Announce post #3092: Apothecary updates

Autoposter

5/12/2020 at 6:45
Razmael, the Synthesist
Everyone
Apothecary updates

Here's some changes to Apothecary to satisfy classlead report 2795.

More animals have been added to the game in 'horde' groups of 10-20 (similar to the rat hordes that already existed). These have been added to areas that you can find normal versions of those animals in, but for your convenience I've listed them out here:

- Flocks of mesias (Western Itzatl, Eastern Itzatl)
- Swarms of dragonflies (Green Lake, Tasur'ke, Mamashi)
- Bachelor herds of mugyiks (Western Tundra, Northern Tundra)
- Basks of crocodiles (Dun Valley, Torston)
- Families of beavers (Rebel's Ridge, Itzatl Morass, Vashnars)
- Sounders of boars (Three Daughters, Aureliana, Ollin, Morgun)

Additionally, there will be lions (both horde form and singular) added to the Mamashi within the next few days, so keep an eye out for those!

Other Apothecary changes:
- Minimum roll for powder has been increased
- Minimum roll for horns has been increased
This means you will consistently get a higher amount of powder and horns when collecting.

You can also now mass collect parts if you have multiple corpses in your inventory:
- COLLECT PARTS FROM CORPSES will collect any parts from viable corpses.
- This won't work on snakes since there's multiple parts you can collect from them, but you can do COLLECT <part> FROM CORPSES to specify a part to collect in that instance.

We'll keep an eye on things and make tweaks as needed.

Penned by my hand on Closday, the 8th of Haernos, in the year 487 MA.

Ardent

And just like that, I'm harvesting again.

Sanir

Ooh, my classlead got an upgrade from what I suggested.

Phoenecia

Holy crap, this change has been amazing for multiple reasons. 

1) It's made previously painful ingredients so much more plentiful and much easier to obtain, particularly when it comes to mugyik testicles and dragonfly wings since they produced the fewest ingredients of the animals in this change. I've not gone looking for all of the horde groupings yet for adding to my master list, but so far I've been finding not just the addition of one horde in each area, but at least 3.

2) I can hit my base collection amount without trouble at all within a few minutes. No more spending an entire day just harvesting ingredients and doing area rotations while waiting for animals to respawn.

3) It greatly enhances the capability of making elixirs and salves without needing to spend a ton on using gold bars to boost the quantity you produce since ingredients are so much easier to get.

4) This greater availability and reduced reliance on gold bars will make it much cheaper to produce elixirs and salves since you'll not have to sacrifice profit as much if you need to make large quantities of them. 

5) The COLLECT PARTS FROM CORPSES command is a very nice convenience, and the balance is surprisingly fast.

I wasn't going to get the artifact Apothecary scalpel before, but I'm more than likely to now. 

There are a few weird things, though. Some of the hordes still look like they have lines from the rat swarm template. Like the mesia flocks scurrying up your leg and biting you in their attack line, and the mugyik herds being labeled scurrying rat swarms in their exit lines (don't get me wrong, the image of those is hilarious).

The bulk collection command also kind of seems to nullify the halving of balance from the Apothecary artifact because the balance is surprisingly low (less than 2s). The double collection amount maximum is still nice.

The only thing I'm a little disappointed that didn't make the horde list, but it's relatively minor, was fish, since they also yield the fewest Apothecary materials at about 4 per corpse. But this is kind of mitigated by the fact there are kind of a lot of fish you can harvest them from, though fish caught via fishing can't have stuff harvested from them. 

Sanir

Phoenecia said:

But this is kind of mitigated by the fact there are kind of a lot of fish you can harvest them from, though fish caught via fishing can't have stuff harvested from them. 

My classlead was specifically targeting mobs that had very low density and, in some cases, mobs that also gave piss all reagents on top of having low spawns. 4 per corpse is fine when there's hundreds of them and they all respawn relatively quick. Versus 2 per mugyik for example, when there's only like 15-20 or so of them that can be harvested.

Seems like frogs were overlooked, though.

Phoenecia

Sanir said:

But this is kind of mitigated by the fact there are kind of a lot of fish you can harvest them from, though fish caught via fishing can't have stuff harvested from them. 

