Herbalism and Apothecary

RazmaelRazmael Administrator, Immortal
edited March 2017 in Aetolia Development
Hello folks! Today the reconstruction of Aetolia's curing goes live! This post is long, but it has important information, so please read it all. A copy will also be posted on the forums, so you can post feedback and questions.

=== OVERVIEW ===
As the Bloom ravaged Aetolia, victims found that curatives began failing them. The newly discovered purgative did not abate this complication -- instead, it made it worse. Due to the plague, the cure, or both, the physiology of those infected changed. This, compounded by the sludge's decimation of local flora, has forced mortals to look elsewhere for relief. Thankfully, the Apothecarium in Esterport's research into new cures in the onset of the Bloom has doubled in benefit, and with the crisis over, they are sharing their results!

No longer do undead and living use separate cures, rendering the skills of Reanimation and Concoctions obsolete. Instead, the skills of Herbalism and Apothecary have risen to the fore.

Herbalism involves harvesting herbs to produce pills, which are the replacement for herbs and slices. Some of their herbs can also be smoked in a pipe, replacing tinctures and the old smoked herbs.

Apothecary involves collecting parts from animals (that you need to kill) to produce elixirs and poultices, which are replacements for elixirs/serums and salves/poultices respectively.

HELP HERBALISM, HELP APOTHECARY, AB HERBALISM and AB APOTHECARY offer further details on these skills. You can find a list of new cures and their old equivalents under HELP CURES.


=== TRANSITIONING ===
That said, we've done as much as we can to make the transition smooth:
- FirstAid has been updated to support the new cures.
- Common curing commands will substitute your input with the appropriate new cures. E.G.: 'outc moss, eat moss' will become 'outc anabiotic, eat anabiotic' for you.
- You can type the first 4 letters of most of the new cures for shorthand in these same commands. E.G.: outc anti, eat anti, for antipsychotic.
- CONFIG CUREMSGS LIVING or CONFIG CUREMSGS UNDEAD will change the output of a lot curing and discernment lines to match their old lines for living and undead players. It's our hope that this setting, combined with the substitution above, should allow your systems to have little to no need of update.
- Use CONFIG CUREMSGS DEFAULT to go back to the default, new cure messages.

Unfortunately, those of you with limp_veins in your system will need to update them to remove it, as the affliction was deleted along with these changes (it did the exact same thing as asthma).

*** NOTE: To support you in the initial days of these changes, you can type in CAREPACKAGE once anytime within the next two weeks to receive a limited amount of each pill, elixir and poultice. ***


=== IF YOU HAD REANIMATION OR CONCOCTIONS ===
If you have Reanimation or Concoctions, the first thing you'll probably notice is a big ugly notification when you log in telling you to read this post and SELECT HELP.

There are three choices available to you: Switch to Herbalism, switch to Apothecary or get a full lesson refund. If you choose to switch to one of the new skills, you'll be at the same skill points as you were in the old skill. However, please realize that skill ranks for many of the cures have been changed around. If, for example, you only learned Concoctions to make health elixirs, you might find you'll not have access to that in Apothecary at your skill level.

Use the SELECT HELP command for syntax on switching or obtaining a refund.


=== ARTIFACTS ===
- Harvesting gloves (quick_harvest) will carry over into Herbalism and serve the same purpose: Doubles the base amount you can harvest each day, and improves balance recovery on most Herbalism actions. Wearing these also bypasses the need for an iron sickle.

- The reanimation scalpel will carry over into Apothecary, although its function has changed slightly. It is now the direct equivalent of the harvesting gloves, in that it will double the base amount of animal parts you can collect each day, instead of doubling the output. It also improves balance recovery on most Apothecary actions, and bypasses the need for an iron scalpel.

We'll be offering a direct 1:1 conversion for the gloves and scalpel if you decide to pick up the opposite skill instead. Message myself or Oleis to discuss that.

If you have any other artifact that served a purpose in Concoctions or Reanimation, and no longer does in the new skills, again please message myself or Oleis to discuss options.


