Test of the Vigil

Overview

Conduct a Vigil at a Sacrificial Bonfire. Visions will come to those around the bonfire, illuminating the required offerings. Scoring is based on the length of the Vigil, and your participation.

Principles

T3 data, please edit as needed and remove this note.

• Locate a Common Altar
• Gather Wood from a tree
• Make Firebricks using a Box Kiln
• Crush Flax Seeds for Oil at a Kitchen
• Make a Silver Bowl using a Casting Box
• Build a Sacrificial Bonfire
• Make a Sacrifice

NOTE: You only need to Make a Sacrifice to pass. Doing so before the other items listed displays the message "Making a Sacrifice allowed you to skip some steps in Principles of The Vigil - smart move!

Demonstrating the Principle

What it takes to unlock the test for Egypt.

• 1 Baskets
• 1 Dried Flax
• 1 Linen
• 1 Flint
• 1 Clay Mortars
• 1 Slate Shovel
• 1 Jugs
• 1 Crucible
• 1 Nail Mould
• 1 Pulley
• 1 Charcoal
• 1 Ash
• 1 Grilled Fish
• 1 Honey
• 1 Saltpeter
• 1 Sulfur
• 1 Gold
• 1 Limestone
• 1 Lime
• 1 Dirt
• 1 Medium Diamond

Demonstrated by Malard in Meroe on Jan. 3, 2009. Credit to Spooner who found the vein and would have unlocked if he passed worship init :)

Details

Description

Conduct a Vigil at a Sacrificial Bonfire. Visions will come to those around the bonfire, illuminating the required offerings. Scoring is based on the length of the Vigil, and your participation.

Sacrificial Bonfire

The sacrificial bonfire is built from a Small Construction site, and must be near a common altar.

   * 2500 Wood
   * 250 oil
   * 1000 firebricks
   * 1 Silver Bowl 

The Silver Bowl is created in a Student's Casting Box with 2 silver and 2 beeswax. The option will only be available once you have started the test at a University of Worship.

Caution

• The vigil starts off extremely slowly. I didn't time it exactly, but about 1 vision comes every 20 minutes when first starting. The longer the vigil goes on, the quicker the visions come. At the 100 sacrifices made is when they start coming about one every minute, which is as fast as they seem to come. The time between visions scales pretty linearly between the first and the 100th. Once again, I didn't take very exact timing notes, but I believe the 100th sacrifice came somewhere around the 13th hour of the vigil. Plan accordingly, you have been warned ;) - Bortoas

• As you still have a 2 hour period to perform the sacrifice, this means that you have some number of sacrifices "pending" at any one time. - Sabt-Pestnu

What is a Vigil, really?

• After reading this page, I had no clear idea of what a Vigil really was. My confusion lasted until I participated in one. A Vigil is a scavenger hunt. Clicking on the sacrificial bonfire gives you a list of items you must scavenge and the time limit for each item. The Vigil will continue until the participants fail to turn in an item in time. Vigils look complicated, but are great fun, especially as the hour grows late and people desperately struggle to find rare items to continue their Vigil. Vigil participants have been known to disassemble and salvage valuable buildings to keep it running long after they have achieved a passing score. - Thujone

• Principle seekers: All you have to do is show up at the vigil and make one sac. That is it. Ignore all the other stuff on your tab. Just go to the vigil, take papy, slate, or anything else on this list: http://wiki.atitd.net/tale3/VigilSupplies in any reasonable quantity you can spare, and ask for a turn. That's it. ~Shiv

• Note: as far as Rosethorn's vigil showed Flimsy brick racks are NO LONGER needed.
• Note: it will ask for your seeds.

How to Prepare for a Vigil

One suggested method of preperation is...

