I Hate Apothecary

Apothecary has always been painful and tedious, but after returning to the game and experiencing transcendent Herbalism with gloves for the first time, I hate Apothecary. I realize this has been brought up before, but I perhaps it is time to revisit the worst skill in the game.

1. For those without experience with Apothecary and/or Herbalism, Herbalists can fill their daily quota in about half an hour, perhaps less if they are are blanket harvesting and not being picky. No triggers are required, just one command to harvest everything in the environment. Apothecaries can fill their daily quota in, well, it depends because the amount of of parts you get from an animal ranges from 10 to 1. Then factor in the time to travel to, find and kill these animals, plus the time it takes for them to respawn, and it could take several hours.

2. Announce post #3092 added herds of a few animals, and this made Apothecary slightly less tedious. I still hate it. Notably missing were stags, frogs and snakes. On a side note, this change actually nerfed the scalpel; now its only use is to increase the daily harvest amount whereas gloves still get decreased balance to harvest.

3. Comparing economic potential, Apothecary and Herbalism are worlds apart. First, Apothecary requires casks to sell whereas Herbalism does not. To sell everything but purgative, an Apothecary needs to spend 560 credits for 14 casks. (To put that in perspective, that is 2.8 million gold at 5,000 gold per credit or roughly $190 USD.) Next, an Apothecary makes a refill of an elixir that sells at, say, 10 gold, whereas an Herbalist makes 10 pills at a time, which also sell for 10 gold each. In other words, an Herbalist sells one preparation for 10 times the amount of an Apothecary, or to put it another way, an Apothecary has to do ten times the amount of work as an Herbalist for the same amount of gold. Then using these rough numbers, Apothecaries need to sell 20,000 (40 credits at 5,000 gold each) refills (at 10 gold each) before they break even from their cask purchase, while Herbalists are making gold from their very first pill. Lastly, I do not even figure the use of gold/silver or ice/ashes into these calculations because at current commodity prices, it is not worth it.

In conclusion, given the ease and speed of harvesting plants, the ability of pills to be sold directly from shop caches without artifacts, and the fact that one preparation of Herbalism creates 10 times the amount as Apothecary, I hate Apothecary.

So, here are some ideas how to make me hate Apothecary less.

1. The fact that some animals only give 1 or 2 parts is, in my opinion, the most egregious part of Apothecary. It hardly matters that there are herds now or an entire snake pit -- you still have to find and kill each one of those animals. Snake oil is the worst of all. Each snake gives ONE vial of oil, and not only is this used in health, the most common elixir, but it is used in Herbalism as well. Want to use your daily quota for snake oil? Have fun killing 2,100 snakes. In Reanimation, we had the idea of slices. Males did not just give two testicles and females just two ovaries, but several slices of each. In fact, this already exists in Apothecary; you do not get a single boar heart but several slices. This needs to be extended throughout Apothecary. Every single animal should give you 8-10 parts, no exceptions.

2. Make herds of every animal.

3. Now that the scalpel balance decrease is pointless, have it do something else. For example, perhaps the normal roll for animal parts is 5-10, the scalpel can make it 8-10.

4. Give shops a fluid cache and fully refund casks. (While you are at it, do the same for scroll racks. It is kind of insane that some mercantile skills can sell their goods freely while others require sizeable credit investments.)

5. Why does one preparation of Apothecary make one refill and one preparation of Herbalism makes 10 pills? I understand it is because one refill of elixir is 50 sips, but when one refill and one pill sell for the same price, this distinction is pointless. Let one Apothecary preparation create 10 refills, or meet in the middle and let it make 5 refills and let Herbalism create 5 pills at a time.

6. Integrate Apothecary more into Herbalism. If Apothecary is going to be time-consuming, tedious, unprofitable and worthy of hatred, make Herbalists depend on Apothecaries more. Put an Apothecary ingredient in EVERY pill, or at the very least, in the most common such as anabiotic, antipsychotic, opiate, et cetera. At the same time, get rid of all Herbalism ingredients in Apothecary. Herbalists have it easy enough already.

7. Change the Silver and Gold skills to be in line with the current economy. As it stands, these skills are useless and only further increases the time consumption of being an Apothecary.

