Blood Gems issue

[Mouxine]

I think you should change the recipe for the blood gem. The way it is (1 Alter Gem + 4 Dragonblood), it's hard to make them early game, late game they aren't that usefull either. The worst part is once you get the Time Manipulator, you can uproot it and plant it next the Fish Village to make infinite profit by buying blood gems, uncrafting them and selling them for a huge profit (10 Blood Gems (3k gold) are worth around 8k gold uncrafted ! And it takes a minute only !). And with the Time Manipulator, you can even increase your bargaining skills to maximise this. Unless late game items costs a lot, it's way too easy to gather moutains of gold by teleporting regularly to the fish shop to stock on blood gems in a chest. And I'm not talking about having loads of dragonblood to heal almost instantly and still making profit.

Something like 1 Blood gem = 1 Alter gem + 1 Dragonblood would be more logical with the actual pricing, or just increase the value of blood gems. I think it's the only item which is cheaper than it's lower tier components, thus allowing this exploit.

[David Maletz]

I actually already changed it so that blood gems can't be uncrafted because of that exploit (not uploaded yet). They still require 1 alter gem and 4 dragonblood, and I'm okay with that as you can mine blood gems and they are also the loot of an enemy - the forge recipe is there if you need it, but it isn't meant to be cheap. I might reduce it to 2 dragonblood tho...

[zhurovium]

I would generally agree based on the early game argument, though keep it maybe 1alt gem+2 dragonblood. For late game blood gem use,in my gameplay I only usem them for fuelling the Golemech, which is useful for the small planet.
However, I wonder to what extent this nerf is needed - the way I see this is a very late game exploit, and can be seen mostly as a reward for players who are paying attention to the economics of trade. Having one or two of these might be an indirect reward. Then the players can choose to exploit this or not, depending on how much difficulty they want to experience - a bit like with the spirit box I read elsewhere where some say it is too OP, yet I have it and barely, if ever, use it (primarily used it to aggregate all the stockpiles from warehouses on all islands in the two bunkers) - this then keeps both the more causal gamers, and the hardcore fans happy (also, a bit like the choice of quests that enable players to skip fighting some bosses, yet the spirit pyramid enables all to give them a go). Having 1alt +2 dragonblood makes this less of a financial exploit and more accessible in the early game, imho.

[David Maletz]

I don't mind some minor discrepancies like that (and there are a few, although none as intense as the blood gem one currently) if you're paying attention. But given how easy it is to buy, uncraft, and sell for a profit (even with only 1 alter gem and 2 dragonblood and no bargaining, it's a quick and easy 103 profit per blood gem), it kind of makes money meaningless. I'll consider adding the uncrafting back now that I changed it to 2 dragonblood (especially since it requires some thought to move the time manipulator there), but it does seem like an easy endless source of money.

[Brukov]

You could set it to have a maximum stock of 5 at once, so it takes a while to make much money from it, and long term it would probably be more profitable to spend that time setting up giant automated farms and selling what they produce.