Let's establish the current state of alchemy first:
- Alchemy requires huge time investment to determine ingredient effects (150+ different herbs and minerals that can be combined with each other and even with other combinations)
- Even when you already know the effects you still need to gather different ingredients (sometimes seasonal) for a good elixir
- Some crafts are gated by the certain progression level (i.e. hard metals, precious metals)
- It is hard to create high-quality elixirs. Not only alchemy tools Q is heavily affected by Rough Polish (i.e. Wax & Sand) but the ingredients themselves have bad quality due to more than half of them being foragable herbs
There are two types of the elixir effects:
Buff certain stat/skill for a duration
This is the example of the elixir with 3 matching strength ingredients. It gives 50 strength for 7.5 minutes + a wound that deals massive amount of damage and will heal for a loooong time (a week?).
How useful is this elixir? Well, not really useful. As a miner I'd use it 2 or 3 times during this world when I required just a sliver of strength to mine on a new level after the minehole was ready.
I spent 2 RL days starting from zero alchemy knowledge to discover enough ingredients for this kind of elixir (on the complete industry, having access to all minerals and herbs). If we put into perspective that I could've just done quests for those 2 days I would be able to get enough EXP for a several gilding songs, LP, hunger restoration, etc that will result in the same +50 str (even more tbh) but permanent and without any wounds.
If we consider the top-end elixir with str/masonry/duration bonuses, so let's say it will be: +50 str, +50 masonry for 15 minutes without any wounds. Would I use it as a miner? Yes, it's a good elixir for the first month of the world (maybe even up to the second month if you're not playing that much). However, to create such an elixir I would probably require at least a week to find proper ingredients. It is simply not comparable to the value.
Heal certain wound
Just some random "healing" elixir. The problem with healing elixirs is that compared to W12 when Alchemy has been added, most of the wounds nowdays already have a better and cheap healing solution. You simply cannot justify going alchemy route when you can just craft an Ant Paste. Elixirs are also quite slow and does "wound conversion" for some wounds, which is not desirable.
I'd like to see alchemy elixirs being used on a daily basis and really having an influence on the game. So there are some suggestions here:
1. Balance changes
- Increase the basic elixir duration to 30 minutes. It would be useful during the early game everyday game activities like mining, foraging, hunting, etc. even with wounds being applied. Later in the game it would be reallistic to add a duration increase property as well, resulting in 1 hour elixir duration which is nice (it's not that much, we already have a fishing song for that duration)
- Elixir's side-effecs wounds should heal quickly. Like really quickly. 150 damage wound should heal no more then 12 RL hours
- Buff elixir effect strength. Intead of (2^(n-2))*10*qCoeff make it (4^(n-2))*10*qCoeff. It will make it more impactful and more desirable to push the quality
- The healing effects should work faster. Also, remove the "wound conversion" and just let it heal normally. And add Coaler's Cough healing
2. Make it interesting
I suggest to add some effects from the credos to the alchemy. We already have them in the game so I don't think it will be that hard to implement. But it would be so much more fun. The rule is simple: improve chances and quantity but never quality (otherwise it will become mandatory and that is bad)
Example of such effects:
- A chance to double herbs picked
- Reduced risk for loss of fishing equipment
- Increased chance of a rare catch
- Gain more meat from butchering
- Increased crop yield
- Increased cutting speed of trees and logs
- Increased board and block yield from logs
- Hearth Magic cost reduced by %
- Increased stone chipping speed and mining strength
- Chance to dig out Quarryartz Stone
3. Quality of Life
- All processed alchemical ingredients (Lye Ablution, Fiery Combustion, Herbal Grind, etc) should have a tooltip that mentions the source ingredients. It is simply impossible to work with them, distracted for a moment and you've already forgot what did you combine
- Fiery Combustion should not require Brimstone. Not only it is a contested resource but it also expires quite fast. Requiring such ingredient as a part of your daily alchemical gameplay is a nightmare