Phew, I feel better getting that off my chest. Now I am going to make an I HATE APOTHECARY pin and mail it to every single person in the game because I hate Apothecary.
SaidennCallidora

Comments

  • You don't need artifact casks to sell items, you can make your own or have a woodcrafter make you rundlets. You don't need to have scrollracks for shops, you can enchant and make the items and sell them directly. These are convenience purchases that you are suggesting as being necessary - they aren't.

    You also don't need to spend real life money on anything since you make 20 credits a day through milestones, plus whatever other gold you raise and can buy credits off of market or through (guild/city/friends/strangers).

    If you're not making enough gold, up the prices on refills. Or sell something else that has a higher profit margin when they've come into your shop for your cheap refills.

    Maybe there are some problems with apothecary but boy is this all over the place.
    BulrokIllikaal
  • Stine said:

    You don't need artifact casks to sell items, you can make your own or have a woodcrafter make you rundlets.

    No, that just makes Apothecary even more tedious by having to worry about refills decaying. There is a reason everyone uses casks.
    Stine said:

    You don't need to have scrollracks for shops, you can enchant and make the items and sell them directly. These are convenience purchases that you are suggesting as being necessary - they aren't.

    No, selling enchanted jewelry and selling a charge that customers can place on any item of jewelry are not the same things. Either way, this does not change the fact that pills can be sold from a shop cache without the need for any artifact, convenient or not.
    Stine said:

    You also don't need to spend real life money on anything since you make 20 credits a day through milestones, plus whatever other gold you raise and can buy credits off of market or through (guild/city/friends/strangers).

    You obviously do not need to spend real money, and I never suggested that. I simply mentioned that to put the amount of credits required in perspective. Even if you earn them in game, that is 560 credits an Herbalist gets to spend on something else.
    Stine said:

    If you're not making enough gold, up the prices on refills. Or sell something else that has a higher profit margin when they've come into your shop for your cheap refills.

    Um, no and no. You cannot raise the price of refills if everyone else is selling at a lower price, and bringing people in with cheap refills is not a viable tactic when everyone can use the directory to compare prices.
    Stine said:

    Maybe there are some problems with apothecary but boy is this all over the place.

    Yeah, there are problems.
    StineBulrokIllikaal
  • @Stine I am not sure why you LOL at my response unless you were laughing at your own ignorance. All you did was inaccurately criticize a few minor details of my post and completely fail to address the main issue. I mean seriously, your response to the fact that Apothecary is not as profitable as Herbalism is that I should raise the price of refills? Like I could just decide to charge 25 or 50 or 100 gold for a refill and people would pay it? Have you never run a shop before or have even the most rudimentary understanding of how a free market economy works?

    Here, I will attempt to simplify for you and leave it at that. To make 5,0000 anabiotic to fill your shop cache and sell at 5-10 gold each, you need 500 birthwort, 500 yarrow and 500 madder. Harvesting this can be done in a single day (with gloves) and would take about 20 minutes since you only have to go to two environments. Add another five minutes to prepare it all, and you have 5,000 anabiotic in less than 30 minutes. To make 5,000 refills of health to sell at 5-10 gold each, you need 10,000 boarheart, 5,000 snakeoil, 5,000 claw and 5,000 horn. This will take you 12 days (with scalpel) and require you to kill 7,000 animals (assuming you get ten parts from every boar, lion and stag, which is impossible), requiring so many hours I cannot even make an estimate. Then to top it off, you have to buy a cask to sell your elixir. (Yes, you have to buy a cask unless you want to squander those countless hours you spent killing snakes.) And again, I am not even considering the use of gold and silver because it is too expensive to be profitable. So yeah, Apothecary has some problems. I hope this summary was easier for you to understand.
    Saidenn
  • I agree that there is an enormous difference in effort for those that have apothecary vs herbalism. I think raising the difficulty required for herbalism a bit more might make the gap a touch less shocking.
    Lin
  • edited April 2021
    I also agree there is an enormous difference in effort required to stock refills as opposed to pills. I have only recently realised this because Saidenn picked up Apothecary and was trying to acquire and refill casks wholesale for the guild shop, and we were looking at how much we should price it according to the effort it takes of filling one without the use of goldbars.

