Elysium FAQ

This is a page dedicated to collecting all of the questions I receive about Elysium into one place for simplicity. - +Nyx

What is Elysium?

Q: What is Elysium? I've never heard of it!

A: http://uoex.net/wiki/Elysium

Timeframes

Q: What's the hold up?

A: Mainly I am waiting on things to be scripted/added before I can do the bulk of the development. In the mean time, I frequently work on Elsyium in smaller ways - building things, decorating, outlining quests in my database, preparing spreadsheets for +C that go over the details for each large scripting project. The amount of work is insane, exponentially more than I expected when I was originally granted a facet.

Q: Why hasn't +C just busted it all out yet?

A: I suspect it's largely a motivation matter. While the facets will of course be very good for the shard, and all of the staff are aware of that, it doesn't make it much easier to get motivated. Many of the things I need scripted aren't just a quick thing, they're entirely new systems or big updates/remakes of currently existing systems within the game. Each of those larger projects takes dozens of hours, if not a hundred or more of +C's time. +C also has the portal upgrade, which is his personal pet project (like Elysium is mine), so it's harder to get excited about working on something for someone else's project when your own project is there, calling to you. I can say that in the past several months there has been much more progress in completing the scripting list for the facets, and +C has been working hard to maintain a balance between working on his projects and scripting for ours.

Q: Why not do one facet at a time?

A: The simple answer is because Touria is not my project, and Elysium is not +V's project. +V had a long-running storyline that was written to include numerous events in the past 7 years, flow into the opening of Touria and throughout his facet. It is all one wide-spread storyline that I not only didn't have any part in writing, but don't fully understand his vision for it. When someone has a very specific vision, formed and refined over the course of years, it just isn't feasible to then bring in someone else and have them work on it for them. My vision for Elysium began much later than +V's for Touria, but once I was granted a facet, and over the years since then, I've formed a very solid idea of what it is, where it's going, and what it's about. While +V and I discuss all aspects of our facets frequently, it not the same as being the one having the vision. We each grasp the 'big picture' of what one another are doing with our facets, but I couldn't step in and do Touria in any way that would be close to what he will do with it. Beyond that, there's also just basic personality/skill stuff. I am great at deco, and I think that most of the players could recognize a space decorated by me easily, whereas +V's style is very different. I could try to help him get Touria going by deco'ing some of his spaces, but they wouldn't look the same way he'd envisioned in his mind. It's just easier, in the end, for us to do it ourselves.

Now, that doesn't mean that we don't help one another and that the facets are a territorial matter for us. +V helps me with designing monsters, I give +V ideas for graphics to use for quest rewards, and so on. Our rl partnership helps a lot in these cases, so there's a lot of reciprocity with assisting one another with our facets. But it's just not feasible for us both to concentrate on a single facet in order to get that opened faster, when we each have such specific and strong visions for it. Nor do we want to put that pressure on +C to only work on Touria stuff, or only work on Elysium stuff. He's already constrained by needing to work on scripts for the facets in addition to his numerous and burdensome responsibilities with the shard, and his portal project. When he's ready to work on scripting, I believe strongly it's best for him to work on what interests him at that time regardless of which facet it's for. In the end, that makes things go faster (as it doesn't drain +C's morale as quickly!).

Q: Why not open Elysium in pieces?

A: Because that's not how I designed it, basically. The nature of this facet will be such that opening it in pieces would be like giving you a book to take a test on, but ripping out 75% of the pages. All of the regions in Elysium will have a sorta symbiotic relationship with the other regions, they will rely on and reference one another so much that they can't stand alone.

Q: How much is left to do?

A: My heavens, a ton. But, there's also been a ton of progress. We've been beta testing things as they are added - currently the new plant system is in beta and nearly ready to be considered finished. Next is the Plant BOD system which will run a beta for a few months. Once the major systems are updated and the bulk of the miscellaneous scripts are done, then I can begin development in a more hands-on way, being making the NPCs and such. That will likely take several months, depending on my rl work schedule. I'll also want to do beta testing for the facet as a whole, but that may be done region by region as I complete them.

