alchemy is stupid

[cinless]

It's overpowered as all hell, and the only thing making it balanced is that most people will probably never figure out how it works without being told about it and looking it up.

the only scenario in which most people are likely to use alchemy is one in which they look up their seed and find that one or both of the solutions are easy to make. it's basically a randomized cheatcode.

i'd love to see more consistent and less overpowered alchemy

[sparrowbird611]

I'm sure that will happen eventually. Considering the fact that you can some times have impossible recipes, (Lava and water needed to make matter into gold, for instance) I'd say what we have now is just an unfinished feature.

[Shrinkshooter]

It's stupid right now. Should I remind you that half the time the recipes involve something that's impossible to get (like soil or cement)? It's clearly just a rough and cut mechanic that hasn't been fleshed out. I dabble in coding a bit, and the current state of alchemy is far more indicative of "let's add thing and see if we can get it working" rather than "here's some secret mechanic that isn't going to change."

Now, hopefully it doesn't stay stupid forever, but nobody can read the future. Caves of Qud actually has something just like this, where there's a cure for a commonly obtained fungal infection, and the recipe is randomized every game. In order to get the recipe you need to travel to a specific location and purchase a specific book, or get lucky and find it somewhere in the world (most people buy it because by the time you find it chances are you've been hit with an infection or three).

I'm not saying they should do that, but if they keep the randomness, they should 1) make it easier to obtain (but still somewhat difficult) and 2) tone down the Lively Concoction power (which also smells strongly of testing).

[SilentCaay]

It doesn't even have to be randomized if you install the tool that let's you manually set your seed. Thinking of it as a cheat code is a good idea since that's basically what it is so you may as well just remove all pretense and only use it via the tool when you want to cheat for fun.

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

depends , i just started this game and i seen midas liquid made itself once

i personaly think this game could be greatly expanded not only in progress but how alchemy works , like expanding world , adding more luquid interactions , able to more easily bottle dangerous liquid

and making it more based on alchemy and spells:) maybe not "terraria with alchemy" but it has a lot potential on that

[Krag]

It's meant to be a secret. Either you experiment like a real alchemist and maybe you'll figure out something or you don't, or maybe nature will work its magic without requiring your input.
It's only stupid if it's mandatory.

[dornenfeld]

I would like a strong alchemy focus and way more recipes aswell, i just love to watch the liquids transform and to mix them up. Also some gas - liquid crossover recipes would be cool.

[Lordly Cinder]

Early access...

[Revolver Ocelot]

They are like Easter Egg or, has you say, cheat codes, some complicated ones....

[Alphanumerai]

I had Rejuvenating Tonic from something silly like water, blood and slime, I've also had water, blood and toxic sludge, which is almost impossible to do manually but happens all the time when you're not trying.

[Sierain]

Originally posted by Lordly Cinder:

Early access...

Exactly. It seems as overpowered as getting a great wand at the start of the game to me: You have to be extremely lucky to get the benefits. I haven't been able to create anything with alchemy yet. Have you tried not cheating?

[You_Cant_Beat_K]

Yeah it is dumb.

[piotr.sharek]

sheep can barely fly 2 meters. has completely lost its use, and teleportation is chaotic. no longer works as indicated by the cursor. two words to developers: ♥♥♥♥ you

[Metalliferous]

Honestly alchemy is just an OP gimmick atm, like without cheating the chances of getting a run where you discover the recipe and its a viable one to make is pretty slim

[tons0phun]

Each playthrough, I try to deliberately mix liquids a bit.
Haven't whisked up anything magical yet...

I feel there really ought to be two primary variants of potions:
A large group of reliably mixable potions, from combining mixes of 3-4 commonly found (water,blood,tox,oil, slime, magic potions like invis/tele/bersk) sources. The vigor potion should be from this lot (ex: water+pheremone+berserk+spirits).
A small group of randomized (seeded) potions, from combining 2-3 rare (worm blood, fire, lava, liquid flame, angry skele-god bone dust, dragon parts, etc). The midas potion would be from this lot.
Like the geography of the game itself: essential pieces unchanging, everything else changing.

Soil and cement should not be included in alchemy though.
Necromancy would be rad too. The opposite of vigor.

[Ayame Musashi]

After many many games, I happen to have been blessed with naturally occurring alchemy. The recipe for Alchemic Precursor in my current world is Grass, Mud, and Water... On the first level I was seeing AP appear all over the place while playing normally and using water to neutralize toxic slime, or to put myself out when on fire, as well as around an existing pool of water or two.

And the Lively Concoction is Berzerkium, Water and Snow... This happened randomly with no cheating. So that is pretty close to a double jackpot. It also proves it can happen with a lot of luck.

I did use a mod to display the formula for each of the two recipe, though I was not even looking at it when all of this occurred. When I saw the AP floating on some water, I looked at the formula and was pleasantly surprised. Seed: 575776955