I warn everyone who hasn't started alchemy to either stay away from this profession or just level it slowly without wasting any AD on it because there is nothing to gain from it. Another warning ***and this one is important*** do not buy the tools. They are a waste and are not needed at all. If you want a dye pack just buy it from the AH or use the crappy tools the vendor sells. You can use 3 slots and white tools to get the exact same result someone with Million Diamond Mithral tools gets. Actually, 40% of the time you will get better results. LOL. It just cost you a few more of the FREE mats to make it.
0
minotaur2857Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,141Arc User
I warn everyone who hasn't started alchemy to either stay away from this profession or just level it slowly without wasting any AD on it because there is nothing to gain from it. Another warning ***and this one is important*** do not buy the tools. They are a waste and are not needed at all. If you want a dye pack just buy it from the AH or use the crappy tools the vendor sells. You can use 3 slots and white tools to get the exact same result someone with Million Diamond Mithral tools gets. Actually, 40% of the time you will get better results. LOL. It just cost you a few more of the FREE mats to make it.
OK, this is just ignorant. What you get from most of the crafts are 8 or 10 potions from a set of ingredients rather than 6 if you achieve the higher tier rewards.
My other comments:
Why is the level 3 task 20 minutes when the higher ones are 10. I was cursing lots when I got to 2 successes/7 failures. Then a funny thing happened. When I set out to do the task again the reward showed at the start of the task as the scroll and recipe, which duly arrived at the end, so it looks like there is a limit to bad luck. Well played on that.
The new orange healing potions are nice, but very expensive to make, not sure if I'll actually bother.
Also not clear what you can get from the level 20 research task, I'm getting there (my main is training to 18 atm), but it costs some serious potions.
This isn't specific to Alchemy but having to start another profession from scratch got me thinking about the crafting system. I can't help but wonder if the next logical step after this micromanagement heavy crafting system, particularly where gathering/processing is concerning, is to start automating things. Assign worker X to gather resource A, worker Y to gather resource B and worker Z to craft something from them provided an adequate supply of each.
It's arguably a simplification may disconnect crafting from the gameplay even more than it already is but my brain is telling me this is the sort of evolution that has occurred in other game genres with resource gathering systems.
0
beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
edited June 2013
It took 8 tries to get 2 knowledge items at level 8. I sincerely hope this was just a run of bad luck and there's not a mechanic in place to cause increasingly more experiments to fail than succeed the higher you go.
I already use the assembly line approach as much as possible.
0
spiderbrigadeMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 14Arc User
edited June 2013
I really enjoy the feel of Alchemy but as others are saying I really question if it's worth the time in the long run.
Healing and rejuvenation potions aren't worth it vs vendor potions. just on gold cost alone. I'm not even taking into account the time and logistics. You'd be better off running Patrol the Mines if you want lots of potions. Now, I can see how they don't want to completely obsolete the consumables vendor, either, so I was looking for some of the recipes to be a sort of "value added" for the time and energy you spend. I thought maybe the Distilled versions would provide this, but they're even more expensive to make.
To be fair, my impression is that the other professions are also mostly filled with inefficient tasks. For armorcrafting, the only thing anyone really cares about is the pants/shirt since they are BiS across the board. The other armor pieces as far as I know are only useful to level with; drops will always be better. Leadership looks attractive since it can get you AD or gold directly but from what I've been reading it's the least time-efficient of the professions. It also doesn't provide anything you can't get elsewhere.
Is there any hope of the Elixirs being the unique thing that makes Alchemy worthwhile? The only other way to get those AFAIK is through drops, and it looks like the "normal" versions don't consume rare materials (could be wrong about that). Do people use enough Tidespan or Force or etc. to make this a viable moneymaker for Alchemy? Currently looking at AH I would guess not.
What they need to do is take a look at the costs of the recipes vs demand for the potions and tweak the numbers. Batch tasks would also be a great idea. There also need to be options that are the best for their level in each tier, similar to the pants/shirt in the armor professions, and the cost/time needs to make sense.
I will say that for me personally Alchemy has been worth it in the short-term because right after the profession went live people were buying the basic vitriols for 1kAD or more. But that actually discouraged leveling the profession until prices normalize since it was a better time investement to just spam the refine task and sell everything.
Use the <removed exploit lead-in> to interact with the auction vendor.
0
angelxeyeMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 1
edited June 2013
I like the idea - I am working on this one now.
