins, quite a bit. Both manufactured (CJs), and bought (Fest MDs). CJs way more, since they're not limited supply. Also gweth smashers and Astral Guides. Note that most used ones are manufactured, not GM supplied. Given that these should be more common in 3.0 since there should be a much larger supply (both due to 3.0, and the fact that more than 1 guild will be able to enchant).
>>For me, the answer is almost never, with the exception of camb and gweths. And my character is an enchanter.
How you are defining yourself as an enchanter, if you're not using MDs other than camb and gweths. It's pretty impossible to enchant without using MD.
TG, TG, GL, et al.
"Disagreement with the fundamental plan at this point is akin to supporting Richard III vs the Tudors."
-Raesh
Depends. In Assassins, quite a bit. Both manufactured (CJs), and bought (Fest MDs). CJs way more, since they're not limited supply. Also gweth smashers and Astral Guides. Note that most used ones are manufactured, not GM supplied. Given that these should be more common in 3.0 since there should be a much larger supply (both due to 3.0, and the fact that more than 1 guild will be able to enchant).
>>For me, the answer is almost never, with the exception of camb and gweths. And my character is an enchanter.
How you are defining yourself as an enchanter, if you're not using MDs other than camb and gweths. It's pretty impossible to enchant without using MD.
TG, TG, GL, et al.
"Disagreement with the fundamental plan at this point is akin to supporting Richard III vs the Tudors."
-Raesh
>>
How often do you use magical devices? For me, the answer is almost never, with the exception of camb and gweths. And my character is an enchanter. Hopefully this will change with 3.0 and we'll have a slew of more useful and interesting devices to play with, but without knowing what's coming, it's hard to get excited about.<<
I use astral guides constantly.
- Buuwl
>>How you are defining yourself as an enchanter, if you're not using MDs other than camb and gweths. It's pretty impossible to enchant without using MD.
I don't travel as much as I used to (staying put for training purposes), and since I can use the Ways without them I don't generally bother with Astral Guides. I stopped selling enchantments when I left the game several years ago. I'll probably start up again soon, but your point is taken. My concern is that since enchanting will be its own skill, that aspect of Arcana's current usefulness is going away.
I don't travel as much as I used to (staying put for training purposes), and since I can use the Ways without them I don't generally bother with Astral Guides. I stopped selling enchantments when I left the game several years ago. I'll probably start up again soon, but your point is taken. My concern is that since enchanting will be its own skill, that aspect of Arcana's current usefulness is going away.
>>My concern is that since enchanting will be its own skill, that aspect of Arcana's current usefulness is going away.
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if the material gathering skills for enchanting involves arcana (and/or scholarship), sorta like how mining uses foraging, perception, and appraisal.
Arcana will still probably have some relation to both the prep and use of items created via the enchanting skill. My understanding is that some parts of the crafting process will also be magical, and that magic can be either innate or via devices, and once again I'm guessing that those devices will have their effectiveness connected to the arcana skill.
When in doubt, http://elanthipedia.org/
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if the material gathering skills for enchanting involves arcana (and/or scholarship), sorta like how mining uses foraging, perception, and appraisal.
Arcana will still probably have some relation to both the prep and use of items created via the enchanting skill. My understanding is that some parts of the crafting process will also be magical, and that magic can be either innate or via devices, and once again I'm guessing that those devices will have their effectiveness connected to the arcana skill.
When in doubt, http://elanthipedia.org/
