Alchemy and Smithing

[Mith]

and every grand titan drops a smasher (1400 pl) and a bonecrusher (750 pl) (not to mention the other stuff he drops)

[Casper]

ok, if the reasoning behind this is too much plat, then why not make the items from alternate recipes unsellable

That is a solution, but how do you justify it in terms of gameplay? Spell failure can be just justified by there not being such a recipe.

As for alchemy being the only way to obtain some items, huh? in bulk yes, but :
I am looking through the forumlae file everything else is reasonably common. It is easier to find 10 potions of cold immunity than it is to find 10 ice para-elemental residues.

Take the cloak of unholy protection. Almost impossible to find, it is the highest holy word protecting item in the game. It is still too weak to guard against high level banishment, but when rods will get tuned down it should become a nice item to have.

To say that alchemy is the only way to obtain any of the items alchemy can produce or even the easiest way is just plain wrong.

No.

Alchemy now seems the worst way to obtain any of the items that alchemy can produce.

For some of the items I do agree, it is easer to find them than make them for an overall balanced character. But then make the formulae too easy and you will end up with people never leaving their apartments generating millions worth of wealth. I'd say there's more of a case that not enough items can be made through alchemy, and with that it's simply a case of adding more recepies.

If the piles of platinum from alchemy were the problem then the solution would be to make the products of alchemy not valuable to someone trying to sell them to the shops. Instead, alchemy is now very much broken.

In terms of gameplay this would indeed be a strange thing (and in my opinion broken). How exeactly is alchemy broken now?

As for the scripters, they will still make their mountains of plat making philo oil, they don't care if it takes a while, their scripting.

True, but the amount they generate is very different. With alternative formulae enabled it is possible for a lvl 10 woodsman (with lvl 20 summoning and reasonable magic regeneration and movement speed) to generate around... 30bil plat (worth) overnight with the right formula. Nice as it is for the scripter it does hamper the economy significantly.

As for me it is easier to simply buy potions of cold resistance than it is to make them. At alchemy 57, it was still somewhat of a danger to make potions of cold resistance even with the fire alchemists mark.

That is a good point IMO, some things are far easier to go out and find then go out and fight and then risk some more at home. Perhaps some spells need to have their dificulty reduced a litle? Perhaps also make an introductory formula for each skill with difficulty 1 (which looses money) which can be practiced to gain a little xp?

What exactly do you suppose anyone would bother leveling in alchemy to make?

Read above

It's not the economy issue, it's the alternate recipies issue that bothers me. I havn't checked but I imagine I could make gobs of plat from mushroom of gourmet. That isn't a problem because it isn't an alternate recipe. So I suppose I could run a script to make piles of plat doing that, then just buy my potions of cold resistance.

Scripting without alternate recipies does not generate a high revenue as they generally have low yield (will not make you several tens of hundreds of items in one cast) and initial ingredients cost a significant proportion of the final result (menaing that starting with 0 plat you can not just generate ingredients required for the above cast in 3 seconds).

I have millions of plat, I got it from identifying chests and selling the good stuff. Alchemy gave me potions of cold resistance in bulk.

Good for you!

Economy? Every wizard in humanoids drops about 2000 plat worth of stuff?

Exeactly, only 2000 plat!

Other than that an exploit used to exist allowing generation of items that had 100+ resistances. Such super-items made alchemy very (too?) powerful, and ways of obtaining them were completely undocumented, meaning that for many people it looked like a very unfair cheat. Generating such items required alternate recipes to be enabled.

[Mith]

Other than that an exploit used to exist allowing generation of items that had 100+ resistances. Such super-items made alchemy very (too?) powerful, and ways of obtaining them were completely undocumented, meaning that for many people it looked like a very unfair cheat. Generating such items required alternate recipes to be enabled.

Then, why wont we document these features?

currently i am working on some maps 'wizard valley' and i think some alchemy should fit in nicely

I assume these things are quite dangerous to try (uncontrolled mana, evil masters and other unfavoured side effects of alchemy) and will still be dangerous, even when you know what to do.

