Dig this cunning suggestion

A long time ago I played Cassius in a production of Julius Caesar thanks to my lean and hungry look. When that inspired me to bulk up a bit, I used the after school times awaiting rehearsal to visit the weight room. My father noticed all of this and wondered whether I was being unduly influenced by media. I explained my motivations and his cold, gritty answer was “don’t aspire to be cunning, lad, no one likes Conan.”

I had already learned from the courtship of a very sweet girl that flattery was indeed a bad thing, so was it possible that cunning is a similar sort of snaky word, one you wish to possess but rarely hold?

To me, Cassius, Conan, all of Poe’s foolish protagonists, they all employed cunning in such clear and humorous ways. I think there should be more of this in Conan Exiles.

Let’s start with the shovel. With a shovel, we can now bury Loot Chests wherever we want. This would make an enormous difference in PvP, in my estimation and after considerable testing and surveying of games where this is an option. Conan would’ve buried his best loot. I think we would too.

Any other cunning stunts we should add to the game?

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Omg, I speak this language over 35 years, I bumped in this word (cunning) several times but I never bother to go on trslanslator. Omg, thanks @Barnes, I wanted to use this word and I was trying with stupid ways to explain πονηριά.
YES Conan was cunning, but cunning is annoying mostly for the defeated, makes the loss seem unfair. Pvp has many opportunities for a player to behave this way already, spawn kills, offline raids, beehive protection, body vaults, etc…
However I believe that your intentions are for less painful “cunning” in this game that generates more fun than frustration. So…
So far in exile lands I know only 2 rocks that you have to break and gain loot. The one is on unnamed city, if you break it you gain a fragment and the other is on wine cellar, if you break it you gain khari steel. What I mean ofcurce is that these rocks hide a small chest under it so you gain the loot :wink:. There for I suggest for us to have the ability to hide a chest under a rock
If someone breaks this rock then he will find the chest and loot it.
My suggestion is not far than yours, it’s similar, but it is triggered again likewise from a mechanism that already exists in this game. And like you I believe that this cunning would be fun :+1:t6:

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There is a passageway that leads to the Arena and away from the River. In it is another chest, under a rock, and a ghost even shows the way to it…

You can do a form of what you are suggesting already: after I quit an Official but don’t delete my toon – I will break a big rock and lay down where it was. Presto Loot Box, as long as I log in occasionally. :coin:

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Yea, @Marcospt reminded me this yesterday, it’s been years that I didn’t use this path or ghost chests because their loot is… simple unfortunately. I never looted them a lot except the one that it’s located across the bat tower. In my starting days I was always farming iron from this area and always loot this chest, but never got anything special. The best thing I ever took from these chests, including den (big clif, not neebs) and mount of the dead was a steel pick. There are others too , the swimmer, the bear and ghosts again that I cannot recall their position if my memory don’t fool me. But these 3 I have farmed the most and the loot sadly was always plain. I really wish they’ll change this someday, it would be wonderful to work as neebs chest (if they haven’t already, I have years to loot them)

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So, with a shovel can you dig up someone else’s not so cunningly hidden treasures? Start a clan of treasure hunters and dig all over the map?

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Yes, yes! In the other two games you must be within about a meter of the buried chest. Then you must still destroy it to gain the booty.

It would probably be profitable if someone knew the lay of the terrain, where treasure might be. In that way they might be a cunning linguist of the land.

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Finally a use for all those languages.

Leaving directions, or misdirections to treasure.

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I lke this idea. Also I always thought cunning was a positive thing too? Now that I think about it though, I guess people use it to describe villains and maybe anti-heroes or trickster type heroes. You don’t describe an honourable knight or open-hearted peasant hero as cunning. There is an element of darkness to it.

Doesn’t stop me aspiring to cunning though.

very late edit: I believe cunning is the Old English/Saxon word for “intelligence” or “cleverness” as opposed to wicc which meant “wisdom”. Strange that cunning and wicked in modern english are not positive traits :thinking:

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Sounds like a cunning stunt indeed :thinking:

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image

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:point_right: :smirk: :point_right:

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Wicked has a few leaps from it’s origin as wisdom. Think what the general middle ages view of witchcraft was and use that as a guide.
The very basic is that the word became associated with “wise folk” later with hedge wizards and then all sorts of practitioners of devilry. There is more to unpack, but that’s the rough up.