=== GENERAL CHANGES ===
Now some general changes that you should take note of:
- Preparing curatives now requires you to be in a special Herbalism or Apothecary room. Cities can purchase these room upgrades for 10,000,000 gold each.
- Animals no longer drop their parts on being killed -- an Apothecarist must collect the part from their corpse.
- Limp_veins deleted, as mentioned above.
- There is now a new commodity shop in the Siha Dylis area in Azdun, selling gold, silver and stone.
- Herb populations are now shared globally and harvesting mechanics have changed slightly (HELP HARVESTING).
- Daily harvesting limits have been reduced drastically.
- Collecting parts from animals has a daily harvest limit now (Unlike Reanimation).
- Anybody with an iron scalpel (from Forging) can now autopsy and dissect old Reanimation slices from corpses, if you need them for something.
- Anybody with an iron sickle (From Forging) can now harvest old Concoctions herbs, if you need them for something (although these will be hard to find until the sludge event is resolved).
- Racial improved harvesting skill now only raises your daily limit by 100 herbs, instead of 25%.

In the interest of preserving our database space, I've gone ahead and deleted from caches, shopcaches, inventories and rooms the following:
- All Reanimation organs, dried organs and slices.
- All Concoctions herbs and parts.
- All elixirs, poultices, salves, tinctures, and serums (their containers willl remain).

And in the interest of ensuring nobody has a head start on these changes, I've also gone ahead and deleted all of the new herbs and animal parts that were obtained the past few days due to ongoing game events.


=== THE NEXT FEW WEEKS ===
While we adapt to this system, we'll be keeping an eye on numbers and how things are going. You'll no doubt see a lot of adjustments in that regard, and possibly even changes to what ingredients are used for each cure.

As the first few days are undoubtedly going to have heavy demand, I'll be cranking up the numbers (plant regrow time, plant max, mob respwan time, etc) and then slowly dialing them back down to our desired levels.

For the next 72 hours, the Apothecary in Esterport will have a public Herbalism and Apothecary prep room where you can find cures. After that, there will be a nominal gold fee to gain access to it for 24 hours.
Roxi
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Comments

  • Wasn't sure where to post it but it seems to be a potentially bad bug.

    I had a few hundred of most of the pills in my cache already by the time a friend told me that I could use CAREPACKAGE to get a basic stock started.

    After using it though, my cache emptied of ones I already had and replaced them with the carepackage amounts.

    Essentially lost around 55k gold worth of curatives.

    C/Ping my before cache and after cache.

    Glancing into the cache, you see:
    -------------------------------- Pills ---------------------------------
    [ 200] acuity [ 200] amaurosis [ 599] anabiotic
    [ 200] antipsychotic [ 200] coagulation [ 200] decongestant
    [ 200] depressant [ 200] euphoriant [ 100] kawhepill
    [ 100] opiate [ 200] ototoxin [ 200] thanatonin

    ------------------------------ Herbalism -------------------------------
    [ 170] reishi

    -------------------------- Inks & Commodities --------------------------
    [ 465] blue ink [ 465] cloth [ 157] coal
    [ 16] elemental ashes [ 184] gold ink [ 94] goldbar
    [ 105] green ink [ 173] iron [ 187] leather
    [ 253] obsidian [ 27] obsidian ink [ 199] purple ink
    [ 562] red ink [ 190] rope [ 83] silver
    [ 246] steel [ 136] wood [ 200] yellow ink
    [ 38] ylemshard

    ------------------------------- Crystals -------------------------------
    [ 103] crystal cube [ 121] cylinder crystal [ 85] diamond crystal
    [ 112] disc crystal [ 123] egg crystal [ 107] pentagon crystal
    [ 113] polyhedron cryst [ 136] sphere crystal [ 103] spiral crystal
    [ 150] torus crystal

    ------------------------------ Gemstones -------------------------------
    [ 2] ruby [ 2] sapphire