   You will need:

• Five or six chests onsite
• Facilities for flax, boards, and bricks onsite
• Seeds of every type, jugs, and water onsite
• An ample supply of medium and small gems of each type (5-10 each), as well as knowledge of nearby [public mines]?
• An ample supply of the rarer metals? (5-10 each), as well as knowledge of nearby [public mines]?
• An ample supply of Papyrus (~200), and an established method for getting more
• An ample supply of each type of fish (~500 for common types, ~60 for rare types), and knowledge of nearby bands?
• Two or three admins who are committed to staying in shifts until the thing ends
• An established, understood, and agreed-upon system for accepting new participants, and putting them in order
• A nearby compound with all advanced facilities (saws, rakes, etc.) kept current, to which you have access
• The best shovels and hatchets you can find
• Unless your participants are already in the same guild, strongly consider making (or coopting) a guild just for vigil communications. Becoming a team, even just for the vigil, is a BIG boost to both productivity and morale (not to mention being able to coordinate who sacrifices next).

I don't think any of this makes sense -- it all depends how long you want your vigil to go. the first 12 hours of it are slow, and easy to maintain with a few people near their camps. After 12 hours, it's going so fast, you need supplies, in which case, you need some of everything it requests, probably 5+ sacs worth (on average), if you want it to last a while. But really what you want is 20 rich guilds involved in it, with huge stockpiles of every item in the game. Without 20+ people involved, you can't go mining for metals once it hits the 1 request/teppy minute stage, so you really need a huge number of people or absurdly rich people with enough offline time to do the runs. At least, that's how I feel... Managing a small vigil might work the way mentioned here, but a small vigil doesn't do much for you, really. :) Unless you do them 10 times...and if you just did stockpiling of resources for half the time it would take to do 10 vigils, you'd be able to make 1 vigil that gets you way more than 10x the points... - anon

Storing materials, being able to replace as much as possible, administering the vigil, what doesn't make sense? (When you wrote, the bullet about forming a guild wasn't there. Does it help explain things any?) You don't need "20 rich guilds" involved if you plan appropriately (and the above is all about planning). With no more than 10 people at any one time, we achieved a roaring success of a vigil, IMHO. (We did have about 20 people total, coming in and out, and sometimes back in!) And replacing the resources as you go serves a very important second purpose: molding the vigil group into a team. - Sabt-Pestnu

anon you make a good point about time-benefit maximization, but remember, 21 people/week x 24 weeks = 504 people theoretically passing this thing. There is an undercurrent of competition which makes me think there are gonna be a lot of newbie slaves in those 20 rich guilds you're talking about. I say this not to argue, but just for the benefit of people who aspire to do the test: don't despair! Like S-P says, the test is very fun, and makes for strong friendships. Yes, that ~700 sac vigil did go off during week 3 or 4, but I have to believe those are going to be the exception. If that's not the case Teppy needs to give us more things to do :) - GiantPineapple

In terms of manpower, a well-organized vigil can run on 10-20 people indefinitely as long as there is a decent stock to cushion spiking requests and ease stress. You sure do need a lot of people to run a big vigil, which is why it's a Test of Worship, but it is not completely insane or unbearable. The real killer is organization, teamwork and connections. In the light of the recent 1200 sac vigil we organized in Kush, I think that even larger vigils are feasible. After a certain point of inflation in the passes, the competitive scent will probably disappear and people will just have to participate longer or in multiple larger vigils to get a safe pass. Which is very much in the spirit of the Test and can be very fun. - Spoiled

What to do

• Build your chests, stash your goods. Make everything viewable to the public and stashable by the public.
• The admins should be in the same guild if possible. If so guild the chests. If not, understand clearly who the "lead" admin is at any given time. That person will stay at the fire, call out sacs, and hand out supplies to the person whose turn it is. When the lead changes due to fatigue or injury ;), the lead gives all the chests to the new lead.
• When a new participant arrives, there are a number of ways of engaging them. An up-front donation works, as does delaying their spot in line for one round, to see how they work. Unfortunately once your fire is public it is not really possible to enforce anything. People can sacrifice out of turn if they want to, and it is undetectable. For this reason it is best not to go -too- public with your vigil. I trusted pretty much everyone in Egypt until my most recent Vigil. In my experience, ten smart people, admins included in that number, can keep a Vigil going almost to 200. If the need is dire, tell everyone to move back from the fire unless making a sacrifice. This offers some hope of at least shaming/outing a lurking sac-stealer
• Basically everyone who is in line should be working on someone's donation at all times. If there is a complete lull, Papyrus, flaxing, fishing, and digging are a never-ending source of amusement, as well as future relief.
• As Bortoas points out, it starts slow. Only the admins will be needed for perhaps the first 3-5 hours. Do not burn travel time during this period, and do not spend your stores. It will really peak after about 12, so the best time to start a vigil is in the middle of the night.

