...But the parity is still there. Alchemy used to be forests only, and then with the specializations brought in, it was made so most of the general stuff was available to cities, but Lorecrafters, which were still only forest, had some stuff that was needed, while Brewmeisters had their teas and malts. With alchemy becoming a skill without specialization, that distinction wouldn't be there anymore, meaning cities would have the full access to everything alchemy provides, while Tinkering leaves out stuff that only cities could provide, with Cosmic and Elemental.
While you don't see a problem with this, part of the reason Brewmeister and Tinkering came about was because of the divide of skills, and the complaints about how it provided an unfair leverage over other orgs in-game. So giving full access to one skillset while leaving the other only at it's partial is something that will need to be taken into consideration.
Id kind of say yea if you are dropping the full alchemy=forests only bit you should probally drop the spellcraft/ele enchantment for cities only bit as well.
Lets be honest as well we have a lot of tradeskills and not always enough players to cover them all. Cutting down the tradeskills a bit wouldn't be a bad thing for the game health.
1) This isn't the Enchanting topic, so can we please not focus on that specifically? I will touch on it but that is not the topic. The fact that there are two Spellcrafts (Elemental and Cosmic) should answer your questions. What sense does it make to have a guardian be able to enchant cleanse or a mage to enchant nimbus? We can bicker about how things are unfair and such, but nothing in Spellcraft is actually REQUIRED for anything. And if there is actual requirements, move it to base Enchantment or give a clone to Tinkering.
2) Absinthe is still used to let dreamweavers remain asleep and if I remember correctly its how you even got to the dream realm. It's been a while since I've touched that skillset so yes I can be wrong. However, if anything it still gets you massively drunk if I also remember correctly. If it doesn't, make it so!
1) This isn't the Enchanting topic, so can we please not focus on that specifically? I will touch on it but that is not the topic. The fact that there are two Spellcrafts (Elemental and Cosmic) should answer your questions. What sense does it make to have a guardian be able to enchant cleanse or a mage to enchant nimbus? We can bicker about how things are unfair and such, but nothing in Spellcraft is actually REQUIRED for anything. And if there is actual requirements, move it to base Enchantment or give a clone to Tinkering.
2) Absinthe is still used to let dreamweavers remain asleep and if I remember correctly its how you even got to the dream realm. It's been a while since I've touched that skillset so yes I can be wrong. However, if anything it still gets you massively drunk if I also remember correctly. If it doesn't, make it so!
1) Your proposal is changing a long-standing aspect of the game, one that is linked to Enchanting so in that context yes, Enchanting is on-topic.
The simple fact is that it has been an intentional decision to make the stuff in Spellcraft and Lorecraft only available through the Cities and Forests respectively. Sure, Spellcraft is more 1-to-1 but at the same time stuff like vitae and philosophers stones have always been limited to Druids and Wiccans.
Also like... Cleanse, Waterwalk, Gust, Levitate, Web, Icewall, Ignite, and Acquisitio are all on my required lists. (Unless all of the Cleanse stuff is gone now) Afaik, it was always the intention that part of your daily "requirements" would sit with the forests(lorecraft), another with the cities(spellcraft), and the rest are in general skills.
Brewmeister is what gives the cities access to Alchemy, if you delete that and give full Alchemy to the cities then that is unfair to the forests. Similarly though, if you delete it and lock Alchemy back to forests only it's unfair to the cities (though less so cause they still get Spellcraft to bargain with)
2) I actually meant that you're only really moving two skills from Brewmeister into Lorecraft and then saying everything is fine for Alchemy.
So, if you just left Absthine and MagicInk in Brewmeister and added in a couple extra skills to Alchemy and/or Lorecraft you'd get the same effect without deleting a spec and leading to the mess of the cities having access to all trades and the forests missing out on access to one regularly needed spec.
There's bound to be some stuff that you could drop into herbs that could then give them some more sellable stuff but if you couldn't, couldn't you split the herb bundles between the Alchemy skills instead?
Looks like the main issue with a split of the herb groups would be that nearly every recipe in Alchemy requires at least something from either the forest or valley groups.
Used the below split: Alchemy getting Farms, Caves, Hills, and Swamps (7 herbs) Lorecraft getting Valleys, Forests, and Ethereal (9 herbs) Brewmeister getting Wastes, Deserts, Mountains, Seas, and Astral (11 herbs)
Would require trading between Brewmeisters and Lorecrafters to make everything. But whether that's a detriment or a benefit is likely dependent on your personal views of the situation.
This is a pretty big and unnecessary derail. If you are interested in revamping enchantments, go on ahead. If you need help figuring out how to post a new thread, I'd be happy to walk you through it.
Making alchemy both forests and cities is not a big deal, the forests do not only get enchantments because they are holding alchemical goods hostage. It's not really a mess in any real sense of the word because (and this is really important) cities ALREADY GET everything still useful in lorecraft and have since the curing overhaul and it's been manifestly fine. The 1/5 defenses and perfumes becoming marginally more available to cities will not break anything. All that's left in alchemy are frills and minor defenses. If you are concerned about city mages being able to freeze out commune access to cleanse enchants now that they can make the perfumes on their own, move cleanse into base enchanting.
To reiterate: With no changes cities already have access to all important alchemy goods. All of the curatives are now in the base alchemy skill anyways. Lorecraft (and by extensions forests) doesn't have things that cities need.
Would it be really a big deal if we just combined the stuff to let forest do all these fancy enchantments and cities do fire/frost and oils and such?
I'm sort of in two minds about tradeskills overall right now. One of the issues with the economy as I see it is that one person can nearly get everything they need themselves all the important tradeskills have very little in the way of restrictions so you can basically be almost totally self sufficent which isnt great if you want a living working economy with people trading back and forth. So more restrictions could be a good thing.
On the other hand we're short on a lot of folks with the right tradeskills who are about and avaliable. Its a real pain having to dig around to get some random newbie such and such an enchantment. Theres basically two people I know who'll do certain enchantments for me right now and if they are away or busy then its like your out of luck. Then you look at tattoos and finding a tattoo artist is tricky enough.
This is a pretty big and unnecessary derail. If you are interested in revamping enchantments, go on ahead. If you need help figuring out how to post a new thread, I'd be happy to walk you through it.
