Alchemy (skill?) and item fatique [topic split]

[Lauwenmark]

Post a clear description on how dynamic alchemy works and I'll implement it.

By clear description, I mean a precise description of the game mechanisms regarding alchemy (eventually provide an example to clarify things). Don't bother with possible implementation details.

Whatever alchemy may become through such a system, rebalancing the current stuff is something that needs to be considered. People are using client scripts to automagically create tons of money during the night with simple formulae ? Make alchemy more dangerous, so the risk of repeatedly doing it without risking your life are increased. Alchemy was never meant to be riskless and industrial - it is supposed to be (just like all other kinds of magic) somewhat dangerous.

There are various ways to increase the risks: make backfires more probable or nastier for example. Or you can introduce a "fatigue" element on the cauldron: the more you use it, the more it is prone to break. And finally, you could also introduce a "fatigue" element on the alchemist him/herself: it sounds logical that you'd need some rest between difficult formulae.

I really don't think toning down the value of created items is a very good idea. If you are brave enough to fiddle with the magical forces to create objects, it is logical to be able to sell them with some profit. Besides that, alchemy is meant to produce highly magical and/or rare items: how do you justify those having no selling value ?

The problem doesn't lies in the value of the created objects IMHO - it comes from the fact that some recipes are simply too easy and riskless to attempt.

Just the two cents of a veteran player.

[Mith]

Post a clear description on how dynamic alchemy works and I'll implement it.

By clear description, I mean a precise description of the game mechanisms regarding alchemy (eventually provide an example to clarify things). Don't bother with possible implementation details.

Thanks for your offer!
I'll make a description soon, though i first have to pass some exams and write a paper. Next week i've 5 days to spent
I suppose you dont yet need a full list of recipes, ingredients and their effects?
Do you want me to post it to the cf-dev list, or just here?

Whatever alchemy may become through such a system, rebalancing the current stuff is something that needs to be considered. People are using client scripts to automagically create tons of money during the night with simple formulae ?

Yes, some formulae only need ingredients you can easily summon (with the summon food spell)
At a higher lvl woodsman (20+) you've a success rate of 100%, and usually convert 7 ingredients to 7 products (just like water of the wise)
the end-product sells for 50+ plat each.
(so actually, you dont even have to run a client and a script over night, you can make a million plat in less than an hour)

Make alchemy more dangerous, so the risk of repeatedly doing it without risking your life are increased.

LOL, according to recent alchemy on MF, it _IS_ very dangerous. i've seen lots of evil masters, shadows, cyclops, demons and others as products of alchemy... (not to mention the uncontrolled mana)

But i think you're right. These things happened when trying random stuff - and thats begging for uncontrollable powers. With neat recipes that are not too hard for your lvl, alchemy is (almost) 100% safe.

There are various ways to increase the risks: ....

Problem is that high lvl alchemy recipes are already likely to fail, nobody likes losing very rare items due to the high change of failure

I really don't think toning down the value of created items is a very good idea.

Not in general, but I think some products should be tuned down. The recipe i mentioned above, for example, gives zillions of plat with almost no efford.

The problem doesn't lies in the value of the created objects IMHO - it comes from the fact that some recipes are simply too easy and riskless to attempt.

Agreed, but some recipes have to be easy for it creates a basic ingredient. You cant make water of <anything> too hard, for example. If one of the recipes thats too easy is such a basic recipe, better tune down its value.

[Rednaxela]

With dynamic alchemy doing things like adding bonuses to items because of the ingreadents added (with very noteably increased item power). Perhaps one could also be able to 'merge' items, combining their statistics with dynamic alchemy, however at the cost of #1 requiring another (or several) ingreadent to facilitate the merging, and #2 a massive increase in item power (perhaps something along the lines of 3 times the sum of their origional item power). However the details of points 1 and 2 above will need to be carefully balanced to avoid abuse of such item merging.

Just and idea I had about something to make dynamic alchemy interesting.

[Mith]

sounds like an easy way to increase damage... add 100 daggers together, then you've a dynamic dagger (dam+200)
i bet this would also increase its weight!

even better: add special daggers together to make a dagger with several attack types. (note: should god-enchanted attack types count?)
who wont like the outcome of the combination of a dagger of valriel, of devourers, of magical hitting, of paralyse, of poison, of ruggilli, of sorig...
(attacks: physical, weaponmagic, fire, cold, electricity, poison, paralyse, depletion, blinding)

only question is: what should 'glue' them together?

now serious, i like the idea, but there should be a way to prevent overpowered items.

side note: maybe items created with dynamic alchemy shouldnt be allowed in further experiments, so if you want to add fire, cold, elec and poison resistance, you have to do so in one run.
(can you ppl please comment on this statement?)

