your reagent experience?

I have not been able to play lately and was wondering how everyone see's the changes to reagents and there use.

 

It seems "OK"... Just have to make sure to carry some regs when you go hunting now.

 

I find that it is no longer necessary to carry around a crapload of reagents under the latest changes, which is a considerably more pleasant experience.

In the past, I would outright avoid using the higher tier spells because of their expense, but now ? I spam them with abandon.

I am very pleased with the latest changes.

 

Loving it... I'd like to see the % reduced and have attunement actually impact reagent consumption for that school... as you get better at that magic school you consume less reagents just like the tactics skill to reduce weapon and armor damage to durability as you progress through skills that use weapons/armor or they take damage... so if I have 100 fire attunement I'd gain a better reduction chance to consuming reagents than you currently have it set to but if I cast a water spell where I have -50 attunement due to my fire it might have a penalty that increases the need for the reagents... just a thought

 

This is the best it's ever been. The more reagents are needed, the better.

 

Not too expensive. Don't get used up too fast. I like it quite a bit.

Could be that I'm familiar with expensive habits (archery pre 26).

Both the cheap arrows and the cheap reagents did make it so they are no longer viable or worthwhile crafting items. In that way the new changes have destroyed a part of the economy.

 

I don't think the change goes far enough. While I love the idea of reagents in theory in practice I hate them. I hate having to carry around superfulous stuff, and that they are tied to higher level spells. It is one of the things that has pushed me to use physical skills instead. Which should be interesting since I have only ever wanted to play mages in every other game.

 

@Chris - As an archer/mage, I can confirm that using spells/abilities with Reagents is much less painful now. It's still just a wee bit expensive, though - I've found that if I hunt until I'm out of arrows and regs and head home, I wind up spending about 20-40% of what I make re-stocking reagents for chain lightning and healing grace, as where I spend less than 200g on re-stocking arrows.

Arrows seem fine right now, if anything maybe increase the cost of the bundle of 24 from 2g to 3g. Reagents could use a slight tweak still, perhaps lower the chance at consuming reagents a bit further or drop their prices an extra gold or two.

As for Enchanting - The mandrake root costs are crazy high if you don't have access to a higher tier crafting table (at low alchemy skill anyhow). Since the mandrake gets consumed on failed attempts, and my chance at socketing a cut gem into a chest piece was 6%, I burned through 200 or so trying to socket something before I gave up. Perhaps tweak the chance to socket or reduce the mandrake root cost? As it is right now it won't be feasible for me to enchant things until my alchemy is much higher and I have the gold to turn a village lot somewhere into a mandrake farm.

Edit:
Also, Arrows are very heavy. Since rapid fire and multishot eat 8 arrows per cast you have to carry a ton. I find myself not feeling prepared unless I leave town with 100 pounds worth of arrows... it'd be nice if they were lighter.

It'd also be nice if the bundles you buy from the vendor auto-stack. I have to stack them by hand.

 

The high cost of mandrake for socketing gems may be good for weapons crafters in the long run because it means that not everyone will craft their own and be more willing to pay a good price for the weapons.

As a mage, I am enjoying the new reagent system. I need to have reagents on me all the time, but they are affordable now if I end up having to buy them. I prefer to forage for my reagents myself, no matter what the price. It helps that reagents are more plentiful now out in the wild, especially mandrake. Please don't change that!

In past releases I avoided using the high level spells, which meant I didn't have any AOE spells. That sadly restricted my progress, so I am going all out in this release, picking spells for their usefulness and not for their reagent cost. This means that I have to go reagent hunting, but I enjoy that. There is great satisfaction in picking nightshade and getting 5 or 6 from one node.

 

HaHaHa Reagents HaHaHa

Good Joke Man



I've played a game called Ultima Online and it had a beautiful and fun reagents system which enriched the economy by players.
Unfortunately, SotA has a reagents system, you know ... there's work to do ...

 

interesting feedback, thanks everyone, hopefully i'll get a chance to check these changes out for myself soon.

 

i like they are required now, i like they are easy to get. part of the danger of playing a mage is resource management. if you run out of a reagent because you were not paying attention your spells will fail these are good changes imop dont reduce the the useage % to much or u will lose what u just gained.


arrow crafting should generate more arrows and be cheaper i look at both of these kinda the same idea and the cost needs to be effective since the warrior has no real $$ cost. i guess you could adjust where swords and such take a slighlty higher durability hit to off set.

 

I like the changes a lot. I have no complaints. Costs seem fine at vendor prices for the amount I need the higher tier spells. I find I cast the lower tier and faster/cheaper spells before reagent spells anyway. But they sure are handy when you need the bigger spells, and running out of reagent, and managing the amounts makes for some OCD fun.. I just wish they made inventory from containers separate from the main inventory.

 

I never played UO, so I have no idea what you're talking about. Would you mind saying what you don't like about the SotA system so far and how you think it could be improved?

 

I really like the system. I only need a few kinds of reagents because most of my spells are 2nd tier or lower. Lightning and Chain Lightning create a need to carry black pearl/mandrake (which I can grow myself), and sulpherous ash.

I hope that eventually we can have a reagent bag to lower the weight of reagents. (I want to use bag mode so bad, just awaiting it to have smaller icons and better bag management)

 

As a pure archer,
Arrows are fine now finally, don't mess with them further. The arrow scavenger will reduce amount used soon enough.

*Edit* I misread that quote. Being a battlemage that requires reagents & arrows I can see that would get heavy & expensive

 

I haven't done a huge amount of testing with it, but pre R26 I was avoiding tier 3 spells as much as possible, and now I'm casting them as much as I can. My god I love casting Blink over and over and over and over. The lowered price on reagents is also a really, really welcome change. 20gp per was just never going to be sustainable, even with the new system, let alone the old one.

I cannot FIND reagents for the life of me, except for that one random encounter with the undead where it's kind of blatantly obvious when you spot them the first time. I think something needs to be done for reagents visually because trees and mining nodes are easy to spot, and reagents are not. The survey skill hardly ever seems to work, but that sparkle effect should be enough so long as it does work on a regular basis.

 

Mandrake is quite plentiful in the swamp outside Solania (North Celestial Wetlands?) and in East Perennial trail. Nightshade is abundant in the Necropolis barrens area. There are also three nodes of Nightshade in the skeleton area of South Valeway in the Hidden Vale. Mages and Wizards often drop reagents, too. They have been my only source for serpent scales, which I have never found in the wild. There are many mages in the beginner area of Highvale. Unharvested Black Pearl and Garlic are the hardest for me to spot. North Brightbone woods has a lake with a number of Oyster nodes that are easy to see and harvest.

EDIT: in earlier releases I loved hunting for reagents at night because the sparkles were easy to see and drew me to them. Since the use based skills system was introduced, I don't see the sparkles until I am standing right next to the node. I have hopes that with improving survey skills, the distance at which the sparkles are visible will increase. Gathering skills unfortunately don't level up as quickly as combat skills. I have started to harvest every pumpkin patch I can find in the hopes that it will help to improve my foraging skills more quickly.

 

This is one of the things I loved about UO. Reagents were cheap, people carried them in their backpacks, and it wasn't that big of a deal. Lowering the prices from 20g per reagent to the current prices is easier to deal with. I wouldn't mind if reagent consumption percentages were increased.

Cheaper base reagents might also open things up for exceptional/farmed reagents that have a potency bonus, etc.