Greetings fellow prisoners.
As you may know I've been hard at work on major crafting updates for a long while now. A series of set back and real life interfered, delaying things for a while. I am happy to report I am back at it and ready to move on. The new metals and wood essences are almost ready to be implemented, I just need to update a few areas where these resources will spawn and voilà. Then my attention will be entirely focused on completing the tailoring overhaul.
But first, it was really important to finally correct a problem of my own making: Herbalism.
In my last update I introduced a slew of new herbs, but a scripting error caused a very small amount of them not to spawn correctly. This should be corrected as of next update.
Revising the impacts of the changes, I also came to realize I underestimated the DC difference between potion tiers. It should not be as big a step as it sometime is right now and this is something I wanted to correct for a long time now.
To address the points above I propose the following adjustments:
The ability to make a same potion at different effective caster level.
There was this idea of differentiating a bit further between the potions that can be made with herbs from higher level areas from those of lower level areas. We wanted to give a bit more value to high level area herbs. Those would now be used to make more potent versions of potions. For the most part this means an increase in effects durations.
A smaller DC increase between tiers.
While not every high level herbs potions would see their casting level impacted, it sill provides us with a significant amount of potions of varying power that allows us to recalibrate the DCs between tiers. Meaning that many of the potions you brew now will see their DC lowered, with the more potent versions being assign a greater DC. Each tiers are now 5 DC apart, except at the very end near mastery. This will allow a much smoother, and by default faster progression while working this craft. This should greatly help casual players to reach a competent herbalist level without any need to become a master.
The recipes stays the same...
You will not need to relearn anything. The recipes stays the same. Just the end result may differ for something stronger.
... but may require more herbs.
This is a balancing issue. After all you do get stronger potions. But more to the point, the original change was brought about because people could master the craft too quickly and easily. This change will bring the pendulum back on the side of fast progression. The best option that does not penalize lower level players is to double the amount of herbs required for some of the higher level potions. I suspect this will be the only part that may not be welcome about this change, but I ask you to give it a try. We can always revert back to a lower amount of herbs required later if need be.
This update is all ready to go live now. Though this time I leave the decision to you the players. Have your say people. Is this something you wish to see implemented or not?