Forums » Crafting and Gathering

Alchemy (Poison Specialist) vs Rogues "Poison Craft"

    • 520 posts
    April 14, 2019 1:24 AM PDT

    So how would it work? In my opinion Alchemy with Poison spec should be pretty much the most desirable crafting spec for rogues, but if they have separate skill for creating poisons wouldn't it make Alchemy redundant for them? I would rather see the passive that strenghtens effect, prolongs their duration and adds bonuses to crafting poisons like chance to add additional effect or chance of creating more vials.

    • 1315 posts
    April 14, 2019 5:19 AM PDT

    From what has been said in the streams the Rogues “Poison Craft” is going to be more of a choice of which special ability to apply to their weapons than an actual craft. It may be flavor skinned as “Poison Craft” but in reality it is a line of self only weapon buffs.

    We are still eagerly awaiting Ceythos opening up about crafting. Personally I see Potions and Poisons to be too similar to have them be different alchemical specializations. I would have split it into solid alchemy and liquid alchemy. Solid alchemy would make some devices but largely create and transform base materials into magical materials needed in other crafting. Liquid Alchemy would focus on Potions and Poisons and special solvents that are also needed by other crafting masters.

    This honestly highlights why I think skill trees are better than specialization for crafting masteries. Having to pick either or means you need to build both equally but that is your only choice. A crafter may prefer not to go to either extreme and be more of a generalist but that is not really an option in a hard coded specialization decision.

     

     

    • 520 posts
    April 14, 2019 6:34 AM PDT

    Personally i don't like locked crafting and think that it should only be limited by time and resources we spend on them. That being said I get why they're doing what they're doing - social aspect of buying what you need from others plays major role in this game - though on another hand plenty of people will just make alts in order to craft what they need for themselves and skip market hunt (honestly I hate shopping both in rl as well as in gaming -.-).

    • 1315 posts
    April 14, 2019 7:51 AM PDT

    I personally prefer a tiered skill point tree with each skill point taking more experience to unlock and diminishing returns on additional ranks of each tier.

    For crafting all crafting would give you a general experience pool to draw from to buy skill points. Those skill points could be spent on the crafting tree unlocking knowledge of materials, crafting minigame abilities, and additional optional materials. Each of these nodes would unlock the ability with the first point and increase the effect or efficiency of that skill with additional points but a diminishing returns.

    In addition to needing to put point into the tree each node would have some appropriate crafting prerequisite to put the point. Basic iron work would require a certain mastery of operating the forge, like say successfully making 100 metal items, smelting 100 good quality or better iron ingots (low quality can always be resmelted) and have the Hammer work node unlocked.

    Once Basic Iron Work was unlocked you would be much more proficient in making iron items and work towards your Apprentice Blacksmith skill nodes and do your apprenticeship quest which unlocks special bonuses.

    Each tier is more specialized than the last, representing a greater and greater amount of game time focused in one area but also required to unlock the Journeyman, Master and Grand Master quests which unlock the same titles where the real goodies are. Rather than mastering one craft it could be possible to become a Journeyman in a handful of crafts with the same amount of time spent as reaching Grand master in one.

    As each skill point takes more and more crafting experience having one craft at Grand Master (say 100 points invested as a minimum) or 4 crafts at Journeyman (25 points each) both take the same amount of crafting experience. Pushing a second craft to Grand Master or all 4 of the second version to master would take roughly the same amount of time but 10 to 100 times as much time as the first set.

    This system also opens up the idea of cross discipline crafts as well. A magic engineer could require Journeyman in both Iron Work and Bronze work as well as Apprenticeship in Alchemy, Scribing (cause math is a tradeskill) and Carpentry. The Magic Engineer nodes may have a higher return then your standard Master nodes as it has such a high entery point cost. Or not, maybe Magic engineer is rare because it takes twice as long to get to Grand Master as any pure craft would.

    I would love to see the combat side also have similar style of character building but that would be for a different game.