    -------------------------------- Other ---------------------------------
    [ 5] brass [ 4] bronze [ 11] clay
    [ 3] copper [ 2] hematite [ 4] lead
    [ 1] marble [ 4] nickel [ 1] ore
    [ 1] ore [ 1] ore [ 4] pewter
    [ 4] ration [ 2] sandstone [ 4] tin


    Glancing into the cache, you see:
    -------------------------------- Pills ---------------------------------
    [ 100] acuity [ 100] amaurosis [ 250] anabiotic
    [ 100] antipsychotic [ 100] coagulation [ 100] decongestant
    [ 100] depressant [ 100] euphoriant [ 100] kawhepill
    [ 100] opiate [ 100] ototoxin [ 100] panacea
    [ 100] paste [ 100] steroid [ 100] stimulant
    [ 100] thanatonin [ 100] waterbreathing

    ------------------------------ Herbalism -------------------------------
    [ 100] reishi [ 100] willow [ 100] yarrow

    -------------------------- Inks & Commodities --------------------------
    [ 465] blue ink [ 465] cloth [ 157] coal
    [ 16] elemental ashes [ 184] gold ink [ 94] goldbar
    [ 105] green ink [ 173] iron [ 187] leather
    [ 253] obsidian [ 27] obsidian ink [ 199] purple ink
    [ 562] red ink [ 190] rope [ 83] silver
    [ 246] steel [ 136] wood [ 200] yellow ink
    [ 38] ylemshard

    ------------------------------- Crystals -------------------------------
    [ 103] crystal cube [ 121] cylinder crystal [ 85] diamond crystal
    [ 112] disc crystal [ 123] egg crystal [ 107] pentagon crystal
    [ 113] polyhedron cryst [ 136] sphere crystal [ 103] spiral crystal
    [ 150] torus crystal

    ------------------------------ Gemstones -------------------------------
    [ 2] ruby [ 2] sapphire

    -------------------------------- Other ---------------------------------
    [ 5] brass [ 4] bronze [ 11] clay
    [ 3] copper [ 2] hematite [ 4] lead
    [ 1] marble [ 4] nickel [ 1] ore
    image
    Avatar of Fyrren drawn by the amazing Sessizlik.
  • OleisOleis Producer Emeritus Administrator, Immortal
    Fyrren said:

    Wasn't sure where to post it but it seems to be a potentially bad bug.

    I had a few hundred of most of the pills in my cache already by the time a friend told me that I could use CAREPACKAGE to get a basic stock started.

    After using it though, my cache emptied of ones I already had and replaced them with the carepackage amounts.

    Essentially lost around 55k gold worth of curatives.

    C/Ping my before cache and after cache.

    I can't personally do it right now (though I am fixing the command), but we'll get you back to where you were right away. Thanks for letting us know, and sorry about the trouble.
    You say to Slyphe, "You're so freaking smart."
    [---]
    "^," Slyphe agrees with you.
    Fyrren
  • OleisOleis Producer Emeritus Administrator, Immortal
    Okay. Command is fixed. I'll be able to get your cache where it is supposed to be ASAP tomorrow.
    You say to Slyphe, "You're so freaking smart."
    [---]
    "^," Slyphe agrees with you.
    Fyrren
  • @Oleis Thanks for the quick fix! Hope there haven't been too many speedbumps during this change. It's a pretty big change, after all.
    image
    Avatar of Fyrren drawn by the amazing Sessizlik.
  • @Oleis would it be possible to convert the various parts that you only get one or two of per collection to slices or pieces so that it's a little easier to gather apothecary parts?

  • AxiusAxius where I am
    those of us crafting en-masse for others... -how- are we supposed to do this? Casks don't -work-. Concoctionists used to be able to just make it in their pot, hand their pot to the person they were making for and go "Here, dump this in your fluidcache".. but one cannot distill into another's fluidcache for them, one cannot distill into a cask, hand the cask over for them to refill their fluidcache from...so.. what the heck are we supposed to do?!
  • I don't feel like casks are a reasonable solution, either, since they do require credit investment.

