Potters Need Some Lovin' After This Mess

It's been happening slowly, but potioning changes of late have mostly been to the detriment of potters.

We got the potion goddess in the game. That was definitely a good thing. But it's getting overshadowed by the other changes.

1) Cold/Heat/Radiation Protection potions - 12k per book, then make them only to find noone has a use for them. Or if they do, they're hiding it well.

2) Attack/Defense Reduction Pots - 20k per book, expensive to make, and no market because they went way too far beyond expensive into the realm of grossly overpriced. Zero market.

3) Speed Hax - 20k book. Interest, but the horrendously huge amount of food needed if you're carrying anything made them not just hard to use, but completely useless. Now they're being removed from the game.

That's 96kgc in books alone.

Now, yes, there's only one way to find out if something is useful, and that's try it out.

The a/d pots, with some tweaking to make them just "expensive" rather than grossly overpriced might have found a use. The speed hax, with a bit of a reduction on the food use, may have become useful to some. Instead they were left to die, and in the case of speed hax, actually die.

And then there's...

4) TS Potion ingredients changed. Twice.

Henbane replaced with animal furs. TS was one of only a handful of potions that were useful for leveling the skill. The highest one, in fact.

Rule of thumb for potioning is that if it requires an animal part, it's not leveling-friendly. The only real level-friendly potions left now are BRs and SRs, both of which are in the same experience range.

This was a huge hit to the skill for no real reason. It's not like there's a huge number of people with extreme potion skills. I'm currently ranked #16 in the game without even potion level 100. I don't see why this skill had to be made harder to level.



So we got the potion goddess, but we also got 5 potions that were close-to-dead from the start, and the killing of one of the limited number of potions that allows for any even remotely decent way to level the skill.


Potioning is desperately in need of a full workover.

1) Many of the potions before even these above additions were deemed mostly or completely useless.

Very few skill potions are ever used. Magic gets used by those wanting to mana drain before they hit the required level for it. It has a worthwhile use since magic is the only skill with required levels.

Summoning pots get asked for on occasion. The rest are...? Maybe a few used in an "insurance" manner when doing something high level, but that leaves them to be rarities.

The harvesting pot... Pot lasts 5 minutes and reduces 1 per minute. Who exactly would find a use for this in a harvesting manner?



2) Some mixes need to be killed, as noone in their right mind would ever mix them. (a Binding Stone for a GHP? I think this was added as a joke, an 8.5kgc+ stone for a pot that has a hard time selling even at 175gc.)


At any rate, the changes to the potions themselves of late have been quite costly to potioners. We really need a break from that.

And I gotta say, while I've been one of the first to try new potions before (made att/def reductions and speed hax the day they were introduced), any future ones will be looked at with a bit of skepticism. I and other potters have been, well, burned by the last few additions, and I got enough gc sinks I already toss all my spare gc into. Unless some full disclosure before it gets added indicates an incredibly large interest in a new potion, I won't be a first-to-try again.

Potters are needin' some lovin' with positive changes at this point. We're players too! :P