     

    • 35 posts
    April 15, 2019 4:12 AM PDT

    and you forgot deleveling when you spend to much time on another craft than your grandmaster one. :-)

    • 1315 posts
    April 15, 2019 5:04 AM PDT

    Pufug said:

    and you forgot deleveling when you spend to much time on another craft than your grandmaster one. :-)

    Wow that would be brutal.  Something along the lines of if you don't use a skill every X crafting Exp earned it begings to release/break the skill points invested in it.  If it completely fades then your total skill tally drops so its not as hard to re-earn it as it would be to get a new one but it will still hurt.  All pre-requisits count as being used when you use an advanced skill.

    That being said some way to release old skills either through attrition or deliberately breaking the skill point would be required.


    This post was edited by Trasak at April 15, 2019 5:04 AM PDT
    • 2419 posts
    April 15, 2019 10:57 AM PDT

    Trasak said:

     

    From what has been said in the streams the Rogues “Poison Craft” is going to be more of a choice of which special ability to apply to their weapons than an actual craft. It may be flavor skinned as “Poison Craft” but in reality it is a line of self only weapon buffs.

    I do not see why 'Poison Craft' could not product potions/vials that Rogues could sell to allow players to add short-term effects to their weapons.  To limit the craft to a self-only choice severly limits its applicability and also would mean Rogues could not take up other tradeskills they might really prefer to explore.

    • 1315 posts
    April 15, 2019 11:14 AM PDT

    It has been said that there will be no adventure class specific crafting.  While that was a crafting sin that EQ had with poisons and alchemy. I do not believe any other MMO has had adventure class locked crafting.

    That being said maybe there is some room for rogues to be able to apply "poison" they made to others weapons.  It is not a crafting tree and would not lock out a rogue from picking any of the trees, even poison focused alchemy.  But realistically Poison Craft is a class ability not a player crafting discipline and there for should not have any more utility or duration than Summoner summoned objects.  Frankly Rogues should not want it to be either or the material cost for one of their class abilities would end up being a burden to using it. 


    This post was edited by Trasak at April 15, 2019 11:16 AM PDT
    • 68 posts
    April 27, 2019 6:25 PM PDT

    don't forget race locked.  If you wanted to tinker in EQ, you were a Gnome.  The End.

    I didn't have a problem with that.  Life's not perfectly balanced and even.

     

    • 82 posts
    February 19, 2021 7:28 AM PST

    Hegenox said:

    So how would it work? In my opinion Alchemy with Poison spec should be pretty much the most desirable crafting spec for rogues, but if they have separate skill for creating poisons wouldn't it make Alchemy redundant for them? I would rather see the passive that strenghtens effect, prolongs their duration and adds bonuses to crafting poisons like chance to add additional effect or chance of creating more vials.

    Was wondering if there has been any internal discussions around this topic since Nephele came onboard ? Any updates that VR can share?


    This post was edited by Kaynrath at February 19, 2021 7:29 AM PST
    • 246 posts
    March 13, 2021 4:07 PM PST
    I wonder if the boys didn't give me traded to other people? And I wonder if other evil classes are racist can use it
    • 83 posts
    March 14, 2021 9:45 AM PDT

    Trasak said:

     

    From what has been said in the streams the Rogues “Poison Craft” is going to be more of a choice of which special ability to apply to their weapons than an actual craft. It may be flavor skinned as “Poison Craft” but in reality it is a line of self only weapon buffs.

    We are still eagerly awaiting Ceythos opening up about crafting. Personally I see Potions and Poisons to be too similar to have them be different alchemical specializations. I would have split it into solid alchemy and liquid alchemy. Solid alchemy would make some devices but largely create and transform base materials into magical materials needed in other crafting. Liquid Alchemy would focus on Potions and Poisons and special solvents that are also needed by other crafting masters.

    This honestly highlights why I think skill trees are better than specialization for crafting masteries. Having to pick either or means you need to build both equally but that is your only choice. A crafter may prefer not to go to either extreme and be more of a generalist but that is not really an option in a hard coded specialization decision.

    Alchemy has been stated to be one of the two 'consumable' crafting professions as per Nephele's words on February 4th. It's unlikely to result in any permanent items such as devices. While specialization's details are up in the air, they are considering having them be fairly specific, so Poison as a specialty is highly likely in my opinion.

