One other reason is that fishing is a huge bottle neck for most alchemy and causes ingredients to stack up high. Most people just don’t use consumables aside from buffs for raiding. Also when you consider in raids you are 1-shot, the notion of a heal pot for example is that there is no notion for a heal pot. You could use them exploring, but again its gonna cost you fishing time. People might have a ton of queens ears, etc, because it’s simple to whack a plant or complete an event and get a chest. The disproportion of harvest-ingredient to fish is massive. People would totally actually craft/use potions (aside raid buffs) if they didn’t have to go fishing all the time, IMO. Also some harvestables aren’t just very useful, like coconut (body lantern/pack mule). Not only do these potions suck (though body lantern might be fun if there were dark areas, and it didn’t cost fish…) they cost fish!
Body Lantern Potion
- Blue: Coconut Milk, Rotospore
- Turquoise: Catfish, Rotospore
- Red: Carfish, Queen’s Ear
- Green: Finish
Pack Mule Potion
- Blue: Coconut Milk x2, Clownfish
- Yellow: Sharkfin, Water Toad x2
- Green: Catfish x2, Rotospore
- Turquoise: Axolotol, Spiralback
- Red: Finish
Additionally, another solution could actually be nice to see crafting levels for Alchemy. Or maybe alchemy perk unlocks via achievements (craft 100, 300, 500, 1000 healing pots…) This is always a good resource sink. That is, to craft better potions you have to level up your profession (ie consuming resources, ie trying to make back your money by selling the potions you made). Not everyone would raise their crafting profession, so they might opt to gather their resources & trade to players who actually do alchemy. Profiting both the harvester and the skill-trainee/potion maker/the consumer who gets to use the potions. Harvesting/crafting then also becomes a meaningful activity for players, when resources are more scarce & valuable. The incentive to level up your profession to be able to produce aged enhanced buff potions is good. There could also be other benefits to leveling up alchemy, for example, not just new recipes but benefits akin to the over-leveling (extra % to craft extra potions). Perhaps when you use 2 items of some ingredient, being a high level alchemist gives you the chance to recover 1 during the craft, and so forth.
There’s also a medium sized issue here, and that is the auction house limit. If you crafted several hundred potions training your skill, for example, you might be inclined to sell them. But at what stack size? You only get like 12 slots? 1 pot? 5 pots? 10 pots? 99 pots? Players will end up holding on to a lot of their stuff and maybe not be able to sell a diverse amount of items (what if they have other rares on the AH they are trying to sell at the same time, dyes? etc… even now but also consider a healthier future economy with more rares, etc to sell in the future)
To prevent potions from stockpiling sky high, which they would initially given the stockpiles that exist right now, they need to have incentive to be consumed. Body lantern? How about a dark dungeon, selling torch/lantern tools which provide light but are low-range, and body-lantern makes you a holy beacon of light. Or how about mobs that spawn at night which are debuffed in light? Or in a dungeon? What if dungeons had specific rewards/rares/cosmetics/loot, different from other dungeons, such that players wouldn’t complain how “they basically have to drink a light pot in that dungeon, whereas if they got a broken halls shard it would be equally rewarding at no cost.” How about giving it some option to be a trippy-light effect such that people will just straight up drink them to become an ithecac light show. How about a crafting NPC which you can accept weekly missions with, and you have to trade him potions etc and the reward is XP & cool unique looking crafting armor, house cosmetics, a pet, some titles? The spice of life is variety. I could go on for a long time.
Also adding more pots, probably also not requiring fish all of the time, like throwable explosion potions, gender swap potions, the ability to age basically every potion(ie also a chance to ruin them mwuahah, but just fun/incentive/activity to partake in), and other shenanigans would help greatly in addition to this kind of stuff. I guarantee players could easily whip up a huge list of potion ideas.
Though it’s also fine keeping the way it is. If you know a recipe, you can craft it. But let there be some kind of incentive and design behind it. Fishing seems like something to be used for things other than just alchemy, and maybe high-end potions or very specific potions meant to be more rare. Or maybe if there was other reason to have fish than just alchemy, people might fish more? The other issue is how many people are fishing, because of VR game population. It’s not too many, and the supply/demand is hugely distorted. Fish are very pricy.
) of reagents and am pretty sure I made way too much dram with selling all the other useless stuff to the apprentence smith. Very bad. I know the opposite problem of ppl complaining there is not enough of something. Well in my opinion that is a way better thing then having too much of something… It has been said many times before by the community that everything is being dropped too much, no good item and dram sink etc. I hope you guys can seriously take some time to analyse the current economy.
?
. Its never too late. Its only getting worse how longer you wait though.
