Geas

It is still a big problem for people who are NOT citizens of Elvandar to get reputation good enough for the smith to accept an order for custom goods.

Perhaps we can have a smith in Arborea that will work custom goods for Arborean citizens and possibly one in the Underground for those citizens.

I have only ever managed to get a neutral reputation in Elvandor even after helping the usual people etc...

I was talking today to a person with the same problem so its an on going thing.

Alternatively maybe the smith could be allowed to accept order from those that are not good or bad which seems the best that a non citizen can get without running themselves ragged to no avail.

Have you tried asking someone to place an order for you?

If evil bastards occasionally get custom things, so should you.

But thank you for your thoughts.

Per

Becoming a citizen gives you a moderate one-time boost to reputation, but no advantage in maintaining it.

You may eventually find characters that help your character! *hint*

I think for someone who gets into Elvandar and is welcomed there, it should not be too much of a problem to find someone else to place an order.

But, from a common-sense perspective - why would a smith -not- want to work for someone with a _neutral_ reputation? He earns his living that way, after all. If he's heard something bad about a potential customer, I definitely can see the reasoning. But neutral? Same goes for the mercenaries in Arborea - why would they not work for someone with a neutral reputation? After all, they are not doing this as a favour to me because they like me, they're in it for the money. And after all, money has no smell.

Naturally my character got someone to make the order for her, the point is she shouldnt have to .

The other point is asking someone to order for you is putting them to a lot of trouble especially if they are not a particular close friend of yours. I am lucky I have that but others dont.

Once the order is places then the minerals and coins have to be collected and asking someone else to meet you to hand them over etc may not always be convenient to co-ordinate and the time could then run out and the item have to be re ordered and so on it goes. And this DID and does happen.

I am simply stating that if I am a citizen of good standing in Arborea and not a citizen of Elvandar I cannot get my reputation to a high enough point for the smith to take the order and then maintain that till the order is ready. I have tried. I am a person who is not good or bad so that means I am acceptable and can get repairs done at the other smith and the tailor and shops will sell to me etc but NOT the smith for custom made so whats the difference.

Is being citizen of an area really a big liability? From my understanding it should have no big effect, reputation should be amenable much more significantly by action (and teaming with certain people) rather than on affiliation alone. I mean, Arborea and Elvandar aren't at war exactly, it would not make much sense to have a huge impact on reputation (I could understand a small animosity though, I have no idea if that is the case.)

Anyway, I think one possible reason for not having more than one custom shop was because of areas appearing too similar to each other if all would have the same.

Perhaps a compromise could be that Arborea gets a more limited custom shop, which focuses mostly on "Asral-ic" weapons (polearms, twohanders and such), and stuff like "suit of armour" or other platemail-like things, perhaps at a slightly reduced price compared to Elvandar if you were to order the same at the Elvandar shop.

This is not going to completely solve any problem but at least it would offer an alternative for characters that wants customized stuff but are forced to go to Elvandar.

As for mercenaries, I agree, but not completely. Sure, mercenaries should be loyal and fight with you, but if they are within a settlement (Elvandar, Arborea, perhaps Asador as well, no idea here) then they should not be completely neutral, as the city guards and such would protect them.

A good example for a "real" mercenary camp would be the campsite outside Ironhold (but as said Ironhold is much more a place for characters killing monsters, rather than a "real" town).

@triska:
I guess the reasoning was that a master smith can afford to be choosy.
But I agree, IC it doesn't make that much sense to me, either.

@lanyara:
Sure, I don't think the mercenaries should be completely neutral either. If someone has a bad reputation in Arborea, why would they go with them? But a lot of people in Arborea (Asralites) need to maintain a more or less neutral karma, which doesn't make it exactly easy to maintain a saintly reputation as well. Unless I start giving all my gold to Volog while butchering humanoids on Elvandar soil. But then I could forget about custom items, not even to mention that this would be totally dumb roleplay.

Yes, being on the extreme end (good/evil) is easier than maintaining to be neutral.

I'm not complaining about the difficulty of being neutral. The problem is that neutral karma and good reputation don't mix well, especially not if you'd like to keep a good reputation in both Elvandar _and_ Arborea.

I suspected for a while what Abharsair said about there being no boost to maintaing reputations for being a citizen.

At first I agreed with poTriska about the reputation issue, but really, with my character getting into certain habits, and keeping them up regularly, having a higher than neutral reputation has really _not_ been difficult at all.

As for worrying about the towns looking the same...don't all sizeable towns in the real world generally offer the same goods and services? How many large towns have you been to that really seem generally the same? I think each town should have a smith and should have tanning and parchment making guilds. It's not like Dwarves were forever buying clothes from Elves, and the Elves didn't have parchments before the humans showed up. Maybe bad examples but eh. Anyhow even this I don't think is really a huge issue anyway, just a minor inconvenience.

On the bright side, it gives me a reason to visit each town regularly

About smiths! I think right now most smiths tend to be dwarves. Perhaps the smith in Arborea could make an exodus and join the smith in the underground? And a human smith replaces the Arborean one?

The forging craft stuff is probably not finished:

> skill refining

SKILL: refining SKILL: 0 KNOWLEDGE: 0
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Info for this skill has to be written.

With playerchars offering to forge weapons there would be another option to bypass the reputation requirement (and only one area able to offer it)

Yer daft its common known dat us dwarves are da best at smithin, yer humans needs us if yer wants da best.

Yeah an we talks proper Khuzdul too saves yer walkin to da underground ter learns it all da taim.