Part of why the update for BTB's Game Improvements has been taking me so long lately is that I sorta got sidetracked updating the "Alchemy" plugin. I realized that even with the changes I made, there were a bunch of negative effects that served no purpose, lopsided distributions of positive effects, etc., etc.

So, I set out to balance all of the effects accordingly. The positive effects have remained as true as humanly possible to the original settings, given that I've removed a few positive effects to curb abuse issues (fortify intelligence, fortify luck, and fortify fatigue) and added a few new ones (jump, shield, slowfall). All of the negative effects, on the other hand, have been balanced to be more appropriate to the positive effects they are trying to counter, as well as making them show up in potions more often than before, generally requiring higher quality ingredients to brew downside-free potions. Drain magicka, drain endurance, and drain personality have all been removed as negative effects, since they weren't very negative.

Amazingly, I managed to stay (hopefully) pretty faithful to the game's original settings. While nearly every ingredient in the game has been edited in some way, most of the edits are either to the negative effects (which most people probably don't pay attention to, anyways, since most of them would never actually show up) or to the positioning of the effects. The readme file in my mod when I finally finish the update will go into a bit more detail, but I just wanted to get some more immediate feedback while I was still working on it.

I suppose I could just post a list of the ingredients I've edited, but it seems like the changes I've made would probably be much more apparent if I listed all of the ingredients by effect. Incidentally, I created a file doing just that, which I am considering including with my mod as sort of an "extra" for people who want a quick reference to the new effect settings. Yes, no, maybe?

Here are the new effects (EDIT: I've whipped up[ something hopefully a little easier to read, that I intend to include with my mod):

http://btb2.free.fr/temp/alchemy.html


(My main concern, FYI, is that I've inadvertently made any one effect way too difficult to achieve without seriously adverse side effects.)

http://btb2.free.fr/temp/alchemy_changes.txt


And that's the full changelog, so you can see the context of the changes, along with the changes to pricing, weights, and the pre-made potions.

Looks good to me. Looks like it could make alchemy a fair bit more interesting anyway, and I do like the way you've matched positives and negatives to make it hader to make negative-free potions, but I wouldn't say you've made it too hard, although I only had a fairly quick look at a few categories.

That's pretty much exactly the sort of comment I was looking for. Because, honestly, the last thing I want to do is have to go back and change something.

Even changing one tiny thing means having to go and change about twenty other things to keep the balance. It's like putting together a puzzle, except every two pieces you put together makes two other pieces come back apart >.<

Yay! Useful Bungler's Bane at last. Looking at the list of effects, seems like I won't have to balance the ingredients after all.
IMO, ingredients always lacked variety in effects and the negative effects were so easy to avoid all together. That should fix it.

Thank you for this BTB.

P.S: Including the extra list of effects is a great idea.

Edit: Finished reading the list of changes. Love the way you modified the potions. I'll have to change a few of my alchemic habits though, but overall it will be more balanced/fun that way.

Yeah, I wanted to give the player something useful to do with Hypha Facia and Bungler's Bane besides selling them to Arrille for nothing more than a few drakes and his eternal scorn >.>

All of the ingredients now have either two or three positive effects - no more of the ones with only one, or the way too useful ones with four of them.

Another thing I think is interesting is how the ingredients are somewhat "themed". Alteration effects are found largely on ingredients from the Bitter Coast region, for example, as are poison effects. Playing as an Argonian or Redguard gives you a rather tangible benefit due to their resistance. And because paralysis is the new most common effect of all, playing as a Wood Elf now actually gives you a huge benefit as far as alchemy goes.

And that's real cool, when you think about it. It's one thing to say a race is good with alchemy by giving them a bonus to the skill, but another to make them able to use a far wider range of potions effectively than the other races.

Anyone else?

It always seemed odd that the game even had negative effects on the ingredients - and a piece of alchemical apparatus whose purpose is to minimize negative effects in potions! - when those effects VERY rarely came into play in potion-making. I like the idea of having to be a little more careful which ingredients you mix to make your potions, and of the alembic (I think that's the one) serving some useful purpose in the game.

