Howdy,

I'm working on updating the information for Elanthipedia regarding instruments in Elanthia! My greatest task is going to be to classify all store-bought instruments by type and relative difficulty.

I have a question or an issue that I may need other Bards to help with: I can't really tell the difference between about 50% of the instruments!

For the top and bottom ends, I was able to rank the instruments relative to one another, however in the middle I get two big lumps of instruments that all appear to be the same in terms of difficulty.

I'm not sure if this is because they are actually the same difficulty, or that at my skill level, the subtleties are being washed over.

My tests are really very simple. I play each instrument using the four known style modifiers: off-key, halting, (none), confident and masterful. I then record at which point I go from no difficulty to slight difficulty.

Does anyone know if all instruments have a relative ranking amongst one another, or if my data is correct?

I'm also looking for information about non-store bought instruments that may be of a different class than those currently found in stores. If you happen to know of any, please let me know!

Any other advice or data would be helpful. For reference I'm working with 55 Agility, 1008 Music Theory and 800 ranks in each of the instrument skills.

Thanks!
GENT

I want to point out to anyone gathering data on this that (it appears) Battle and Polka are reversed on the list of difficulties (that is, Battle is harder than Polka, rather than easier as it is listed).
Good luck on this project.

---

Aveda's Field Guide- http://dr.aveda.googlepages.com

>>I'm not sure if you're doing moods as well, but the order that is displayed in the PLAY verb for moods are not in order of difficulty. As an example, quick is much harder than both slow, haunting, and solemn from my experience.

I thought this depended on the play style.

That is, a slow dance remix is harder than a fast dance remix, while a slow rock ballad is the natural pace for a rock ballad, and thus easier than a fast rock ballad.

~Kashik

The only song modifiers that give a consistant difficulty change are the initial five...
off-key : 20% easier
halting : 10% easier
quiet : default difficulty
confident : 10% harder
masterful : 20% harder

Every other song style has a varying adjustment to difficulty depending on what song you're playing. For instance, the style "solemn" makes a serenade harder, but makes a minuet easier. For reference, a minuet is a harder default difficulty between the two.

>>I want to point out to anyone gathering data on this that (it appears) Battle and Polka are reversed on the list of difficulties (that is, Battle is harder than Polka, rather than easier as it is listed).

Er... Aveda, battle is listed as harder than polka. Check PLAY HELP again.

Killing you softly with his song,
- Stormsinger Shavay

---

Madness does not always howl. Sometimes, it is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "Hey, is there room in your head for one more?"