    Either make it a little easier for Apothecary or make it harder for Herbalism. I personally am for easier. 
  • Apothecary gathering is, indeed, a pain in the ass. People will bash out the mobs you need to gather. There are very limited availability of certain ones (toads, eagles, lions - looking at you). Also, to put some things in perspective in terms of price with gold:

    Gold in Spinesreach is 400 gold per commodity. Gold turns 1 refill into 20 refills. When I was first attempting to fill a cask (after dropping 40 credits more), I made 1140 refills out of materials + 20-25 gold comms (I don't remember exactly I had in my inventory due to trying to make sure all I needed was not in my cache).

    At the price of gold, that is 8k-10k for the 1140 refills. Some went into my cache, so let's say we're working with 1100 refills for sale. The average price of health on shadow tether is 8 gold. If it only took the latter, that means all of my hard work was worth a profit of 800 gold, or worse, cost me 1200 gold, meaning I am operating at a deficit.

    Now, gold/silver/ash/ice is not used because it is accepted that they increase the cost to a point of herbalism/apothecary to a point to be unsustainable. Here is the thing, though: In total, there are around 10-15 lions, 10ish toads (unless you maybe do Tcanna, which not all can), 100 rats in hordes (one tail per rat), 35-40 mugyik (including herds and 2 testicles per herd), very limited eagles, and then the snakes where you can find them (which do give 1 oil or 2 skin per snake). IF no one else is gathering and/or bashing these areas for gold/xp - Snake Pit is a common bashing area, Ollin is common bashing, Morass is uncommon but still done - you can gather 20ish legs per morass dive, 40-70 oil per snake pit, and maybe 80 testicles. Then... you wait. Because unlike plants, which do have their own grow timer and global amount, there are not 20,30,60 rooms each able to guarantee at least 1 mob per room to give us to collect.

    At the end of the day, herbalism, apothecary, and toxicology can all be considered pure profit due to no cost in the gathering process, but apothecary and toxicology have inherently added costs, be it casks/rundlets/barrels (while not costing credits, there is the crafting cost, the license cost if you can't find a woodcrafter, the danger of losing x amount of fills because no one is buying and the rundlet/barrel decay, having to replace the rundlet/barrel every time it is emptied), or simply the battle over mobs versus the ease of gathering plants.

    TL;DR: Bring mercantiles to a baseline to their comparable skills. Forging and Enchanting should be somewhat comparable, same with herbalism, apothecary, and toxicology.
  • AxiusAxius where I am
    This may or may not matter much... but I learned that Enorians have snakes that can be oil-collected as vermin in their city. I know it doesn't add any real value to the conversation, but it's why Axi has an enorianite friend or two out there, that they work with for a little bit of mercantilism cross-tether interaction.
  • 5000 refills is not the same as 5000 pills. This comparison is useless to make - 5000 refills is 100 sips * 5000. 5000 pills is 5000 swallows. A better comparison would be 50 refills to 5000 pills.
    Toz says, "Dishonor on you (Mjoll), dishonor on your family (Seirath), dishonor on your cow (Bulrok)"
  • Good lord don't make Herbalism (or any other mercantile skill) harder, please. Stocking mercantile items (i.e. pills, elixirs/poultices, enchantments, venoms, and forged weapons) is already a hugely tedious exercise made even worse by commodities being somewhat hard to acquire - despite these items being essentially required for all gameplay except straight-up emoting. If I had my way, all this stuff would just be infinitely AVAILABLE at NPC city shops, with player economic activity being all about tradeskills (i.e. largely cosmetic).
    (Web): Abhorash has joined your web.
    (Web): Abhorash says, "Nerds."
    (Web): Abhorash has left your web.



    Alela's Affirmations
  • LinLin Blackbird The Moonglade
    The "make X harder to compensate" argument is absolutely baffling. No, make Y easier. Literally why would you want something else to suck?

    (Disclaimer: I actually like Apothecary)
    TetchtaDrystin
  • My idea to make Herbalism slightly more difficult comes from the realisation that almost everything in this game has been made easier - nearly ridiculously so - in the decade or more that I’ve played. 

