NicramDuel

This is how we stand now - but this is FAR from over, no matter how desperate the situation looks like!
 
 
I know the event was implemented at a very user-non-friendly period: during the week, and it'll end in the middle of sunday European time (our U.S. and western friends will thus have until 6:00 am sunday...technically, a single weekend's day to compete!), meaning that apart from our Far-Eastern fellow gamers, we will have only a stripped, short period to act. But this can be done!
 
 
The two main reasons are both simple, utterly so:
1. you get points WAAAAAY over your stamina usage!
...I got this near-30k from just over 11k stam. HOWEVER! 4k stam was used to specifically hunt zombie brew potions, and to focus on the mission of killing 1000-1000 vapors and other thingies (VERY unoptimal for the event!). I barely made 5000 points from my first 4k stam - then however, I activated conserve(175 only), animal magnetism(again 175), and global booster (only lvl 250 instead of even better options!) - and got the last 25k for 7k stam. And even this was with killing loads of revenants - not specifically focusing on the emaciated fellows. So all in all, even with such a pathetic buffage and unoptimized hunt, a...
 
...3.5 kill/1 stam usage can be achieved!!
 
2. Exactly due to the weekend - and being on standby for titans/etc, most of the players have been holding back their stam to this moment! Only to unleash hell in a matter of moments!!
Quite a few players have stated this in chat, and a few more from my guild, that they'll be hammering the mobs tomorrow. The numbers are decieving-we really have got the core of assistance to achieve what it'll take - but we need MUCH MORE HANDS ON THE DECK! WE CAN NOT AFFORD TO HAVE YOU WAITING FOR OTHERS TO GET THE JOB DONE - WE NEED YOU HELPING, TOO!
 
 
 
 
Here's what we need:
 
26.000.000 more kills.
 
Calculating the nearly worst-case scenario, with a 3.5 kill/stamina ratio, 7.428.571 stamina will have to be burned to achieve our goal. This may seem a lot...but if we break this down, then...
- 1.000 players with 7.500 stamina each, or
- 750 players with 10.000 stamina each
...should be more than enough to pull this event off! That's not a lot!
 
Now, we know that some big guns are still waiting, with far more than 10k stam, and quite probably aiming for the top 100, or so. Hope that happens, and this less-than-1000-needed-players base will be reduced even lower!
 
Here are some tips to work:
-Read the news about Oidhche Shamhna III in the news archive, where to start the mission and how (Mountain path, Cathedral of Ways)
-find a small realm, so you don't have to walk a lot! Cathedral of ways, Spook central was perfect for me.
-ONLY kill Emaciated Fellows - they give a HUGE bonus (5 kills x your global booster per kill)
-use conserve, naturally, and light foot's also good
-Global booster 250 is VERY cheap in AH now!
-Animal magnetism is especially useful if many of you are in one place-I kept refreshing my block and mobs kept popping up like crazy due to massive player activity.
 
Just a wild thought: The ruby box gives the regular super-hunting-buff pack (am 500 and conserve 500, of prime concern here). If anyone has any leftovers from last time, and wants to make sure (s)he gets more this occasion, then this could be used! Any Emaciated Fellow you come across will remain there for the duration of your hunt (choose a big realm where there is little chance of anyone bulging in on your single mob), and along with a zombie brew, the effect of conserve would be 575 (28.75% stam saving). 
If we multiply 10.000 stam with the reciprocal value of the 71.25% of regular stam usage con 575 grants (this is almost exactly 1.4), then we can see that the thus-usable 14.000 stamina of the original 10.000 stamina grants a staggering _70.000_ kill points (Emaciated fellows grant 5x kills)!
Due to AM 500+ granting a 100% respawn, it doesn't really matter what global booster level you use, but it's pretty scary to calculate what a 100k+ stam player could do...xD
 
 
Anyways, please, to all in doubt, or to all who we could reach out to in this last day...please get them all aware, and grinding on those mobs! A maximum of 1 hour of using up 7.500 stamina for 1.000 more players at most shouldn't be something our community can't achieve!
 
 
Please, if you know of any heroes that will step up in the next few hours (or day!) to save us all, feel free to post their endeavours here, or direct anyone (individuals, guilds, etc.) here, and see how close we actually are to getting this done!
 
 
GET SMACKING!

New titans may be nice, but other developments should take precedence, like 1600+ buffs, the quick buff upgrades,  etc...

The difference between implementing new titans and new buffs is that coming up with a new titan name/drop/calibration/ohsobeautiful picture and launching it into the game is, as far as programming is concerned, the same as any of the 25+3+1 creatures released in each content update. The aproximately 2 programmers+1(?) graphic artist of HCS that are still scheduled to maintain the game can grant this. New buffs, on the other hand, seem to be much more of an issue (functions, etc) - there simply HAS to be "some" reason *wink* why the skill-topic hasn't been answered for such a massive time, with HCS not showing even a sign of a sign of a sign of a sign of implementing any new buffs at all. No offense to our admins who still care about us and try their best to tend to our needs - it's just HCS in general (strategy? I guess...) to focus more on their modern games than here. Some new titans would really be fun, with minimal time-investment. 

And with a little effort of focusing to on-topic issues instead of my regular rant, I would personally be very enthusiastic about seeing a massive gap regarding epic gear being filled by a REGULARLY, NOT SEASONALLY APPEARING, intermediate-level titan with a piece of ARMOR as a reward. +2 stam gain, +2ish xp gain, and around lvl 500-700. 

