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CK3 Dev Diary #80 - Is That a Dagger in Your Pocket…?

Is that a dagger in your pocket…?​

or

Inventory System/Commission Artifact:​

Howdy all,

Your Friendly Local Community Manager here to introduce this week's Developer Diary! While it was not my article, it was written by our ever mysterious Content Designer, CC! So sit back, relax, and enjoy some neat new features from the team and we can't wait to hear your thoughts and feedback!

Without further ado:

Greetings!

Let’s talk about artifacts and the systems surrounding it.

Artifacts can be divided into two categories, inventory and court, which is also where the items are stored. This dev diary will focus on the former one, so the inventory.

Inventory system​

Feast thine eyes on the inventory screen! Instead of putting all of the goodies into a big pile, we’ve made an inventory window showing what’s currently equipped and how many of each category you can “wear”.

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[image of inventory screen]

Equipable artifacts fall into the following categories; crown, regalia, weapon, armor, and lastly, trinkets. Most of these categories speak for themselves but trinkets, so what are they you may ask? The answer is a myriad of things; they can be brooches, dried flowers, even a worm on a string.

You can also sort after these categories, making it easy to find what you’re looking for when you want to equip, repair, or just browse your inventory.

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[image of inventory screen: artifact section]


In the Artifact Details, you can read the artifact’s history, as well as see what people are claimants. Watch out - some of these people may be looking to steal the artifact away from you…
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[image showing artifact details: history tab]

Of course, it goes both ways! Did your stupid brother inherit the family heirloom? You can duel, declare war, or steal it — as long as you have a claim.

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[image showing artifact details: claimants tab]

Artifacts wear down when on your person versus when they are on display in the court. So keep that in mind as it can be costly in the long run to equip everything for the bonuses if you're not making full use of them.

Since the Antiquarian is such a vital figure in maintaining and making full use of your artifacts, there’s a shortcut to recruiting or just looking at who has that position in your court.

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[image showing the Antiquarian court position info]

As shown in the image, the Antiquarian unlocks the ability to Reforge and Repair, as well as Commissioning Artifacts.


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[image showing the Reforge Artifact interaction]

Commission Artifacts​

Inspirations are fickle like creativity, so if you have the gold and you want something commissioned, you can get in touch with local artisans through the Commission Artifact decision.

An additional benefit of commissioning an artifact is that you get to decide what’s being made.

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[image showing the commission artifact decision; artifact selection]

Now you might wonder, “why would I ever subject myself to the whims and possible long time for a person to become inspired if I can just go to the local artisans and get what I want?”
You see, even if inspirations appear as fickle as love during springtime, it’s that little extra spice — a creator’s passion — that permeates through the final product. It’s that warm feeling of love for the craft that the beholder can feel just by looking at it, it’s something that’s not always present in a commissioned piece.

Ah, my apologies, I appeared to have been carried away there for a brief moment by my muse.

What I meant to say is that in gameplay terms, that means that inspired people can create artifacts of higher quality while the commission artisans will do the bare minimum and therefore be of the lowest quality.


9.png

[image showing the inspiration progress]

Whether a passion project or not, creating something takes time. We ask for your understanding and hope that you continue to enjoy Crusader Kings 3!

This Dev Diary was ghostwritten by the mysterious CC.
 
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Looks very promising, but one thing seems to be of concern:
Artifacts wear down when on your person versus when they are on display in the court. So keep that in mind as it can be costly in the long run to equip everything for the bonuses if you're not making full use of them.
Item deterioration in games is annoying in general, but here we will be forced to often equip and unequip items, like equip The Ring of Master Builder +7, pay for single building, unequip again. Micromanagement worse even than teleporting generals between battles in EU4. I'd very like to ask you to reconsider the system, or at least add some cooldowns and automation.
 
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1.) does that broach contain some fertility herbs or something? aka how does a broach improve fertility. Prestige I get, but fertility?
same way attractiveness traits do, id figure. makes you look sexy on account of how fancy it is, so your spouse or lovers want to get it on more

you kind of have to pretend not to know that fertility works by periodically rolling dice, which would necessitate all fertility modifiers be the actual physical fertility of your human body. i personally think its a fine abstraction, it works
 
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Can you steal equipement from someone in your jail ? Would make a lot of sense from a rp point of view, a nightmare gameplay wise if not balanced but could be cool.
 
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Regarding the pilfering of other people's artifacts; I love the options you've already included, but I would once again like to humbly request that characters be able to outright "loot" rulers they've killed in battlefield duels or simply taken prisoner.

Of course there would need to be some kind of logic involved as to when characters are expected to actually wear their artifacts: The king is probably wearing his weapon and armour on the battlefield, but probably not his regalia.
And if you've kidnapped someone or simply captured them in war, you should definitely have the option of just seizing whatever they're wearing at a hefty opinion penalty (and possibly a Piety cost if the victim is of a righteous or astray faith?). You might even ransom such a seized artifact back to its owner!
 
