In their current implementation, they're in zones where your character shouldn't be naturally progressing in the first place, and the examples given were to use them tactically to escape conflicts/escape, or to use them to travel the night before your character can survive it.
The former sounds like a pro gamer move from veteran players who know to run out, do an ox cart, get some Edelweiss at the dealer after carefully running past all of the Ogres, and bandits on the way there because you can't kill them, and then sitting on 3-5 of them for a rainy day.
The latter sounds like it's directly circumventing the design philosophy of the server for a mundane character, instead of banding together with other players, buying potions being sold by other players, or travelling during the day-time. We've had other threads discussing the trivialization of fearing the dangers of the night, and how it becomes a responsibility settled upon the shoulders of a player to engage that fear reasonably.
So if it isn't used to provide ninjalooting options to classes that aren't really meant to do it, and whom do not have the gear or the supplies to do it, and if the other option is to use it for low-level characters to travel in Barovia by night who do not have access to stealth, potions, or their own magic, but also know they cannot survive travelling at night-- Which as I said, seems like it's going against the design philosophy of the server--
What are the uses of adding a low-cost invisibility-providing alternative item to the Edelweiss (low-cost being lower than the cost of Dust of Disappearance, at 2,500 gold) at presumably some distant high level location, that does not conflict with these things? How does this benefit the community and enforce the setting?
So...two solutions/thoughts here.
Problem: "The item is somewhere new players can't get". So put it somewhere else?
Invisibility is available to casters at a very low level, and is used from then on to level 20. It's not a low level desire to be invisible.
That wasn't the problem. The problem was, the Edelweiss dependency only helped people who knew about it to begin with, meaning it realistically effects a much smaller proportion of the player base, and mostly only veterans, not the new faces to the server, and certainly not the majority. Most people (including myself, prior to the hysteria surrounding its removal) were unaware there were vendors selling it at low prices in obscure locations for anything but Remove Disease. The locations where they are currently, and the reasons they are allegedly being used, do not seem like issues that apply to the broad majority of low-level PCs, and they probably shouldn't be used to encourage invisibility ninjalooting, either. Fighters, Barbarians, and other classes in that vein aren't really supposed to be ninjalooters regardless.
This issue becomes exasperated because Fighters are now better off going 20 Fighter and pure, instead of the classic 5 Rogue 15 Fighter mashup, and Barbarians are better going pure now as well, which means two classes that traditionally mixed and matched skills (including UMD) are faced with the dilemma of getting their full class benefits and feats at late level, or being able to utilize their rogue/etc levels for revenue where other classes can. You have to pick your poison, I feel.