Making alchemy both forests and cities is not a big deal, the forests do not only get enchantments because they are holding alchemical goods hostage. It's not really a mess in any real sense of the word because (and this is really important) cities ALREADY GET everything still useful in lorecraft and have since the curing overhaul and it's been manifestly fine. The 1/5 defenses and perfumes becoming marginally more available to cities will not break anything. All that's left in alchemy are frills and minor defenses. If you are concerned about city mages being able to freeze out commune access to cleanse enchants now that they can make the perfumes on their own, move cleanse into base enchanting.
To reiterate: With no changes cities already have access to all important alchemy goods. All of the curatives are now in the base alchemy skill anyways. Lorecraft (and by extensions forests) doesn't have things that cities need.
Again, it's something that's been a factor of the game since launch. One that was maintained through Lorecraft and Spellcraft rather than just being removed altogether when Alchemy and Enchanting were made base skills. It's quite literally the reason for why they're in their current state and whether or not there is a need for a separate thread to discuss Enchantment is only really relevant if the clear decision of this thread is that the division of available trades should no longer be the case.
The decision in any direction has wider and rather obvious implications, you may not want to think about them but it doesn't stop them from being there. For example, Veyils noting that a reason to do this is the coverage of tradeskills and the potential discussion of general availability vs restrictions.
It's also seeming that the issue is more that Spellcraft is considered fine because it's wares are still considered necessities while Lorecraft isn't because it's aren't.
In terms of pure stuff to make, sell and use. Not looking at self defs and such.
Forest got frost and fire which is needed for all. Plus oils for influence.
Would it be really a big deal if we just combined the stuff to let forest do all these fancy enchantments and cities do fire/frost and oils and such?
I'm sort of in two minds about tradeskills overall right now. One of the issues with the economy as I see it is that one person can nearly get everything they need themselves all the important tradeskills have very little in the way of restrictions so you can basically be almost totally self sufficent which isnt great if you want a living working economy with people trading back and forth. So more restrictions could be a good thing.
On the other hand we're short on a lot of folks with the right tradeskills who are about and avaliable. Its a real pain having to dig around to get some random newbie such and such an enchantment. Theres basically two people I know who'll do certain enchantments for me right now and if they are away or busy then its like your out of luck. Then you look at tattoos and finding a tattoo artist is tricky enough.
I think the answer to whether or not it would be a big deal depends on the last two paragraphs. If restrictions to promote trading/economy and reduce self sufficiency are a good thing then not combining is beneficial because you have limited specs that you can put attractive wares in. (Arguably, you could put ice and/or slush up into Lorecraft, for example)
If more generic availability is more important then combining them is the way to go.
Also, more broadly if Alchemy did move to more generic availability, then there's considerations of who actually gets it. Does it stay with Wiccans, Druids, and Bards. Does it also become available to Monks and Warriors? Do you lift the Lowmagic requirement (unless that's already gone) and allow Mages and Guardians? Which is kinda linked to Forging, Tattoos, and Enchanting being limited to their respective classes. But also, if that's done then the only tradesperson I would ever need ever again would be a tattooist until that gets envoyed away.
It's a thing that has been a factor since launch... and died as the curing overhaul went into effect, as mentioned at the start of the thread. The existing status quo is that cities do not need lorecrafters for anything but convenience (and fire defense, which is nice but by no means necessary). Because of this fact, the question "is this a big deal" has been answered by the state of the game thus far: it's not a big deal.
Requiring that any changes to alchemy also rework the entire enchantment cluster derails the conversation to preserve something that already is dead. Simplify down alchemy to remove the crusty old skills and fill back in an otherwise empty trade tree, start a thread about enchantment to simplify it if necessary, then look towards restricting each to cities or forests as a third issue. No need to entangle all three. No benefit to entangling all three. Stop entangling all three.
It's a thing that has been a factor since launch... and died as the curing overhaul went into effect, as mentioned at the start of the thread. The existing status quo is that cities do not need lorecrafters for anything but convenience (and fire defense, which is nice but by no means necessary). Because of this fact, the question "is this a big deal" has been answered by the state of the game thus far: it's not a big deal.
Requiring that any changes to alchemy also rework the entire enchantment cluster derails the conversation to preserve something that already is dead. Simplify down alchemy to remove the crusty old skills and fill back in an otherwise empty trade tree, start a thread about enchantment to simplify it if necessary, then look towards restricting each to cities or forests as a third issue. No need to entangle all three. No benefit to entangling all three. Stop entangling all three.
I'm starting to think that "derailing" to you is any kind of criticism. You're not the arbiter of what is and is not relevant, which I'm thankful for when your arguments appear to boil down to "because I said so." If you want to discuss Tattoos, Monks are going to come up. If you want to discuss Toadcurse, you should be prepared to talk about both Wiccan classes. If you want to talk Alchemy, I'm not sure why you're surprised that people are bringing up Enchantment, and I'm not sure why you expect "stop talking about it!" to work.
The fact that there are trade goods exclusive to each grouping of orgs hasn't actually gone away. Really, all the attempts to stop talk about Enchantment are doing is reinforcing that what the overhaul did was remove value from the "forest trade" while the "city trade" was unaffected.
Lorecraft not having "value" is something that could be fixed without removing the skill and the split isn't dead until all trades are directly accessible by all orgs. Arguing that this should be the first step towards that is arguing to change the status quo rather than repairing the skills affected. That is an entirely fair view and a discussion to have.
I also imagine it's something that any report attempting to change the split would need to address when sent to the Admin, as you would expect in the examples @Sylphas provided.
I personally think a review of trades would be a really good thing. Looking at the notes Veyils made, maybe looking at more interactions between trades, figuring out a baseline for how many "necessities" each has and the like. Which is also why I'd rather see Lorecraft and Herbs get a bit of love for now, and then deal with the potential removal of skills in something like that instead.
Cause like, you could go through the whole thing of deleting the specs, have threads up trying to change Enchanting, and then have the discussion about the future of trades end up deciding to revert all of that cause restricting how much any one player can make ends up looking more beneficial to the economy. I'd be willing to bet if you asked people about each of the trades you'd likely find complaints about the state of most of them, so kinda seems like the discussion is happening in the wrong order.
Sylphas, do you have any particular proposals you'd like to make regarding a revamp of Enchantments?