What I like:
I like no toon exp was added.
I like the variety of bottles that appear pretty early on in the crafting.
What I dont like :
I dont like that Prof Exp takes forever to get. Especially when the gateway for phone is sooooo slow I cant ever seem to get it to let me do more than collect (which is kind of only half the process).
I dont like that to make mass items (mass being sets of 5 lol) takes too long. For 6 hrs you should get 12 which is still more time then doing them individually. Some of us have rl jobs and checking in every 10 min is not possible. Heck checking in every hr is not possible. I dont expect it to be 'easy' but a rebalancing would be a good idea.
I dont like that nothing is free to work on here. I can sit and make rocks forever in the other professions - here everything costs from the start for items that are not very helpful- when many of us are already lvl 60ig.
**edit note: I like that you tried something new - please take my and most of the others comments as a way to improve. Many of us are thankful that you are looking for ways to make it interesting, these are just bug reports. (added after i read a few whiney posts.)
AP potions look attractive. The requirements of all good stuff doesnt. It looks like i have to invest too much and gain too little out of apo and most other professions. Sorry to say. Generally i never met a more disappointing crafting system than in this game (even browser games do better IMHO).
I have had fun with alchemy so far. A few things could be better...
- we should be able to make a variety of dyes. Every piece of gear in the entire game is one of 4 color schemes already --- and you guessed it, what dyes do we get? Dyes to make things these same colors! That sucks!
- the costs of materials is higher than it should be as tasks are all rapid complete. Solvent, while cheap ... I have used over 1000 already because it burns out more than 10 at a go! And as potions are one of the top items to vendor at 60, keeping them around to do alchemy tasks takes a bite out of our ability to earn in game money. The need for quicksilver in bulk may be too rich for my blood, not sure yet, but its looking grim.
- The basic healing potions should have a mass production (like, 20 in 4 or no more than 8 hours) option esp at lower levels. It could take longer for the max level one or something, but I can kill trash mobs and farm a stack of potions about 100 times faster than I can produce them. That sucks! Heck I can't even farm the materials due to the nerfs to materials gathering -- farming potions makes alchemy pointless. And farming yields gold so you can buy them from the vendor too. Its like you can spend months leveling up the craft to be able to spend 10 times as much effort, 10 times as much gold, and 100 times as much wall clock time for the same results!
- we should be able to discover, reproduce, and enjoy the fun potions of various types. I would love to have a fun "turn into a pig for 10 min" potion to play with. Did our grandmaster alchemist dude forget to write down how he cooked that one so we can't reproduce it??
So, in a nutshell, it needs to be able to produce basic useful items in bulk rapidly at a reasonable cost and do other exotic things at higher costs, longer times, etc. It needs to produce some fun items as well, for you know, the fun of it.
0
orodalfMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
- we should be able to make a variety of dyes. Every piece of gear in the entire game is one of 4 color schemes already --- and you guessed it, what dyes do we get? Dyes to make things these same colors! That sucks!
The only one that looks remotely attractive is the Cleric dye. Try using it on Wizard's armor.
0
scottligulaMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 29Arc User
edited June 2013
You should have kept to the same system as the other crafting profs. It feels like it will be insane to have to level this as it sits. The reward for a 6 hour level 1 is the same as 5 ten min ones? Please tell me where the reward is in that?
Very poor thought put into this system.
They came from.... BEHIND!!!!
0
beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
edited June 2013
That's the same as every material prep vs. mass material prep in all the other crafting professions. Takes more time, but uses a lot less of the stuff you have to buy.
the only issue i have is the chance to get alchemical knowledge seems very low or broken because ive done the level 2 experiment 8 times on 2 character so 16 times total now and havent got a singe basic alchemical knowledge and im doing it in game not from gateway so its not any of the gateway bugs
0
chelseacrafterMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
so I've seen the GWF dye pack- grey, CW dye pack- blue and grey, other 2 packs grey adn dk brown.
When do we get to make some colours instead of the basic set colours on our dull grey and boring characters?
I mean individual colours not sets.
so I've seen the GWF dye pack- grey, CW dye pack- blue and grey, other 2 packs grey adn dk brown.
When do we get to make some colours instead of the basic set colours on our dull grey and boring characters?
I mean individual colours not sets.