  • Distill into a vial or bandage, I guess. That's what toxicologists have to do if there is no cask.
  • OleisOleis Producer Emeritus Administrator, Immortal
    edited April 2017
    Bulk distillation is coming soon. Just an oversight on our part.
    You say to Slyphe, "You're so freaking smart."
    [---]
    "^," Slyphe agrees with you.
    Fyrren
  • RoxiRoxi Reno, NV
    With stag horn now being used in enchanting and apothecary, and stags no longer dropping horns on death, will all the enchanters need to buy horns from apothecary people, or will they still have the ability to get the horns themselves, just having to go to an apothecary room to get it? I havent been able to test it myself yet, but I havent seen anything about it (if I missed it, Im sorry)
    "
  • RazmaelRazmael Administrator, Immortal
    Enchanters will need to obtain horns from an Apothecarist now.
  • SeirSeir Seein' All the Things Getting high off your emotion
    Razmael said:

    Enchanters will need to obtain horns from an Apothecarist now.

    And so do Shamans now. :shakefist:
  • AishiaAishia Queen Bee
    Lame.
  • Seriously, did no one read Oleis' initial posts about the reason for these changes being made? This is a multiplayer game - the changes are so that you can't exist solely as your own personal one-stop crafting shop capable of making every single item you might ever need in-game.
    FyrrenLin
  • AishiaAishia Queen Bee
    still feathers and horns are secondary resources for a lot of skills and crafts.
    TeaniSeir
  • @Ayegor Yes, everyone understands the reasons that these changes were made. However, it seems like there's been some farther reaching impact than what people expected.

    FyrrenSeir
  • Apologies if someone's already brought this up somewhere, but I'm not seeing it with a search. It looks like this new herb system's screwed up fumology, as we use the old concoctions herbs for it. The new ones do not seem to be useable as fumology ingredients, and if they become so, it would be far nicer to see them as new ingredients with new messages, than just replacing their old counterparts. Will the original herbs be made available somewhere so they can continue to be used for fumology or other crafts that folk have used them in?
  • TeaniTeani Shadow Mistress Sweden
    @Phendegwen, old herbs are still accessible for harvest, though to a lesser extent. There's one in each original room where you used to find them. If you don't have a skill to harvest (Herbalist or Apothecary), you should still be able to harvest 50 per week of whatever you might need, you just need a sickle. Otherwise you might ask a Herbalist to harvest it for you, but chances are, they might be more interested in harvesting the necessary ingredients for curative pills.

    I am not sure if it is the same for animal parts, but I would guess that if you have a scalpel and you haven't harvested your maximum amount for the week, you should be able to harvest things like bones, feathers and other things too. This should be checked though, as I might be wrong.



  • OleisOleis Producer Emeritus Administrator, Immortal
    Everything from before should still be available, as Teani said. We've had small problems here and there, as is normal with giant changes like this, so don't hesitate to shout out if you can't find something or it's not working as intended.
    You say to Slyphe, "You're so freaking smart."
    [---]
    "^," Slyphe agrees with you.
  • Thank you Teani and Oleis for the replies- I missed the small detail about availability in the announce post, and I wasn't sure if the single herbs were just leftovers from a worldwide extinction since I was only finding them on rare occasions. I'm happy to know my favorite tradeskill will live on.
    OleisTenshyo
  • PhoeneciaPhoenecia The Merchant of Esterport Somewhere in Attica
    So. Despite not having either Herbalism or Apothecary myself, I've already noticed a huge disparity between both skills. Despite plants being a global cap for Herbalists, gathering materials and making cures is VASTLY more convenient for Herbalists. From what I've seen, an Herbalist can easily max out their harvest limit in an hour, and make enough cures to max out a standard cache with ease.