[Rednaxela]

sounds like an easy way to increase damage... add 100 daggers together, then you've a dynamic dagger (dam+200)
i bet this would also increase its weight!

even better: add special daggers together to make a dagger with several attack types. (note: should god-enchanted attack types count?)
who wont like the outcome of the combination of a dagger of valriel, of devourers, of magical hitting, of paralyse, of poison, of ruggilli, of sorig...
(attacks: physical, weaponmagic, fire, cold, electricity, poison, paralyse, depletion, blinding)

only question is: what should 'glue' them together?

Not sure, but it definitly should be something you can't get in at a store or create with spells. (perhaps something you can only get from a quest of some sort)

now serious, i like the idea, but there should be a way to prevent overpowered items.

Well, I think this would work well to prevent overpowered items:
-weight should be the sum of all of the items merged together (and possibly the weight of the glue too)
-perhaps the 'glue' could be heavy enough that it uses up cauldron space so one could'nt put too many weapons together
-and the item power should be increase something along these lines:

Code: Select all

(number of combnants^2)+(sum of origional item powers^1.5)

(the ^ above rerfers to the exponant symbol)
so someone could merge 100 daggers together, but that would have a ridiculious itempower of 10000 even if they were ordinary daggers with no itempower before. This would discourage abuse of combining too many items together, but would still allow people with high levels to combine a demonbane and a dragonbane and such (with a very high, but useable itempower)

But one question that I just thought of, is what should the names and pictures of such merged items be?

side note: maybe items created with dynamic alchemy shouldnt be allowed in further experiments, so if you want to add fire, cold, elec and poison resistance, you have to do so in one run.
(can you ppl please comment on this statement?)

I think that would be good, but I'm not completely sure.

Anyways don't get completely sidetracked my my possible idea for one part of dynamic alchemy, there's many other parts about dymanic alchemy too.

[Mith]

now serious, i like the idea, but there should be a way to prevent overpowered items.

...

maybe i just dont like the idea anyway. (or to be more precize, as a player i would love it, but it makes no sense to me)
i now feel its just like combining a bike with a car to get a motor

the idea beyond alchemy - as far as i understand/intend it - is to enchant an item by adding magical powers to it.
These magical powers need a source, the other items in the cauldron.
You put in several ingredients, then you hope the power some ingredients - dragon steaks, dread eyes - contain move to some other stuff in the cauldron - a plate mail, a chaos sword, a <whatever>

In other words, alchemy is the art of moving magical powers from one object to an other

hence, you cannot move one object into an other. You cant move mass, you cant move damage, but i fail to see why (certain) attack types cant be transferred.

by putting several weapons in a cauldron, the best you might get (or hope) is one weapon with all the magical powers of the others. By taking the daggers as example: by combining a dagger of magical hitting with a dagger of poisoning, you get either a dagger of magical hitting of poisoning and a plain dagger, or the ingredients dont change at all.

when trying this with three daggers (Magical hitting, Poisoning and Ruggilli for example) there are more combinations - 5 to be exact: (mpr,_,_; mp,r,_; mr,p,_; pr,m,_; p,r,m) and even more outcomes, for there are always the 'side effects of alchemy'

So, combining items: no
gambling while moving magical powers: yes, please

(note to admin: i'll create a new thread soon, containing a summary of 'dynamic alchemy')

[Casper]

Post a clear description on how dynamic alchemy works and I'll implement it.

Thanks for volunteering!

Whatever alchemy may become through such a system, rebalancing the current stuff is something that needs to be considered. People are using client scripts to automagically create tons of money during the night with simple formulae ?

Yes, some formulae only need ingredients you can easily summon (with the summon food spell)
At a higher lvl woodsman (20+) you've a success rate of 100%, and usually convert 7 ingredients to 7 products (just like water of the wise)
the end-product sells for 50+ plat each.
(so actually, you dont even have to run a client and a script over night, you can make a million plat in less than an hour)

That has always been the case (or at least for some time now). At low levels alchemy is hard to level, and hurts a lot, which discourages people from it.
At medium levels alchemy is still hard to level, but is now scriptable since easy recipies are now safe to do. However by this time you already have a stock of almost all the alchemy targets, and probably dont have many of the ingredients.
At high levels alchemy is still hard to level (you pretty much need to script to gain levels at any speed) but making low level formulae is safe.
Since there are very few reasons to develop alchemy to a high level, since there are currently no really cool items that you can get through it, very few people actually develop it, and those that do, do it for the money not for the items.
At all levels some recipies have items that are not easy to come by, and having to look for them also discourages players.