I feel like you kinda need to start looking at the justifications for making Lorecraft available to cities. Cause, aside from shifting two recipes from Brewmeister to Lorecraft, that's effectively your suggestion for Alchemy. And if adding two skills to Lorecraft is sufficient to resolve the issue, why not just create two new ones and leave Alchemy otherwise as it? In turn, trying to make Spellcraft available to the forests wouldn't really be up for consideration any more because you're no longer removing the intentional division.
Herbs may not have their curative properties any more but from memory, pretty much all of them are required through skills in Alchemy, Arts, Bookbinding, Cooking, Ecology, and maybe some others. Demand has definitely dropped, there's no denying that but there could be ways to adjust supply so that each herb is more valuable or even an increase in the number of herbs needed in the various abilities that use them.
Or, per the other suggestion further up, instead of splitting Alchemy, split herbs (which doesn't come bundled with the Enchantment considerations)? If everything in Alchemy maintains its demands and herbs has dropped to practically nothing, then you're just adding that little bit into Alchemy to replace what it's lost.
EDIT: Arguably, you could even justify reducing some skills in Brewmeister because they'd get extras
Sylphas, do you have any particular proposals you'd like to make regarding a revamp of Enchantments?
I don't think Enchantment needs a "revamp." I just think it's part of the conversation when you start discussing Alchemy. My main issue so far with this has simply been the perceived attitude that literally anything outside of Alchemy, Lorecraft, and Herbs is off-topic in this thread. If someone asks what you mean to do with the non-trade part of Brewmeister, it's dismissed. If someone mentions the forest/city split between alchemy and enchantment, it's dismissed. It boggles my mind how much tunnel vision is on display here.
Personally, if it were up to me, I'd probably axe all four specializations in Alchemy and Enchanting and start from there. If we wanted to keep the split, I might make it a flavor-only split and simply make potions that give the enchanting buffs and vice versa. If not, just lock Alchemy to Low Magic and Enchanting to High Magic and call it a day. After that, you're into the easy part of the idea, which is basically "What does Alchemy get, what does Herbs get, and what does Cooking get?"
From my perspective, the issue with the proposal that started this off is that you guys did the easy stuff and you really just don't feel like talking about the harder stuff.
So, it's the new year vacation period, and I have some time to dick around, so I thought I'd check out the forums, and this thread caught my attention, because herbs was my favourite trade skill up until the first day I learned and tried to harvest and promptly decided to ditch it. This got me excited of the possibility of a rework that would make it not mind-numbingly boring. While I was disappointed on that front, at least the bickering is still the same as ever.
Since I'm here anyway, just to offer my two-cents: herbs is probably fine as-is, once someone fixes the waste of time that is harvesting. Don't need to add more stuff to it, even if most of its individual herbs no longer cure anything. As long as there is demand for the herbs to make curatives (which there are), the skillset functions well enough as a trade. If anything, sparkleberry alone is the bulk of the value of taking herbs as a trade - the overhaul didn't change that. Truth be told, though I'm whining about the harvesting mechanics, it's also what is keeping sparkleberry valuable, I guess. But anyway, I digress.
The loss of function for lorecrafts' variety of potions is probably the more valid problem. If you want to merge lorecraft and brewmeister (as seems to be the case here), it's probably better to ditch lorecraft for brewmeister, since the latter is more interesting flavour-wise. Keep the teas where they are, slot in the remaining functional potions and liquids into the skillset. Remove or tone down the combat abilities as neccesary, or not - where trade combat perks go, herbs and armour based trades have always had their lock-hold as the trades you take for combat. I vaguely remember there were plans to tone down the herbs combat perks for that very reason (too strong?) did anything come out of that? Anyway, I digress again.
Finally, the point about skillset restrictions... lol. Really, who cares? Just take all the skillsets and open them to the general public. How hard is it to pluck plants from the ground, and how hard is to mash them plants up, measure them into cups, dump them into a cauldron and swirl them around? Enchantments are a tougher sell to make public, but we're all creative people here. Rename it "mechanism" or something and make it a steam-punk based skillset that is all about creating mechanical equivalents of spells, and which therefore requires not highmagic and cosmic spell-slinging, but craftsmanship to create. Basically, take tinkering and make it cooler. Tada.
Make the skillsets generally available for equity, and you also contribute slightly to alleviating, with one stone, the other problem (can't find people with tradeskills) that has been floating about here and there. This isn't the "harder stuff" - this is possibly one of the less important parts of the conversation. If anything, everyone should be jumping on the chance to make more trade skillsets generally available. You know what's the hard part that everyone seems to be ignoring? Making herbs less of a complete waste of time while retaining its value. Now that's something worth talking about.
@Sylphas: As Lerad points out, it isn't as simple as just adding two abilities to Lorecraft. If that was all that was necessary, I'd have just done that. It's Herbs that are the problem here. Right now, Herbs has four direct-to-market goods (stuff that you can sell in a shop directly and have non-tradespeople buy) and fifteen commodity goods (stuff that's only of interest to other tradeskills). Compare Jewelry with five direct-to-market goods and eighteen commodity goods.
Assuming you wanted to fix Alchemy and Herbs without merging or moving any skills, you'd want, at a minimum, two new Lorecraft recipes, new uses for Earwort*, Merbloom**, Yarrow**, Wormwood** and Faeleaf*** and plus another two or three direct-to-market skills in Herbs. None of which can be new cures, disrupt combat balance or rely on buy-in to new minigames like miniature battles or pyschodrama, but which must still be good enough that people really do buy them for non-niche purposes.
Opening up Enchantments requires no such needle threading - just a solution to the thematic issue of how non-mages and non-guardians are enchanting mage and guardian spells.
*Absolutely no post-Overhaul use. **Used only in small amounts in a single potion. ***Primarily of use as a tint in Tattoos.
If it's not as simple as adding two abilities to lorecraft, then why did you literally just add two abilities to lorecraft? From brewmeister? At least one of which seems to be extremely niche and marginal even then.
I'm looking over the jewellery skill list, and I can't find eighteen goods only of interest to other tradespeople. Gems and powerstones are kinda hitting my limit here. I'm not sure the fact that most of the stuff -can- be enchanted makes them only of interest to other tradespeople, given players can, and do, buy them for RP. I'm not even sure why that's relevant. By your counts, all we -actually- need is one more direct-to-consumer herb product, and maybe three more trade items. And that's if achieving parity with jewellery is either necessary or what we want to do!
