The Olde Apothecary

"- Fixed an issue where NPC merchants would not take number of charges of a potion into account when calculating the sell value of the item. Due to this fix, all Alchemy potions have been updated so they can now be sold to NPC merchants."

 Can you say "hell yeah?!" I thought you would. :) 

9/26/06 FAQ page updated with new alchemy skill cap among a few other items. The recipes format updated for easier viewing.

09/23/06  Alchemy excerpts from yesterday's grab bag on the Camelot Herald:

"Q: (Insert question here about selling potions, particularly those created during the process of skilling up.)

A: We still don’t have a fix for the way the game treats potions (I’ve mentioned in past grab bags that the game looks at your potion and treats its value as fully charged, and grants gold accordingly – this is a bit… exploitative). You WILL be able to sell them back when we fix the problem, but for now, we think that for most people the convenience of having charged potions outweighs the bug of not being able to sell them. Sorry about the delay, though – since devs don’t have magic plat fairies, my own potion crafting is on hold.

Q: Hey! Put those sixty minute charge timer things back!

A: I know, they were cool, but they really weren’t supposed to go live. I asked the designer (Red Headed Stepchild, a veeeeeeeeeery straight shooter who has been with us for years, but new to sitting in the pilot’s seat) to give me the scoop on why we killed your dream.

1)      Potions were never supposed to get changed in the first place, actually. I was changing [other things], and didn’t mean to mess with these. Noob mistake on my part.

2)      The negative feedback [from people who hated the sixty minute timers, not the negative feedback from people who loved them] was completely legit. Timered buffs are not equal across the realms, and the dynamics involved in using them are very particular. By increasing the durations, we created a new breed of buffbot. It allowed certain classes to gain abilities they had little or no access to before, created a large disparity across the realms, and further pushed certain classes out of their minimal roles in group dynamics. Why group a class for a certain type of buff, when you can fire off a buff from a bot and be good for a full hour?

3)      Making buffs castable on the move solved almost all the issues that the changes were trying to address. Lowering downtime, stopping every 5 minutes to rebuff, and getting straight back to the fight after a rez being the major factors.

4)      Allowing one hour timers made people on classic servers particularly unhappy, and for good reason. The mechanics of it pretty much kick the “no buffbots” aspect of the server in the nuts."

09/14/06  A special thanks to the VN DAoC tradeskill community for their great suggestions and ideas for enhancing the site. Keep checking back here at the News page for future updates as I'll try to incorporate them. 

Here's today's fixes:

Corrected typo for Superior Elixir of Instant Power  on in Recipes page/Power Potions - now correctly reads as a value of 99, not 89.

Updated recipes and added links for charges, special charges, and reactive tinctures on the Recipes page.

Fixed issue where recipe excel sheet could not be downloaded from host - it should be accessible now.

Corrected some information on the FAQ page - thanks to Mythic Item/Tradskill TL  DHCruiser for the feedback!

The location of Tir na Nog alchemy master Aslander has been corrected in documentation to reflect his dutiful place by the alchemy table outside the Druid Grove.

9/12/06  The Olde Apothecary goes live! Working on a few design fixes and the new charges, special charges, and reactive tinctures recipe lists.

9/08/06 Excerpts from the Herald grab bag - Jewelcraft has been a big "if" for a rather long time and it appears to be shelved indefinitely. :(

"Q: We were very excited about the announced changes to the crafting system such as 40% less cost and time to reach the LGM level.  When will this be implemented?  Nothing was mentioned in the last patch notes :(

A: Grin. I know most crafters are excited, and heaven know I may even fish out my own stagnated-at-400 crafter, but as I said last week: “I [have] no idea when these things would hit Pendragon” and “won’t even dare say what patch we’ve scheduled” these changes. Not soon.

At one of our many roundtables, I explained the process of making changes to the game. (Fixes to the game are a different kettle of fish.) Making change involves: reading feedback, making plans, creating code and art assets, testing, a second round of design refinements, executing those changes, testing, public testing, and patching. In terms of the crafting changes, we have finished stage two on that list. Again, I would not have mentioned these things at ALL if I hadn’t made the judgment call of giving the European players an exclusive announcement.

Q: Is Jewelcrafting on the list of crafting changes.

A: No. For that horse to rise again, it’d take a miracle. (“Have fun storming the castle.”) It was a matter of making a choice from our many options in terms of what to do for crafting – and we chose to revamp the system as a whole."

9/08/06 More hot fixes posted on the Herald:

"- Hibernian Alchemists can once again create diminutive siege.  

- Alchemists can now recharge the new level 49 charges using the liquid arcanium renewal or liquid arcanite renewal. "

However, liquid arcanium still doesn't appear to work for recharging despite this fix.

9/07/06  Another hot fix posted on the Herald:

"The minor lethal poison, minor weakening poison, minor imbalancing poison, and minor infectious serum will now check the proper herbcraft skill level."

9/06/06 Hot fix posted on the Herald regarding buggy timers that were impacting some of the new potions:

"-Some spell timers had been incorrectly set to have one-hour durations.  These spells have been reverted back to their original durations."

9/06/06  Big changes to alchemy with this patch. Read on...

Excerpt from 1.85 Release Notes on the Camelot Herald

TRADESKILL NOTES
 General Changes and Fixes

 - The Alchemy weak essence of weariness recipe will now properly accept the greater enervating poison ingredient.

