Has the alchemy been simplified?

[Walrus Beard]

I haven't had the chance to play a lot of the demo yet. So far I have seen that recipes require a specific material for one slot, maybe a material with a specific element for another, and then some slots there seems to be no restriction on the material whatsoever. Seems to be quite an emphasis on resonance instead. Maybe it gets more complex later on? It feels like there just isn't much to it.

[Capcom's fat dong]

There wasn't much to the old system either, just grab some high level mats and dupe it to 999 with all maxxed out sub stats, when has this game ever been complex? Stop pretending to be some elite alchemist geez

[akkristor]

From a Watsonian (in-universe) perspective, Yumia uses a different style of alchemy than other Atelier protags. Her alchemy is more similar to Klein's from Atelier Iris rather than, say, Ryza or Sophie's. She manipulates the mana in an object directly.

We've actually seen/heard of this alchemy in prior games. Sophie touched on it the most, "Eradication" or "Ablation" alchemy. It's always described as a much more dangerous form of alchemy, which fits in with what little bit we can see of Yumia's narrative. Yumia's mother seems to have been responsible for a massive explosion, and Alchemy is a forbidden taboo.


From a Doylist perspective, each series of Atelier game re-invents the alchemy system.

[Walrus Beard]

Capcom's fat dong lähetti viestin:

There wasn't much to the old system either, just grab some high level mats and dupe it to 999 with all maxxed out sub stats, when has this game ever been complex? Stop pretending to be some elite alchemist geez

I am not pretending to be anything. The Sophie and Ryza games at least required materials from specific categories if they did not require a specific item. With this system it seems like in many cases you can put whatever ingredient you want into the node regardless of what it is or what category it belongs to.

[Shylaar]

Yeah, it's very simple now. Each item has multiple cores, which each affect a certain factor of the item, one affects its inherent effect eg. damage of a battle item or stat bonus of a piece of gear, while another affects its quality, and so on. Each core requires either one specific material or class of material to activate it. Then there are additional nodes on each core to improve that core's effect by adding more materials; these never have any restrictions on what can be added but sometimes have bonuses for using the right element. Additionally each core has mana spread around the nodes; each material added to a node has a radius that will activate the mana, and more activated mana means a higher quality item.
So the only considerations here are adding ingredients that give enough resonance (a stat every item has) to raise the effect, and having a radius wide enough to activate the mana. Quality only goes up from adding more materials, regardless of the material's quality, but compared to the Ryza games it seems a lot harder to get quality to go up overall, as it depends far more on mana activated than the quality of material items. Some items also have effects such as improving the quality of the product item when used, or adding attack to gear they're used in.

The biggest simplification in Yumia is that traits are no longer part of the synthesis process. Items now have up to three trait slots. You find traits in chests around the game world and you equip them into items like they're materia in FF7. This is a massive change that removes complexity from synthesis since you no longer need to worry about getting the traits you want onto items in the synthesis process, you just make the item and then equip it with whatever traits you have on hand that work and take them out later.
Oh and every item now has 5 levels and you level them up with materials gained from exploring, each time you level up an item you permanently increase its effect when synthesised, eg. making more at once, a boost to quality, or an improved item effect. You don't level things by making them like in Firis.

Capcom's fat dong lähetti viestin:

There wasn't much to the old system either, just grab some high level mats and dupe it to 999 with all maxxed out sub stats, when has this game ever been complex? Stop pretending to be some elite alchemist geez

Even Ryza 3's incredibly easy to abuse system had far more going on mechanically than this. Never mind the older games where trying to make good gear actually required planning things out.

[Walrus Beard]

akkristor lähetti viestin:

From a Watsonian (in-universe) perspective, Yumia uses a different style of alchemy than other Atelier protags. Her alchemy is more similar to Klein's from Atelier Iris rather than, say, Ryza or Sophie's. She manipulates the mana in an object directly.

