I had a thought...

I had kind of a difficult time with Alchemy in Oblivion. While I could successfully craft Master rank potions, they never seemed to be as powerful as the ones I could find in random loot drops.

So I was wondering, would the rest of the community like a retool of the Alchemy system? Or do you think that it is just fine as it was in Oblivion?

It could need some tweeking. For the first: you should be able to choose what effect of the ingredients you use: if two ingredients have one negative and positive effect the same, you should be able to nullify the other one away, making a poison of a potion of it.

I agree. I would like to choose the effects as well. Being stuck with such limited options or having to deal with the negatives was very bothersome IMO.

Alchemy was mainly used for making a lot of money. This is not how it should be.

It should also be required to have empty bottles to be able to create potions.

My restore health potions were always more powerful than the ones i found, they would take longer to heal me but they did a lot more healing.

make it so the equipment stays on the table when you use it.
like what the At Home Alchemy mod did for Oblivion.

Agreed. Should require more 'stable' surroundings for mixing/cooking potions and more varied apparatus. Shouldn't be able carry a load of glassware around.

That and I've always found that the Alchemy equipment took up space in your inventory that could be better used for other things. It made an unnecessary limit on what you could carry lower than it ever needed to be. I do like the At Home Alchemy, and I think having a special place in your domicile would be better than having to take up space in your inventory. And I agree that the whole system needs tweaking. I used Alchemy mostly as a money generator because the potions had too many negatives once Master rank was achieved. You could barely pick any ingredients that had zero setbacks, and the ones with no setbacks wouldn't make the potions you wanted. Dillema, lol.

Definitely.

But that way, how would you get it there in the first place?

Have a WoW kind of "make this number of potions" because hitting the A button 4000 times to make potions in one setting gets very boring.

Tone down the effectivity of potions in general (by limiting their use in combat), but boost the possibilities for the skill itself, imo. Increase price of health, magicka and attribute potions, too, and make the ingredients for such potions rarer.

the set can be brought into the inventory, moved, then placed where you want, then locked into place.

The dev's should incorporate this mod in it's entirety. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=25226 seriously improves on the default alchemy system in Oblivion.

I think they should both be allowed in this game.

but just to keep the traveling alchemists on their toes. If doing strenous actions like combat or jumping, rolling, swimming and ev en running. There is a 99/1 chance of one of your glass retorts or jars breaking.

And yes and yes to choosing effects we would like to use on doubling effects of potions from ingrediants as long as it is at higher levels to obtain this 'perk.'

To all the people who want to cherry-pick effects, being able to pick effects would be unbalancing. There are both good and bad effects in order to make you think harder about your potions/poisons. You can't have a perfect potion every time. You should be able to specify whether you want a potion or a poison though.

EDIT: Just read the post above mine, making the whole effect picking ability a perk of a high alchemy skill sounds reasonable.

Lots of things could be improved:
1) Use base item to determine whether a potion or poison. That way, you can have negative or positive effects as you prefer.

2) Ingredients should contribute to magnitude, or else only rarer items should be alchemical ingredients. You shouldn't be able to make a few hundred gold by running the ingredients of a ham sandwich through a mortal and pestle at a novice level. Probably you should dump a lot more value in ingredients into high-end potions. Alternatively, you can leave reagents the same, and use the base to determine the power of the potion.

3) Potions breaking the economy should be dealt with -- potions should probably not be salable, or at least should not usually be very profitable. #2 would help mitigate this a lot.

4) Either potion-making failure should come back directly, or it should be simulated by requiring more ingredients to make the same potion at lower skill levels of skill. Or, perhaps even better, potions could have multiple"doses", and as skill goes up, you get bonus doses.

5) Potion magnitudes should be somewhat flatter, and durations should be much longer (several hours of game time).

6) Rather than a straight 4-potion limit, potion quality should determine how many potions you can consume. Something like the Witcher's toxicity concept would work, or you could add a "tolerance" stat that would reduce the benefit of subsequent positive potions, or you could even add some risk of having a Fallout-style addition for a while.

7) You should be able to save potion "recipes", and make as many potions as you would like

8) Potion making should take some game-time, depending on power and skill. Anywhere from 1 - 8 hours sounds right.

9) Non-alchemists should be able to pay NPC alchemists to create specific potions. Essentially, you'd substitute gold for skill, but it would otherwise be the same (requiring reagents and so on). If potion-making does take time, it would be nice if you could leave them to make the potion and then come back later to pick it up.

10) Poisons should affect your weapon for a certain, reasonably long duration, with each hit reducing the duration a bit. They should be somewhat less powerful to balance it out.

I actually found alchemy very useful apart from being a money maker. Even at level 35-40, which can be your starting level at alchemy, the restore health, restore magicka and damage health were pretty useful. Once you leveled up and got better apparatus it became even stronger. You seem to have the problem of first getting to master rank quickly to get loads of money, and then finding out that master rank gives too many negative effects. Also if you store your alchemy stuff at home, you'll never really be burdened by it unless you're making potions.

I'd like to see alchemy skill be a bit harder to get, and also having diminishing returns on the effects that you create. For example, after a hundred restore fatigue potions, the next hundred aren't going to add a lot to your knowledge. Making potions with new effects should level you up quicker.

I imagine alchemy is going to use 'work benches' similar to FO3. So you have static alchemy sets in shops and player homes. Thats an educated guess.

First off, it's Alchemy not potion making. This isn't Harry Potter now. And second, the alchemy could use some improvement, but it was already way too easy in Oblivion. As everything it was dumbed down from Morrowind. Hopefully they'll revamp the system and provide a challenge to making alchemical products and finding ingredients more entertaining.

