[crossfire] RFC: dynamic alchemy

[Wim Villerius]

On Mon, 2006-05-22 at 20:50 +0200, Raphaël Quinet wrote:
> Sorry for joining this discussion a bit late, but I only restarted
> plauing Crossfire a few weeks ago.  
A most heartly welcome! The discussion was barely started - and perhaps
you restarted it :)

> In my opinion, the shadow alchemy should be removed from the game
> because it will soon be too easy to abuse it (more on that at the end
> of this message).  
Anton Oussik already explained that shadow alchemy is already easy -
errr - if you now how to generate hash collisions.
But that's not enough, a few months ago alchemy was modified and shadow
alchemy is blocked whenever the value of the result exceeds the value of
the ingredients - which is pretty much always the case.

> I am not sure that the dynamic alchemy as proposed here is the best
> alternative, but at least it is better than the abuses that are
> allowed by the shadow alchemy tricks. 
Honestly, I am not sure as well but I am sure that it's better than
current alchemy and I am even more sure that we can find a still better
solution. That's exactly why I brought up this point. Hopefully we can
design an alchemy-system that makes the alchemist-profession as useful
as the warrior :)

>  Also, shadow alchemy is player knowledge and not character knowledge:
> this gives an unfair advantage to experienced players regardless of
> their character level.
Yes, shadow alchemy is player knowledge, not character knowledge. But
the same goes for current alchemy, maps (passwords), where to find
artifacts, how to beat monsters, etc etc. In other words, (almost) the
whole game is player knowledge.
Even using dynamic passwords would not change that much: an experienced
player knows where to find the password.
What's the point? Player experience is just everywhere, so perhaps it is
not as worse as it looks.
Why do I suggest _that_? Because from a player perspective it's horrible
to search for information you already know. Why do a quest to learn that
water of the wise is made in a cauldron using 7 water if you already
know that? Oh, just because the game forces you to do so.
Nothing wrong with that for some items (especially powerful receipes)
but I think it will be very annoying if you have to do so for all
receipes.
(Note that I am not suggesting that this was your suggestion, I just
want to express a bit of frustration about games that forces you to find
out what you already know)

> One of the reasons for the RFC on dynamic alchemy was that alchemy is
> not used that much in the game.  
And, most important, that it is pretty useless - only an easy way to
gain some experiece.

> The basic idea of these quests is that you can apply for being thaught
> some alchemy tricks by some some alchemists (and smiths, bowyers).
> They ask you to perform some specific tasks before they reveal more of
> their secrets to you.  This is a bit similar to the quest for becoming
> the prince of Scorn and the rewards are some formulas, like in the
> fire temple quest (by the way, I would like to put a lock code on the
> potion of cold resistance, like there is one for the fire potion that
> can be found in the fire temple).  Some of the tasks that the
> alchemists assign to their pupils involve the creation of specific
> items that can only be created by alchemy.
Sounds good. In fact I have been playing with more or less the same
idea, but dropped it (more or less) due to lack of time and inspiration.

I suggest to put a lock on every receipe that has a change of zero to be
found in random treasure. (there are quite a few: face of death (dust,
currently broken according to the formulae file), fire immunity,
invulnerability, magic immunity, electric immunity, magic power (both
formulae), fiery destruction, rainbow wave, bolt/arrow of Assassinating
{Dragon, Troll}, bolt/arrow of Blessedness)
My reason for that is that the formulae don't show up in the game, so
players are not supposed to create them. And in fact, they cannot,
unless they cheat.
I would as well add the formula for the potion of cold immunity to that
list, but it currently has a small but existing chance to appear.

> One of the things that hinder the usage of alchemy in the game is that
> the formulas are *much* too difficult to find in dungeons and in
> shops. 
<snip>
> It is not surprising that nobody uses alchemy if it is so hard to find
> the formula for any useful item.  Not to mention that having the
> formula is a prerequisite, but only a small part of the solution: the
> ingredients are usually hard to find and the difficulty for creating
> the most useful items is such that there is a very high probability of
> failure. 
And quite often the ingredients are worth much more than the result.
Dynamic alchemy is supposed to 'fix' both issues. Since there are no
fixed receipes, you don't have to search the whole world a few times
before you found a reasonable formula.
Also you can use pretty 'worthless' ingredients (e.g, wyverns steak) to
improve a bit (not a lot) so at lvl 10 you can customize your armour.
It is not likely that you'll be 100% successfull, but failure does not
imply that you loose your valuable items.

> My suggestion would be to increase (by a large amount) the probability
> of finding formulas in treasure lists.  
Yep, good idea although it depends a bit on what alchemy system we
choose. 


> P.S.: Did you know that there are <...> only two maps in which one can
> find Ancient dragons (and the corresponding dragon steaks required for
> entering the dragon training levels)?
Nice statistics... Perhaps this one is not very player-friendly.