    Apothecaries, on the other hand, will spend hours bashing the same mobs and struggle to hit their harvest limit. And even though there's competition for the same mobs like herbs are for herbalists, herbalists have several hundred rooms that can be harvested from. With apothecaries, all material mobs are in the same couple of areas, and are being competed for by several people at once, even with quicker respawn timers. You're not quick enough in killing the mobs you need for stag horns? You're SOL. And the fact there's so few of certain mobs, like toads, makes Apothecary the least appealing and more frustrating of the two options.

    I can understand limiting cures, but it seems Herbalists get a MUCH better deal with their skill set.
    RunasMalcanthetSibattiXenia
  • @Trikal and I kinda touched on this OOC the other night, there is one area in the game with toads, while apothecary folks are generally courteous we kinda have been keeping our eye on who is in that area during the time, Trikal noticed I was in there and was like oh...coming for toads and beavers, I was actually hoarding snakes at the moment, so he was able to get toads.

    That being said herbalists dont have to deal with that, because they are not limited to a single area to harvest from with a limited amount of spaces, generally in an area a herbalist and another herbalist could harvest seperate sides and generally get a decent haul, meanwhile in an area that has say eleven toads, you have two apothecary fighting over only 22 legs total, which is way less than a herbalist can even get in one room of harvest.

    Like I get the reasons behind limiting, dont get me wrong, but it needs to either be adjusted to be the same for both skills or something, right now for an apothecary to max out its roughly 2-3 hours of work 4 if you have a scalpel, where an herbalist is only losing an hour of time or so.
    MalcanthetXavinXenia
  • I have to say that @Runas has a very good point. If this system was like dissection used to be, where you could get pretty much any part from almost any living creature, baring the the obvious ovaries, testis, and sulphurite, it would not be a big deal. You could roll through and max out your daily limit in an hour or so with bashing, even if you could only grab one collection per corpse it wouldn't be nearly as bad. Right now, though, there are quite a few components that are very difficult to get if there is any competition. So either the animals that are used need to be made much wider-spread in wilderness areas, or something else has to change.

    Xenia
  • SerriceSerrice the Black Fox
    I'm confused as to why you guys would think this, since I ran the numbers and I need one and a half days worth of harvest limit to get a full cache of pills but I'd need like a quarter day's harvest of apothecary ingredients for a full fluidcache.
     
    Lin
  • Serrice said:

    I'm confused as to why you guys would think this, since I ran the numbers and I need one and a half days worth of harvest limit to get a full cache of pills but I'd need like a quarter day's harvest of apothecary ingredients for a full fluidcache.

    Plus add in that Apothecary is cheaper to do the max fills, I think the two balance out decently well. Just sucks because so many were out gathering, probably won't be as bad once things settle back down - like they already have with herbalism.
  • LinLin Blackbird The Moonglade
    I don't have an Herbalist, but I gotta say, Apothecary has been a breeze. I really don't feel like there's any shortage of anything at the moment.

    Except for having to bash crystal entities. Hoo boy, that's a trial.
  • Maybe it's the time of day that I had been trying to gather. But I do think that on some of the things, eagles and toads especially, there is a bit of a shortage.

  • OleisOleis Producer Emeritus Administrator, Immortal
    Xavin said:

    Maybe it's the time of day that I had been trying to gather. But I do think that on some of the things, eagles and toads especially, there is a bit of a shortage.

    This is exactly the sort of thing we're looking to hear about, so thanks for the heads up. I'll keep an eye on times of day. A few extra eagles and toads aren't going to totally upset the economy or anything.
    You say to Slyphe, "You're so freaking smart."
    [---]
    "^," Slyphe agrees with you.
    Teani
  • As a person with Apothecary who doesn't sit there and watch for things to respawn, it's a total drag. I've yet to acquire stag horns cus as Runas said, I'm always SOL when I get into the Ithmia. Maybe I need to explore more and learn of some other forest where stags also spawn? Also testicles, those are hard to get too, can't seem to get my hands on any.

    FyrrenRunasSerriceKelliaraSeth
  • SibattiSibatti Mamba dur Naya Amidst vibrant flora and trees
    Was kuzu replaced? I don't see any in the rainforest.
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