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What stat(s) are going to be useful for the antiquarian? Learning and stewardship for forging and looking after artefacts are the obvious ones, but if they are also now protecting artefacts during a siege that suggests the need for either martial or espionage skills. Is this going to be a job that actually has multiple skill boons and you have to decide if you want a knowledgeable but frail antiquarian to look after your treasures but not protect them in times of war, or a strong but stupid antiquarian who might break the cross off of your crown but would die before letting anyone else touch it?
 
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I'm looking forward to playing it like a child waiting for Santa Claus.

I have a few questions.
Are there any artifacts that can't be handled under certain conditions?
For example, the armor that I, a giant, had made can only be equipped by giants. Or a large sword is too big for a dwarf to equip, etc.
 
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There's already Attraction opinion for this though
that doesnt manage that mechanic. that manages opinion

certainly, your wife liking you more will help with conception because the mechanics behind making babies are weirdly complicated and obtuse, but for the most part those are two mechanics that are kept separate. i agree that being handsome shouldnt help you much when your wife is a lesbian, so you could remove that from the attractiveness traits with good argument, but you really do need to stay consistent

if you want fertility to refer solely to the actual mechanical fertility of the human monkey animal, youd have to revisit a bunch of traits. things like athletic and strong should add fertility slightly and the attractiveness traits should not. lustful and chaste should no longer affect fertility, liking sex more or less doesnt necessarily mean your junk works better, since we no longer consider how often a person would get it on as a factor. like, you could make these arguments, these arent absurd changes and would work just fine in a mod i think, but paradox has already settled on a specific way of handling this. argue against it if you dont like it and maybe theyll change it, but again, consistency is the name of the game here
 
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that doesnt manage that mechanic. that manages opinion
As the brooch should as well. It shouldn't make your seed more potent. Your wife might be not even attracted to you because she's a lesbian, and that brooch would make her think you're "hot"

if you want fertility to refer solely to the actual mechanical fertility of the human monkey animal, youd have to revisit a bunch of traits. things like athletic and strong should add fertility slightly and the attractiveness traits should not.
Well, yeah, they should be revisited
 
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I love it. Especially the go to war option.
Just imagine the fun we will have roleplay wise.

Reenact last christmas. The Queen of Lotharingia and the King of Saxony go to war with thousands of dead over the question he inherits mothers ugly trinket :)

CK3 is going to be soo much more fun. And don't get me started on multiplayers
 
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Bit odd to clap the commission community like that. I might be inspired to walk out and draw a picture of Ryan Reynolds tossing an angry koala at Boris Johnson, but I can guarantee you that someone I pay £25 to on Fiverr will produce a far better product.

Being inspired doesn't necessarily mean the product will be better, basically. It should be an event trigger that can be factored in to artifact creation, possibly improving the quality.

The question since first DD about artifacts remain: why the hell random courtiers (many of those may be nobles who never worked in their lives) can suddenly be inspired to make work of art, better than commissioned artisans?

Alright, they can be inspired to do it... but where did they learn how to do that? Why that random woman who might be my Doctor or my son's wife suddenly knows how to make THRONES? She went to carpenter courses? And learned how to make thrones in better quality than commissioned carpenters?

It's hard to tell without seeing the finished product of course, but I hope the implication is supposed to be that people who receive inspirations are already master artisans to begin with; like if you commission a sword, the craftsman is just going to be a random smith, but if someone is inspired to create a sword, that person is going to be fucking sword-Leonardo (as in Leonardo da Vinci, but for swords, not Leonardo the ninja turtle, who admittedly did use swords).

I also would be careful about projecting the workings of modern gig economy artists back onto medieval patronage.
 
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The Equip screen already made me immediatly think that sooner or later, a modder will mod boss fights in.
You and a few other courtiers against the judeo-christian god in order to make Ck3 a true JRPG!
 
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I really like this system. Particularly the fact that I can challenge people to duels over artifacts, which means I might get to see the duel system a bit more often. :)

I would be interested how claims on artifacts work. Do all children inherit a claim on them? Can these claims be forged? It seems I can loot some artifacts during sieges and raids, which seems to be another way to get them, and I assume the old owner will get a claim on them then? I also wonder how many unique historical artifacts there will be, and what methods are at my disposal to bring them into my possession.
 
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It's hard to tell without seeing the finished product of course, but I hope the implication is supposed to be that people who receive inspirations are already master artisans to begin with; like if you commission a sword, the craftsman is just going to be a random smith, but if someone is inspired to create a sword, that person is going to be fucking sword-Leonardo (as in Leonardo da Vinci, but for swords, not Leonardo the ninja turtle, who admittedly did use swords).
Nope, according to the first DD about inspiration, they... just occur. Devs ignored questions how that makes any sense there as well
 
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