How about this: If Lorecraft is genuinely in a place where all it needs are Absinthe and MagicInk and people will want it again... then it's genuinely in a place where people are fine where it is. Finish removing any effects that the purgatives have (Choleric curing Love I think is it) and delist them. Lorecraft is saved. For Herbs, well... we can get rid of earwort and merbloom, since that's part of your proposal. Now shake things up and change the present alchemy formulas to accommodate yarrow, wormwood, and faeleaf. Finally, make it a design trade that can design floral arrangements and scented candles. Brewmeister can stay just as it is until someone goes through the trades and removes all PK effects from all tradeskills, but since that involves tradeskills that are not related to herbs and alchemy, discussing them is beyond the scope of this thread. Meanwhile, brewmeister has a thematic resonance that some people like and possibly use for RP, as well as creating the highly important tea and malt commodities used to make the drinks that upkeep two of the monk classes. Also it has the legendary and highly desirable Absinthe and MagicInk. As for enchanters, well, they no longer enchant cosmic or elemental spells on items. Instead, enchanters learn ancient... trill runes or something that can empower jewellery with effects exactly similar to those already present. Enchant your wand with the burninate glyph, and destroy those pesky icewalls.
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!
@Moi Herbs being a commodity producing skill is entirely valid, also...
Earwort is accurate Merbloom is in Allheale if it remains, Frost, and Vitae Yarrow is in GreenTint, Health, Allheale if it remains, Wafers, and ValleySmudges. Wormwood is in Ice and Absinthe Faeleaf is in Goldtint, Love, Absinthe, and Vitae
Also they're likely going to be in a variety of existing designs already, which also brings up another potential solution. Rather than having them need a mechanical effect you could find some use seeing if the Charites would okay them for special effects in crafting, similar to how essence already works.
If they're good enough then designers will use them in their designs just like people already use essence in them, could even make recipes that require multiple herbs and maybe an essence to make a special comm that's just for those designs. Could also potentially be used in the org potions allowing Herbs users to effectively gather essence for Alchemists. And yarrow seems used in a decent number of things to be fine, especially considering it's in wafers.
Herbs is literally the only source of commodities that various skills require, either directly or indirectly because those skills require tints.
As for changing up how herb gathering works, a random idea of greenhouses came to mind, let people construct them and hire gardeners to tend the plants, providing a small money sink. They could fill up a small bin that the owner of the greenhouse can collect herbs from every day with a maximum, you can make the artifact gardens better by not having the gardener payments and a higher cap on the max number of herbs? Could set them up for a specific environment too and maybe lower the max number of herbs in the wild.
Took a brief break from this, because things were just getting stale and the same things repeated. I'll do what I can to explain things to answer what people call criticism and address why we state the things we have with more clarity since it wasn't made clear enough apparently.
It wasn't as simple as just adding two new skills to Lorecraft, and the snark being pointed that way is less helpful and more of just not wanting to actually help. This thread was made to take suggestions for these specific trades. That is the topic. Not a single person here is trying to say its not linked. This is why we keep asking, usually politely, to remain on topic and have already stated, which I'm sure was glossed over, that a thread can and will be made for Enchantment. We've also asked for ideas to improve upon this, in which more complaints came in than suggestions, but some did happen and if you notice, updates to the original post were made.
As its also been overly stated, the vast majority of useful items in Alchemy are already in the base skillset, and as a side note - Lorecraft and Spellcraft were NOT HERE ON LAUNCH. Those were introduced when later, thank you. It was originally Wiccan and Druids for Alchemy only, Mages and Guardians for Enchantment. There were no specializations on launch, the skills in Enchantment differed based on your current class, kind of like how the OrgPotions show up in base Alchemy now. When Bards were given Alchemy and Brewmeister, Lorecraft became a specialization, in which the perfumes and such were made. Enchantment is a tougher nut to crack in simplifying BECAUSE they are actual class skills that are trained, and put on jewelry. I loved the idea of Tinkering getting steampunk versions of things! I enjoyed the idea of making mechanical versions of other enchantments (kind of like the yoyo does acquisitio etc). We hear those ideas and they're great, but it has nothing to do with the current topic.
Good points were brought up on both sides but clarification is in order. Lorecraft, in this proposal, lost more skills than they gained ... as anybody who actually HAS Lorecraft would notice. Lorecraft and Brewmeister specializations are being reverted back to the launch Alchemy, but still being class trades of Wiccan, Druids, and Bards. The only part of the argument I dislike is requiring every organization to be able to have access to everything. Last time I checked a Commune has always been allied to a City, except in the events of the Hai'gloh. Making statements that trade skills should be at ransom to force interaction just means you don't believe in the political aspect of the game. Nobody stated they should be held at ransom, but just pointing that out. What needs to be agreed upon is that locking things behind a requirement that is a whole organizational choice is silly. It is bad enough you can barely find someone of the trade you're looking for, MUCH LESS IN YOUR OWN ORGANIZATION. It is honestly bad enough as is feeling obligated to take a trade skill because I qualify for it, and people need it.
tl;dr
Read the topic, stay on topic, and offer ideas or support.
Several people seem to feel that your proposal creates an undue
imbalance in the game, and no efforts are made to address that beyond
"go make your own thread" and "we have alliances, yo". The first is
vastly unhelpful - the imbalance is not with Enchantment, but with the
-after effects of this very proposal-. Why make another thread about how
to resolve the Enchantment imbalance caused by your proposal? It is
well within topic to discuss here. The second doesn't address the
fundamental concern. Forests would be at a disadvantage. Is it much of
one? How much of a concern is it really? Well, that's up for discussion,
but again, it's relevant to this thread.