I can understand the devs not wanting to have Alchemy take away from the sales of their dye packs, but at the very least it should be able to craft the basic colors you get from the "welcome pack" when you make a new character - blue, pink, and red. I'd also like to see other basic colors, like green, yellow, orange, purple, etc.
<::::::::::::::)xxxo <::::::::::::::)xxxo <::::::::::::)xxxxxxxx(:::::::::::> oxxx(::::::::::::::> oxxx(::::::::::::::> "Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
0
bioshrikeMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,729Arc User
Uh... what's wrong with this picture? You aren't getting EXP from either one. Very illogical & wrong.
5 Vitriol needs to take 50 minutes or less. Otherwise ppl are going to sit in town like I'm doing now and making single vitriols to level up alchemy.
Use your heads...
I agree with you, but you'll also notice that other professions tend to give better results with the tasks that keep you "glued to your seat".
<::::::::::::::)xxxo <::::::::::::::)xxxo <::::::::::::)xxxxxxxx(:::::::::::> oxxx(::::::::::::::> oxxx(::::::::::::::> "Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
0
orodalfMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited June 2013
Ugh, my Alchemy experience bar is bugged; I finished a Research task, got my Experience to the max for that level, and now it's stuck.
Alchemy Advancement Stuck, when using the Gateway
This makes it a Dead End
Been broken for at least 2 days now
Anyone heard any ETA on a Fix??
PS they doubled the time from 1HR to 2HR for Leadership "Explore Local Area"
As if Leadership wasn't slow enough already, it takes over a week of non stop leadership with 5 Slots to go from level 17 to 18
0
beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
Uh... what's wrong with this picture? You aren't getting EXP from either one. Very illogical & wrong.
5 Vitriol needs to take 50 minutes or less. Otherwise ppl are going to sit in town like I'm doing now and making single vitriols to level up alchemy.
Use your heads...
Ignore the lack of XP because you very simply need to make or find the stuff to do the experiments to then do the research and level up. No XP is totally irrelevant because of the different mechanic. You get your XP once you've done enough other stuff whether you decide to do it fast or slow, cheap or expensive.
So...
Mailsmithing - Forge iron rings and scales - 2 ore + 2 charcoal = 2 rings in 15 min
Mailsmithing - Mass iron rings and scales forging - 10 ore + 4 charcoal = 8 rings in 6 hours
The long task uses more ore to produce the rings, but ore can be had for free. It uses half the amount of charcoal, which you generally have to buy. So, the reward for being patient is spending less money.
Alchemy - Simple vitriol extraction - pelt + wood + 2 solvent = 2 vitriol in 10 min
Alchemy - Mass simple vitriol extraction - 5 pelts + 5 wood + 5 solvent = 10 vitriol in 6 hours
Found materials put in is equal to materials gotten back either way, but again, you use half the solvent, which you have to buy. The reward for being patient is again spending less money. You actually get a better return on your base materials in alchemy than in other crafts when it comes to the mass-producing task, if you look at it costwise instead of timewise.
The most efficient way to do this is set yourself up with a bunch of alchemical dudes right off the bat, then set your crew up to all make vitriols overnight. Keep working the extras whenever you are researching/experimenting in one task slot, brewing potions or whatever you need. Plan ahead to get your ingredients in place for the next several levels of experiments. When you arrive at needing a higher level dude for the next set of experiments, fuse your dudes, but try to plan on having a crew of the first tier dudes still brewing away making you stuff for when the second tier dude is ready to go. Etc.
Need to go run some numbers on the 2nd and 3rd tier prep tasks....
Alchemy Advancement Stuck, when using the Gateway
This makes it a Dead End
Been broken for at least 2 days now
Anyone heard any ETA on a Fix??
PS they doubled the time from 1HR to 2HR for Leadership "Explore Local Area"
As if Leadership wasn't slow enough already, it takes over a week of non stop leadership with 5 Slots to go from level 17 to 18
I can understand the devs not wanting to have Alchemy take away from the sales of their dye packs, but at the very least it should be able to craft the basic colors you get from the "welcome pack" when you make a new character - blue, pink, and red. I'd also like to see other basic colors, like green, yellow, orange, purple, etc.
I completely agree with this.
Also I really think that the "class dye" packs should be split up so you don't dye the entire outfit (i.e. should be able to choose primary/secondary/tertiary slotts).
But between this and the 60k AD just to change the appearance of my hat I'm pretty bummed about appearance in general.
