Premium Point Enchanting: Combat Script Upcharges

[Archigeek]

These seem to be very subjective. When I look at the chart, I see: combat script = a straight surcharge of 600 points, but this seems to have evolved into charging the base surcharge plus charging you for what the script does, IE: if the script adds an occasional flare, you get charged for the flare too. This has been applied to padding and weighting as well, and there doesn't seem to be much consistency.

Another thing that seems odd to me is that if you get hit with a big surcharge and it exceeds the PPs you have in your account, the scroll gets rejected, and since no breakdown is given, you have no way to contact whichever GM came up with the total and question it. If it's not rejected you can respond to it, but if it's rejected because you don't have the points, you're stuck having to communicate via another method (email or boards) and then you're guessing at who you should be talking to.

What have you gotten enchanted with PP's and what surcharges you've paid? Be as detailed and exact as you can, and maybe we can make some sense of it all. I've made two attempts to do enchants recently and here were the surcharges I was given:

enchant zelnorn shield: charge for zelnorn per chart
returning axe on string: combat surcharge x2

[Jeril]

Has it been asked recently that we get a concrete list of surcharges for things?

[Archigeek]

There have been some discussions between players, but no one has really asked for clarification that I've seen. The Voln armors have been qquoted some crazy point numbers, with surcharges. I think what we're seeing is an interpretation that is overly harsh. A piece of armor that occasionally flares DS and even less often flares padding shouldn't be paying a surcharge based on the value of permanent DS and permanent padding.

[JackWhisper]

Around CCF, Voln got a revamp for the charges.

Voln went from being a combat script, to taking the entire script apart and charging for every single part of it.

It went from like 600 points added, to over 3000.

[Ardwen]

It seems with advanced scripting on items that they went to adding a surcharge for every possible benefit of the script, voln has a lot of benefits so it gets a lot of surcharges, patently ridiculous but it is what it is.

[JackWhisper]

That isn't what bugged me. What bugged me is that Voln was already ON the PP listing. It HAD been recently updated at the beginning of RTCF *Early 2013, before I started playing again, I'm told*. And it was just a combat script charge. Which was true when I first became interested in padding a set of voln armor I had.

Then about a week before CCF went off, they released a new update that more than quadrupled the price because, like you said, they tore every benefit apart and said OH THIS IS SO AWESOME IT DESERVES A SEPARATE CHARGE.

Horseshit.

#InsertGifOfHorseshit

[Archigeek]

It seems with advanced scripting on items that they went to adding a surcharge for every possible benefit of the script, voln has a lot of benefits so it gets a lot of surcharges, patently ridiculous but it is what it is.

I think "it is what it is" can be changed to something else. The good folks at Simutronics do occasionally make changes after listening to solid reasoning.

[Archigeek]

I guess my feeling is that if the flare ratio is 1:6 opportunities, then the PP charge should be 1/6th the base charge for whatever the flare is. That alone would pretty much take care of the issue with the voln armor. Additionally, if you're going to pile on charges based on the specifics of the script, then why have a base charge for combat scripts at all?

But it's more than just that, it's a shift to what appears from my perspective to be a bit more arbitrary. I would suppose that it isn't arbitrary, but that the logic isn't visible. I don't know for example, why I was charged 2x the combat script the last time I tried to enchant something; a combat script that I'd previously been charged the flat rate on. As soon as you try to parse the value of each and every combat script to a finer point, it's probable that the results, which already had some variation, are going to swing even wider.

[Donquix]

didn't they change the voln surcharge to be the FULL HCP surcharge, even though it's only on some creatures and only when it flares? because that makes sense.

[Jarvan]

I have done a PP enchant on Zelnorn for someone, and it was a 500 PP surcharge. Infact, I know 3 people that got only 500 a few years back. Maybe they changed that recently then. But Zelnorn was def 500 Surcharge shortly after the First CCF.

[Archigeek]

didn't they change the voln surcharge to be the FULL HCP surcharge, even though it's only on some creatures and only when it flares? because that makes sense.

Yes. Even though you only get the HCP when the DS flares happen (I think they're standard flare rate) but you still get hit. So figure you get the DS benefit at maybe, at best 1 in 10 hits, probably more like 1 in 20... but you pay the full surcharge for HCP. And you pay for the DS flare too, because surcharge.

[Archigeek]

I have done a PP enchant on Zelnorn for someone, and it was a 500 PP surcharge. Infact, I know 3 people that got only 500 a few years back. Maybe they changed that recently then. But Zelnorn was def 500 Surcharge shortly after the First CCF.

The quote I got was right off the chart for zelnorn. That seemed reasonable to me: the standard surcharge plus enchant cost based on the combined AS/DS. That one was a pcalc though, so not really reliable data.