Reagents: Refining & Mixing Spells

With all the talk of reagents off and on for awhile now I thought I would add my own thoughts on them in a separate thread.

I had heard some time back, one of the devs talking about reagent use. Such that reagents might not be completely used up each time a spell is cast.. but rather they might last for several castings. The idea I recall was in response to reagent availability and concerns about the viability of mages who have to rely on reagents.

Now as a long time Ultima player (including UO) I’m a firm believer in reagent use. Reagents get used up every time a spell is cast.. with the exception of cantrips which occasionally appeared in Ultimas and didn’t require reagents.

So I started thinking how to address both sides and how to make reagent use more interesting and flexible.

Going off of the original idea (as I understood it) this is what I came up with.

Raw Reagent Use
Raw reagents have a minimum and maximum number of doses. Each casting uses 1 dose.. but you don’t necessarily know how many doses there are. This would allow mages to simply carry reagents and allow those reagents to last longer than they did in the Ultima series or UO.

Refined Reagents
Using cooking or alchemy skills, each reagent has a refining process (inspired by earlier Ultima manuals describing such a process for each reagent.. ie boiling 40 times and leaving out to dry etc)..

Refining brings out the maximum dosage of each reagent and may include other perks such as a slight increase in power or decrease in focus per spell. There could also be a slight reduction in size and weight, allowing the mage to carry more and making reagents easier to manage.

Pre-Mixing Spells
Pre-mixing spells is the combining of reagents into a single mixture to be used in the casting of a specific spell. This would have the possible benefits of increased potency and reduced focus cost at the expense of flexibility.

All mages could cast using raw reagents and still be competitive. Reagents would not be used up right away making it potentially easier on mages to stay stocked up on reagents with no extra effort required. Young mages, those dabbling with magic or those who are just downright lazy can still function normally.

Serious, more industrious mages can refine their reagents and get a bit more out of them while pre-mixing adds a more strategic component into the mix.

I would imagine the pure mage would pre-mix their favorite spells while also carrying refined or raw reagents for flexibility.

 

really great ideas

 

Sounds incredibly grindy and boring to me. I want to be a powerful spellslinger and sage of ancient lore, not cooking mama.

 

I love this idea.

 

so dont cook.. just because i use platmail dont mean i need to be a black smith...

 

Buy them, if you want. Its a player economy, so someone will be selling them. You don't have to be the cook.

 

Who says mage has to do it all themselves? You could just as easily purchase refined reagents or just use raw if that's what you want to do. You're going to have to get your reagents from somewhere.

If you're the type who doesn't want to refine your own.. you probably won't want to go harvest them either. There will be plenty of other players offering those services.

 

And we're right back to "People in SoA think Magic = Shopping".

 

You're going to need reagents one way or another. You're not going to be a very powerful spell slinger without them.

 

I remember Redfish had a post on something similar to this a while back. Maybe include some of these ideas here in this post. https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/reagent-potency-potion-doses.14331/

 

I'm sure reagents will settle into their usual state of comfortable irrelevancy that appeases the people who think convenience is evil while keeping the game playable.

It's just sad that there are so many people who can't see how incredibly devoid of good gameplay systems like that are. If something doesn't require skill or knowledge or shrewd resource management or anything else other than simply time it just shouldn't be in a game.

 

Hmm pretty sure I missed that one. Redfish usually has pretty well thought out and interesting ideas.

 

Ah yes.. I remember that post now. The basic idea regarding reagents having 'charges' is the same as mine and both are inspired by the same comments Chris was making. I may have simple forgotten where I got the original idea from for raw reagents. My expansion on the concept is inspired by early Ultimas and Ultima docs.

I more or less avoided a couple details that redfish covers such variable sizes/potency of raw reagents as well as visual indicators regarding their usage. In this regard our ideas are very compatible. I just go a couple steps in the direction of crafting with refining and pre-mixing.

 

As encumbrance is now in with R14 the subject of reagent weight has come up and it's something I overlooked here so I thought I'd mention it..

A natural by product of processing reagents would almost universally be a reduction of weight.

 

It was basically the point I was making in my suggestion -- if a single reagent had multiple charges on it due to potency, a mage would be carrying around a lot less reagents. Maybe 5 mandrakes instead of 50.

Carrying around a sack of 50 mandrake roots , and 50 of every reagent is pretty silly if you think about it.

Then, we need a better way to organize things in reagent bags too. I still think we need a little bar at the bottom with slots for bags pouches or other items we're carrying on our person/belt, and then a mage could always drag a reagent from his harvest window directly to his reagent bag without going through any inventory screens.