Basic Crafting

 - Chain and Scale recipes in Basic Crafting will no longer require the use of liners.

Multiple Charge Potions

 - All existing Alchemy potion recipes are now set up to create 3-charge potions. Please note that any potion created before this patch will not be affected. New potions created with these recipes will have the appropriate number of charges.

 - We have added 6-charge and 9-charge recipe versions for each Alchemy potion. Alchemists will now have the option to create a 3-charge, 6-charge, or 9-charge version of each of their potions.

 - Due to changing the potions to be multi-charge potions, newly crafted potions can no longer be sold to an NPC vendor.

 - The recipes in Alchemy have been reorganized to fit the multi-charge potion recipes more cleanly into the recipe list.

Alchemy Potion Changes

 - The durations for the Strength, Fortitude, Dexterity, Enlightenment, Might, Deftness, Shard Skin, and Speed potions have been increased from 10 minutes to 20 minutes.

 - The durations for the Invigoration potions have been increased from 2 minutes to 5 minutes.

 - The buff value of the Strength, Fortitude, Dexterity, and Enlightenment potions has been increased from 20 to 34.

 - The buff value of the Might and Deftness potions has been increased from 30 to 51.

New Low Level Tinctures

 - We have added reactive effect and charge tincture recipes to Alchemy for levels 25 and level 35. The names and effects for these tinctures are listed below.

Level 25 Reactive Effects

Reactive shard fine alloy armor tincture - 2.6 damage shield, 15-second duration
Reactive hardening fine alloy armor tincture - 37 armor factor buff, 60-second duration
Reactive ablative fine alloy armor tincture - 50 melee ablative, 10-minute duration

Level 25 Charges

Stable shard fine alloy tincture - 2.1 damage shield, 10-minute duration
Stable hardening fine alloy tincture - 37 armor factor buff, 10-minute duration
Stable enlightening fine alloy tincture - 37 acuity buff, 10-minute duration

Level 35 Reactive Effects

Reactive shard adamantium armor tincture - 3.6 damage shield, 15-second duration
Reactive hardening adamantium armor tincture - 56 armor factor buff, 60-second duration
Reactive ablative adamantium armor tincture - 75 melee ablative, 10-minute duration

Level 35 Charges

Stable shard adamantium tincture - 2.9 damage shield, 10-minute duration
Stable hardening adamantium tincture - 56 armor factor buff, 10-minute duration
Stable enlightening adamantium tincture - 56 acuity buff, 10-minute duration

New High Level Tinctures

 - We have added reactive effect, weapon effect, and charge tincture recipes to Alchemy that provide new effects for crafted armor. The names and effects for these tinctures are listed below.

 - Some of the higher level tinctures require a dropped component, which comes from the standard dropped components used in Alchemy. The following recipes that require this dropped component are as follows:

Reactive blinding netherium armor tincture
Reactive draining netherium armor tincture
Reactive blinding arcanium armor tincture
Reactive draining arcanium armor tincture
Stable neutralizing arcanium tincture
Stable revivifying arcanium tincture
Volatile depletion netherium weapon tincture
Volatile blinding netherium weapon tincture
Volatile depletion arcanium weapon tincture
Volatile blinding arcanium weapon tincture

Level 45 Reactive Effects

Reactive coil netherium armor tincture - 30% snare, 15-second duration
Reactive depletion netherium armor tincture - 35 power drain
Reactive blinding netherium armor tincture - 25% nearsight, 30-second duration
Reactive draining netherium armor tincture - 75 omni drain

Level 45 Charges

Stable greater celeric netherium tincture - 10% celerity, 5-minute duration
Stable transference netherium tincture - 30 power transfer
Stable shifting netherium tincture - 7 hits transfer

Level 45 Weapon Effects

Volatile provoking netherium weapon tincture - 16 taunt
Volatile depletion netherium weapon tincture - 35 power drain
Volatile blinding netherium weapon tincture - 25% nearsight, 30-second duration

Level 49 Reactive Effects

Reactive coil arcanium armor tincture - 35% snare, 15-second duration
Reactive depletion arcanium armor tincture - 55 power drain
Reactive blinding arcanium armor tincture - 30% nearsight, 30-second duration
Reactive draining arcanium armor tincture - 100 omni drain

Level 49 Charges

Stable greater celeric arcanium tincture - 15% celerity, 5 minute duration
Stable neutralizing arcanium tincture - cure poison
Stable revivifying arcanium tincture - cure disease

Level 49 Weapon Effects

Volatile provoking arcanium weapon tincture - 28 taunt
Volatile depletion arcanium weapon tincture - 55 power drain
Volatile blinding arcanium weapon tincture - 30% nearsight, 30-second duration

Ranged Weapons

 - (Fletching) We have added new level 51 ranged weapons with a predefined weapon effect. Players will have a choice between three different recipes for each level 51 bow to choose between either a cold, heat, or energy based direct damage weapon effect.

 - Material Level 9 bows with predefined weapon effects have been added to the game.

---

9/06/06  After some email  correspondence, I received the blessing of the owner of "Prissy's Guide to Alchemy" to continue the site as he indicated he was no longer playing DAoC or updating the site. Big changes are coming up in the next patch for alchemy which greatly affect alchemy so hopefully I can pick up where Prissy left off and continue provide a useful resource for other alchemists. Stay tuned for updates here!