Alchemy/Enhance potions revamp

[Cetric]

With the change to chivalry, making it more skill oriented, the change to curing poisoning, and the constant talk of potions, i started thinking about alchemy.

To has always seemed as though enhance potions and alchemy were backwards.

There is an item cap of 50% Enhance Potions

100.0 Skill in alchemy grants 30% enhance Potions.

My proposal is this:


Change the item cap of alchemy to 40%. Make the individual item/imbuable intensity 20% (altering all items accordingly, imbued jewels, ecru citrine rings, etc) It would be fairly simple for starters. Just change every 5% in enhance potions to 4%. Change Ecrus to 40%, then afterwords possible make the imbuing ability have 4 tiers, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% at 25% intensity each. (rendering something with 12% enhance potions (that was 15%) somewhat rare.

Now for the skill: Make every 10skill grant a bonus of 5% enhance potions up to GM. (a JoAT human would still be running 50% enhance potions with 40% in items)

At GM Skill level, the Grandmaster Alchemist would receive a 10% bonus (allowing for 60% from skill, or an overall cap of 100%). At GM, they would also receive other bonuses such as:

-90% Chance cure potion rate on Lethal poison, essentially 100% on all others (what curing with cure pots used to be prior to the change)

-The ability to single click on an explosion pot and toggle from the current way they work, to an "explode on contact" potion with a 20-30 second cool down timer. Direct Damage to a single player, not area, and cannot effect the thrower)

-A Grandmaster Alchemist with no other skill in a Direct Healing skill (Magery, Mysticism, Healing, Chivalry) Will leave weaving, bushido, spiritspeak) will have a lessened heal potion timer to 5 seconds. (essentially a Focused Alchemist)

-A Grandmaster Alchemist with no other skill in ranged combat (Magery, Mysticism, Necromancy, Archery, Throwing) will have the explosion potion toggled timer reduced from 20-30s to 15-20seconds (essentially a Focused Alchemist)

-An Alchemist with 80.0 or more Alchemy can equip and use an Alchemist Satchel. This would function exactly the same as a quiver but must be equipped to be used. Could hold 250 stones. The satchel would have 2 mods, 50% weight Reduction, and another mod such as 5-20% Enhance Potions, dci, hit point increase, a regen, something. This would allow an alchemist of the required skill to carry 250 potions (at 1 stone a piece) in this satchel, and the potions would stay with them in death. It would not be fillable or usable without the required skill. (Because an alchemist is just about useless with the 2 Stone weight per potion currently)

and 2 other things that im on the fence about:

-Make Fear and Shatter potions craftable by a GM Alchemist (with a heavy fail rate, and high resource cost), and only be usable by a GM Alchemist. 120s cool down.

-A GM Alchemist could throw Dark Glow and Parasitic poison potions. 30second cool down. Possible to resist based on Resisting Spells skill. (Biological Warfare)




***I expressed the change to cure potions based on alchemy skill because, essentially, every skill in the game has another skill with a counter ability. Currently, there is no major counter to lethal poisoning. However, if someone has GM poisoning for lethal, i would think it would be appropriate someone with GM Alchemy would be able to counter it.



*slips on flame retardant straw hat* Any thoughts?

 

[Tinsil]

Agree with a lot of it... At least it's another starting point. Not sure I'm okay with shatter potions being craftable.

The big thing is alchemy NEEDS to help you cure pot chance against poison.

 

[Mervyn]

Not a bad idea, but spellweaving needs a revamp first.

 

[Cetric]

Tinsil, i agree, the main reason i was thinking of it was for cure potion chances, then it spun-off into other things. I know people had alot of love for the pot chucking exploited archers that were around not that long ago as well. This kind of appeases some of those types as well, with something more....not overpowered (timer may still need adjusted)

 

[icm420]

I play an alchemist mage as my main character, so this effects me more then the average person. I love your ideas, you clearly put a lot of thought into this, however I don't agree with it all.

"-The ability to single click on an explosion pot and toggle from the current way they work, to an "explode on contact" potion with a 15-20 second cool down timer."

"-A Grandmaster Alchemist with no other skill in ranged combat (Magery, Mysticism, Necromancy, Archery, Throwing) will have the explosion potion toggled timer reduced from 15-20s to 10-15seconds (essentially a Focused Alchemist)"


The first thing I want to say is no to the explode potions. It's a nice idea I like what your thinking but whipping explode potions is why I play the template, to take that away would not be cool in my eyes. I have 40 meditation so I rely heavily on potions for damage output and control. I just giggle everytime I start chucking explodes all over, sure I may not do much damage since people run away but it's fun. Also a common tactic I use against ganks is e field traps. After they are trapped i chuck about 8 explodes, curse and run away to fight another guy. To make it like a "spell trigger" is not cool to me. Fight 6 guys at once and tell me that you want a timer on your explode potions.


"-90% Chance cure potion rate on Lethal poison, essentially 100% on all others (what curing with cure pots used to be prior to the change"

I 100% agree with this, I tested cure chances extensivly and with gm alch and 50 ep ring I don't cure the way I feel I should. They wanted to stop the crutching on potions and force resist spell again, but if you dedicate 100 points into being a potion specialist you should have a more intimate knowledge of potions. I made the poison your using so why can I not cure what I make?