Player level

Q: Who is Elysium for? What is the expected difficulty level? How many relayers will I need?

A: I'm grouping all of these questions together, since they're all basically the same thing.

Elysium is being designed as the facet for mid-range players. There will likely be a minimum account age to enter, and when the facet first opens I may or may not also add an account age maximum for a few months. Relayers-wise, I am designing the facet to be at a difficulty level equal to about 3-6 relayers. A player with 0 relayers, but similar stats (full resists, over 200hp, etc etc) would be able to survive similarly. I only refer to it in terms of relayers because that is an easy reference point for all players, rather than trying to explain all resists and stats and so on.

General Information

Q: What are 'factions'? Will this be like old-school UO?

A: No, they won't be anything like the old-school UO factions. These will be much more like faction systems you find in WoW or EQ. Each region/area of Elysium will be the home of a particular faction. That particular faction may be warring with another faction, or allied with them. Doing quests for them will negatively affect your faction standing with anyone they are warring with, and positively affect your faction standing with any they are allied with. You will raise faction by doing quests, killing mobs, and in several other ways. Each faction will have their own set of rewards, special vendors that will sell items you can only obtain there, and other very neat stuff specific to each area.

Q: What systems are you updating or adding?

A: I will be getting my grubby hands on many of the systems we already have in UO, and updating them for Elysium-specific functionality. After Elysium has been open awhile, some of these changes will then be expanded onto other facets.

For example, I am vastly updating cooking. I'll be adding nearly 200 new recipes, buff/stat food, pet-specific food, recipes that the player will customize as they create the item, and a lot of other SUPER cool stuff. I'll be adding a brewing system that will produce wines, liquors, and beers customized by the player during the process and created using items grown by the player. The plant system is getting a big revamp to include many new types of plants. Plant BODs will be a major addition that will let players grow plants to turn in BODs for amazing rewards - all of which are entirely brand new and customized for this system. I intend to give fishing some love as well, there will be fish specific to Elysium which will be used in quests, cooking, and so on. Taxidermy is another one that will be fun for Elysium- with the proper skills and tools, you'll be able to create trophies of almost all of the patch-graphic monsters used in Elysium. I'll be adding to the bio engineering system, allowing some patch-graphic Elysium monsters to be sampled from to create very neat new bio appearances. Treasure hunting will get an Elysium-specific set of maps and loot. Oh, and there will be new tamables, as well as new mounts and pets that buff their owner. :)

Q: Why will some items be non-relayerable or not samplable for a relayer?

A: We use these functions to control the market on specific items and graphics, and this practice will continue in Elysium. That said, I don't intend to use it heavily. For the most part, items you receive in quests will be able to be sampled for a relayer, and many (if not most) items will be relayerable.

Q: New clothes & weapons - what types/layers? How will they be acquired?

A: Rest easy, darlings, I plan to add literally hundreds of new graphics for clothing and weapons. I've already plugged them in to the various patches we've released and I intend to use them. Nearly everything you've seen in the masquerade dressing area, as well as quite a few you haven't ever seen at all, will be available all over the facet. I have new graphics available for every single layer, with emphasis on layers that were particularly lacking before (Robes, belts, and so on).

These items will be acquired in various usual ways - stealables, rare drops, quests, vendors, etc.

Q: Will Elysium have any housing available?

A: No. I may at some point make a few custom houses that would be sold in grand auctions or raffled, but there will not be any 'open' housing anywhere on the facet. Elysium is using a modified Ilshenar map, and Ilsh was never designed for housing so the terrain doesn't allow for it. Further, I just don't want houses and blank plots cluttering up my masterpiece ;)

Beta Testing

Q: Beta testing: what's being done, what's upcoming, how to get in?

A: Beta testing will go in stages based on each system that gets updated, and then when the facet is nearing completion I will also hold beta testing for the quests/areas. Currently we are beta testing the new plant system, and soon will be beginning beta testing for Plant BODs. Anyone interested in beta testing will need to keep an eye out. I'll make announcements when I'm opening another beta and need applicants.