    So yeah. Make Herbalism more than a half-hour AFK sesh. Making Apothecary easier isn’t going to do anything for the already abominable curative economy, either. 
  • TetchtaTetchta The Innocent
    Lin said:

    The "make X harder to compensate" argument is absolutely baffling. No, make Y easier. Literally why would you want something else to suck?

    (Disclaimer: I actually like Apothecary)

    God I have to cosign this but for the game at large in general. It seems like there's a praxis to make things too much work just because sometimes and if something is made better, that there has to be some drawback that makes it unfun. Always a fan of More Buffs, Less Nerfs.

    Lin
  • RhyotRhyot Bloodloch
    Ok.... so I drastically disagree with everything on this and I use Apothecary. Let me start breaking this down.


    @Maldoror said:

    1. For those without experience with Apothecary and/or Herbalism, Herbalists can fill their daily quota in about half an hour, perhaps less if they are are blanket harvesting and not being picky. No triggers are required, just one command to harvest everything in the environment. Apothecaries can fill their daily quota in, well, it depends because the amount of of parts you get from an animal ranges from 10 to 1. Then factor in the time to travel to, find and kill these animals, plus the time it takes for them to respawn, and it could take several hours.

    While you are correct those with Herbalism can obtain their full 2k harvests in a matter of minutes, Apothecary can also be completed in about 45-60 minutes depending on what you are harvesting. True, you do have to compete with respawn times, but a lot of those are quick respawns and were intentionally designed that way. Travel time is not a valid argument because herbalists need to travel too. Finding the animals, sure and killing them are super simple. Mobs like rats, boars, stags, bullfrogs, and snakes all respawn within 5-7 minutes. Hell, snakepit has an even faster respawn rate and those snakes are viable for 3 different item types (sac, skin, oil).



    @Maldoror said:

    3. Comparing economic potential, Apothecary and Herbalism are worlds apart. First, Apothecary requires casks to sell whereas Herbalism does not. To sell everything but purgative, an Apothecary needs to spend 560 credits for 14 casks. (To put that in perspective, that is 2.8 million gold at 5,000 gold per credit or roughly $190 USD.) Next, an Apothecary makes a refill of an elixir that sells at, say, 10 gold, whereas an Herbalist makes 10 pills at a time, which also sell for 10 gold each. In other words, an Herbalist sells one preparation for 10 times the amount of an Apothecary, or to put it another way, an Apothecary has to do ten times the amount of work as an Herbalist for the same amount of gold. Then using these rough numbers, Apothecaries need to sell 20,000 (40 credits at 5,000 gold each) refills (at 10 gold each) before they break even from their cask purchase, while Herbalists are making gold from their very first pill. Lastly, I do not even figure the use of gold/silver or ice/ashes into these calculations because at current commodity prices, it is not worth it.

    @Stine is right that you do not need to get casks or whatever to refill your shop, but if you do want casks they are only 50 credits apiece. You can get that in roughly 3 days with milestones, plus whatever you might get from city credit sales, guild sales, event prizes, etc. However, I would also argue that there is such an abundance of people stocking curatives that if you decide to sell curatives, you're willfully getting involved in a market that already sells for a loss. In Bloodloch alone, there are 6 shops that sell elixirs, add that to the 4 in Spinesreach, and another 2 in Esterport. That is roughly 12 shops that are all selling elixirs/salves. While I cannot say how heavy the demand vs supply is, I would venture to argue that the supply exceeds the demand. Furthermore onto that point is the fact that because there are so many shops that stock elixirs/salves, there will never be a time where people will agree to charge anything more than what they are now.

    Now you brought up gold/silver and ice/ash. If you ARE trying to make a net profit, there's absolutely no reason for you to go and use either of them. You'll never hit it unless you charge 15+ gold per refill (which a couple shops do), but most sell at 10 or less. But again, you don't -need- to use gold/silver to make elixirs. Given that the mobs are free to kill and most barely cause too much damage, you can essentially just spend an 30-60 minutes bashing things and get a nice amount of apothecary comms.