As to the actual
proposal. Again, this is stated as an Alchemy/Herbs revamp. There is
basically no revamping of Alchemy. One of the very proponents of this
idea states in this thread that lorecraft is basically a waste and none
of the abilities are useful or necessary. And yet Lorecraft is what
remains, with Brewmeistery shunted off for various reasons - it's
largely PK, it was made for Dwarf but provides no bonus anymore, it's
not fair that bards get specialties. Of this, exactly 2 skills are kept -
Absinthe, whose use is questioned in this thread, and MagicInk, which
has to go somewhere. Yes, there is a bit of arbitrary rearranging of the
Alchemy skill path. But to me, this whole thing flies in the face of
the very premise of this rework - the overhaul has devalued Alchemy, and
it needs to be fixed. I can't find any way where your proposal addresses
THIS, because it's basically just axing a speciality. This is why I
have so much concern and objection to the issue. It completely doesn't
fix one of the very skills it claims to want to fix. And the other gets
castoffs. Especially when there are calls for opposition to develop new skills for all three skills. Your proposal does not do that. It leaves Alchemy/Lorecraft virtually untouched. If influencing oils and elemental resist pots aren't enough to entice someone to Lorecraft currently, why would they be when there's only one Alchemy skill? And I, personally, don't think Brewmeistery needs to go away, so to me that implies that status quo is good enough for now. We can table that, and come back later if needed, since as was helpfully pointed out, there's no reason to have to consider multiple skillsets at a time.
This leaves herbs. Well, perhaps Herbs needs new abilities. Either way, one thing it needs is to have all available herbs reassessed for use across all alchemy recipes and other assorted skills that use herbs to make sure every one is in enough demand. So let's work from here. If every herb has a distinct use and demand in other recipes, then where do we stand? How many abilities are needed to make Herbs viable at that point? Would my suggestion to make a design/craft element work? Boutonnieres, corsages, bouquets, centrepieces, wreaths, maybe candles with custom ambients, something of the like.
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!
It wasn't as simple as just adding two new skills to Lorecraft, and the snark being pointed that way is less helpful and more of just not wanting to actually help.
@Sylphas: As Lerad points out, it isn't as simple as just adding two abilities to Lorecraft. ... Assuming you wanted to fix Alchemy and Herbs without merging or moving any skills, you'd want, at a minimum, two new Lorecraft recipes
The number two is literally coming from the OP because that is what was suggested there. If two isn't enough then the suggestion in the OP is insufficient by your own declarations and if you added more the question would naturally become "Why not just add those to Lorecraft?"
This thread was made to take suggestions for these specific trades. That is the topic. Not a single person here is trying to say its not linked. This is why we keep asking, usually politely, to remain on topic and have already stated, which I'm sure was glossed over, that a thread can and will be made for Enchantment.
Yeah, they're linked and what you're demanding here is that one discussion (should the division of available trades continue) be split over two separate topics. Which is inefficient and ultimately prevents the discussion from reasonably happening. A discussion which could see this suggestion thrown out because people might want to actually keep the split. (Which some could be indicating with their posts)
As its also been overly stated, the vast majority of useful items in Alchemy are already in the base skillset, and as a side note - Lorecraft and Spellcraft were NOT HERE ON LAUNCH. Those were introduced when later, thank you. It was originally Wiccan and Druids for Alchemy only, Mages and Guardians for Enchantment. There were no specializations on launch, the skills in Enchantment differed based on your current class, kind of like how the OrgPotions show up in base Alchemy now. When Bards were given Alchemy and Brewmeister, Lorecraft became a specialization, in which the perfumes and such were made.
Yes... and that original Alchemy was effectively what you're suggesting now, just keeping the oils to replace the lost curatives.
Good points were brought up on both sides but clarification is in order. Lorecraft, in this proposal, lost more skills than they gained ... as anybody who actually HAS Lorecraft would notice.
As someone has multiple trades (including both Lorecraft and Brewmeister), I've noticed that Alchemy also has more sellable items that are required for combat than pretty much any other trade skill, particularly stuff that everyone in the game needs(unless you're not moving leaving your city). Which is a point others have brought up and seems to have been glossed over.
Making statements that trade skills should be at ransom to force interaction just means you don't believe in the political aspect of the game. Nobody stated they should be held at ransom, but just pointing that out. What needs to be agreed upon is that locking things behind a requirement that is a whole organizational choice is silly. It is bad enough you can barely find someone of the trade you're looking for, MUCH LESS IN YOUR OWN ORGANIZATION. It is honestly bad enough as is feeling obligated to take a trade skill because I qualify for it, and people need it.
tl;dr
Read the topic, stay on topic, and offer ideas or support.
You may not think it's a factor, but if there was an actual discussion about it maybe people might determine that it should be enhanced rather than elimited.
You have obviously made up your mind on the topic, but whether or not "locking things behind a requirement that is a whole organizational choice is silly" is a discussion to be had, because envoying and pushing to remove that, then having a discussion afterwards to determine if that's the path people actually want trades to go down is not just silly, it's a massive waste of time.
Also if you can't find someone with a trade... welcome to the club? If that's an argument then Tattoos... Artisan... Cooking... Bookbinding are all in need of an overhaul. They're each skills that I've taken purely because I couldn't find someone with them and regularly flexed because people needed them and couldn't find anyone. I currently maintain tattoos because it's the worst offender.
If that's your reasoning, then really we should be looking at the level of profitability for all trades, where it's at, what it should be, and then how we can raise the various trades up to that level in their own threads.
Comments
While you don't see a problem with this, part of the reason Brewmeister and Tinkering came about was because of the divide of skills, and the complaints about how it provided an unfair leverage over other orgs in-game. So giving full access to one skillset while leaving the other only at it's partial is something that will need to be taken into consideration.
Lets be honest as well we have a lot of tradeskills and not always enough players to cover them all. Cutting down the tradeskills a bit wouldn't be a bad thing for the game health.
1) This isn't the Enchanting topic, so can we please not focus on that specifically? I will touch on it but that is not the topic. The fact that there are two Spellcrafts (Elemental and Cosmic) should answer your questions. What sense does it make to have a guardian be able to enchant cleanse or a mage to enchant nimbus? We can bicker about how things are unfair and such, but nothing in Spellcraft is actually REQUIRED for anything. And if there is actual requirements, move it to base Enchantment or give a clone to Tinkering.
2) Absinthe is still used to let dreamweavers remain asleep and if I remember correctly its how you even got to the dream realm. It's been a while since I've touched that skillset so yes I can be wrong. However, if anything it still gets you massively drunk if I also remember correctly. If it doesn't, make it so!
The simple fact is that it has been an intentional decision to make the stuff in Spellcraft and Lorecraft only available through the Cities and Forests respectively. Sure, Spellcraft is more 1-to-1 but at the same time stuff like vitae and philosophers stones have always been limited to Druids and Wiccans.
