[SPOILERS] Beholder Tree Altar

[panurgy]

So regarding the altar at the tree:

What can you sacrifice for Old Pagos?
1. spirit rock - seems to do something
2. bag of magic amulets?
3. asterion's cloak? (which seems like an expensive item to throw away)
4 ...?

[Trentcorwin]

Blood

[Kïïhl]

I managed to get a fruit by sacrificing 4 vitality and 3 spirit rocks

[Og-the-Trog]

Eudocia's rods (sacrifice 4 at a time for a stronger reaction)
Alchemical potions
The 'magic arrow' and human bones from the missing hunters quest also have mild reactions

But yeah blood & spirit rocks are probably the most economical

it also appears to be bugged atleast 2 ways- you can consume the seed and still turn it in to the howler's dell druids for good guy points, (at least if you show it to them first..), and you can sacrifice another rock after consuming the first seed to get another. (you can only have one at a time though, so don't sacrifice more hoping to stack them)

I'd say it takes 4-5 spirit rocks to produce the first seed. (maybe 15-20 vitality?)

[Cyllya]

Pneuma is an option if you're a mage. I managed to get the fruit by offering pneuma, using (not offering) the spirit rock, offering more pneuma, and then offering the max amount of blood.

[panurgy]

Originally posted by Cyllya:

Pneuma is an option if you're a mage. I managed to get the fruit by offering pneuma, using (not offering) the spirit rock, offering more pneuma, and then offering the max amount of blood.

Nice! I was playing a mage and didn't even realize that.

[carandiro]

The easiest way is 5 spirit rocks, which by that point of the game should be 20 dragon rings (and you get 2 for free, so in reality just 12 dragons). Nothing comes even close to the economical value of those, unless you're a mage and throw in all of your pneuma and all you plan to do that day is curing the village, which will shave off another stone from the equation.
So yeah, blood, stones, pneuma (if you're a mage) and alchemical potions (super-weak, so hardly economical) are the only replenishable things you can use. Everything else is just not worth using.

[Rithrin]

The Tool of Destruction counts big towards the fruit, but you may want to save it for other things. Same with Asterion's cloak. I had much dearer things to spend crowns on than spirit stones, so I only used the free one, two healing potions, and a 4 vitality cut which did it. Seems like you need about 4 powerful offerings to awaken the fruit.

It's probably a point system. Need 16 points, offerings give between 1 to 4 points. Blood = # of vitality offered, rods = 1pt, spirit stones = 4 pts, etc.

[carandiro]

It is points indeed, but the value is more likely to be a bit higher for the fruit to grow.
Also - did you actually struggle with money that you consider 12 (or even 8) dragons to be not worth it? I kind of regretted that I didn't pick "I want to be rich" as my goal, because I hit the 100 dragons by 29th day and the +1 HP you get from fulfilling your goal is really handy.
But all in all, 12 dragons to save a settlement and open... pretty much everyone as a trusting friend is massive gain for zero effort. I mean that's 4 gambling victories.

[Rithrin]

I was doing 2 playthroughs overall, both as Scholar, after the first I realized that growing the druid and curing the town was best done early (it helps with reputation and gaining access to the very important basalt at the monastery). At that point, you certainly don't have enough reputation to get a reduction in spirit stone price. 12 dragons is so much for something that you're just going to throw away, especially multiple, when you need to save for a crossbow for 26 (after long quest line for price reduction), you need 10 to clear out the goblins, you need 30+ for fancy clothes down the line, another 20 for repair kits, constantly need to bribe people with rations (not to mention for some late game stuff people will ask you for 30+ crowns for their services), so on and so forth, the money is pretty tight.

There are several opportunities in game to get huge dumps of crowns all at once (trading commodities, some trophies, placing all rods, etc), but chances to achieve those without those items mentioned above are slim.

Whereas for Scholar, healing potions basically cost 2 dragons, and you even get 2 of them for free right at start of the game. Why not just use those?

[carandiro]

When in doubt - gamble. This will allow you to hone your combat experience, so two birds with one stone.
When still in doubt - trade. If you aren't trading early and aggressively, you are setting yourself up for a vicious cycle of poverty, until you will scrap up big pay-off from some quest. You don't need a lantern early on and you do have enough to buy linen, which even at lowest possible price will be worth dragging to Foggy. Bam, free money to start the ball rolling.
And if you are buying food, or, even weirder, living off rations that you pay money for, you are doing something TERRIBLY wrong. Like really, really wrong. The only food there are to buy are 4 meals at Foggy's for 1 dragon.

But more seriously - you are going to get better results by sacrificing your own blood if you plan to do it cheaply, and then applying the potion to heal yourself, than by throwing the potion directly at the altar. You will get healed for curing the plague, too.
If I'm wrong, I'd like to be corrected by the dev. But as far as I figured it out, your blood has higher "value" than the healing potion.