We've actually seen/heard of this alchemy in prior games. Sophie touched on it the most, "Eradication" or "Ablation" alchemy. It's always described as a much more dangerous form of alchemy, which fits in with what little bit we can see of Yumia's narrative. Yumia's mother seems to have been responsible for a massive explosion, and Alchemy is a forbidden taboo.


From a Doylist perspective, each series of Atelier game re-invents the alchemy system.

Yes I remember ablation alchemy. Using materials in slots no matter what they are or what category they belong to would fit with that.

[Walrus Beard]

Shylaar lähetti viestin:

Yeah, it's very simple now. Each item has multiple cores, which each affect a certain factor of the item, one affects its inherent effect eg. damage of a battle item or stat bonus of a piece of gear, while another affects its quality, and so on. Each core requires either one specific material or class of material to activate it. Then there are additional nodes on each core to improve that core's effect by adding more materials; these never have any restrictions on what can be added but sometimes have bonuses for using the right element. Additionally each core has mana spread around the nodes; each material added to a node has a radius that will activate the mana, and more activated mana means a higher quality item.
So the only considerations here are adding ingredients that give enough resonance (a stat every item has) to raise the effect, and having a radius wide enough to activate the mana. Quality only goes up from adding more materials, regardless of the material's quality, but compared to the Ryza games it seems a lot harder to get quality to go up overall, as it depends far more on mana activated than the quality of material items. Some items also have effects such as improving the quality of the product item when used, or adding attack to gear they're used in.

The biggest simplification in Yumia is that traits are no longer part of the synthesis process. Items now have up to three trait slots. You find traits in chests around the game world and you equip them into items like they're materia in FF7. This is a massive change that removes complexity from synthesis since you no longer need to worry about getting the traits you want onto items in the synthesis process, you just make the item and then equip it with whatever traits you have on hand that work and take them out later.
Oh and every item now has 5 levels and you level them up with materials gained from exploring, each time you level up an item you permanently increase its effect when synthesised, eg. making more at once, a boost to quality, or an improved item effect. You don't level things by making them like in Firis.

Capcom's fat dong lähetti viestin:

There wasn't much to the old system either, just grab some high level mats and dupe it to 999 with all maxxed out sub stats, when has this game ever been complex? Stop pretending to be some elite alchemist geez

Even Ryza 3's incredibly easy to abuse system had far more going on mechanically than this. Never mind the older games where trying to make good gear actually required planning things out.

That's disappointing. I will have to see what I think when I play more. Probably tomorrow. Been tired all day and didn't feel like actively engaging with anything after work, so I just watched Stargate SG-1.

[Aerugo]

I'm going to be honest, I'm not into this new type of alchemy. Maybe it gets better later, but right now, nah, and that's what we do like 70% of the time in the game.

[Melodia]

Aerugo lähetti viestin:

Maybe it gets better later, but right now, nah, and that's what we do like 70% of the time in the game.

Of course, given the stupid unskipable animation at the beginning of every time you try to do alchemy I'm not sure one would want to spend 70% of the time on it....

[pkmis007]

now I only have 4 cores and you should activate all 4 cores for better result. For some reason I feel this take time more than most complex ryza loop.

[spike86]

akkristor lähetti viestin:

We've actually seen/heard of this alchemy in prior games. Sophie touched on it the most, "Eradication" or "Ablation" alchemy. It's always described as a much more dangerous form of alchemy, which fits in with what little bit we can see of Yumia's narrative. Yumia's mother seems to have been responsible for a massive explosion, and Alchemy is a forbidden taboo.

also in ryza 2, during ruin exploration you read several memories about mana alchemy.
the 'modern' klint kingdom alchemy empel taught to ryza is something klint Alchemist create in attempt to recreate the mana stuff previous and extinct civilizations had before them.

so ryza alchemy is a new, from scratch thing compared to the mana alchemy of ancient times.

my guess is that yumia civilization is like an antidiluvian or atlantean civilization compared to them. that's why the alchemy looks more advanced (future bikes, rifles etc)

[jclosed]

Hmm... Even if you call the Alchemy "simplified" for me it's fun. I really like that you can make simple things like bullets "in the field", so you don't have to travel back and forth to the Atlier to restock. The Alchemy system itself is just fun to do.