The new effects look pretty well-balanced. The only thing I might like to see done differently is some of the negative effects as the first effect - the one that happens when you eat the raw ingredient. Bungler's bane is said in-game to be poisonous, so shouldn't poison be its #1 effect?

The re-pricing of comberries, ash yams, and a few other ingredients seems a bit disproportionate to me, but that's a fairly minor quibble.

The idea of negative effects actually showing off when you make a potion is great. I even thought to make something like this myself in the future, and I'm really happy that you avoided me the work, eheh.
Changes to the potion effects are good, too.
Changes to the alcoholic brews will conflict with NoM, but I already adjusted the weight and cost for them, so the difference won't be as noticeable. The effects will be a little different, but it's an acceptable thing.

Here are a few comments on possible adjustements:
- What are the differences between this and Srikandi's Alchemy? Sri Alchemy is the alchemy plugin used by the majority of the players, I think.
- I'd give bread only 1 effect. My idea is that cooking somewhat ruins the alchemical properties of raw ingredients, so cooked ingredients should have in general less effects than raw ones.
- I agree with the above poster that some ingredient prices have been adjusted too much. Durzog meat, from 7 to 75, for example. Some suggestions: comberry 6, ash yam 5, durzog meat 15, rat meat 5, hackle-lo 8 or 10. I'd try to keep the new cost between 1/3 and 3 times the original one (unless the original is 1, in which case raising it to 4 or 5 could be an option).
- If large kwama eggs weight is 1, then the small ones should be 0.5, since their volume in game looks about 1/2 to me and not 1/5.

Feel free to use this feedback as you like more.

There's really no reason for ingredients to have negative primary effects.

Granted, many of the positive ones are almost as pointless when set as primaries (though some, like restore magicka, can be useful), but I do it more for consistency than anything else.



While rarity is still likely the main factor when it comes to pricing, I've also taken ingredient usefulness into consideration, as well. Comberries and Ash Yams are the two priciest non-rare plant-based ingredients because both are key to some of the most valuable potions in the game (restore magicka and fortify strength, respectively).



I've never really looked into Sri's Alchemy. I wasn't aware that it was widely used.



I would have done the same, but I needed one last ingredient for a restore endurance effect, and I couldn't pull it out of anywhere else without causing my whole setup to come crashing down like a game of Jenga. Besides, it makes sense that bread would restore your endurance >.>



The problem with using the original values as a base is that the original values were way off in lots of cases. In the readme for my mod, I explain how Hotfusion before me sat down and drew up a brand new price list for ingredients based solely on rarity, resulting in some wildly different pricing, and that was the basis I used for my values.

As for the pricing of animal-based ingredients, I have no problem with increasing the monetary reward for killing dangerous creatures. Since there's far less effort to collect plant ingredients, the values range from 1 to 10. Animal-based ingredients start at 15 and just go up from there. Killing animals is a time-tested way of earning moeny in video games, and I wanted to reflect that to a somewhat reasonable extent with my mod. As for Durzog Meat, given its effects (fortify strength and agility), one might even argue that a value of 75 septims is too low.




Well, initially, I had left it at 0.2 because the ingredient only had one effect and was basically next to worthless as a result. Now, I might actually take you up on that suggestion.

By the way, I edited my initial post - I whipped up a little html page that makes browsing the effects a lot easier.

I'll hopefully finish out the alchemy portion of the mod tonight.

That will just leave the Equipment and Settings plugins.

Will I need to start a new game or can I just upgrade midgame with your updates?

You *should* be able to update mid-game, but I have little experience with applying mdos to existing games, as I habitually start new ones whenever I mod. I've experienced difficulties getting new settings to alchemy ingredients to take effect when applied to an existing save, for example, but I've never used Wyre Mash to clean a savegame (which, presumably, would fix the problem).

Ha - I wouldnt dare play either MW or Oblivion without Wrye Mash and Bash - surprised you dont use it but then again your the infamous BTB....

I guess I just assumed everyone used Mash - would you use Mash if a swedish redhead was involved?

Dude, I would make sweet love to wyre mash if there were Swedish redheads involved.

