An idea I had recently...

There have been one or two "Own-your-own-business" mods.
(Namely the Clothier and Blacksmith mods.)

I've been thinking about giving my own spin on the idea.
I would like to make an Alchemist's Shop, with attached apartment living space.
(Perhaps with two floors... the shop on the first floor, the house on the second.)

The house area would be simple, but with full NOM facilities, and a sorter for NOM ingredients.
The shop area would have full sorter and de-sorter functionality, with full support for Sri's Alchemy and Tamriel Rebuilt.
(A full laboratory, perhaps with enchanting gear as well.)

A trader would visit periodically to both sell you a small selection of common ingredients, and buy the potions you've made.
There could also be a small selection of customers who come to the shop to buy from you, as well.

What do you think about such a mod?
Would you like me to make it?
(And don't say I'll be off track with my NOMv3 projects... this'll be one of them!)

So... anybody interested?

Sure why not. One thing I insist all my characters practice, is Alchemy.

Glad to see there is some interest.

I'll add this to my project list... perhaps I'll even bump it to the front!
The main slowdown will be scripting, though.

In Wizard's Rest, I used Nicoliathan's desorter resource, which was originally for use with Despair's sorter resource.
I had to re-engineer it for use with my sorter.

I even improved upon it slightly, and added confirmation messages, so the player could tell when it was done, and if it worked.
This time, I'll need to custom build a sorter and desorter...

The scripts and resources I already have at my disposal simply aren't enough for what I need, though.
Maybe I can find such scripting to borrow from someone else... I'll have to ask around.

Regardless, I should be able to do this, so I'll keep this idea in mind.

This would be fantastic! My current character is a serious alchemist, and I really love the immersive feel of locating ingredients, researching their effects, formulating and making potions... it all takes time, and it actually requires work. As it stands, though, it is almost impossible to use all of those potions, and it is equally difficult to sell them... there just aren't enough shops with enough money to accommodate any volume... which means I don't have any reason to locate ingredients, make potions, etc... because I just have to store them.

One of the things I really like about the clothier mod is the ability to hire an assistant, to run the shop while the player character is out battling Daedra, saving Morrowind and buying up every pair of common pants in Vivec for stock. A similar arrangement for an alchemy shop (an assistant with minimal skills that can be trained up) would be unspeakably swank...

An assistant? That's a pretty good idea, actually.
I could look into the Clothier mod, and see how they did it.

Yeah, that would work out nicely. Thanks for the suggestion.

What about some random " customer requires X amount of reagent " to get the player out and collecting ingredients . Kind of like some of the Telvanni and Imperial Cult quests but linked to the appearance of specific customers . Could be a time limit involved too so the ingredients would need to be collected swiftly . ( Maybe because they need to be fresh .... )
And yes , I like your idea !

Good idea. Some thoughts to ponder before launching into the CS.

Problems:
1. Any potion you make will have unique ID, so you cant sort of have a quest where someone wants a "Fortify Strength" potion, because they wont be able to identify the potion u make cos the ID will be unpredictable
2. Questing will be the only real good way to have 'orders' (that's ignoring the above problem) but this limits you to a finite amount of quests. UNLESS you put in a resetting quest that makes you do something over and over again... or cycle through a list of them.

Ideas:
1. Maybe you could be employed by an alchemist who will give you ingredients for free, and in return will buy the potions off you (ie your payment). Obviously the better an alchemist you are, the more you will get paid cos your making better stuff. This also gives you a purpose (which is really important for a mod). Having a job would be really cool, and who cares if you dont own the shop, you get to concentrate on making cool potions and having fun [bias/ego aside: this is actually a really good idea. I'd go with this sort of thing. Very easy to rig up a couple of 'employment' missions for you to prove your worth as an employee ]

Sounds like a great idea to me. I certainly hope it won't randomly blow up when left alone with the assistant.


This may be a tedious way to do it, but what if the alchemy shop featured a special container/activator alchemy set, which, when given the right ingredients, will produce one or more* potions of a certain type? There could even be side-quests involving the gathering of recipes to brew better potions. This way, you'd be able to seek out ingredients to brew potions, but they wouldn't be made through the usual alchemy system, and would thus have a set ID, and could then be used for "on demand" alchemy quests. The explanation as to why normal player-made potions wouldn't be good enough could be that the potions the player makes are, I don't know, not pure enough or something?

*Depending on how many ingredients you use.

Yea thats actually a good idea. Didnt think of that.
Activator that runs a script that gives a list of potions to make. Then when you click on it it gives you options for how many to make (1, 5, 10) and then checks you have the necessary inventory. Then to determine which potion type to give you (Bargain, Cheap, Standard, Quality, Exclusive) it could check to see what your alchemy is. So with 5 types obviously it would group into units of 20. So if you had an alchemy skill of 19 you would make a Bargain potion, and 20 would be Cheap, etc etc.

