Desired Features

[The dark fairy]

I've been playing through the game, and have loved it! There are a few features that I have wanted as I've gone along though, and I figured I'd throw them out in case someone hears, since they definitely won't be seen if I don't say anything.

1. Bulk Brewing is really fun, and the max of 50% off is really satisfying, but some recipes cannot be split in two evenly, and will round up. This is fine and fair, but I feel like there should be a skill locked behind bulk brewing that makes the bulk brewing raised to six or lowered to four, so that every recipe can be even split in two.

2. Making recipes for the substances is incredible, but at the higher tiers can be arduous to optimize. I have a lot of early game recopies I have replaced or overhauled, but are part of my sun and life salt recipes because I made my Nigredo with it originally. I feel like unlike the potion recipes, you should be able to substitute at least the reagent, or to simply make it so that you use it from your inventory strictly instead of creating it when you make higher tiers.

I also feel like their should be a option to use potions from your inventory rather than the raw ingredients, if you have them.

3. I feel like there should be a upgrade for the gardens for irrigation. Late game upgrade where you can press a valve to water the garden instead of waving the watering can around. It would also give the minotaur another amazing upgrade option.

4. When I was playing with the alchemy machine, I had the idea that maybe instead of needing a bunch of specific potions, it could be a alchemy machine map, where the potions have paths based on its effects and qualities. Maybe this could be used for a different thing, but I wanted to throw it out there.

5. I'm finding the extra requirements fun (I'm playing grand master mode), but would honestly love even more. Some of my ideas:

'Don't water down the potion' for not adding any base in to return to the center.
'I don't like sharp potions, but it can't be weak' for people who want a tier two potion
'I don't want much to drink' for people who wanted limited ingredients, like maybe ten items total, instead of type of items.
'I don't want an item off the shelf, I want my own.' for picky customers who simply will not take a potion saved into your book
'Sabotage the potion' for adding in a incompatible effect
'I don't want chunks' for potions that need to have every ingredient completely ground
'Stirred, not shaken' for potions that need to be at the end of their path, that is fully stirred

6. Its fun to have your potions on display, and I'm honestly tired of handing out 20 gold healing potions. Why not have a shelf or upgrade you can buy where you can put out common potions to be sold? Maybe you can set a price that determines how many you sell, or if a customer buys it. Maybe this could be a extra room on the house.

7. I adore the different bases, and their little quirks. I imagine you already have more bases on the way, and I could not be more thrilled, but I wanted to give my ideas and hope they are helpful.

Milk: Adding certain type of ingredients effects the map. For example, water ingredients causes the effects to spread a bit away from the center, adding death ingredients causes the bone areas to grow, life ingredients cause those areas to shrink.
Vinegar: There are multiple spots that look like the origin of the potion. When you add base, you travel towards the closest 'center point'
Broth: The extra meaty base allows you to have six pips of effects
Sugar Water: Patches of extra sugary areas of the map cause the potions to spin one way or the other as you pass through them. Whirlpools will also rotate you as you go through them.

And because it is fantasy, some odd things
Mercury: You start at the bottom center, and adding base to the potions cause you to go directly down instead of towards the center.

8. Different ways to prepare ingredients. Maybe we can have a new set of things to help prepare ingredients? Maybe we can have a new class of purchasable liquids, which you can soak your ingredients in to change them up? Maybe a ice liquid could mirror the path of a ingredient, or a molasses could cause the path to elongate. Maybe we can roast the ingredients to completely change its path.

9. Search bar for potions and ingredients, so we can search through it to see if we have the one item the customer wants.

10. Something in the alchemy machine, or like the alchemy machine, that can create something customers want. It would be really fun if in the mid to late game, a customer wanted something with a great deal of complexity, that needed ten potions as ingredients.

11. Raised beds as a upgrade for the gardens, to give more space in the existing rooms.



What do you guys think?

[pickupsticks]

Awesome ideas. Especially the new bases, great mechanisms and really thematic - would love it if these were ever implemented.

[Xazz]

I like all these. I especially like the suggestions for potion requirements. Those are by far my favorite in late game to do and not being able to just insta brew a potion would be neat. Some would have to be rarer than others because I would not love a 'a fresh necromancer potion' that can' be brewed from the book too many times. Or regen or luck. Oof

[劉長生]

3.5.6. I agree with all of them.

3.6. These two things really annoy me.
Especially at the top of the magic tree, you can't even see the "lack of water" sign!

Even though I can complete the "1000 Yuan commission for a bottle of potion", I still have to sort out the cheap healing potions and poison potions one by one to meet the customer's requirements because I don't want to lower my reputation.

[Clarke's Third Mage]

2. Making recipes for the substances is incredible, but at the higher tiers can be arduous to optimize. I have a lot of early game recopies I have replaced or overhauled, but are part of my sun and life salt recipes because I made my Nigredo with it originally. I feel like unlike the potion recipes, you should be able to substitute at least the reagent, or to simply make it so that you use it from your inventory strictly instead of creating it when you make higher tiers.

I also feel like their should be a option to use potions from your inventory rather than the raw ingredients, if you have them.

Strong agree on using existing ingredients if you have them instead of creating new ones. 👍

For "optimization," what we really need is the ability to modify saved legendary recipes in-place.

You can do a one-off like this:

1. For any ingredients you want to replace, put the new versions into the machine.
   
2. Open up the recipe book to the recipe. The already-filled ingredients will be greyed out and marked with a check mark.
   
3. Click, "Create one substance." It'll use what's already in the machine instead of making new things for those slots. If you then hover over the created substance, it'll say it was created with the ingredients that are recorded in the recipe book, not what you actually used. I consider this a bug.

If you want to save this change, I think the closest you can do is this:

1. For any ingredients you want to replace, put the new versions into the machine.
   
2. Open up the recipe book to the recipe. At this point, if any of the filled sections are different than in the saved recipe, I would like the, "Erase recipe," button to be replaced with, "Save changes."
   
3. For the rest of the ingredients, click on the remaining parts of the machine on the right page to fill them with the saved versions of the ingredients (again, this always creates new ones even if you have some in your inventory).
   
4. Close the recipe book.
   
5. Pull the lever on the machine to make a substance, and save the recipe when it's done.
   
6. Delete the old saved recipe.

[Jack Rost]

Originally posted by The dark fairy:

4. When I was playing with the alchemy machine, I had the idea that maybe instead of needing a bunch of specific potions, it could be a alchemy machine map, where the potions have paths based on its effects and qualities. Maybe this could be used for a different thing, but I wanted to throw it out there.

Something need to be done with alchemy machine, because right know you only follow strict order. You can optimize potions recipes for salt/ stone but there is no interesting mechanic behind it. And there is no alchemy. Need something that make force you to find real recipes by experimenting.
You solution sounds interesting. But it will work if overall balance will be done right.