Alchemy screen

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Yes to both questions. All equipment is hand-placed (not generated).

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, I never had trouble combining two items to get one specific, desired effect. The greatest downside was that some combinations created potions of different weight, and sometimes the only second ingredient with a desired effect was had another, rare effect so I didn't want to use it.

It would be more interesting if you didn't need the same effect twice, so potions would generally have undesired side effects and instead of combining ingredients based on a simplistic formula you'd do it to increase the desired effect and dilute the undesired ones.
Being able to create either small amounts of very strong potion with serious side effects or very diluted potion with neglegible side effects would have been good, too.

Overall, the system is just too simple and formulatic to be interesting, instead I found it boring and annoying, which is typical for game mechanics in Morrowind as well as Oblivion.

I like both of them. I share others' views; items blending into the background especially the leaves, you should be able to see weight or other statistics of items you'd like to buy -perhaps you could make it so that when you click on an item on vendor, the statistics appear at the bottom-left information box eg. "DMG+4, W:8 Lbs., XX:KK, YY:NN". Should save you on the design as well. I'd also prefer the inventory in alchemy to be to the right but that's just me.

Is there no option whatsoever to simply exchange items by matching the their cost, without involving money, as in Fallout? Or is it somewhat pointless in AOD ( Having money exist in inventory as items, like caps in FO). That way, you could give away items with nothing in return in FO, or try to force a lower price for something you'd buy.

I'd like a system where one indegredient governs what the Potion will do, while the second indegredient would just magnify their effect. Everyone could basically create a weak potion, while the correct way to use the secondary ingredient to produce a potent brew would be the hard (learnable) part. You could have a few select, exotic potions that could neither be improved nor made worse, but would require two indegredients to start with - those recipes should be hard to come by.

Well, don't tamper too much with this stuff if it'll push things back too much.

Well, it´s something like that except that the second "item" is your alchemy skill

That's more or less what I meant - ingredients had 4 effects each, so often you'd waste a good ingredient for a weak potion, or had to make a potion with some undesired/not needed effects. Experimenting with various potions was fun at first, but it quickly got boring and annoying, and I just used several simplest combinations (e.g. a potion of healing rather then healing+lightness+blah).

That's why I prefer a simpler system with schematics over a (theoretically more complicated, but less fun) system in Morrowind.

I think the main focus should be to make alchemy fun. Make sure that the potions aren't too boring - no 10% resistance to electricity recipes.
Also, remove the typical tedious parts, and add some more interesting ones. Maybe make potions heavy and ingredients weightless, in order not to promote making tons of potions without needing them for a long time. Maybe the alchemist will carry two healing salves and one poison handy, and the rest of his alchemical stuff in his ingredients pack, to be brewed into potions when needed.
Maybe have several alchemical apparatus: a mortal and pestle, a boiler, an alambic, etc. Allow the player to experiment with different ingredients and apparatus, and sell the items and recipes for profit.
Also, how about uber overpowering abilities which you could gain from a very high alchemy skill and a series of complicated quests. Turning metal into gold, quick regeneration, etc. This could also allow an anarchist/communist character to crash the economy.

*shudders* I know you mean well, but seeing someone from (even ex-, perhaps) ESF using word 'fun' evokes mental images of mind-numbing boredom, nerve-wracking anguish and soul-wrenching torment.

What on earth is mithril doing in the crafting screen??? It seems terribly out of place in the setting.

Yeah. Wouldn't titanium or adamantine or something fit better?

Unless I´m missing something...

What on earth are you talking about???

They refer to this (old) screenshot of page 1:
http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/5918/crafting1he.jpg
Note the mithril.

I agree, maybe it should be called meteorite iron, pure ore or something like that.

Thanks Jasede! Didn´t notice that!

Now I know what on earth was he talking about!

Of course, by fun I didn't mean "Try to drop as many leaves as you can into the mortar to make a potion!!"
What I meant was that making potions should be enjoyable in itself, not just a way to make combat slightly easier. I think Arcanum did this the right way - making the clockwork lockpicks was interesting, even though I'm probably not going to use them anytime soon.

Yeah, more or less. Except the only time I made a potion with an undesired effect was when my restore fatigue potion also had the fortify fatigue effect. That is also the most interesting experience with the alchemy system I remember.
Like I said above, I would have preferred more undesired effects. Potions without side effects should've been something you have to work for. Maybe with sufficient skill you could've been able to increase of reduce effects of your choice.
And of course, solving the same puzzle over and over is tedious. Saving reciepies should've been a given.
One thing I'd like to know. Do effects you don't know about have any effect? I can't say I spent enough time with Morrowind to experiment with that. Could not knowing about negative effects of my ingredients protect me from negative side effects in my potions?

My feelings exactly.

My main issue isn't that it's complicated, but that it's unnecessarily complicated. The actual system is very simple and hardly challenging or interesting. It's just annoying.
There was nothing interesting you could do with it.

Starmetal. Starsilver. Argentium. Aerolitum.

Beautiful. Cheesy, but beautiful.

My point was that:

Main ingredient + secondari i. usually = Ingredient + skillcheck

but with the added opportunity to have some hard to come by special potions that kind of brake that system - you know, potion of greater 1447nes etc.

Yeah

They have a ´90s game feel, with all the clichés and cheesiness of that era.

Yes to the first question. Really stupid... at low alchemy levels (unable to see ingredient effects), you can mix and match and if two of them have a common effect, it magically pops up in the "potion effects" box. They "fixed" that in Oblivion by making it so only effects you know about are in the potion.

Hmm. Very much my time, the nineties. I don't remember much what came before, and care little for what followed after.

Actually, the opposite would be really, really dumb. I guess this means that Oblivion is dumb. Isn't that a surprise.
Of course one might argue that you need to treat the ingredients right to evoke their particular effects, but why would you then create potions with undesired effects? It would only make sense if you could choose which effects to actually have in your potion.

I'd be much more impressed if the effects you didn't know about were included in the potion. If 2 ingredients have 2 (or more) possible effects in common, both effects should appear in the potion -- but your character should only know the effects he knows (if that makes sense).

An example: Mushrooms have 2 effects (cure wound & hallucinations) while White Berries have 3 effects (Cure wounds, poison, & hallucinations). However, your character's skill means that he only knows that White Berries cure wounds and Mushrooms cure wounds. He creates his potion and "sees" that he's created a cure wound potion -- but is blissfully unaware that it'll also cause hallucinations. Until he takes it...

That being said, I like AoD's system, although single ingredient == single effect does seem a little simplistic. Perhaps having several types of alchemical apparatus and what you create depends on your skill plus the apparatus used? I understand if this is beyond your remit though, and the lack of such a system would by no means put me off getting AoD.

I do agree with the other posters upthread: the background is too fussy in the alchemy screen -- making it difficult to see the twig. Other than that, both screens shown look fine: clear and easy to read. (I'd like to see the updated 'crafting' screen though -- that looks potentially very interesting).

The only problem with hiding information like the cure and hallucination potion is that the player would quickly learn this and render that aspect ineffective.