That could work hahaha

But that sort of thing isnt as satisfying as actually using an alchemy set. I made a mod years ago that allowed me to make skooma (cos its impossible using ingredients) which was basically a script driven activation device. Got sort of boring though

Pretty basic script to put together actually. Long, depending on how many potions you want to option to make (id expect all), but simple.
Depending on your experience with scripting i guess

sounds good but dont forget to add compatibility for other mods!

namely:

- Creatures X (has a lot of new ingrediants)
- Ingrdiant prices redon 1+2 ( has new ingrediants)
- Siri's Alchemy

thats just to name a few

Oh, I intend to add full compatibility for as many of the major ingredient adding mods as I can.

Hmm.. perhaps I could make it so that instead of just buying the shop, you do a series of side-quests.
How about this: An old alchemist wants you to do some quests for him... Bring him X ingredients, deliver Y for him, etc.
If you do, he offers to teach you about alchemy, and make you his apprentice.

After you've done another set of quests for him, he is convinced that you have talent as an alchemist.
Then he reveals that he wants to retire, but doesn't have any living relatives to pass his atelier on to.
(None interested in becoming an alchemist, anyway.)

He'll then leave the atelier to you, and leave Morrowind, returning to his home town in High Rock to retire.
(Perhaps with a reference to a town from Daggerfall as his destination.)

After that, the place is yours to run as you see fit.
So... how about that?

This idea is beginning to grow quite nicely, isn't it?
It will be alot of work... but I really want to follow through with this. ^_^
Regardless, this will be a long term project, and I can't expect to be done with it any time soon.

This will be the largest single project I've ever undertaken.
(It may even be my greatest work yet!)

That sounds like a good plan to me. Where are you planning to put the shop? Balmora would obviously be a bad idea.

I was thinking about either Pelagiad or Caldera as the location, actually.

Edit: In either case, the Atelier itself would be placed slightly outside of town, for compatibility with other mods.

Not a fan of Imperial towns myself, but that would work, yes. Pelagiad never struck me as a town where a business like this could flourish, so of the two, I'd personally go for Caldera.

Sounds good to me. Since it has a Mage's Guild, Caldera would be more convenient for travel, anyway.

Id have it as a small shop tucked away inside Vivec somewhere

Places like the underworks (in whichever place) always feel like good places to start up a new shop. Maybe the Foreign Quarter to fit in with your story ideas.
Pelagiad is a cool place, but its awkward to get to, and i cant imagine there being much business

You have a rather good idea there, actually.
The Vivec Foreign Quarter would be a nice location.
(...and convenient for travel, to boot!)

I would enjoy doing some of that. Course a thought came a while ago about having a smith giving you repair work to do, so you can build up your skills and get paid for it at the same time.

Too bad the scripting language doesn't support checking for either names or effects on potions/items. That way you'd look for a minimum, maybe something like CheckItemEffect "SomeItem", "Effect type", Magnitude, Duration. It would return true if it had at least what was specified.That way some random bloke could walk up and say 'hey, i need a feather potion that lets me pick up a twenty pounds for a twelve seconds", you could work until you got it. You may have to go out of your way to get a high enough intelligence/skill to satisfy the request.

Yeah, I've thought about it, and I think I'll have to stick with the appearing/disappearing customers and buyer idea.
Occasional customers "wandering in" with a small amount of money, and an East Empire Company shipping agent.

The EEC agent carries a fairly large sum of money, but would only appear once every few days.
He buys and sells ingredients and potions in bulk, to bring back the potions for the company to ship and resell.

A system to specifically handle homemade potions in any other way would probably require MWSE scripting, if even possible.
I'm not familiar with MWSE scripting at all, so I can't use it.

Although MWSE does add a lot of needed functions, it wouldn't do for alchemy very well. Glancing it over, only a few functions catch my attention. Although the workings are in there for an enchanter that recharges for people, and an armorer to repair items. It also adds plenty of FileIO stuff so you can log your output and whatnot.

Hmm... MWSE functionality would be really nice. ^_^

This mod is still in the early brainstorming period, but I intend to start work soon enough.
When I have the atelier itself up and running, maybe I'll ask around for a volunteer to do the MWSE patch.

That reminds me... Stuporstar has a working MWSE sorter.
Maybe I should ask her about that, when I reach that point in development.

Where were you planning to place this alchemist shop?

This is a great idea...bloody historic!

But one thing...I can not figure out how to put on MWSE....could someone give me complete instructions? Thanks!

He is planning on placing it in either Vivec or Caldera, according to the previous page.