People complaining about that animation have probably forgotten that in older games you also had a short animation when you do Alchemy. I clearly remember that raising bubbles and more of that stuff. So why complaining if it is also present in other games in this series? Are people have become that impatient? It's less than a second ffs...

So, the Alchemy system is different. That was to be expected, because the Alchemy system changes every game. Sometimes the changes are small, and sometimes bigger. For now we only have the start of the game, so the system could be become much more complex later on. But even if it does not I have a fun time with it.

This are, of course, personal opinions. So far I enjoy what is offered to me...

[Shylaar]

jclosed lähetti viestin:

Hmm... Even if you call the Alchemy "simplified" for me it's fun. I really like that you can make simple things like bullets "in the field", so you don't have to travel back and forth to the Atlier to restock. The Alchemy system itself is just fun to do.

Frankly given the completely negligible secondary material cost to make those field items it hardly even makes sense for them to exist in the first place. What's the point of having a limited supply of bullets in my inventory when I can make more anywhere, at any time, and by the time I'm an hour in I already have enough materials to make a thousand of them? It's pointless busywork.

People complaining about that animation have probably forgotten that in older games you also had a short animation when you do Alchemy. I clearly remember that raising bubbles and more of that stuff. So why complaining if it is also present in other games in this series? Are people have become that impatient? It's less than a second ffs...

No it isn't. It's around 8 seconds. There's an 8 second unskippable cutscene every time you start to make an item. Start making an item only to realise you don't have as many neutralisers as you wanted? Now you need to back out, go to make a neutraliser, sit through the animation again for that, then go back to the item you wanted to make, and watch the animation AGAIN. No previous game in the entire series ever had ANYTHING like that. In Arland synthesis was lightning fast. Just look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q1ku4NPr40
Everything there is instant, the only delay is the 3 second long completion animation, which you could skip.
You can see Sophie is the same too, the only delay present in the entire process is the short completion animation which was skippable; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpZISjUSNJs
And that's not even counting all the smaller transitional animations present in Yumia's system. It's just plain badly designed from a functionality standpoint and it's all the worse because the series was smart enough not to add lengthy unskippable cutscenes to a process you're doing hundreds if not thousands of times throughout the game before.

[FreshMint]

Honestly I'm sort of surprised there's not really anything stopping you from just filling every core's nodes.
If there was some kind of limiting factor then you'd have to stop and think what to focus on, and synthesis would feel a bit less linear.

Currently I just have that feeling of 'i'll add what looks best' and makes it feel like I'm just increasing number, though maybe the conditional properties will help with that in the future.

jclosed lähetti viestin:

People complaining about that animation have probably forgotten that in older games you also had a short animation when you do Alchemy. I clearly remember that raising bubbles and more of that stuff. So why complaining if it is also present in other games in this series? Are people have become that impatient? It's less than a second ffs...

I haven't played older than Arland but usually the animations are primarily as you finished synthesis, and can usually be sped up.
This hasn't changed

What changed is that there now is an animation when starting synthesis.
This animation isn't too bad at first, but over time it begins to feel like a bit of unnecessary downtime, especially if you can't skip/speed it up unlike the finishing animation.

[Melodia]

FreshMint lähetti viestin:

What changed is that there now is an animation when starting synthesis.
This animation isn't too bad at first, but over time it begins to feel like a bit of unnecessary downtime, especially if you can't skip/speed it up unlike the finishing animation.

Yup. Every other issue I have about the game doesn't bother me enough to outweigh the positives but this, this is really just beyond the pale. I really really hope they patch something to deal with this at some point. Thankfully I wasn't going to get the game for quite a while anyway...

[nbutler_5557]

Would anyone be able to tell me if trait level actually even matters? Reading the descriptions of the individual traits it seems like the boost you get doesn't actually increase with level.

Also, do effects stack like in old games? If I add attack up with attack up + is the bonus 5 + 10?