Oh and there not being a neck slot on the fashion tab so I might actually use my caturday cloak. =(
Comments
OK, this is just ignorant. What you get from most of the crafts are 8 or 10 potions from a set of ingredients rather than 6 if you achieve the higher tier rewards.
My other comments:
Why is the level 3 task 20 minutes when the higher ones are 10. I was cursing lots when I got to 2 successes/7 failures. Then a funny thing happened. When I set out to do the task again the reward showed at the start of the task as the scroll and recipe, which duly arrived at the end, so it looks like there is a limit to bad luck. Well played on that.
The new orange healing potions are nice, but very expensive to make, not sure if I'll actually bother.
Also not clear what you can get from the level 20 research task, I'm getting there (my main is training to 18 atm), but it costs some serious potions.
I have this same difficulty
You need to take all the potion recipes and multiply the results by 3-5x to make it viable, let alone worth the costs of investing in.
It's arguably a simplification may disconnect crafting from the gameplay even more than it already is but my brain is telling me this is the sort of evolution that has occurred in other game genres with resource gathering systems.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
Healing and rejuvenation potions aren't worth it vs vendor potions. just on gold cost alone. I'm not even taking into account the time and logistics. You'd be better off running Patrol the Mines if you want lots of potions. Now, I can see how they don't want to completely obsolete the consumables vendor, either, so I was looking for some of the recipes to be a sort of "value added" for the time and energy you spend. I thought maybe the Distilled versions would provide this, but they're even more expensive to make.
To be fair, my impression is that the other professions are also mostly filled with inefficient tasks. For armorcrafting, the only thing anyone really cares about is the pants/shirt since they are BiS across the board. The other armor pieces as far as I know are only useful to level with; drops will always be better. Leadership looks attractive since it can get you AD or gold directly but from what I've been reading it's the least time-efficient of the professions. It also doesn't provide anything you can't get elsewhere.
Is there any hope of the Elixirs being the unique thing that makes Alchemy worthwhile? The only other way to get those AFAIK is through drops, and it looks like the "normal" versions don't consume rare materials (could be wrong about that). Do people use enough Tidespan or Force or etc. to make this a viable moneymaker for Alchemy? Currently looking at AH I would guess not.
What they need to do is take a look at the costs of the recipes vs demand for the potions and tweak the numbers. Batch tasks would also be a great idea. There also need to be options that are the best for their level in each tier, similar to the pants/shirt in the armor professions, and the cost/time needs to make sense.
I will say that for me personally Alchemy has been worth it in the short-term because right after the profession went live people were buying the basic vitriols for 1kAD or more. But that actually discouraged leveling the profession until prices normalize since it was a better time investement to just spam the refine task and sell everything.
And finally, on the topic of why the vendor potions are cheaper...
Terrible dyes + insanely expensive/time consuming buff potions = unimpressive.
What I like:
I like no toon exp was added.
I like the variety of bottles that appear pretty early on in the crafting.
What I dont like :
I dont like that Prof Exp takes forever to get. Especially when the gateway for phone is sooooo slow I cant ever seem to get it to let me do more than collect (which is kind of only half the process).
I dont like that to make mass items (mass being sets of 5 lol) takes too long. For 6 hrs you should get 12 which is still more time then doing them individually. Some of us have rl jobs and checking in every 10 min is not possible. Heck checking in every hr is not possible. I dont expect it to be 'easy' but a rebalancing would be a good idea.
I dont like that nothing is free to work on here. I can sit and make rocks forever in the other professions - here everything costs from the start for items that are not very helpful- when many of us are already lvl 60ig.
**edit note: I like that you tried something new - please take my and most of the others comments as a way to improve. Many of us are thankful that you are looking for ways to make it interesting, these are just bug reports. (added after i read a few whiney posts.)
- we should be able to make a variety of dyes. Every piece of gear in the entire game is one of 4 color schemes already --- and you guessed it, what dyes do we get? Dyes to make things these same colors! That sucks!
- the costs of materials is higher than it should be as tasks are all rapid complete. Solvent, while cheap ... I have used over 1000 already because it burns out more than 10 at a go! And as potions are one of the top items to vendor at 60, keeping them around to do alchemy tasks takes a bite out of our ability to earn in game money. The need for quicksilver in bulk may be too rich for my blood, not sure yet, but its looking grim.