    That being said, Rogue Poisoncrafting, I feel, is more of a thing because they don't want people's progression to be hard-locked behind other people. They don't necessarily want Rogues to feel like they're required to be Alchemists to succeed, so they give them the option to create simple poisons to increase their damage without any input from others. They made it a crafting-like skill instead of an ability because they want to nail that power fantasy of Rogues being smarter and sneakier than their opponents, and having them make choices like picking up mushrooms from the environment to create toxins is a simple way to enable that power fantasy without forcing them into the complex Crafting system (and allowing them to Craft without forcing them into Alchemy, of course.)

    I think Poisoncrafting probably started as a stop-gap measure because Rogue was finished far before Crafting was, and they didn't want to overtune Rogue damage to compensate for alchemy's lack. From what has been said I think it will still be around long-term, but what purpose it will serve long-term and how it will be tuned in comparison to Alchemist poisons (and if Alchemist poisons will be usable by other classes, for that matter) is yet to be seen.


    This post was edited by Darchias at March 14, 2021 9:53 AM PDT
    • 1992 posts
    March 14, 2021 7:22 PM PDT

    Darchias said:

    Rogue Poisoncrafting, I feel, is more of a thing because they don't want people's progression to be hard-locked behind other people. They don't necessarily want Rogues to feel like they're required to be Alchemists to succeed, so they give them the option to create simple poisons to increase their damage without any input from others.

    From what has been said I think it will still be around long-term, but what purpose it will serve long-term and how it will be tuned in comparison to Alchemist poisons (and if Alchemist poisons will be usable by other classes, for that matter) is yet to be seen.

     

    I agree with you. Keeping with Rogue 'tradition' likely had a significant part in poisoncrafting, and really the whole gamut of 'Alchemical Abilities' that were listed for them on the old website. I hope we get some of them at release.

    I believe a Rogue's toxins should progress as he levels, but never be equal to what an equivalent Alchemist can produce. Rogue is a skillful amateur at alchemy, while a dedicated Alchemist should be as masterful with it as the Rogue is with his Dagger.

    I think the Alchemist's poisons will be sellable, that would seem like a contentious issue if they weren't. I know the Devs have said they want to give every Crafter some way to monetize their products. It wouldn't HAVE to be the poisons of course, just seems like they would.

    • 83 posts
    March 16, 2021 5:45 PM PDT

    When talking about if stats would influence tradeskills, they mentioned that they didn't want any class to feel 'obligated' to pick any tradeskill profession due to their normal stat distribution. It seems like forcing Rogues to be Alchemists by making Alchemist poisons NO-TRADE would be somewhat counter-intuitive towards that goal.

    • 246 posts
    March 17, 2021 9:04 AM PDT
    I hope that poison could be tradable and used by other classes but they have to be of an evil intent class or evil race to use them.
    • 100 posts
    March 17, 2021 3:35 PM PDT

    Raidil said: I hope that poison could be tradable and used by other classes but they have to be of an evil intent class or evil race to use them.

    You could have a blessed ointment to smear your weapon with for good races dealing damage versus undead and demonic creatures too, why not :D

    But apparently there won't really be alignements in play in the game so I doubt they'll restric use of certain items or mechanics like that.

    • 1992 posts
    March 17, 2021 3:47 PM PDT

    Raidil said: I hope that poison could be tradable and used by other classes but they have to be of an evil intent class or evil race to use them.

    I know that "poison on the blade" is a popular motif in movies and books, and that is usually associated with a 'morally disadvantaged' character.

    But in the kind of world we'll have on Terminus, harmless looking animals (and even plants) could decide to have you for lunch.

    I don't see why you would feel that if a random critter was trying to eat you, it would be evil for it to die of poison on your sword, but not evil if you stabbed it thru its heart?

    • 83 posts
    March 17, 2021 7:46 PM PDT

    Ew, don't poison random critters. It ruins the meat.

    • 1992 posts
    March 17, 2021 11:46 PM PDT

    Darchias said:

    Ew, don't poison random critters. It ruins the meat.

    ROFL!

    Ok, but after I kill it without poison, I'm gonna stand there and make you eat the dang thing. All 7 eyes, both noses, the 6,7..9...whatever number of feet it has. AND that gelatinous stuff oozing out of...whatever orifice that is.

    I hope you're hungry!