My classlead was specifically targeting mobs that had very low density and, in some cases, mobs that also gave piss all reagents on top of having low spawns. 4 per corpse is fine when there's hundreds of them and they all respawn relatively quick. Versus 2 per mugyik for example, when there's only like 15-20 or so of them that can be harvested. Seems like frogs were overlooked, though.

I've actually gone and counted the number of mobs that exist for each Apothecary reagent in the main areas they're found and recorded them in my crafting spreadsheet. >_>

Originally, there were only a total of 10 mugyik to harvest testicles from, 6 in the northern tundra and 4 in the western tundra. That's been increased dramatically now. In just the north tundra alone, there's now a total of 49, with 6 singles and 3 herds of 15. I haven't checked the western tundra yet, but the increase is bound to be pretty big too. 

For frogs, there's 29 in the Green Lake. And probably more frogs in other places I've yet to check. There's 4 in Torston, and a few in Ignaco Resort that I've for some reason forgotten to count, as well as the Iztatl Morass. Not as huge numbers as they could be, but there were already a bunch. 

As a weird side note, I'm oddly pleased by the usage of the group names for the various animals. I didn't know a group of boars was called a sounder, or group of crocodiles a bask. Learn something new everyday! 

Another interesting side note: I've noticed that the smaller the initial horde number is, the more damage the horde does. The flock of 20 mesias? Can stand there all day and not worry about it. Herd of 15 mugyik? Okay, ow, but it's still not that bad. The boars? OH GOD WHY DO THEY DO SO MUCH WHEN THERE'S ONLY 10?! Weirdly, the bask of crocodiles seemed to be doing no damage at all, or it might have been my imagination. 

Razmael

Phoenecia said:

There are a few weird things, though. Some of the hordes still look like they have lines from the rat swarm template. Like the mesia flocks scurrying up your leg and biting you in their attack line, and the mugyik herds being labeled scurrying rat swarms in their exit lines (don't get me wrong, the image of those is hilarious).

Those are fixed.

Phoenecia said:

The bulk collection command also kind of seems to nullify the halving of balance from the Apothecary artifact because the balance is surprisingly low (less than 2s). The double collection amount maximum is still nice.

Tbh I forgot that the artifact also halved the balance cost. I made the bulk collect balance low since I figured you already need to spend a lot of balances to kill the NPCs in the first place.

Phoenecia said:

Another interesting side note: I've noticed that the smaller the initial horde number is, the more damage the horde does. The flock of 20 mesias? Can stand there all day and not worry about it. Herd of 15 mugyik? Okay, ow, but it's still not that bad. The boars? OH GOD WHY DO THEY DO SO MUCH WHEN THERE'S ONLY 10?! Weirdly, the bask of crocodiles seemed to be doing no damage at all, or it might have been my imagination.

Crocs are fixed. The hordes still have levels like normal NPCs, so the boars/crocs are set to a higher level for example and have more damage as a result.

Aloli

I love this. Thank you so much!

Rhyot

What about a pride of lions?

Aloli

I didn't notice herds of stags in the initial post, would you consider them as well?

Razmael

Rhyot said:

What about a pride of lions?

Sounds like you need to read my post more carefully!

Aloli said:

I didn't notice herds of stags in the initial post, would you consider them as well?

I'm hoping that the minimum roll increase we made for horns will help instead.

Phoenecia

I did check the roll for for stag horn earlier. Before, it was 5-10. After the change, it's now 8-10.

Axius

I love it. Can we get flocks of Mesia added to the Liruma Grasslands too?

Rhyot

Aloli said:

I didn't notice herds of stags in the initial post, would you consider them as well?

Razmael said:

I'm hoping that the minimum roll increase we made for horns will help instead.

Totally necro'ing this thread.... but I'm gonna go with a whopping answer of 'this didn't help'.

Can we please get a few herds of stags?

Tetchta

There's more than enough stags in game. Check more often! Slow and steady wins the race!

Rhyot

I like the phrasing of using what I said to you about stone. Well played.

However, I will reiterate my question so it doesn't get overlooked....


Can we get a few herds of stags?

Ayastia

It doesn't matter if drop 40 horns at a time. When there is only 12 of them (13?) It doesn't fix anything.