I'll copy-paste from another post I made:



Alchemy you didn't mention. I liked bits from MW and bits from OB. So do this:
- You should be able to try to combine any two ingredients. MW let you combine any two ingredients with effects in common, but OB made you only able to combine ingredients if you had already discovered their effects. You couldn't experiment. I think you should be able to combine ingredients and get worthless potions that do nothing OR at least be able to try to combine two ingredients and the game says "no effects in common, can't make potion." I remember discovering that one of saltrice's effects was restore health ages ago before I could properly see the effect. It was really cool.
- Keep the sorter. OB had a "highlight the ingredients that I KNOW have effects in common with this one" option. That was fantastic.
- Potions should PLEASE BE PHYSICALLY SMALLER. No one swigs a gallon of potion. Make 'em a few tablespoons at best.
- You should be able to apply any potion to a weapon and eat any poison. Yes, this is probably worthless in game, but c'mon, everyone's made a deadly poison that accidentally restores fatigue which the game thought was a beneficial potion and wouldn't let you dip your arrows in it.
- If you apply a poison to a blade/arrow/thingy it should last for a few strikes. Maybe it should last as 100% intensity first strike, then 50% then 25% then none or something. Also, you can dip more than one arrow in to a poison, I'd think. At lease 5 arrows per poison bottle, c'mon.



I like some of the ideas I've seen here. Definitely, potion making should be at a table or something. Also, it should take time. And I REALLY like the idea of being able to commission potions, that would be great. Also, the more powerful the ingredient, the more likely it is for you to fail at it (though this chance should NOT be as big as it was in MW, that was irritating).

I think certain ingredients should be more effective, definitely. But, I don't like the idea of cherry-picking effects. That will unbalance stuff. Having to deal with the fact that certain plants/things have bad effects too makes it more interesting and realistic, I think.

I can't remember if your alchemy skill wouldn't let you see effects of potions if you had low skill, but it not, that should be included.

Last, I think the game should let you swig as many potions as you want at once, BUT I think that it should let you do maybe 3 or so with no ill effects and after that there is an increasing possibility of nullifying existing effects or accidentally poisoning yourself. This way you can try the old swig-18-potions trick, but it's likely to blow up in your face.


EDIT: Oooooh, I like the idea of diminishing returns, too. That's excellent! Maybe the game counts how long it was since you last made that configuration of potion or that last effect of potion to determine how useful the next potion is to gaining knowledge?

This in my opinion could be a good idea. How would a shopkeeper know what my potion is? So why would he purchase it without knowing its contents? All he has to go by is my word that it is a "restore health" potion, but for all he knows it could be poisonous. When he sells this to another would be adventurer they could die instead of being revitalized when they drink it. That's just bad business . Alternatively there should be ways around this, such as characters with high speech skills being able to persuade a shopkeeper to buy their homemade potions or being able to sell to accomplished alchemists who would be able to anolyze what ingredients are in your potions and their effects.

Also I think you should be able to alter the magnitude and duration of your potions manually. It annoys me that i can't make instant cast potions. Maybe when using a complete set of alchemical tools your potion would have base magnitude/duration effects similar to what was already in place for Oblivion. But then allow the player to swap duration for magnitude and vice-versa based on some ratio for example, I don;'t know, 1sec:5 points or something.

Alchemy skill shouldn't decide how many effects ingredients ingredients have and can be used, but how many of them you know. It wouldn't make sense that two ingredients might be benificial to mix with a low alchemy skill, when only the first effects are visible, only for it to add negative effects later when you 'unlock' the last effects of the ingredients with a high alchemy skill.

That way you can create potions without knowing exactly what they do if your alchemy skill is low.

2 things: don't make pots so valuable to the npc and so strong like in MW and OB, and don't make poisons overpowered. Alchemy was in both TES 3 and 4 a quick money scheme and a way to make a character overpowered.

I think it could be balanced. What if it worked like this:
1) You research potion recipes using an interface very similar to the spellmaker (you can also buy recipes from NPCs), and costing gold just like spellmaking.

2) You only pick the desired effects for your potion. The magnitudes, durations, etc. are considered to formulate "potion power".

3) The game randomly generates a list of ingredients based on the spell effects you specified -- each spell effect has a table of ingredients that it can add to the recipe. The more powerful the effects, the more powerful and expensive the ingredients you need, and you may need several for one potion.

4) The game also creates a hidden formula for undesired side effects for that potion, up to the same power, based on the ingredients it picked.

5) When you actually go to create a potion, there is an "ideal power" which is calculated from your Alchemy skill and stats (and possibly your equipment as well). If the potion power is less than or equal to your ideal power, you create a potion with only the desired effects. If the potion power is over twice your ideal power, you can't create the potion at all. Otherwise, your potion has undesired effects. The power of the undesired effects is equal to the difference between the power of the potion and your ideal power. That is, if a potion has a power of 800, and your ideal power is 500, you will have 300 points worth of side effects, as determined by the formula created in the previous step.

6) Rather than reducing undesired effects, poisons would function with reduced effectiveness between the ideal value and twice the ideal value.

I'd like to be able to make the same potions you can buy. It seems weird that as a master alchemist you can't make a simple health potion that you can buy at any alchemist shop.

While I don't want potions to break the economy I have no problem with it being used to make money. A lot of skills can be used to make money I don't see why alchemy should not be allowed just because its method does not involve killing things or breaking into places. In fact I think it is cool that there is a skill that allows a alternate method for making money so people who play a less standard D&D style game have ways to get rich as well. If the strength of the potion was tied to the cost of the ingredients you could reduce the profit margin considerably. And at low enough skill/expensive enough ingredients you might be losing money by making the potion instead of selling the ingredients.