Also like... Cleanse, Waterwalk, Gust, Levitate, Web, Icewall, Ignite, and Acquisitio are all on my required lists. (Unless all of the Cleanse stuff is gone now) Afaik, it was always the intention that part of your daily "requirements" would sit with the forests(lorecraft), another with the cities(spellcraft), and the rest are in general skills.
Brewmeister is what gives the cities access to Alchemy, if you delete that and give full Alchemy to the cities then that is unfair to the forests. Similarly though, if you delete it and lock Alchemy back to forests only it's unfair to the cities (though less so cause they still get Spellcraft to bargain with)
2) I actually meant that you're only really moving two skills from Brewmeister into Lorecraft and then saying everything is fine for Alchemy.
So, if you just left Absthine and MagicInk in Brewmeister and added in a couple extra skills to Alchemy and/or Lorecraft you'd get the same effect without deleting a spec and leading to the mess of the cities having access to all trades and the forests missing out on access to one regularly needed spec.
There's bound to be some stuff that you could drop into herbs that could then give them some more sellable stuff but if you couldn't, couldn't you split the herb bundles between the Alchemy skills instead?
P.S. cleanse enchant is still needed for people without soap that are facing druids with Sap or Illums with sludgeworms.
Used the below split:
Alchemy getting Farms, Caves, Hills, and Swamps (7 herbs)
Lorecraft getting Valleys, Forests, and Ethereal (9 herbs)
Brewmeister getting Wastes, Deserts, Mountains, Seas, and Astral (11 herbs)
Would require trading between Brewmeisters and Lorecrafters to make everything. But whether that's a detriment or a benefit is likely dependent on your personal views of the situation.
Making alchemy both forests and cities is not a big deal, the forests do not only get enchantments because they are holding alchemical goods hostage. It's not really a mess in any real sense of the word because (and this is really important) cities ALREADY GET everything still useful in lorecraft and have since the curing overhaul and it's been manifestly fine. The 1/5 defenses and perfumes becoming marginally more available to cities will not break anything. All that's left in alchemy are frills and minor defenses. If you are concerned about city mages being able to freeze out commune access to cleanse enchants now that they can make the perfumes on their own, move cleanse into base enchanting.
To reiterate: With no changes cities already have access to all important alchemy goods. All of the curatives are now in the base alchemy skill anyways. Lorecraft (and by extensions forests) doesn't have things that cities need.
Forest got frost and fire which is needed for all. Plus oils for influence.
Cities got waterwalk/nimbus/gust/levitate/waterbreathe/geyser/web/icewall/ignite/acquisitio
Would it be really a big deal if we just combined the stuff to let forest do all these fancy enchantments and cities do fire/frost and oils and such?
I'm sort of in two minds about tradeskills overall right now. One of the issues with the economy as I see it is that one person can nearly get everything they need themselves all the important tradeskills have very little in the way of restrictions so you can basically be almost totally self sufficent which isnt great if you want a living working economy with people trading back and forth. So more restrictions could be a good thing.
On the other hand we're short on a lot of folks with the right tradeskills who are about and avaliable. Its a real pain having to dig around to get some random newbie such and such an enchantment. Theres basically two people I know who'll do certain enchantments for me right now and if they are away or busy then its like your out of luck. Then you look at tattoos and finding a tattoo artist is tricky enough.
Fire strictly speaking isn't either, as the freezing conditions are cured by purity dust, but the fire potion defense is useful.
The decision in any direction has wider and rather obvious implications, you may not want to think about them but it doesn't stop them from being there. For example, Veyils noting that a reason to do this is the coverage of tradeskills and the potential discussion of general availability vs restrictions.
It's also seeming that the issue is more that Spellcraft is considered fine because it's wares are still considered necessities while Lorecraft isn't because it's aren't. I think the answer to whether or not it would be a big deal depends on the last two paragraphs.
If restrictions to promote trading/economy and reduce self sufficiency are a good thing then not combining is beneficial because you have limited specs that you can put attractive wares in. (Arguably, you could put ice and/or slush up into Lorecraft, for example)
If more generic availability is more important then combining them is the way to go.
Also, more broadly if Alchemy did move to more generic availability, then there's considerations of who actually gets it.
Does it stay with Wiccans, Druids, and Bards. Does it also become available to Monks and Warriors? Do you lift the Lowmagic requirement (unless that's already gone) and allow Mages and Guardians?
Which is kinda linked to Forging, Tattoos, and Enchanting being limited to their respective classes. But also, if that's done then the only tradesperson I would ever need ever again would be a tattooist until that gets envoyed away.
Requiring that any changes to alchemy also rework the entire enchantment cluster derails the conversation to preserve something that already is dead. Simplify down alchemy to remove the crusty old skills and fill back in an otherwise empty trade tree, start a thread about enchantment to simplify it if necessary, then look towards restricting each to cities or forests as a third issue. No need to entangle all three. No benefit to entangling all three. Stop entangling all three.
Lorecraft not having "value" is something that could be fixed without removing the skill and the split isn't dead until all trades are directly accessible by all orgs. Arguing that this should be the first step towards that is arguing to change the status quo rather than repairing the skills affected. That is an entirely fair view and a discussion to have.
I also imagine it's something that any report attempting to change the split would need to address when sent to the Admin, as you would expect in the examples @Sylphas provided.
I personally think a review of trades would be a really good thing. Looking at the notes Veyils made, maybe looking at more interactions between trades, figuring out a baseline for how many "necessities" each has and the like. Which is also why I'd rather see Lorecraft and Herbs get a bit of love for now, and then deal with the potential removal of skills in something like that instead.
Cause like, you could go through the whole thing of deleting the specs, have threads up trying to change Enchanting, and then have the discussion about the future of trades end up deciding to revert all of that cause restricting how much any one player can make ends up looking more beneficial to the economy. I'd be willing to bet if you asked people about each of the trades you'd likely find complaints about the state of most of them, so kinda seems like the discussion is happening in the wrong order.
In turn, trying to make Spellcraft available to the forests wouldn't really be up for consideration any more because you're no longer removing the intentional division.
Herbs may not have their curative properties any more but from memory, pretty much all of them are required through skills in Alchemy, Arts, Bookbinding, Cooking, Ecology, and maybe some others. Demand has definitely dropped, there's no denying that but there could be ways to adjust supply so that each herb is more valuable or even an increase in the number of herbs needed in the various abilities that use them.
