Admittedly, the bribes seemed unfair but that was more because they were more expensive depending on what time so it was unfair to different timezones, but even the highest wasn't that ridiculous of an amount to pay.

To do the smelter once (which is all that would be required for advancing in the plot) is only 100k which is barely anything.

Mathis and Connor recipe shenanigans can be expensive, but this should be expensive since it is the alternative to battling the boss and it is far more expensive (and takes a lot of time and commitment) to acquire good weapons and to train up a battle pet strong enough to stand a a chance at earning top tier prizes. Also like the fighting the boss, it doesn't seem to be required for advancing in the plot, just might give a chance at some better prizes for those that do invest a lot.

So these "pay to play" portions have either been rather low cost, or not required...so pretty much like past plots. Not really getting this complaint.

We have the choice to ask Connor for different ingredients and it's an option to wait instead of forge.

Of all the things to complain about 500k a pop, or less, for the non-battlers option is negligible imo.

Your personal decisions in how to do this step of the plot is dictating the "expense."

I kinda agree with this one

The main thing I have an issue with is that it could have been a great sP sink and the ball was dropped. The idea someone mentioned about having a shop that was run by Subeta for the ingredients needed to forge weapons would have been perfect, rather than us transferring the sP around the site between users.

I don't personally agree that we need a huge sP sink at all, really, but so many people do and this was a huge opportunity missed.

That's just it. You shouldn't have to buy prizes. Thst defeates the whole point of a prize. The definition of a prize in layman's terms is something that's awarded to someone who has earned it not paid for it. Paying for a prize or prizes no longer makes them prizes but paid for items just obtained in a non-conventional way. Yes there's the flip side where you can buy a lottery ticket and win prizes that way, too, but tickets st least give everyone a more even playing field as the winning numbers are random. It doesn't make sense that the best prizes only go to people who have the most cash over skill and ability or an equal chance method like tickets. Skills and abilities are what earns you prizes in competitions in RL and that's what plots are - a competition not a lottery or some other thing where you buy prizes through buying tickets or some other such method. You're competing against yourself to see how well you're able to do something instead of dreading how much you're being forced to spend. If you don't do the paid plot steps you don’t get a chance to be given those prizes. it's a catch-22. It takes the fun out of things when only the richest gets a real whack at the paid plot part prizes.

The battling, on the other hand, is different. Time and dedication has gone into training and those guys deserve it.

If some sort of sP sink happened where you got equal valued items (or close to it) in exchange for the sP spent then things would be different. Like others have mentioned - getting actual weapons after creating them with Connor instead of things just disappearing.

The more you help Connor the better your prizes is how I'm sure this is going to pan out. Same with the RB. There should have been some other way like donating the sP directly from playing the plot games to the spirits as at least that way it was part of the plot instead of digging into your savings and having to pay increasingly for steps which just doesn't seem right.

You may not get the feeling that you're not being forced but I'm sure that people will miss out on plot prizes if they don't pay for steps...just like how you will be if you skipped any gave component of the plot.

Damn. The government fucked me over because I need to buy lottery to win a prize!

BUTT! I'd like an option to give away our special weapon thing with Mathis. I forgot I was a battler and made one .. It has no use now, booo.

you obviously didn't read my full post because I touched on lottery tickets

Tickets give everyone an even chance over the someone just being able to walk up with a suitcase full of cash and take the prizes. Even someone who buys 1000 tickets doesn't mean that they're going to win with everyone else buying tickets too.

So .... The plot prizes should be a lottery? They are going to sell tickets for sP and then everyone will be pissed again because you spend sP. :c

Not 100% positive, I'll need to dig up the post, but I think staff said somewhere that this wouldn't be the case with the Recycle Beast. Just once was all that was required for participation. Anything more was just going above and beyond to help with the group goal but won't get you anything better than those that just met the minimum requirement.

[edit] found it here

relevant portions:

@ Raze

Interesting. That should have been made clear from the start.

I don't understand WHY staff is so bad at relaying important information to the site as a whole, but they are.

Like.. yes, let's make a post that'll get buried and be seen by only a handful of people about how you don't benefit at all by throwing 500k at the Smelter each day and all you need to do is go once and smelt 100k.

I kinda agree but then again I only have like 1 mil total in my vault atm due to my terrible spending habits. XD

Insane summed it up.

Training is expensive. Boosters are expensive. Weapons are expensive. If you can't battle because you didn't put forth the expensive effort on your pet, well now is the time for you to pay up.

People who have put the money/time/energy on their pet now get to reap the rewards with the boss battle. If you don't have a battle pet, that's fine, because staff created an alternate way to fight. Spending the money that you would have spent had you worked on a battle pet. Tada. ~500k? You can get 3 times that much from questing in one day. If it's still too expensive, decline the items until you get something cheaper. has said that each weapon you make with Mathis does 250-500 damage on the boss.