Cunning has a slightly less clear origin but the best we have so far is as you describe…
However, keep in mind how English came about. The native Briton people have exceedingly little input towards the language spoken in the lands their ancestors dwelt in. The Sassanach invaders were quite thorough, hence English sounds nothing like Cymric (Welsh). Angles, Saxons, and others incoming spoke something much more closely related to Deutsch (German) and scrummed significantly with the “Danes” (Nordic people that were not primarily from Denmark, but that is a very long tangent. Basically remember that the English continued to call the native people of the 'Murikas “Indians” long after they realized they were nowhere near India. This sort of trend extends centuries into the past). Thus words of Nordic origin are not seen in a positive light. But wait, Deutsch also using a similar word, Kennen for Knowledge and Understanding!
Let us continue, the Normans, Francophone and Francophied “Danes”, would later roll up and roll the Saxons right off the top of the pile. The language of the high courts became French, language of the low became Germanic. This arrangement was not to last, but during the fusing process of the language, many concepts came to have two or more words, and the word with the villain (lower class) origin (read: Celtic, Gaelic, Dane, or Germanic) was sorted as the base, vulgar, or less upstanding and noble of the meanings while the Latin (read: French/Norman/Ecclesiastic) would be the more virtuous or refined. For example, a swine (schwein) is living pig, but pork (porc, porcus) is the edible meat. Deer (dier, tier) is an animal but Venison (venesoun, venatio) is it’s meat (in this case literally, as Tier just means animal, and Venatio is to hunt and in times that will seem long ago to those who grew up with radio, Venison was any terrestrial meat hunted rather than domesticated). Thus Cunning, of colourful origin, but definitely not French/Latin, became the intellect of the base, the morally/socially low, or the beastly in Middle English (read: post Normans) on.

In many ways English is one of my favourite languages for demonstrating the fruits of plural cycles of conquest and subjugation before (if the vanquished are lucky) integration. The vocabulary and grammar alone tell a story of turmoil, triumph, and repeated turn over in dominance.

But this one digresses.

Also, this one loves the term Cunning and takes it as high praise. The “wisdom” of humanity has been turned to cruelty and atrocities that stagger the mind and breeds in us self destruction in almost equal measure to success. The cunning of beasts is a tool for pure survival.

Perhaps that is why this one enjoys Howard’s works so much.

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@LostBrythunian
So, for me to understand the true translation of the word cunning, because some times words translated as similar and not exact, in other languages and most of the time the dimension of the particular world may cover fields that doesn’t in others. I will give you an example and you will tell me if this is cunning…
Tigers, some times climb and hide in trees to surprise the others, or walk almost crouching, with really light steps so the “victim” won’t understand their attack. Can these examples cover the word cunning when it comes to tigers?

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RP after my own heart.

On my last server I had a little “way station” for new players. I left a note in Brythunian (after my unexpected discovery of the language feat) that led to a stashed full chest. No one ever claimed it.

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Cunning is definitely a dark triad trait and therefore part of the darker psychological traits. That doesn’t mean that use of it is strictly evil but it definitely plays at the negatives of the human psyche both in it’s implementation and the reason to be cunning. If you don’t understand the dark psyche, you won’t be good at being cunning.

Now that this disclaimer is out, I dream of CE providing more ways to be cunning. The shovel is a great way but right off the bat, will that be a land claim at that point? So all that cunning rework gets thrown out with the foundation sweeping (that is used to find hidden bases…another cunning play technique) and pushes people to do this more often. CE needs to allow cunning aspects into the game and take heart and correct the cheesy tactics that people use to limit cunning play.

Of course the problem there is that the cunning players will then have a huge advantage over everyone else and if they aren’t of noble character, then you get the same result as the min-maxers…people still leave the game.

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I’m not sure how it works in Rust, but in SCUM there’s no landclaim: anything outside of your flag degenerates rather quickly, including contents. If you dig a chest into ground outside your claim, the weapons and clothes and ammo – everything – will lose durability along with the chest. You can maintain these things by repair, but you risk exposing the buried chest.

Since we have decay, it might be easier to implement a “one chest per clan” strategy, where you can bury one box with no landclaim yet receive standard decay rates. Make its build profile rather large, say the size of a temple, so that it is considerably tough to exploit.

Yes, exactly so.
As is the habit of the serpent entering the rodent’s hole while the rodent is out foraging, only to eat them when they return.

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