Or, per the other suggestion further up, instead of splitting Alchemy, split herbs (which doesn't come bundled with the Enchantment considerations)? If everything in Alchemy maintains its demands and herbs has dropped to practically nothing, then you're just adding that little bit into Alchemy to replace what it's lost.
EDIT: Arguably, you could even justify reducing some skills in Brewmeister because they'd get extras
Personally, if it were up to me, I'd probably axe all four specializations in Alchemy and Enchanting and start from there. If we wanted to keep the split, I might make it a flavor-only split and simply make potions that give the enchanting buffs and vice versa. If not, just lock Alchemy to Low Magic and Enchanting to High Magic and call it a day. After that, you're into the easy part of the idea, which is basically "What does Alchemy get, what does Herbs get, and what does Cooking get?"
From my perspective, the issue with the proposal that started this off is that you guys did the easy stuff and you really just don't feel like talking about the harder stuff.
Since I'm here anyway, just to offer my two-cents: herbs is probably fine as-is, once someone fixes the waste of time that is harvesting. Don't need to add more stuff to it, even if most of its individual herbs no longer cure anything. As long as there is demand for the herbs to make curatives (which there are), the skillset functions well enough as a trade. If anything, sparkleberry alone is the bulk of the value of taking herbs as a trade - the overhaul didn't change that. Truth be told, though I'm whining about the harvesting mechanics, it's also what is keeping sparkleberry valuable, I guess. But anyway, I digress.
The loss of function for lorecrafts' variety of potions is probably the more valid problem. If you want to merge lorecraft and brewmeister (as seems to be the case here), it's probably better to ditch lorecraft for brewmeister, since the latter is more interesting flavour-wise. Keep the teas where they are, slot in the remaining functional potions and liquids into the skillset. Remove or tone down the combat abilities as neccesary, or not - where trade combat perks go, herbs and armour based trades have always had their lock-hold as the trades you take for combat. I vaguely remember there were plans to tone down the herbs combat perks for that very reason (too strong?) did anything come out of that? Anyway, I digress again.
Finally, the point about skillset restrictions... lol. Really, who cares? Just take all the skillsets and open them to the general public. How hard is it to pluck plants from the ground, and how hard is to mash them plants up, measure them into cups, dump them into a cauldron and swirl them around? Enchantments are a tougher sell to make public, but we're all creative people here. Rename it "mechanism" or something and make it a steam-punk based skillset that is all about creating mechanical equivalents of spells, and which therefore requires not highmagic and cosmic spell-slinging, but craftsmanship to create. Basically, take tinkering and make it cooler. Tada.
Make the skillsets generally available for equity, and you also contribute slightly to alleviating, with one stone, the other problem (can't find people with tradeskills) that has been floating about here and there. This isn't the "harder stuff" - this is possibly one of the less important parts of the conversation. If anything, everyone should be jumping on the chance to make more trade skillsets generally available. You know what's the hard part that everyone seems to be ignoring? Making herbs less of a complete waste of time while retaining its value. Now that's something worth talking about.
Assuming you wanted to fix Alchemy and Herbs without merging or moving any skills, you'd want, at a minimum, two new Lorecraft recipes, new uses for Earwort*, Merbloom**, Yarrow**, Wormwood** and Faeleaf*** and plus another two or three direct-to-market skills in Herbs. None of which can be new cures, disrupt combat balance or rely on buy-in to new minigames like miniature battles or pyschodrama, but which must still be good enough that people really do buy them for non-niche purposes.
Opening up Enchantments requires no such needle threading - just a solution to the thematic issue of how non-mages and non-guardians are enchanting mage and guardian spells.
*Absolutely no post-Overhaul use.
**Used only in small amounts in a single potion.
***Primarily of use as a tint in Tattoos.
I'm looking over the jewellery skill list, and I can't find eighteen goods only of interest to other tradespeople. Gems and powerstones are kinda hitting my limit here. I'm not sure the fact that most of the stuff -can- be enchanted makes them only of interest to other tradespeople, given players can, and do, buy them for RP. I'm not even sure why that's relevant. By your counts, all we -actually- need is one more direct-to-consumer herb product, and maybe three more trade items. And that's if achieving parity with jewellery is either necessary or what we want to do!
How about this: If Lorecraft is genuinely in a place where all it needs are Absinthe and MagicInk and people will want it again... then it's genuinely in a place where people are fine where it is. Finish removing any effects that the purgatives have (Choleric curing Love I think is it) and delist them. Lorecraft is saved. For Herbs, well... we can get rid of earwort and merbloom, since that's part of your proposal. Now shake things up and change the present alchemy formulas to accommodate yarrow, wormwood, and faeleaf. Finally, make it a design trade that can design floral arrangements and scented candles. Brewmeister can stay just as it is until someone goes through the trades and removes all PK effects from all tradeskills, but since that involves tradeskills that are not related to herbs and alchemy, discussing them is beyond the scope of this thread. Meanwhile, brewmeister has a thematic resonance that some people like and possibly use for RP, as well as creating the highly important tea and malt commodities used to make the drinks that upkeep two of the monk classes. Also it has the legendary and highly desirable Absinthe and MagicInk. As for enchanters, well, they no longer enchant cosmic or elemental spells on items. Instead, enchanters learn ancient... trill runes or something that can empower jewellery with effects exactly similar to those already present. Enchant your wand with the burninate glyph, and destroy those pesky icewalls.
Herbs being a commodity producing skill is entirely valid, also...
Earwort is accurate
Merbloom is in Allheale if it remains, Frost, and Vitae
Yarrow is in GreenTint, Health, Allheale if it remains, Wafers, and ValleySmudges.
Wormwood is in Ice and Absinthe
Faeleaf is in Goldtint, Love, Absinthe, and Vitae
Also they're likely going to be in a variety of existing designs already, which also brings up another potential solution. Rather than having them need a mechanical effect you could find some use seeing if the Charites would okay them for special effects in crafting, similar to how essence already works.
If they're good enough then designers will use them in their designs just like people already use essence in them, could even make recipes that require multiple herbs and maybe an essence to make a special comm that's just for those designs. Could also potentially be used in the org potions allowing Herbs users to effectively gather essence for Alchemists.
And yarrow seems used in a decent number of things to be fine, especially considering it's in wafers.
Herbs is literally the only source of commodities that various skills require, either directly or indirectly because those skills require tints.
