Herbalism Needs Better Mono-Trade Crafts

[chocolatelover]

You can also lose your shop when the settlement sees you're not making a profit.

[AstralUniverse]

You can also lose your shop when the settlement sees you're not making a profit.

So play around with it and see what works for you. You need to be selling VERY little in a central high traffic shop in order to actually find yourself on the settlement leader's radar.

[Kenji]

1. Confer a soft bonus based on the average of the 100 (all stack, TBD)
   i. >= 20 gets +1 to Int (Shows message: You feel sharp)
   ii. >= 35 gets +1 to Str or Dex, whichever base is lower, defaults to STR if the same (Shows message: You feel strong and sharp)
   iii. >= 50 gets +1 to Con (Shows message: You feel healthy, strong, and sharp)
   iv. >= 80 gets +1 to all saves (Shows message: You feel amazing!)

I get the idea behind it, but, sorry, it's full of "running your WoW dailies" vibes. People are going to feel it's necessary to get that +1 to INT and others will redesign their equipment around those Str/con bonuses. I don't really think that's what you're going for.

Our own writ system is even more of a running WoW dailies vibe. We can easily adjust the food bonus, but the framework and incentive are there for the players to pick up and RP around with it. If they choose not to, then nothing has changed.

Other bonuses or parameters I can think of are to allow QoL boosts. Instead of stats, what about skills? Maybe it helps with Climb or, gods forbid, Sail?

As for the Fresh Drinks, I have tried to get multiple dungeon parties to pause long enough for me to brew them a fresh drink. NO TAKERS. So while I applaud the efforts of the devs injecting some RP into herbalism, I have had very little success actually getting any actual RP with it.

That's because there is no incentive behind the food RP other than raising the food/water meter up. And in exchange, it is time lost for your party grind. That's really what it is. To stop, chat, trade, and then eat/drink? Not everyone wants to do that if there's no further incentive behind it.

The fresh food system is in place to help with that ordeal.

More importantly, many have asked to have plenty of features removed:

1. Food/Water meter (they even play Fey solely just for this)
2. Repair Kits
3. Repairing in general

Like it or not, these generates social friction, from the smallest of a simple inconvenience "Hey, can you repair my armor", to a full RP of "The smith carefully fixed the riveted rings in place, measured the wearer's chest and waist to ensure the chainmail is neither too loose or too tight."

Not to derail the thread with what I subjectively deem important in encouraging the RP on our server, but I do think a fresh food system tacked on top of the existing Food meter is a good way to buff Herbalism and introduce Chef RP.

[Kythana]

I'm also not really a fan of a food system like that either, proposed as is.

With this system, everyone would now be forced into participating, if they want to receive the optimal bonuses, which just turns it into an obligation.

Writs aren't really a 'daily' system because once you're 30, you don't have to interact with them anymore. You also don't have to do exclusively writs, since grinding is an alternative.

Other bonuses or parameters I can think of are to allow QoL boosts. Instead of stats, what about skills? Maybe it helps with Climb or, gods forbid, Sail?

Something like bonus EXP per mob kill, longer sprint duration, or CP regenerating faster is probably more in line with what I would like to see.

More importantly, many have asked to have plenty of features removed:

1. Food/Water meter (they even play Fey solely just for this)
2. Repair Kits
3. Repairing in general

Like it or not, these generates social friction, from the smallest of a simple inconvenience "Hey, can you repair my armor", to a full RP of "The smith carefully fixed the riveted rings in place, measured the wearer's chest and waist to ensure the chainmail is neither too loose or too tight."

IMO, people ask for these systems to be removed because they don't really accomplish their end goal.

They're just little taxes that more often get in the way of roleplay than contribute to it. Repairs, I can concede on to a degree, but it's still a really unfun system.

Food/water really do serve no purpose, other than an inventory tax. It's not like anyone is actually at risk of dying from food/water loss. I've gone entire character lifespans where all it amounted to was the occasional emote about someone drinking water, or eating a ration.

Cooking related RP seems to be done outside of the system, with little consideration for it in the first place.

[chocolatelover]

While more foods would be great, they are mostly for RP flavor. Someone people love it, and others ignore it.

I believe the OP was asking for more Mono-Trade crafts as in running a shop using Herbalism.

So if we return to the original post,

Perseid wrote:

I don't know if this is a hot take but compared to something like Art Crafting or Smithing I think Herbalism is a massive pain in the Snuggybear. Things like FoM potions are meaningful sure but as far as the ease with which you can just gather mats exclusively w/ your core trade and convert those mats into profits Herb is one of the worst trades. I think it's got a great abundance of rp flavor via foods don't get me wrong but I don't think think it's remotely competitive in terms of converting effort to money.

Perhaps the Freedom and Black Potion of Warding recipes can be remade so they are not so much work? Having to make vials of Mojo just to use all those with bottles, vials, mojo and more to make these potions is just... exhausting. And once the extra benefit of Brew Potion was nerfed it just became painful.

Not asking to become rich on herbology. Just be able to make a decent profit, keep a shop without a settlement hammering you AND not be exhausted spending all time on the server to gather and craft.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Honestly, after playing several dedicated herbalists, I'd rather potion amounts just get boosted and have a possibility to make bulk of them and foods.

Maybe a few of them could use a boost, but some are pretty good already. I do agree on the bulk thing though, that would make it much less annoying to do. It's definitely the most annoying craft in that regard because everything has so many ingredients and they all are cheap on cp, so you are constantly in and out of your bags without any stretches of "Oh, I got this 300+ cp project to work on whenever I pass a cauldron".

[chris a gogo]

Bulk would be a nice QoL.

I think the reduced sales is probably because if you invest 20 ish points in it you can make pretty much everything you need.
I know i do this on most characters, not to sell stuff in shops just so i can ditch heal skill and make all my own potions.

[Wethrinea]

Herbalism could do with an expanded list of potions that can be crafted. Like all zoo potions. Before the recent Skal update, getting zoo potions required a rather dangerous trek across the tundra if you started out there.

[chocolatelover]

What would REALLY be nice, are some ZOO potions that are stronger/ last longer than the NPC versions, like the Giant Strength Potion. It's just time consuming to gather materials and make those versus other potions.

[Darkstorn42]

I like the idea of craftable zoo, bark, and maybe other potions that rival brew potion and wands in caster level but balanced by the need to collect ingredients.

Want quick and easy to make items everyone needs? Feat tax or material collection tax.