I'm looking for playtesters or anybody who can just give general feedback on the balance or what not.
Vile Concoctions is an Alchemy Overhaul that aims to make alchemy a more fun an engaging skill.
Here's a quick rundown of the features, although the info page linked above has more detailed information:
A Toxicity system inspired by The Witcher series of games.
Each alchemy magic effect increases your toxicity by 1 for the duration of the effect.
You have a cap on toxicity that you can adjust via MCM menu and increase via perks.
If you exceed your maximum toxicity, your player overdoses.
You lose all your positive alchemical magic effects, and suffer some penalties that can be adjusted via the balance menu.
(The overdose penalties haven't been implemented yet)
If you're poisoned by an enemy, that will also increase your toxicity level.
So be careful when fighting enemies like Falmer, they might cause you to overdose when they use their poisons.
There's also a slider to make fortify potion durations last much longer, since potions in Witcher games lasted quite a while.
Crafting de-emphasized
So one of my goals was to de-emphasize crafting.
Crafting's still there, I just think it's kind of boring.
So now you can gain XP for drinking potions, poisoning enemies, and hitting them with explosives.
Completely optional and adjustable of course.
Grenades, Mines, and Explosive Arrows
Since I have a burning hatred for crafting menus, none of these explosives are created through a crafting menu.
You have throw Grenade/Mine hotkeys.
And when you click them, a "bomb" item is instantly consumed and you throw a grenade, no crafting menu.
For example, alcoholic beverages such as "Ale" are now called "(Bomb-Fire) Ale" and can be thrown as a fire grenade using the throw fire grenade hotkey.
Fire mines are created from firewood + any fire bomb.
Shock mines are created from Dwarven Metal + a dwemer gyro
Grenades don't require anything other than just a fire bomb.
And of course, the throw Grenades/Mines ability has cooldown, which can be adjusted in the balance menu.
There's also a craft explosive arrow hotkey, since I still hate crafting menus.
5 arrows + 1 bomb + 1 strip of leather = 5 explosive arrows.
Your equipped arrows are used for the creation of the new explosive arrows.
A new "Loadout" perk system
I like the perk system in the sense that it gives you great character customization.
But most players in vanilla are going to get roughly the same perks, because there's only so many ways to advance perk trees and because some perks are better than others.
So I added a new loadout perk system.
When you unlock a perk in your perk tree, you also gain the ability to buy one of two "Loadout" perks.
These perks do not require a perk point, you just pay money for them (Cash Sinks ftw).
You're forced to pick between one or the other loadout perk, you cannot have both at the same time.
If you don't like the one you have, you can always switch to the other. It will just cost you money to switch.