I absolutely agree with both suggestions. Initially, every timer in fs was set for independent, character-specific resets, but HCS finally found a way to make a uniform reset for gold upg's at 0:00. I am all in favor of adjusting EVERY timer for 0:00 in the game. Makes things a lot simpler (at least for the casual or semi-pro player, definitely, not sure about the 24/7'ers though) for players, and as far as I'm aware, this could free up(remove) multiple char-specificationally important slots in the database, perhaps somewhat adding to speed.

And of course, I find it a bit more convenient.

Yet another suggestion, despite not really getting feedback on anything: It would help a lot if we wouldn't get thrown to the buff market-page every single time we accept/reject an offer. I just caused inconvenience to a client thanks to this. I had to afk for 5-6 minutes, and got a number of requests. I tried to quickly accept them in succession, and on the 4-5th turn, i accidentally clicked reject. Yes, I know, mea culpa. However, it would be a bit more convenient if we'd remain in logs - I think.

completly agree..i am seeing the greed come out...those players should be banned from using the buff market..

The ultimate bann for them is simple: introduce the same thing that goes for the fsp-market: best offer on top. Worst offer on bottom. Both for fsp's and for gold. 

lol, no idea how the background remained dark. Sorry about that, I suppose it has something to do with the Dark Side.

There may also be a chance that these sets were aimed at fulfilling one sole purpose: A great opportunity to tank up with compofrags. Even while 2-3 sets actually did turn out truly amazing, I rather see opportunity here as a fragfarmer. My true disappointment was that, just as usual, hcs simply had to wait for me to finish my hunt yesterday and left me little chance to actually participate here. Ah well - I'm used to this, and I guess I'll just have to go with 3 days worth of stam back to one of the realms I hate the most xD 

Ah well, life as a pixelfighter is harsh. I just hope that when a global event comes, it won't bottom-burp me in the face at 200-300 stam, with stalker and smashing hammer still active from my freshly de-staminated hunt.

I am happy to see this idea of old times finally come to life. 

On the old forum, it was a very time-consuming, yet spiritually very rewarding task for me to manage the "Ultimate List of Value Buffers" thread, listing the best buffers of that FS-era - to an actually pretty decent degree. Then, finally, Wzarlon brought salvation to the entire community by creating his direct-search tool at http://fallen-empire...ind-buffers.asp . Unfortunately, time passed and as far as I know, all of us involved in keeping the thread and the sight "clean" retired over the years - but still, a lot of experience was gained. Quite a few of us, often separately suggested such a market - and some good thoughts occured at the time. 

1.: Inactive, or even, offline players should not be available for buff purchase. There was a debate about this, some went with a week's time of being off, others suggested a day, again others preferred "the green-grey light system". As soon as you go grey, you go off. I'm all up for the later, however I have no clear idea of what can be done with auto-refreshers.

2.: Another debate was about where the gold should go. It was quickly decided at the time that if any buff-gold went straight to the bank, then from that moment on, hardly anyone would ever have gold on their hands - an ultimate pvp killer and upgrade abuse. Best it goes in hands, just as it regularly would.

3. An interesting issue was how many buffs or buffers could be listed at any given time. Having infinite buff spots available could allow a near-endless supply of buffs, true, but if it were limited to the most affordable 50-100 buffs (or much less, seing how much the online community has dropped, say around 30), with the most expensive ones on the list constantly dropping out...this would create an incentive for the more dedicated buffers to actually 'marketfight' the casual or more profit-oriented buffers. The later, imho, is what I as a buffer prefer - but this is a highly subjective point of view. 

4.: This is more of a present issue than of the past, since the debate of old was before sustain was introduced. Extend...I'm not sure, I think we already had that, but again, it's a question. Long story short: Extend, Reinforced, Sustained, and anything else that could affect buffs should also be visible - OR...decided if these should at all, take effect when purchasing a buff from the marketplace, or should this remain a priviledge of those clients, who are ready to search for a buffer directly. Either works, but both from a programmer perspective, and from that of loyal client-buff seller relations, I'd vote for the second, simpler option.

5.: And finally, the last thing I remember was a very rigorous "debate" (more of a vocal bloodbath by the end of it) about taxation. Should the buffs submitted on the market be slightly taxed (such as is the case with gold listings on the market), or should they be completely free (as is with the AH). There was no clear conclusion on this case back then. I prefer a tax-free environment.

+1.: This just came to mind: The tool Wzarlon created (the link earlier in this post goes there directly) differentiates in buff levels, too. Many GREAT buffers used to have buffs a bit lower than the generally accepted lvl 175, but with such affordable pricing that they ended up seriously busy participants on the buff market of old times. Even today, I would seriously consider a non-lvl-175 dc for instance, if it was priced a lot lower than the pot on AH. KE is a headblower nowadays, pve sets provide more than sufficient attack anyways, so I often regard DC as a bit of extra service, just in case all goes wrong. Yet paying someone else to use 20 stamina instead of my own can definitely be worth 1k gold, or something similar.

Shortly: The tool should distinguish two separate search modes: One in terms of price (gold preference over fsp, in general), and one in terms of level.

Sorry for the long post, and for typos.

Ah. This is where it shows that I haven't been around for the most of the past few years - I never knew (or thought that it would come to this) that HCS would ever create goldsink-LE's. Of course, on one hand I understand the incentive behind it. Although I hate to admit it: losing most of the good ol' fun seems to be a relatively affordable price in exchange for keeping our beloved virtual economy safe of world-shocking recessions, reducing FS-unemployment rate, generally raising the quality of healthcare for the dragon, demon, and perhaps ogre societies... and even contributing to charity-funded development projects of third-world realms. In this case think I don't have too much against seeing the GSLE's in the caves any more (especially after seeing the information that's available on Wiki and learning that there are hardly any non-GSLE's left at mid-or-high levels left anyways).

Guess I'll be focusing on a few levels and pvp during the event!