[.11] Merchant Insight

jwconvery

jwconvery

Mentor
Merchant Insight (General, Item [Any] / Location, Passive) - The Merchant Insight Ritual allows a character, if they have the prerequisite skill, to identify Potions, Alchemy, Battle Magic scrolls, and Trap Globes in 3 seconds (if within a Location with this Ritual) or 15 seconds (if they bear an item with this Ritual) instead of the normal required identification duration.

The prerequisite skill is Educated right? Not Herbal Lore/Read magic or Create X, Y, Z.

-Joe
 
Correct; Educated is technically the only skill (per the .11a packet) that grants the ability to identify items.

Which leads to some weirdness with Create Trap and Trap Globes, but that's a separate discussion.
 
jwconvery said:
Merchant Insight (General, Item [Any] / Location, Passive) - The Merchant Insight Ritual allows a character, if they have the prerequisite skill, to identify Potions, Alchemy, Battle Magic scrolls, and Trap Globes in 3 seconds (if within a Location with this Ritual) or 15 seconds (if they bear an item with this Ritual) instead of the normal required identification duration.

The prerequisite skill is Educated right? Not Herbal Lore/Read magic or Create X, Y, Z.

-Joe
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I feel like if the intent was Educated, it would say Educated, but I agree it needs clarity.
 
I'm fairly sure it doesn't specify Educated because of the weirdness I noted above, though I'm pretty sure the lack of specificity should really be chalked up to an oversight in skill descriptions.
 
Educated identifies Trap Globes too.
 
Delete this, whoops.
 
It does, but Create Trap DOESN'T, and Educated isn't a prerequisite to put ranks in Create Trap, so you CAN end up with the very strange situation of a character with 20 ranks of Create Trap who can't identify Trap Globes.

I suspect the reason the ritual doesn't specify Educated is because ARC made an oversight by either a) forgetting that Trap Globes need identification (in the first drafts of Educated, Trap Globes weren't on the list of items it could be used to identify), or b) forgetting that Create Trap doesn't allow for identification of Traps Globes (and thus used "prerequisite skill" rather than "Educated or Create Trap").
 
Create Trap should allow for the identification of Trap Globes. I thought there was a reference to this in Create Trap *or* Trap Globes, but I don't have the packet in front of me to look right now.
 
As of .11a, neither Create Trap nor Trap Globes specify that Create Trap allows for identification; in fact, the entry on Trap Globes specifically tells you to read Educated for how to identify them (page 30).
 
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I could see the intent (and hopefully the clarifying text) being that if you have the prerequisite skill to produce the item, would allow for 3 second identification. I think the ritual wasn't updated when the play test packet was. Otherwise this ritual works for anyone who is educated.
 
I'm not sure about that interpretation; Educated is currently the only skill that allows identification, and all Merchant Insight says is that it allows instant ID if you have the prerequisite skill, but since it doesn't specify what those skills are (or even if there are multiple, since it uses skill in the singular), the only way I can interpret it is allowing anyone with Educated a reduced ID time, regardless of their other skills (see the current weirdness with Create Trap above).

That intent also renders the entire Ritual mostly useless on an item; it drops the ID time to 15 seconds, but if you already have 1 rank in whatever skill, your ID time is only 30 seconds to begin with, and lopping off 15 seconds from that probably isn't worth the time or effort it would take to get the Ritual on an item you carry around with you. Even on a mod or in the middle of a fight, I feel you're probably better off handing it over to someone else to ID if another 15 seconds is going to make that big a difference.

I could be 100% wrong, but overall the Ritual needs a rewording and clarification.
 
Sage of Legaia said:
... and all Merchant Insight says is that it allows instant ID if you have the prerequisite skill...
Click to expand...

Merchant Insight allows 3 second or 15 second identifies. And as I had said previously, I think the wording in the ritual was a hold over from before Educated replaced Read/Write and when Herbal Lore, Read/Write, and Healing Arts were needed to identify items.

Cutting 15 seconds in battle could be the difference between needing a life and a cure light. Anything to give an edge to the lower level players who wouldn't be a journeyman/master crafter.
 
Except that's not what you said, but that's neither here nor there.

The wording of Educated as a replacement for R&W that allowed ID of all items has been around since at least the .8 packet, and Merchant Insight at least as long, so from a personal standpoint it's not a reasonable argument to say that it's relying on rules that were already outdated by that point, let alone through 3 additional revisions. As I've said several times in this thread, it needs a rewrite and clarity before we speculate any more on what the intent actually is.

I also said that if the intent of the Ritual is that you get the reduced ID time only if you have Alchemy/Create Potion/Create Scroll/Create Trap, all of which will give you a 30 second ID time just by having them, and cutting that 15 seconds is going to make or break a mod, then you're better off hauling Journeyman and Master crafters along and giving item to them to ID than relying on an item in the first place. It's been discussed elsewhere on the forums that low level players don't have a lot of MIs to begin with, and I doubt that items enchanted with this ritual are going to be in high demand for anyone because of the very low requirements for 30 second ID time, and the minimal difference 15 seconds is going to make in most situations. That's something that'll come out in playtesting, one way or the other, so I'm not going to continue speculating on it.
 
You can enchant a location, right? I don’t know about you, but I’m super interested in enchanting our tavern building with Merchant Insight.
 
Draven said:
You can enchant a location, right? I don’t know about you, but I’m super interested in enchanting our tavern building with Merchant Insight.
Click to expand...
That is the first thought I had when reading that.
 
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