"-A Grandmaster Alchemist with no other skill in a Direct Healing skill (Magery, Mysticism, Healing, Chivalry) Will leave weaving, bushido, spiritspeak) will have a lessened heal potion timer to 5 seconds. (essentially a Focused Alchemist)"

NO!!!! lol the reason potion weights got increased was due to the deathstrike nervestrike ninjas who only use potions to heal. I for one do not look forward to fighting those guys exclusivly again. I see lots of abuse with this. I think people crutch on heal potions too much as it is, to cut that timer in half doesn't make sense to me. A template that doesn't heal well usually has high offense, to make a high offense character heal really well creates an imbalance in gameplay, in my opinion.


"An Alchemist with 80.0 or more Alchemy can equip and use an Alchemist Satchel. This would function exactly the same as a quiver but must be equipped to be used. Could hold 250 stones. The satchel would have 2 mods, 50% weight Reduction, and another mod such as 5-20% Enhance Potions, dci, hit point increase, a regen, something. This would allow an alchemist of the required skill to carry 250 potions (at 1 stone a piece) in this satchel, and the potions would stay with them in death. It would not be fillable or usable without the required skill."

This is genius, I love the idea. The potion weight increases hurt my character a lot, I have to really think about when I use my potions because I can't carry too many. That is sometimes a good idea, but more often then not I end up having to leave to restock explodes, conflags, etc. This should've been put into the game a long time ago. I am not sure about the potions staying with you when you die part, I would love that but I'm not too sure it's fair, mayb half the potions stay with you, but all of them would lead to abuse again. It's like when you would kill a guy who was chugging potions non stop, get 11k on the kill and see no potions on his body. He insured them. But this is the best idea I've heard in a long time.


"-Make Fear and Shatter potions craftable by a GM Alchemist (with a heavy fail rate, and high resource cost), and only be usable by a GM Alchemist. 120s cool down."

"-A GM Alchemist could throw Dark Glow and Parasitic poison potions. 30second cool down"

I like the shatter/fear potion idea. Shatter/fear potions also should be effected by EP, currently they are not. At least from what I can tell they are not. These potions are a nice addition to alchemist aresenal, but are a real pain to get. As for the poison potions, I'm not so sure. I like the idea of being able to use a potion you craft, but poisoning is it's own ability. To make alchemy poison and then counter posion is once again an imbalance in gameplay in my opinion.


"I expressed the change to cure potions based on alchemy skill because, essentially, every skill in the game has another skill with a counter ability. Currently, there is no major counter to lethal poisoning. However, if someone has GM poisoning for lethal, i would think it would be appropriate someone with GM Alchemy would be able to counter it."

This just makes sense, it's how it should be. As i said earlier if you create the poison potion, you know what goes into the potion then you should be able to cure the poison. I had a fail of 11 cure potions with gm alchemy and 50EP ring against deadly poison. That should never ever happen.

One thing I would like to see is a reduction on how much str/agility is given by potions. A dexxer should not be able to have 150str 150dex and 100 some mana. That is not right to me, with 50ep I think you get 32 to str and 32 to dex off a potion. Thats 64 free stat points, which basically translates into 64 mana. I do not think an alchemist should be penalized, but 50EP alone shouldn't be so strong. (my numbers are probably off a little but the point is the same 60 some free stat points is a bit overpowered.)

 

[Cetric]

Thanks for the input icm, after thinking about it, i do agree with you on that 5 sec heal timer. however, it is only granted to someone that has 100 skill in alchemy, and no other direct healing skill. (100 points in healing would actually be more effective) needs more thought or removed entirely im sure.


On your explosion potion note, i just wanted to add this:

I mean that you could have explosion potions work as they do now, but single click your stack of pots, and toggle it to be a direct damage, explode on impact, 20 second cool down explosion pot. So you could have it the old way, and the new way =P But i hear ya as using it like s spell trigger, so now im on the fence with it. Maybe it would be better if you could only use them in this nature if you didn't have any ranged abilities, like the focused alchemist idea.

 

[icm420]

I like the idea of using them two differnt ways. Sometimes a "spell trigger" explode pot would be awesome. I remember those explode pot archers, that was not fun to fight, so the timer makes sense. All of your ideas are great don't get me wrong, I just really enjoy whipping explodes all over and seeing people scatter. lol.

 

[AzSel]

Im all for alchemist revamp.

 

[Zyon Rockler]

It sounds like it's on the right track. I think you would have to actually get it on Test Center or even bring it live and work the bugs out. The only problem that I see is that alchemy doesn't have a support skill. It stands alone so it could become very powerful.

I like the satchel idea because it keeps your potions organized and allows them to function better. It would be interesting if the satchel would start out basic and change as you gain in skill or if there were different types. I'm not sure about having any bonuses on it other than weight reduction, I think would be good enough.

I would think that there would be a few different types of potions, i'm gonna guess 3, that I can think of that would be essential. 1 would be a wall forming another would be, a puddle and the third would be the direct or radius contact potion.

Then you would break that down into elemental damage. Like, Ice Wall, Ice Sheet or Cold Blast or Cold Freeze.

Then you would have each element, Cold, Fire, Energy, Physical.

Then I think a way for them to work off of each other. For example: A flammable liquid, where you're doused or you can put several large puddles on the ground and then any form of fire would ignite or a freeze spell would freeze or an energy partical would turn the liquid into energy.

So, then you could catergorize poison types in that way. Either keep the 3 stages of potions or have 1 potion and decide the strength based on skill and enhanced potion bonuses. Maybe have weak and strong, so you would have 2 types or skilled and non-skilled.

Then they could add in maybe some summon potions where you smash the bottle on the ground and an alligator appears in a puff of smoke.