Logically speaking— Why aren't Relics as coveted as Curses?

Game Discussion
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1

I’ve been thinking about AO’s world-building for a bit and larping my interest in this community, and came to this one, minuet, problem… Gods, and more importantly the relics they make— should be comically powerful. So much so, that they’d realistically be as sought-after as curses.

The first comment on the lore-drop thread talks about the gods powers[1]: “Ares would have the ability to start and decide wars”; I’d assume this would be less/not effective on gods, but still, what the hell? Somewhere out there, Ares could’ve given somebody a relic, and now there just exists this artifact that has some portion of power that could greatly enhance your ability to win any conflict.

“It took an hour of concentration, but I pulled enough spirit from the world into my relic ‘Hero’s Aspis’, I can activate its ingrained technique, 「Machikrato」, ensuring that for the next 5 minutes, I’m completely unable to lose or be put in a state where i cannot continue fighting”

And this isn’t even the only problem child of relics, hell, it’s probably harder to name a Relic that isn’t a gigantic problem:

  • Hecate placed a relic before all the stuff with Prometheus happend; now theres something that can fundementally change 99% of all combatants. “Man, I’m so happy I grinded to get an ancient magic- NOPE! Cloud Magic Infliction Rite of doom”.
  • Hermes gave somebody a relic and now their kingdom has instant information transfer through their oracle, and they can also visualize the value of trades done— rivaling that of modern information transmission; also he can just straight-up make a safe route to anywhere.
  • Phobos dropped a relic and now the power of insanity can be manifested even quicker than any other form of magic, and it has the specialty of making everybody petrified at the thought of war
  • Ouranos found one guy they liked and now they have the ability to summon dimensions and move creatures and things between them however they feel. Anything more powerful from Cronus, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades would likely be able to do this too btw[2].

“Oh, you can’t be certain the gods would give so many relics”— we have a Relic from the primordial, Nyx. And the statement “Relics are about equal to Magic”, when Ancients exist, implies that there are some relics that are unreasonably stacked in divine power; because right now, the power that rivals the gift Zeus left for his strongest legacy[3] is apparently less than lightning magic.

Even if you bought some relic from some low tier god, you still have, in-universe: the only portable tool that can reasonably heal you, alongside every other advantage of body modification, and the ability to affect natural objects permanently.

Why does the story make no mention of this? The story has focus on legacies… yet not the actual tools from the original gods? “Objects in limited quantity that hold powers comparable to that of gods” apply to both Relics and Curses… yet the latter is the only one that gets any remark for it. There are like 3 places that are horridly effected by some kind of magic curse, yet only the only terrain impacted by a spirit ability is Blasted Rock’s sandstorm.

  1. Lore drop thread(Sorta spoilers) ↩︎

  2. Ouranos is the personification of the sky… which is more of a misnomer to the heavens, as it seems like he’d also cover a similar role as to what Olympus was for the earth and the original gods— as far as I’m aware (I’m not too well versed on greek gods).

    Cronus took that From Ouranos, Cronus lost it to Zeus and was sealed; with the exact rule of authority being split between Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon (though the important one for this is most probably the sky, but Ouranos and Cronus have a lot less preserved about what exactly they are). ↩︎

  3. The gods have extremely accurate Oracles— Zeus would absolutely have been told something along the lines of “This relic is gonna end up in the hands of somebody who will fix all our problems”. ↩︎

2

it might genuinely just be that vetex had never thought of it before :broken_heart:

3

Relics suck cause they’re relics

But for real, relics are new thing so I bet vetex has yet to make any mention of them in story

4

Vetex’s mind thinks of hundreds of new ideas, but there’s this little creature that’s constantly whispering about magic, so any ideas about relics get immediately interpreted as for Magics.

5

cause they take skill to use.

6

That’s probably the answer, and mostly why I made this— maybe he’ll remember to add it in the story for the future…

I doubt it’ll ever happen given the current dev count, but it’d be really nice if Vetex could go back throughout the story and fix-up a couple of older parts.

7

So far it seems like order of Aesir is more focused on gathering Curses but guess we might see some relic users as well

8

did they even like, do that?
i thought the cloud thing was just for ravenna.

9

This makes it sound like mages are the AI of the world…

Strength users work hard to master the traces of magic in their bodies, and use it to amplify physical forces to achieve powerful results!

Weapon users work through hours of practice drills for multitudes of tools, mastering their focus to get utilization of magic aura!

Relic users must devote time to understanding the workings of reality, and the nature of their deity to get the best possible outcomes of their Relics!

Oh, yeah, mages can just do all’at. They just think it really hard. They get better as they think more or something. Wait until somebody creates a new magic type and mutate to it later and rival everything else with ease.

10

what am I saying? they did it because the plot demanded it.

11

I recall they hunted beringer to gather information regarding where the death curse is

12

oh that makes more sense.
wait why did berginger know that?

13

Stock probably does have a good answer on “They take more skill to use”, we know stuff like the life manipulation requires you to understand the body pretty well— magic mostly works on intent.

It’d make it fair to assume the Aesir would focus on fire-power to stop things like the Wotan, before going into Relics. which would hopefully give vetex enough time to flesh-out relics too.

14

I don’t think there’s any actual reason given in game just yet aside from relics being really rare

As for speculation I’d imagine the instant immortality and power boost someone gets for just having a curse makes them a lot more desirable compared to some relics which require a lot more time and skill to be as strong.

Hopefully the high tier relics in the future start doing some crazy shit cause damn they’re lame right now

15

He just knew, I don’t know if it was mentioned how

16

so it was the plot convience all along!

17

Another likely reason why Oracles never took off too much is because unlike Mages, who would just get knocked out for a day if they expend all of their Magic Energy, they instead drop dead if they get too reckless and use up all of their Spirit Energy

18

Probably, we don’t know how rare— but with them more likely to be susceptible to the elements, being lost, and the skill requirement, it’d be safe to assume most of them are probably harder to find than some curses…

still, i hope we get a Lazarus relic that has an anti-shield mechanic and reduces your hp by like 90%, but gives you three lives and multiplies your stats each time— Relics have potential if Vetex just finished their planning.

19

I mean bro is a cloud straight up, probably saw where death curse landed while he was hitting on some cumulonimbus

20

well they also had to have approval if they wanted to get a new relic added to the world, with the intent of specifically that person using it.