I'm not a battler but I still manage to click the train button every day, but I have a pisspoor battle set, because I don't want to spend money on a better one. And again, because I haven't spent the money, I'm not able to reap the reward to the fullest extent. I know this.

Not saying I exactly agree with how this plot step has been formulated. Purchasing from other users is not a sP sink. I'm just trying to explain why, in my opinion, sP is needed to be spent in order to do the alternate battling. And on that note, I don't believe alternate battling has ever even been done before? As far as I recall it's just been "fight or don't." This seems like a good opportunity for non-battlers to get some damage points in.

I just love how staff can bury their posts and then we all get a bit salty because we missed relevant infos.

There should be a special thread for this tbh.

I don't think we need something ontop of

1. the news page
2. the site update forum group
3. the announcement forums
4. the admin posts tab

maybe they should just use the channels they already have properly. adding more channels doesn't seem to help

We really didn't get any communication about how the forging of weapons was working, either. Nothing about the fact that we wouldn't actually receive anything for the items we turned in, nothing about how much damage(or even that it would cause damage) was being done to the boss.

Is it already time for another board about how bad staff is at communicating?

Tbh I didn't find it so expensive. I think in total I've spent less than 1mill? And considering I can make a third to half that from just doing 15 wizard quests per day it's actually seemed pretty cheap so far.

I agree with most people that it's not a great sp sink, but it still is a sink because it's encouraging restockers to go out and buy elixirs from the npc shop and sell them to other players and then use that sp to buy more elixirs from npc shops. Sure it's not sinking the sp as much as some other method would have, but anything that encourages buying from npc shops will ultimately take sp out of the economy. And even with people who've had elixirs sitting in their shops/vaults it'll still be taking the items out of the economy making them worth more overall and again directing users to buying them from npc shops because of them being more expensive/rarer in user shops.

I'd say yes, because I'm feeling bad wanting to bring it up on every news post, announcement forum, and feedback/complain thread at this point

Wait. Wait. Wait.

Years and years have had the battle portion of plots come up with the attitude of "SORRY YOU DIDN'T EVER BOTHER TRAINING YOUR PETS I GUESS YOU MISS MOST OF THIS STEP", years of users who can't do more than swipe at the tinies of low level guys with their sad little T1 pets in the hope of participation credit, years of those users complaining that there should be some alternative to battling, and now....when there FINALLY IS an alternative to battling....we're going to whine that it's too expensive? Especially when, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't this plot's low-level challengers kind of beefier than previous plots' have been? Um okay. If that's the case, even with the only pet I've been training (incredibly slowly and lazily, at that) at tier 4, I vote we go back to the old way and people who just aren't battlers are SOL. And we can pat their heads and say "Sorry, it's not like you didn't know battle is a part of every major plot". (Edited to add: this openly precludes me from the majority of battling, just as I've been precluded from almost every significant battle event on this site, compared to actual battlers. I don't consider myself a battler. I'm basically just a little kid swinging a big stick in there. So I'm not saying this from an elitist, holier-than-thou stance where I'd reap big rewards and the little guy gets screwed. I'm pretty sure I still count as the little guy.)

I don't think it's an issue that we don't get an item from Mathis. I don't think it makes sense that this is the step provided for non-battlers, but their step gives them an item relating to battling. No, the actual gathering of items and forging items is what gets you that credit. You know what else gets expensive? Continually healing a pet as you make tiny hits towards the boss, knowing that SOMETHING is better than NOTHING but getting killed in one hit each time. Continually buying potions or new weapons to use against the opponent that you know you have the ABILITY to beat, if by the tiniest margin, but you need to just figure out what items will do it. So, basically, battling.

I'm not in love with the idea that people who didn't have the grace to be on at the same time the one step was released, had to bribe to see an NPC, but from my understanding it wasn't much. However, complaining about being able to skip games that you couldn't win, or contribute otherwise to battles that you can't fight, or even smelting a relatively small sum in a one-time affair, doesn't strike me as reasonable.

Above all else, I'm surprised to see that you're over in this forum complaining that the event as a whole is too expensive, but over on S&I you made a board suggesting a limitation that would have actually driven up the relative cost of the plot for a ton of users, who capitalized either on event junk in their vaults or the very low price of most of these things in shops. Something about having cake and eating it.

I've spent a couple mil at least on this plot, and I have no regrets. GIVE ME ALL THE PRIZES AND DROWN THE GHOSTS IN THEIR ECTOPLASM! I'm not a fan of the Jules bribe (meh, 20k for me, a single round of play on Matal's Jewels), but it barely affected me, so I don't have too much to say. It's not that I'm all me me me about this, it's just that the amounts being asked are so easy to obtain that it seems negligible. It's a balance: a newbie shouldn't be able to do everything on the first day and a long-time user shouldn't be the only one who ever does. This plot is the fairest plot that involves battling I've ever seen on the site. Let's enjoy this and not judge on whether it's worth it before we ever see prizes!

all my love is going to you. Glorious statement. Thank you. Tbh I´m sick of all the complaining and whining. Really I am.