BTB - the changes are great! I like how it makes alchemy more of an art rather than a simple task that anyone can do.

My only quirp is the bunglers bane - its lore and in game lore at that, that stats its highly poisnous and so I think its 1st effect should be posion.... while this doesnt effect potion making at all ( i.e switching jump and posion around wont effect you making a jump potion) but by having poison as the 1st effect the alchemist might not see the jump effect which is all about making alchemy a skill! The higher you skill the more effects you see. So by the player knowing its poisnous, and seeing its got a poison effect first - imagine there surprise when they later on see, with a higher alchemy skill, that it does have a use!

Its more of an asthetic change rather than a practicle change - as I have already read that your making practicle changes.

But thats my only quirp, I love all the changes and the fact that you've managed to balance it out!

I'm glad everyone likes it, particularly because the Alchemy plugin seems to have been one of the least-popular of all the plugins in my mod. Of course, now I know why. What I did before was just half-assedly plug in some new effects without really sitting down to look at the big picture. I spend, like, two weeks putting together what was basically this gigantic puzzle, and I'm glad to see that all of my work has finally paid off.

Anyways, I re-did the styles for the html page above for a better read, setting different fonts and nicer colors for the negative effects, and I went back and made a couple of last-minute changes. It was nothing major, and the focus was mostly on making sure that not only were the negative effects evenly distributed, but no one ingredient ended up totally gimped as a result of not being able to use any of its positive effects at least more usefully than another ingredient.

On another positive note, I can now say that I'm about done with my update for the Alchemy plugin. That just leaves Equipment and Settings, and Settings should go by very quickly since the update to it will be minor.

As for Bungler's Bane... one could argue that the in-game lore refers to the potential nasty side effects if used improperly in a potion. In fact, I specifically set "drain luck" as an effect to reference the name. I suppose I should have done poison, too, but I couldn't fit poison in as an effect without, again, causing everything else I'd built up to come crashing down.

That's the really hard part about this that you may not realize... try going in and changing just one negative effect. Just one! And then see how many other effects you also have to change to keep the balance intact.

*Goes mad*

Just leave it. It's fine.

Haha, sorry if it sounds like I was complaining. I'm just going a little stir-crazy from being cooped up in the office all week.

Any thoughts on the new .html page I made, by the way? Like I said above, I intend to package it with the mod as sort of a bonus/reference chart.

Wow, good job on the html. I'll use it, that's for sure.

At first, I was sad some effects were removed from all ingredients (fort int, luck, fat), but since I don't stack same-effect potions, in the end I hardly even used them anyway.

Awesome, thanks.

Let's see how much of this mod I can get done tonight.

Just for curiosity's sake, I went by and counted up how many times each negative effect appeared in an ingredient, just to a) ensure that I made an even enough distribution and B) see which ones were the most common. These are my results, in order from least to most common:

Drain Agility - 9
Burden - 10
Drain Speed - 11
Drain Willpower - 11
Poison - 11 (shows up almost entirely in Alteration-related ingredients found in and nearby the Bitter Coast, which results in a very nice and lore-friendly bonus for Argonians)
Drain Strength - 13
Drain Luck - 14
Drain Health - 16
Blind - 17
Drain Fatigue - 20
Paralyze - 22 (finally, an actual compelling bonus to playing as a Wood Elf! But only if you're using the portion of my mod that gives them immunity to paralysis, of course)

the html page is a great addition....however, it would be neat if you could add an alchemy book to purchase or steal from a NPC that lists all of the new ingredients - or a book that only lists the regional ingredients so that you have to get a new book in every region you visit.

Waaaaay too much work, especially given that it entails about three things I don't know how to do in the editor.

HOWEVER, it sounds like a neat little addition, nonetheless, and I wouldn't mind at all if somebody wants to go ahead and do it, and I'll package it in with my mod.

Hi BTB are these changes already in 3.6 , or is there a patch available?

Nope, they're in the upcoming 4.0 release.

I was hoping to have it done over this last weekend, but that clearly didn't work the way I was planning.

I'm, really almost done with it now, though. The end of this upcoming weekend at the latest.