Additional Input - Myremi

• I had 1 caller, 2 people to ferry stuff over, 1 person recording actual sacs on wiki (he tracks this according to what the caller says). Towards the end, the caller updated the wiki as well but to ferry the stuff, best to assign 2 people to do the job. Always have backup for each duty in case things go wrong.
• Caller announces the person to do the sac AND next person in the queue.
• Chests were placed quite a bit back from the altar so that traffic (refilling chests/removing stuff) is easier.
• If there are 11 people present at start of vigil, can start digging for stones, even without food. Need a lot of cuttable stones.
• Make sure everyone understands the system in place and get a few people to act as backups in case leader(s) disconnect from system.
• May be a good idea to have some experienced folks nearby in case you need help.
• Be flexible in case you have to make changes to the system.

Points and Passing

When a Vigil completes, the points for it are distributed as follows: Each player gets points equal to the number of their own sacrifices multiplied by the number of sacrifices made by other people at this Vigil. So if somebody did a Vigil all on their own, they would receive 0 points for it. An example with 20 total sacrifices with 3 participants, if A, B and C made sacrifices.. A=10, B=8, C=2.. points would be A=100, B=96, C=36.

Points accumulate over time, so if you participate in several Vigils, the points for each are added to your score.

Every Sunday, the 21 players with the highest points pass the test. Everyone who does not pass keeps their score and can continue accumulating points for later weeks. As of Sunday 27th February, the 7 players with the highest points pass the test.

   Gharib: You know me as The Stranger.
   Gharib: Your grandparents once attended an address by a speaker long forgotten. Though the speaker's name is lost to history, his words are remembered.
   Gharib: "It is man's nature that he is at his best when challenged."
   Gharib: Therefore, to make things challenging, The Test of the Vigil will be passed by those with the 7 highest scores each week.

Notes

A sacrifice will be listed as (in order):

• Longer Than 1 Hour
• Within 1 Hour
• Within 20 Minutes
• Within 5 Minutes
• Within 1 MINUTE

If you fail to make the sacrifice after the 1 MINUTE warning, the bonfire will then disappear and the Vigil will end. (Also, in T4 the first sacrifice needs to be made withing 15 minutes.)

To calculate your score, take the total number of sacrifices made, subtract the number of sacrifices you made yourself (both numbers are shown to you every time you make a sacrifice), then multiply the result by the number of sacrifices made yourself. So, if there are 200 sacrifices made in total, and you did 50 of them, your score is (200 - 50) * 50 which is 7500. Or, in other words, your score is the number of sacrifices you made multiplied by the number of sacrifices everybody else made.

Known Sacrifice Materials

• My guess is that Vigils request resources based on some in-game metric of how available they are, together with a small random factor. This would fit Teppy's usual idea of whether something is possible. If there are 2000 medium stones currently in Egypt then surely those conducting the vigil can find 10 of them... If the theory is correct we should see this reflected in the popularity of certain sacrifices over the coming weeks. For example sacrifices of Baskets should rise as more people make them for use in harvesting grass. -- Tialaramex

• I wonder if the "availability" is less of how many there are in Egypt at any one time, but rather if the tech is currently available at all. I.e. There was a time when we couldn't create alloys, so they would not be asked by the Gods in a Vigil. As they can now be created, irrespective of how much alloy exists in the world, they will be asked for in a Vigil. Actually, alloys (or one of their products, like gears or scythes) might be a good thing to use to check the theory as I don't believe there are many around. Or candles? They have little use beyond Worship tests and tuition, so likely there are few "available for use" in Vigils. -- Mathir

Vigil Guilds

• Guilds/Vigil and Pilgrimage Guild

• Guilds/Venerate