    @Maldoror said:

    1. The fact that some animals only give 1 or 2 parts is, in my opinion, the most egregious part of Apothecary. It hardly matters that there are herds now or an entire snake pit -- you still have to find and kill each one of those animals. Snake oil is the worst of all. Each snake gives ONE vial of oil, and not only is this used in health, the most common elixir, but it is used in Herbalism as well. Want to use your daily quota for snake oil? Have fun killing 2,100 snakes. In Reanimation, we had the idea of slices. Males did not just give two testicles and females just two ovaries, but several slices of each. In fact, this already exists in Apothecary; you do not get a single boar heart but several slices. This needs to be extended throughout Apothecary. Every single animal should give you 8-10 parts, no exceptions.


    I find your argument that snakeoil as the worst apothecary item preposterous. Snakes that give oil, skin, and sacs are by FAR the most plentiful. Between the snakes in the Mhojave, Tcanna, snake pit, and everywhere else in between, they are so much in over abundance that you could easily max out on them with absolutely no care in the world. Additionally, your argument to compare Reanimation to Apothecary is also very well misplaced. With Apothecary, you are actually using the ingredient items in a whole sense (except for stag horn and boar hearts, those don't necessarily fit this argument but nothing is perfect). You are ripping the wings off a dragonfly, ripping the claws out of lions, dissecting frogs for their back legs, cutting the tails off of rats, pulling bones out of mesias, etc. With Reanimation, you were taking one organ and then chopping it into slices and eating a single slice as part of the curing process.


    @Maldoror said:

    2. Make herds of every animal.


    For the most part, the amount of mobs for the more difficult ones have been fixed. There are only a few singular mobs that don't have a 'herd' such as eagles, frogs, beavers, fish, and crocodiles (I might be mistaken on a couple of those, so if I am... I apologize). Eagles are easily found throughout the game, especially in Tcanna. Frogs are located in Tasur'ke and Attica (toads and bullfrogs both count towards the apothecary item). Beavers are in Morass, fish are EVERYWHERE, and crocodiles are in Dun... but you get lots of teeth and scales per one. So I mean, this argument is unnecessary to make given the amount and respawn times for the individuals and herds of mobs.


    ------------

    Ultimately, as an Apothecary, I have no issues getting the amounts of ingredients that I need in quantities that I need without the use of gold/silver, though I do still use gold/silver mostly because I'm lazy and use it 100% for my own use. While it may be a little bit time consuming, I do not think there is anything inherently wrong since they've instituted the herd groups. I am not keen on everything being easy and quick to accomplish, especially for something that is essentially an 'extra'. Herbalism is easy in its own right, Apothecary is easy in its own right as well.

    And if one of your arguments is about the availability of the mobs and location of said mobs, I've also added in my own little snippet of Apothecary info that I made as a quick reference guide and do my best to keep it updated.


    +---------------------------------
    | Wings     - Tasur'ke, Attica (lake)
    | Claws     - Vashnar, Mamashi (lion)
    | Sacs      - Snakepit
    | Bone      - W/E Itzatl (mesias)
    | Tail        - Fengard (rats)
    | Feather  - Pash, Tcanna (eagles)
    | Fat        - Morass (beaver)
    | Testicle  - W/N Tundra (mugyik)
    | Scales    - Djeir, Riparium, Dome (fish)
    | Leg        - Morass, Attica (lake)
    | Powder   - Entities (v25671)
    | Heart     - Ollin, Three Widows (boar)
    | Skin       - Snakepit
    | Intestine - Scidve (dugger)
    | Tooth     - Torston, Dun (crocodile)
    +---------------------------------


    Seurimas
  • Dragonflies can be found in the Mamashi grasslands as well.
    Lions can be found in the Mamashi grasslands as well, and in the Dun valley.
    Mesias can be found in the Liruma scrublands.
    Rats can be found in Rotfang.
    Beavers, both singular and families, can be found in the Vashnar resort.
    Frogs can be found in the Vashnar resort as well.
    Boars can be found in the Aureliana forest.
    And as a side note, there are herds (or basks) of crocodiles in Dun.
    Snakes and fishes really can be found everywhere. I haven't hunted eagles myself, so no idea if they are elsewhere. Entities, I think, are only located in the fissure, duggers in Scidve and mugyiks are lokated in the Northern and Western tundra.
    Rhyot
  • There's also at least one bask of crocodiles in Torston, as well as a few that the bask doesn't allow to travel with them.
    Nonatea
  • And I forgot to mention the frogs in Torston too!
  • TeaniTeani Shadow Mistress Sweden
    And the boars in Morgun.



