[crossfire] RFC: dynamic alchemy

[Raphaël Quinet]

On Mon, 22 May 2006 22:35:52 -0700, Mark Wedel <mwedel at sonic.net> wrote:
[...skipped lots of good points...]
>   I remember in a commercial RPG game, there was some alchemy, and basically at 
> the start of the game, you could find the basic ingrediants (flowers/minerals) 
> just laying on the ground and make a fair number of what amounted to be cure 
> light (or regain a few mana point) potions.  The alchemy formula should be 
> redone so something in similiar - at low levels, you can find the formula to 
> make basic potions (a new set of less powerful potions may be in order).  And 
> the ingrediants for these should also be easy.

Yes, I would like to do something along these lines.  This is why I started
working on a set of alchemy quests.  This also includes some random maps that
are easy to find and provide some basic ingredients.

Regarding the basic potions, a first suggestion would be to make it easier to
create a balm of first aid (or similar items).  Note that we can still keep
the old formula for backwards compatibility and simply add the new one that
is based on ingredients that are easier to find, although it may be
necessary to lower the value of the generated balm/potion so that is not used
as a money maker.  A low level character that can generate and carry around a
bunch of balms of first aid would stand a better chance to survive in combat
and would therefore be encouraged to use alchemy.  Since these balms have a
weight, a low level character would not be able to carry too many of them so
this should not affect the game balance too much.

-Raphaël

P.S.: I will now try to switch my subcription to this list to the address that
      I use more frequently.  So don't be surprised if you see my next
      messages coming from raphael at gimp.org instead of quinet at gamers.org.