All spells should require reagents

I agree, I also think we should have ability to refine reagents at alchemy station for at least ten times as many "uses" than we have now. Also basic reagents should be more expensive at NPC vendors so reagent harvesting could actually be profitable.

We need every spell to use reagents so there is demand,
We need more reagents ir scene so there is supply,
and we need refining of reagents so there is more stuff for crafters.


Also I sort of hate how big is the gap between low level and high level mage for the damage dealt (and xp/gold gained) per reagent used. I think the situation is quite okay for mid level mages, but startin mages and GM+ ones are way out of balance imho when it comes to economy of fight.

 

If reagents were far far more plentiful sure, to just add them as a requirement for low tier spells as is makes 0 sense. Magic is no more powerful than melee as people are about to see with magic resists coming into play.

 

Those didn't exist for the first few years and people didn't seem to have any trouble.

 

Magic practiced in Britannia hasn't really changed since Ultima IV. There are different systems entirely in some of the other games.. ie Rune magic in UW or totem magic in SE.. but these are not evolutions of the same system.

 

Bwahahahahahaa

Reagents: Refining & Mixing Spells

 

The key being as it is. Between foraging and agriculture we should be able to practically swim in reagents for low level spells. But reagent availability is not the only problem here. The economy in general and the use of gold as a single tier currency.. something which could still change I might add.. is a significant issue. Just the other day I saw a plate of.. tier 4 food on a vendor for no less than 1,600 GOLD.. one thousand and six hundred.. G-O-L-D.. Someone in here earlier said this was an RPG not a survival game? The value of currency is completely out of whack and reagent prices it seems to be can't be reasonable until that's fixed.

 

I farm most of my reagents, and use quite a few T2 spells and Tactics glyphs.

Sure sometimes I spend a partial day in Brightbone or Superstition passes, but that's also due to enchanting.

I do think that I could buy for cheaper just by AE farming human fighters though. Still seems to be unbalanced even with the huge reg spawns in those zones

 

+1
All spells must cost regs.

 

It's not difficult to pay for reagents. It's no more difficult to pay for reagents than it is to repair armor and weapons.

 

Gotta say i regretted taming for a long time till i got to bear. in middle of a push for fero spider but that obsid bear is fantastic.
Reccomend a fero wolf for humanoids tho, they do better then bears agaibst non undeads
But yea mil exp an hour by mass aoe.. and im stuck here killen 1 mob at a time like a shmuck. lol

 

If reagents were more plentiful and a 'little' easier to find like on the bodies of some appropriate magic wielding mages and creatures and sometimes is chests, crates we break open etc, this would help. It is happening occasionally now, but magic wielding creatures and mage types should drop some reagent,and loot that shows and gives us the weapon and armor as loot that they were wearing not just loot, it is their loot, their stuff that we get as loot. Besides what happens to what the were using to try to kill us, it is magically not on the body when we kill them, come on this is strange

 

Also when salvaging/scrapping equipment if it was magical we should get a few reagents back just as with salvaging non magic items as well and getting resources back. Buying reagents or growing reagents should not be the only way to get them. Also if we fail and botch aka destroy an item or weapon we have just crafted, we should get some of the resources back that it took the make the damn thing at least

 

If they are more easily accessible then I would say yes. The way it is now noone would create a caster character right off the bat because they would always be broke.

 

You didn't play the real, good and original UO then before EA got their hands on it....

 

Are you sure about the RPG part?
So far it's only grind, grind and again grind.

 

How is there any power balance issue when everyone across the board can use the same spells no matter if they use reagents or not?

 

At some point you can become powerful enough to only use spells that do not require reagents. This goes beyond just being efficient, because many of those spells have no way to be interrupted, have no casting time, no cool down time, and if leveled properly do an insane amount of damage, it's debatable if you need the reagent spells at all.

Now one might simply say "well then you should just make those lower tier spells less powerful!" which would ignore the point of having lower tier spells at all.

The spells have to use reagents, otherwise you have an economic (efficiency) imbalance, and a power imbalance because the spells don't scale appropriately by tier. The benefit of having a lower tier spell that can not be interrupted, has zero casting time, no cool down time, yet still does significant damage is not just so it can be spammed, but so spell casters at lower levels have something they can use in a meaningful way. I believe the power between lower and higher tier spells is relatively balanced (although there are a lot of exceptions) when you remove the use of reagents, your problem becomes that you can level without the higher tier spells. When I say "power" I'm talking about one's ability to augment their experience pool using these lower tiered spells. Not "damage".

 

I disagree; it makes complete sense if you want people to use torches instead of a Light spell, healing potions instead of Healing touch, poison instead of Ignite Weapon.

I mean, the devs could give up on the idea that anyone would want to use these alternatives to magic. Leave them in the game as vanity options. Or, they can try to tweak and re-tweak these things to try to give min/maxing advantages to non-magic alternatives, but its hard to say any of those tweaks will convince anyone except the most hardcore of min/maxers, because its just easier to use magic. In my opinion, its the only thing that makes sense if you think these non-magic alternatives should be in the game.

But I still believe it should not be a pain in the ass to cast simple magic for people who choose to play as pure mages, and that's why my view has always been that the Attunement boost mages would get from playing as a mage -- specializing, using a staff or wand to boost attunement, wearing robes, etc. -- should alleviate a lot of the low-level reagent requirements. Reduce consumption chance, reduce fizzle chance. If reagents had more uses than one to them, that would be great also; although I think reagent consumption chance is supposed to be an alternative mechanic to that.

...

As an aside, I agree with @Earl Atogrim von Draken that we should remember this is a role-playing game. Though sometimes I kind of get the impression that people have forgotten what that means. It doesn't mean two-hour grinding runs where we kill 500 respawning bandits, go sell our junk, then grind 500 more respawning bandits. How the game ever became about that, I don't know.

Role-playing does mean, however, the kind of constraints I'm talking about, though, which would lead someone to want to say use a torch over training a spell.

 

Now, thanks to RPG, you know how hard life was in medieval times...

 

Never thought I'd say this, but maybe Ultima 9 had the right idea about how to make use of reagents with regards to magic. Use the reagents once per spell to bind that spell to yourself (or a spellbook?) and then you never have to use those reagents again for it, only mana/focus.