As for changing up how herb gathering works, a random idea of greenhouses came to mind, let people construct them and hire gardeners to tend the plants, providing a small money sink. They could fill up a small bin that the owner of the greenhouse can collect herbs from every day with a maximum, you can make the artifact gardens better by not having the gardener payments and a higher cap on the max number of herbs? Could set them up for a specific environment too and maybe lower the max number of herbs in the wild.
It wasn't as simple as just adding two new skills to Lorecraft, and the snark being pointed that way is less helpful and more of just not wanting to actually help. This thread was made to take suggestions for these specific trades. That is the topic. Not a single person here is trying to say its not linked. This is why we keep asking, usually politely, to remain on topic and have already stated, which I'm sure was glossed over, that a thread can and will be made for Enchantment. We've also asked for ideas to improve upon this, in which more complaints came in than suggestions, but some did happen and if you notice, updates to the original post were made.
As its also been overly stated, the vast majority of useful items in Alchemy are already in the base skillset, and as a side note - Lorecraft and Spellcraft were NOT HERE ON LAUNCH. Those were introduced when later, thank you. It was originally Wiccan and Druids for Alchemy only, Mages and Guardians for Enchantment. There were no specializations on launch, the skills in Enchantment differed based on your current class, kind of like how the OrgPotions show up in base Alchemy now. When Bards were given Alchemy and Brewmeister, Lorecraft became a specialization, in which the perfumes and such were made. Enchantment is a tougher nut to crack in simplifying BECAUSE they are actual class skills that are trained, and put on jewelry. I loved the idea of Tinkering getting steampunk versions of things! I enjoyed the idea of making mechanical versions of other enchantments (kind of like the yoyo does acquisitio etc). We hear those ideas and they're great, but it has nothing to do with the current topic.
Good points were brought up on both sides but clarification is in order. Lorecraft, in this proposal, lost more skills than they gained ... as anybody who actually HAS Lorecraft would notice. Lorecraft and Brewmeister specializations are being reverted back to the launch Alchemy, but still being class trades of Wiccan, Druids, and Bards. The only part of the argument I dislike is requiring every organization to be able to have access to everything. Last time I checked a Commune has always been allied to a City, except in the events of the Hai'gloh. Making statements that trade skills should be at ransom to force interaction just means you don't believe in the political aspect of the game. Nobody stated they should be held at ransom, but just pointing that out. What needs to be agreed upon is that locking things behind a requirement that is a whole organizational choice is silly. It is bad enough you can barely find someone of the trade you're looking for, MUCH LESS IN YOUR OWN ORGANIZATION. It is honestly bad enough as is feeling obligated to take a trade skill because I qualify for it, and people need it.
tl;dr
Read the topic, stay on topic, and offer ideas or support.
As to the actual proposal. Again, this is stated as an Alchemy/Herbs revamp. There is basically no revamping of Alchemy. One of the very proponents of this idea states in this thread that lorecraft is basically a waste and none of the abilities are useful or necessary. And yet Lorecraft is what remains, with Brewmeistery shunted off for various reasons - it's largely PK, it was made for Dwarf but provides no bonus anymore, it's not fair that bards get specialties. Of this, exactly 2 skills are kept - Absinthe, whose use is questioned in this thread, and MagicInk, which has to go somewhere. Yes, there is a bit of arbitrary rearranging of the Alchemy skill path. But to me, this whole thing flies in the face of the very premise of this rework - the overhaul has devalued Alchemy, and it needs to be fixed. I can't find any way where your proposal addresses THIS, because it's basically just axing a speciality. This is why I have so much concern and objection to the issue. It completely doesn't fix one of the very skills it claims to want to fix. And the other gets castoffs. Especially when there are calls for opposition to develop new skills for all three skills. Your proposal does not do that. It leaves Alchemy/Lorecraft virtually untouched. If influencing oils and elemental resist pots aren't enough to entice someone to Lorecraft currently, why would they be when there's only one Alchemy skill? And I, personally, don't think Brewmeistery needs to go away, so to me that implies that status quo is good enough for now. We can table that, and come back later if needed, since as was helpfully pointed out, there's no reason to have to consider multiple skillsets at a time.
This leaves herbs. Well, perhaps Herbs needs new abilities. Either way, one thing it needs is to have all available herbs reassessed for use across all alchemy recipes and other assorted skills that use herbs to make sure every one is in enough demand. So let's work from here. If every herb has a distinct use and demand in other recipes, then where do we stand? How many abilities are needed to make Herbs viable at that point? Would my suggestion to make a design/craft element work? Boutonnieres, corsages, bouquets, centrepieces, wreaths, maybe candles with custom ambients, something of the like.
The number two is literally coming from the OP because that is what was suggested there.
If two isn't enough then the suggestion in the OP is insufficient by your own declarations and if you added more the question would naturally become "Why not just add those to Lorecraft?"
Yeah, they're linked and what you're demanding here is that one discussion (should the division of available trades continue) be split over two separate topics.
Which is inefficient and ultimately prevents the discussion from reasonably happening. A discussion which could see this suggestion thrown out because people might want to actually keep the split. (Which some could be indicating with their posts)
Yes... and that original Alchemy was effectively what you're suggesting now, just keeping the oils to replace the lost curatives.
As someone has multiple trades (including both Lorecraft and Brewmeister), I've noticed that Alchemy also has more sellable items that are required for combat than pretty much any other trade skill, particularly stuff that everyone in the game needs(unless you're not moving leaving your city). Which is a point others have brought up and seems to have been glossed over.
You may not think it's a factor, but if there was an actual discussion about it maybe people might determine that it should be enhanced rather than elimited.
You have obviously made up your mind on the topic, but whether or not "locking things behind a requirement that is a whole organizational choice is silly" is a discussion to be had, because envoying and pushing to remove that, then having a discussion afterwards to determine if that's the path people actually want trades to go down is not just silly, it's a massive waste of time.
Also if you can't find someone with a trade... welcome to the club?
If that's an argument then Tattoos... Artisan... Cooking... Bookbinding are all in need of an overhaul.
They're each skills that I've taken purely because I couldn't find someone with them and regularly flexed because people needed them and couldn't find anyone. I currently maintain tattoos because it's the worst offender.
If that's your reasoning, then really we should be looking at the level of profitability for all trades, where it's at, what it should be, and then how we can raise the various trades up to that level in their own threads.