There are various ways to increase the risks: ....

Problem is that high lvl alchemy recipes are already likely to fail, nobody likes losing very rare items due to the high change of failure

People are also discouraged from experimenting as most of the experiments are doomed to failure without looking at the source code. And when failures happen, things usually go boom, lose 3 levels, find yourself unable to cast TP any more.
Perhaps if most of the failures were non-fatal, but failures were more common alchemy would actually be fun! and less scriptable. Also when the recepie is wrong, if there was a high (40%-80%) chance of making something (not necessarily an alchemy target, perhaps some funny/mostly useless items with elements that are randomly generated) people would be more inclined to experiment.
For example "Your cauldron becomes alive and starts chasing you!" as a rare failure, but "Your sword lost some weight and became a dagger!" as a more common one.

I really don't think toning down the value of created items is a very good idea.

Not in general, but I think some products should be tuned down. The recipe i mentioned above, for example, gives zillions of plat with almost no efford.

I agree with Lauwenmark, players need to be discouraged from scripting alchemy (through destruction of cauldrons or otherwise) rather than making the items unsellable.

The problem doesn't lies in the value of the created objects IMHO - it comes from the fact that some recipes are simply too easy and riskless to attempt.

Agreed, but some recipes have to be easy for it creates a basic ingredient. You cant make water of <anything> too hard, for example. If one of the recipes thats too easy is such a basic recipe, better tune down its value.

So, on one hand alchemy is too hard and kills innocent noobs before they get anywhere, and hardly anyone uses it because it is too dangerous.
On the other hand those that do use it only make the simple things for money, and never bother with hard things, which is very easy to do.

One must find a way of making it at the same time less dangerous, and less successful at high levels. I think my proposition above may work, by making success rare, lethal failures very very rare, and fun failures common, plentiful, and unpredictable, so it does not get boring, and even some items from failure can be useful and even unique and impossible to recreate again!

[Rednaxela]

maybe i just dont like the idea anyway. (or to be more precize, as a player i would love it, but it makes no sense to me)
i now feel its just like combining a bike with a car to get a motor

Very true, and as you said, perhaps still allowing attacktypes and possibly certain types of weapon improvement bonuses to be transfered to other weapons and such might be good.

I'm quite enthuseastic about this dynamic alchemy idea, and I hope to see it in action soon. I think that the only hard part about doing this is balancing it so it does'nt wreck the economy.

[Leaf]

Do you want me to post it to the cf-dev list, or just here?

The cf-dev mailing list

crossfire (at) metalforge (dot) org

[Aldebaran]

Ok, I may have misunderstood.
If the point of cf is exploration and questing, then why even have skills like bowyer or jeweler?

To have such a skill system implies that you intend for there to be a class of players who are townspeople, craftsmen and not explorers.

It is suggested that having players who never leave town is a bad thing. Do you really only want explorers and questers?
Did you want to have players who specialised in making things? Characters who only did that and the only reason to leave town was to get a mark like fire alchemist or something. Or to prepare for such a journey?

You don't want townspeople? You don't want craftsmen?

You don't want alchemy or jeweler to be a viable sole occupation?

This is why it bothered me so, it looked like the direction of the game was going toward characters who explore, adventurers of various kinds and also makers, craftspeople who don't have to adventure but instead make things.
Suddenly that is changed, and the intention of the change was to make it impossible or difficult to make a living as an alchemist. ONLY scripters would be able to do this. As far as the scripters, let them make their mountains of plat? Who cares? If that is what they want to do, they will soon burn out and switch to doing something else, either a different game, or maybe acquire the goblin chiefs head.

I am watching two boys play this game. One is interested in improving his character, getting more spells, killing bigger and bigger monsters. The other is interested in exploring maps. He is currently working the bunion mushroom quest. He likes puzzels, he likes quests. The first boy has no interest in such things, but he will, when I tell him what is in the tower of stars, or the ball lightning quest. I watched him strategicly kill two dragons to the the prize in the well of intelligence.

Neither is interested in staying in town and making arrows or potions. But if they were, then those options would be closed to them.

Did you really want to require exploration and questiing?

I sense there was a possibility for this game, to expand, become comprehensive, to offer to everyone something to do. But with the ban on alternate recipes, and the suggestion that the point of cf is exploration and questing, then I understand that this is to be nothing more than a really nice version of nethack.

Thats ok, but it could have been more.