  • RhyotRhyot Bloodloch
    edited April 2021
    See!! Everyone is super helpful in locating where these mobs are!! There's a lot more than what people had or have previously realized too, especially with the introduction of the herds. Since everyone has been providing extra locations that I previously didn't have, here is the updated list now. I'll keep adding to it and releasing it out as people let me know where extra places are.
    +---------------------------------
    |T:dragonfly - Wings     - Tasur'ke, Attica (lake), Mamashi
    |T:lion      - Claws     - Vashnar, Mamashi, Dun Valley
    |T:snake     - Sacs      - Snakepit
    |T:snake     - Skin      - Snakepit
    |T:snake     - Oil       - Snakepit
    |T:mesia     - Bone      - W/E Itzatl, Liruma
    |T:rat       - Tail      - Fengard, Rotfang
    |T:eagle     - Feather   - Pash, Tcanna
    |T:beaver    - Fat       - Morass, Vashnar resort
    |T:mugyik    - Testicle  - W/N Tundra
    |T:fish      - Scales    - Djeir, Riparium, Dome
    |T:toad/frog - Leg       - Morass, Attica (lake), Vashnar resort, Torston
    |T:entity    - Powder    - Fissure (v25671)
    |T:boar      - Heart     - Ollin, Three Widows, Aureliana, Morgun Forest
    |T:dugger    - Intestine - Scidve
    |T:crocodile - Tooth     - Torston, Dun
    +---------------------------------


    ArathNonatea
  • The addition of locations since Apothecary was released doesn't change the fact that it still requires far more involvement and activity in terms of product created than Herbalism does re:pills - with profit swinging firmly in favor of the Herbalist.
    Saidenn
  • RhyotRhyot Bloodloch
    Trying to argue profit vs ease-of-access vs obtainability is not a valid argument.

    The market is flooded with elixir/salve/pill producers. So unless every player agrees to never go below X gold price for Y elixir/salve, you'll always have overarching reduced prices. Quite frankly, if I had a shop I would undercut everyone and sell elixirs/salves for 3 gold apiece because it would sell. This would in turn cause everyone else to drop below 3 gold or meet me at 3 gold for their stuff to sell. So that profit argument is invalid.

    As far as activity, I see nothing wrong with making something require a bit more attention and spend a little bit more time doing something. In this era where things are just 'gimme gimme gimme' and 'quick quick quick', having something take a moment is rather refreshing. Sure, you can't build an AFK kill script to bash the mobs and harvest them like you can with Herbalism but that's ok because the mob respawns for both herds and individuals are actually pretty quick.


  • edited April 2021
    OH! Don't forget the horns, @Rhyot. Stags can be found in Easthern Ithmias and Dolbodi, and there's also some available through a quest in Vintal Glade.

    And if the argument hasn't been made yet.. You don't get experience from harvesting. You do from hunting though.
  • TeaniTeani Shadow Mistress Sweden
    Even if XP is negligible for higher levels, yes Apothecary gathering yields some XP. I also think that it takes longer for a herbalist to roll pills without ashes/ice than it does to make elixirs and such with gold/silver. In not sure about that, though. I've never had Apothecary, so I haven't tested it out. 



  • edited April 2021
    You can see the following 2 objects:
    "nazetu115759" a Nazetu eusuchian.
    "horde1168" a horde of twenty rats.
    H:5727 M:5627 E:116% W:113% B:100% Ess:180% [sdb eb lr][None][Huanazedha] 01:45:39.099

    Always has been hordes of rats in Huanazedha.
    Nonatea
  • I've noticed that curatives go for extremely cheap prices here. Does this pretty much make trade skills that generate them not worth the cost and effort?
  • From my own experience with Herbalism:

    Without having the gardener gloves artifact, I can harvest 1100 plants in a day. To fill a shop cache with say.. anabiotic, while not using ashes/ice, it would take 500 of madder, yarrow, and birthwort. That's two days of harvesting to make 5000 of one type of pill that are usually gone within a day.
    ValorieCallidora
Sign In or Register to comment.