- The basic healing potions should have a mass production (like, 20 in 4 or no more than 8 hours) option esp at lower levels. It could take longer for the max level one or something, but I can kill trash mobs and farm a stack of potions about 100 times faster than I can produce them. That sucks! Heck I can't even farm the materials due to the nerfs to materials gathering -- farming potions makes alchemy pointless. And farming yields gold so you can buy them from the vendor too. Its like you can spend months leveling up the craft to be able to spend 10 times as much effort, 10 times as much gold, and 100 times as much wall clock time for the same results!
- we should be able to discover, reproduce, and enjoy the fun potions of various types. I would love to have a fun "turn into a pig for 10 min" potion to play with. Did our grandmaster alchemist dude forget to write down how he cooked that one so we can't reproduce it??
So, in a nutshell, it needs to be able to produce basic useful items in bulk rapidly at a reasonable cost and do other exotic things at higher costs, longer times, etc. It needs to produce some fun items as well, for you know, the fun of it.
The only one that looks remotely attractive is the Cleric dye. Try using it on Wizard's armor.
Very poor thought put into this system.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
5 Vitriol takes 6 hours
Uh... what's wrong with this picture? You aren't getting EXP from either one. Very illogical & wrong.
5 Vitriol needs to take 50 minutes or less. Otherwise ppl are going to sit in town like I'm doing now and making single vitriols to level up alchemy.
Use your heads...
When do we get to make some colours instead of the basic set colours on our dull grey and boring characters?
I mean individual colours not sets.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
I can understand the devs not wanting to have Alchemy take away from the sales of their dye packs, but at the very least it should be able to craft the basic colors you get from the "welcome pack" when you make a new character - blue, pink, and red. I'd also like to see other basic colors, like green, yellow, orange, purple, etc.
"Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark
Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
I agree with you, but you'll also notice that other professions tend to give better results with the tasks that keep you "glued to your seat".
"Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark
Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
It's a good thing no one has made programs to automate that through the gateway. Oh wait...
This makes it a Dead End
Been broken for at least 2 days now
Anyone heard any ETA on a Fix??
PS they doubled the time from 1HR to 2HR for Leadership "Explore Local Area"
As if Leadership wasn't slow enough already, it takes over a week of non stop leadership with 5 Slots to go from level 17 to 18
Ignore the lack of XP because you very simply need to make or find the stuff to do the experiments to then do the research and level up. No XP is totally irrelevant because of the different mechanic. You get your XP once you've done enough other stuff whether you decide to do it fast or slow, cheap or expensive.
So...
Mailsmithing - Forge iron rings and scales - 2 ore + 2 charcoal = 2 rings in 15 min
Mailsmithing - Mass iron rings and scales forging - 10 ore + 4 charcoal = 8 rings in 6 hours
The long task uses more ore to produce the rings, but ore can be had for free. It uses half the amount of charcoal, which you generally have to buy. So, the reward for being patient is spending less money.
Alchemy - Simple vitriol extraction - pelt + wood + 2 solvent = 2 vitriol in 10 min
Alchemy - Mass simple vitriol extraction - 5 pelts + 5 wood + 5 solvent = 10 vitriol in 6 hours
Found materials put in is equal to materials gotten back either way, but again, you use half the solvent, which you have to buy. The reward for being patient is again spending less money. You actually get a better return on your base materials in alchemy than in other crafts when it comes to the mass-producing task, if you look at it costwise instead of timewise.
The most efficient way to do this is set yourself up with a bunch of alchemical dudes right off the bat, then set your crew up to all make vitriols overnight. Keep working the extras whenever you are researching/experimenting in one task slot, brewing potions or whatever you need. Plan ahead to get your ingredients in place for the next several levels of experiments. When you arrive at needing a higher level dude for the next set of experiments, fuse your dudes, but try to plan on having a crew of the first tier dudes still brewing away making you stuff for when the second tier dude is ready to go. Etc.
Need to go run some numbers on the 2nd and 3rd tier prep tasks....
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
Same/10char
I completely agree with this.
Also I really think that the "class dye" packs should be split up so you don't dye the entire outfit (i.e. should be able to choose primary/secondary/tertiary slotts).
But between this and the 60k AD just to change the appearance of my hat I'm pretty bummed about appearance in general.
Oh and there not being a neck slot on the fashion tab so I might actually use my caturday cloak. =(
Jorm