My idea isnt to give players exact recipes, but rather give them clues how they can get fire+150, cold +110 and elec +115 on their mithril chainmail of unholy protection +15

[Casper]

Other than that an exploit used to exist allowing generation of items that had 100+ resistances. Such super-items made alchemy very (too?) powerful, and ways of obtaining them were completely undocumented, meaning that for many people it looked like a very unfair cheat. Generating such items required alternate recipes to be enabled.

Then, why wont we document these features?

It is no longer possible as alternate formulae no longer work. Besides, this only worked of a select few items in the game, and the effect was very hard to achieve. It can not be expected that if the alternate formulae are enabled anyone without a sound understanding of the (alchemy part of) source code would be able to create such items.

currently i am working on some maps 'wizard valley' and i think some alchemy should fit in nicely

You can do similar things with "fake" alchemy (using altars and such), that way you can create map-specific "cauldrons" (altars with cauldron faces) which would generate only the formulae you request. As for 100+ res items, they are so much more powerful than any item you can find, that they take any point out of adventuring. You would get posts like "Why should I risk my life for some stupid armour if I can more easily make a far better one at home?" The point of CF is to encourage questing and exploration, and having over-powered alchemy does not aid that.

I assume these things are quite dangerous to try (uncontrolled mana, evil masters and other unfavoured side effects of alchemy) and will still be dangerous, even when you know what to do.

Yes, but when used with care is very safe. As I said above, you can create pseudo-alchemy failures by having the map summon monstars and do uncontrolled mana explosions.

My idea isnt to give players exact recipes, but rather give them clues how they can get fire+150, cold +110 and elec +115 on their mithril chainmail of unholy protection +15

The best clue you can give them without giving away the formula is the instructions for downloading the crossfire source code... 100+ res items is not a simple thing you can do to an item and there you have it, it's more of a borderline alchemy theory... if all the regular alchemy formulae were things you learn at school, then the 100+ res items would be PhD research topics. working out how to make them and then to manufacture them would require months.

[Leaf]

The "Dynamic Alchemy" discussion has been moved to it's own thread:
http://www.metalforge.net/cfmb/viewtopic.php?t=814

The "Skill/Alchemy & Item Fatigue" discussion has moved to this thread:
http://www.metalforge.net/cfmb/viewtopic.php?t=815

This thread remains a discussion on the "usefullness" and purpose of item crafting skills & how they affect the economy.

Please post to the appropriate thread. Thanks.

[Casper]

I use a home-made weapon

It gives me lots of attack types and stat bonuses which I like, and with it I am able to hit pretty much anyhting! You just need to pick a suitable weapon as a base for enchanting!

[Aaron]

im sorry, i was the one who killed zeph's class.

i thnk alchemy should still be able to make a tidy sum of money, because of all of the risks it presents.

i also think recipies should be easier to find and read, but harder to make. That explosion was a result of boredom. How many times can you make philosical oil? it just gives you a hell of a lot of platinum. But when i try experimenting to fin other recipies because i cant read any of the books, i ussualy go through 5 cauldrons a night. So all of the money i made is spent buying new cauldrons and potions of life.

and most of the time, the items i summon with alternate recipies are cursed, and un-sellable in the shops.

[Zephyrus]

i it just gives you a hell of a lot of platinum

Not so. Keybound philosophcal oil gives you less yield than charmkill + TC looting. Don't say leaving it on overnight. Most of us have no idea how to do that. Especially since Windows XP doesn't even support the scripting properly as far as I can try.

[Casper]

i it just gives you a hell of a lot of platinum

Not so. Keybound philosophcal oil gives you less yield than charmkill + TC looting. Don't say leaving it on overnight. Most of us have no idea how to do that. Especially since Windows XP doesn't even support the scripting properly as far as I can try.

It does. Make sure you have an up to date client. Since scripts need to be excecued, your script command must point to something that Windows can excecute. So, either it needs to be a compiled Win32 binary, eg.

Code: Select all

'script MakeLotsOfMoney.exe

or an interpreter for the language the script is in with the script passed as an argument. eg (bash script with cygwin).

Code: Select all

'script "C:\bin\bash.exe MakeLotsOfMoney"

(don't remember if you need the double quotes or not)
Also note that all files will be looked for in the client's working directory unless an absolute path is specified.