[my ass]

I offer my blood
I offer a magical item
I offer my magical power

for Magical Item here are all the items that count

The cursed coins
A spirit rock
The potion I found in the dolmen
A small healing potion.
One of my healing potions
One of my healing potions
My sharpening poison
The magic quills I’m carrying
A bronze rod that I got from Eudocia
Asterion’s cloak
The magic chisel
The Tool of Destruction
The Golem Glove
The dragon horn
The blinding powder
The withering dust

[my ass]

Originally posted by carandiro:

When in doubt - gamble. This will allow you to hone your combat experience, so two birds with one stone.
When still in doubt - trade. If you aren't trading early and aggressively, you are setting yourself up for a vicious cycle of poverty, until you will scrap up big pay-off from some quest. You don't need a lantern early on and you do have enough to buy linen, which even at lowest possible price will be worth dragging to Foggy. Bam, free money to start the ball rolling.
And if you are buying food, or, even weirder, living off rations that you pay money for, you are doing something TERRIBLY wrong. Like really, really wrong. The only food there are to buy are 4 meals at Foggy's for 1 dragon.

But more seriously - you are going to get better results by sacrificing your own blood if you plan to do it cheaply, and then applying the potion to heal yourself, than by throwing the potion directly at the altar. You will get healed for curing the plague, too.
If I'm wrong, I'd like to be corrected by the dev. But as far as I figured it out, your blood has higher "value" than the healing potion.

Not a dev but

What you donate adds points to the beholder and when a threshold is reached it spits out a fruit

Small healing potion +2 points
Generic +6 points


Slight cut +2 points -1 Health
deep cut +4 points -2 Health
Hurt myself +6 points -3 Health
As much before I faint +9 -4 Health

small healing potion +2 to health
generic healing potion +4 to health

So yes it is better to donate blood than the healing potion

[carandiro]

Is it even possible to get golem glove without healing the plague first? I mean I get how it works as a magic item, my question is about possibility to even obtain the item in the first place. You'd have to max-out Eudocia's trust to get it, and that takes all her quests and all the related events, which I don't think you can get to without curing the plague.

[my ass]

Originally posted by carandiro:

Is it even possible to get golem glove without healing the plague first? I mean I get how it works as a magic item, my question is about possibility to even obtain the item in the first place. You'd have to max-out Eudocia's trust to get it, and that takes all her quests and all the related events, which I don't think you can get to without curing the plague.

if this statement

 eudocia_friendship+appearance_charisma+eudocia_invitation_argument_points) < eudocia_invitation_argument_points_threshold 

= TRUE

then you DO NOT get the Golem Glove.

the plague healed adds to the eudocia_invitation_argument_points but is not the only thing within that parameter there is the bandits quest, abandoned village, howler, etc etc so it is not necessary if the other parameters + eudocia_friendship+appearance_charisma are higher

[Rithrin]

Originally posted by carandiro:

When in doubt - gamble. This will allow you to hone your combat experience, so two birds with one stone.

I assume you mean gamble by taking on combat, not playing dice. I didn't want to save scum by rushing headlong into everything and just rerolling the encounter if I failed, but early on even after throwing axes several times at Pelt, as Scholar even the smallest encounter will leave you with 1 to 3 hits on your gambeson (costly early on) or Vitality (even worse since it costs time to recover generally). IMO it costs more in the long run through repairs and healing to take combat risks early than it does to buy the tools you need to get better results.

Originally posted by carandiro:

When still in doubt - trade. If you aren't trading early and aggressively, you are setting yourself up for a vicious cycle of poverty, until you will scrap up big pay-off from some quest. You don't need a lantern early on and you do have enough to buy linen, which even at lowest possible price will be worth dragging to Foggy. Bam, free money to start the ball rolling.
And if you are buying food, or, even weirder, living off rations that you pay money for, you are doing something TERRIBLY wrong. Like really, really wrong. The only food there are to buy are 4 meals at Foggy's for 1 dragon.

Well, I don't want to derail this thread too much by talking about economy, but yeah I definitely trade the commodities, I built the lantern later myself, etc. Still found that everything is such a huge money sink. There's only 1 linen, 1 elk pelt, etc, for the big payouts, and for some of them it's only worth it if you have good relationship/appearance first or it barely breaks even. To keep it on topic, though, you could get 2 spirit stones or you could buy a crossbow. Crossbow gets you more value (unless you're a mage and can just cast a crossbow spell).

Originally posted by carandiro:

But more seriously - you are going to get better results by sacrificing your own blood if you plan to do it cheaply, and then applying the potion to heal yourself, than by throwing the potion directly at the altar. You will get healed for curing the plague, too.
If I'm wrong, I'd like to be corrected by the dev. But as far as I figured it out, your blood has higher "value" than the healing potion.

I'm surprised the blood was higher value. I tried a few combination of different items and different cuts, and it seemed like I got there at the same rate using the potions directly. But if so, then you're right. For a Scholar, though, especially if you're at this point in the game, a healing potion should cost 2 dragons (Buy each component from Thryssus for 1 dragon each, brew for free with druid) so that's why I was using them.