Remove reagents from vendors

[ZVNII]

As the title suggests, I want mage reagents to be more valuable. There are already ways to get all reagents in decent quantity via pickables and extraction. Add a few more ways to get calamine, few more pickables and we good. I have stacks (getting stuff from pve is too easy in thsi game) of calamine with no use - from extraction. I have a few hundred hours on my mage, there is hardly any preparation to getting ready for fights compared to other archetypes. Gearing process is super fast and easy. It does not feel rewarding to spend time on building a thicc bank. It does not feel rewarding to kill a mage either in terms of their potential loot.

At the same time it is really lame how strong magic is in a group fight situation for how small the investment is. Just for the fun of it i was browsing the UO spells book and some reagents were a chore to get... Not 1 silver from a vendor in any town. I hope this currently is only like this for testing purposes and will change once servers go persistent.

On a tiny side note it would be awsome to have spell books or wands or something that enhance your magic. These items can be built with valuable materials to further put some investment into making your mage combat ready. More of a gold / time sink. Maybe enable parrying with these items maybe not. Make characters with well built wands get some sort of advantage for example better concentration (currently 40% chance to prevent interruption). Mages have a huge problem with getting casts interrupted while getting hit for 0 and handle hits. Having a cronite spell book could maybe eliminate this but ofc drop on death.

 

[Rorry]

Really? You want to make the class that can't pve effectively have to pve to get their "gear?" Even requiring more expensive reagents isn't a good idea as it is so very much harder to make gold as a mage.

 

[Woody]

Really? You want to make the class that can't pve effectively have to pve to get their "gear?" Even requiring more expensive reagents isn't a good idea as it is so very much harder to make gold as a mage.

The issue with mages not being able to PvE effectively has nothing to do with the issue that preparation cost and cost of gearing is too low in comparison to every other playstyle. These issues need to be addressed separately.

 

[Kelzyr]

This would literally make it impossible for a mage to be a mage until they do some mining/extracting...All melee and archers just go to a vendor to buy some starter weapons.

I could understand removing some of the reagents but don't remove all of them.

Everyone complains about how mages don't cost as much to gear. You understand this is because warriors have no actual incentive to wear any light armor. Mages are practically FORCED to...Maybe we should be asking for a reason for FF to be wearing lighter armors so their cost to equip goes down?

Sure you don't have to spend as much for your reagents in comparison to a melee weapon, but bows are almost just as cheap.

 

[Sayton]

Better spells already require more expensive regs though. Like jadeite and cuprum. I don't mind some basic spells being cheap to cast.

 

[Kelzyr]

I think most people don't like the fact that you can fulminate with what is purchasable on the vendors. I would be willing to add coal as a reagent to fulminate tho. This simple change would only allow the following spells to be cast via vendor reagents:

Lesser heal, purify, corrupt, outburst, magic reflect, mind blast, and spurt (though water is pickable, I'd say its abundant enough)

These are all lower dmg/healing spells along with utility spells. The strongest would be mind blast assuming you're hitting a high int-str diff character.

 

[ZVNII]

Really? You want to make the class that can't pve effectively have to pve to get their "gear?" Even requiring more expensive reagents isn't a good idea as it is so very much harder to make gold as a mage.

mages can pve totally fine. if you cannot pve that is on you in my first 3 days of playing this game i farmed over 700 gold with zero knowledge by butchering hunt. Sure you are not the best at killing risars or bandits but it is far from hard to do so.

 

[Putzin]

I dont agree with removing reagents from vendors in anyway shape or form. Mages are good in group fights but you already cant buy Cuprum/Coal/Pyrite from vendors which are the hardest hitting spells like Thunderlash, Flamestrike and EQ. Ecumencial was already etermined to be the most basic of magic schools and new schools will have other requirements for spell casts like spirits with spiritism.

Don't. Remove. Reagents.

 

[Lasciel]

Magery lacking the capability of PvEing without pets is a design flaw of the entire system. I don't see much of a way around it without some serious overhauls. I do think changing it so that fulminate isn't usable straight off of vendor reagents is good, though.

 

[ZVNII]

This would literally make it impossible for a mage to be a mage until they do some mining/extracting...All melee and archers just go to a vendor to buy some starter weapons.

I could understand removing some of the reagents but don't remove all of them.

Everyone complains about how mages don't cost as much to gear. You understand this is because warriors have no actual incentive to wear any light armor. Mages are practically FORCED to...Maybe we should be asking for a reason for FF to be wearing lighter armors so their cost to equip goes down?

Sure you don't have to spend as much for your reagents in comparison to a melee weapon, but bows are almost just as cheap.

You can pick reagents, I do want them to add more spots to pick them though. You wouldn't use some spells. Like maybe flame strike should be locked behind volcanic ash for example, but that would be a balancing issue. Generally it is not hard to get thousands of reagents by picking them from the ground. I picked up 2000 sulfur in 5 mins in haven the other day for example (10 mins run from town). It would just add value to a mages inventory.

Edit start:
AND make prep. time more engaging by a significant margin. Neither of these suggestions will make sulfur expensive but it is more engaging to run into the mountains every few days to get your reagents than buying them off teh vendor for 2 gold that you got for killing a pig. Also it makes people leave the town and use the designs that are already in teh game.
Edit end.

Mages will eventually get high tier light armor materials like cosmoid that will be worth a lot. Does not hurt giving mages more elements of time / gold sink. When I play my mage I want something to do. I don't like being fully geared with less than 5 gold. I want to at least have an option to put more money into my gear to have an advantage. I would pay hundreds of gold to have uninterruptible casts for example.

 

[ZVNII]

I dont agree with removing reagents from vendors in anyway shape or form. Mages are good in group fights but you already cant buy Cuprum/Coal/Pyrite from vendors which are the hardest hitting spells like Thunderlash, Flamestrike and EQ. Ecumencial was already etermined to be the most basic of magic schools and new schools will have other requirements for spell casts like spirits with spiritism.

Don't. Remove. Reagents.

What is the point of getting reagents from other sources then? When you can just buy thousands for barely any investment.

 

[Kelzyr]

You can pick reagents, I do want them to add more spots to pick them though. You wouldn't use some spells. Like maybe flame strike should be locked behind volcanic ash for example, but that would be a balancing issue. Generally it is not hard to get thousands of reagents by picking them from the ground. I picked up 2000 sulfur in 5 mins in haven the other day for example (10 mins run from town). It would just add value to a mages inventory.

You know that flamestrike is already locked behind getting coal right?

I think it makes sense for mages to be able to purchase some basic reagents if all other archetypes can buy starter weapons/armor.

I could get behind removing more of the reagents if they are replace with more abundancy as pickables in the world, but they would have to add these pickables throughout all regions, you shouldn't be forced to travel half way across the world just so you can cast corrupt.

 

[barcode]

this is part of a larger conversation where vendors dont exist. Player trade on the broker should be where the majority of this takes place. people processing tephra/gabore may find themselves with an excess of calamine they can then sell. players can roam the hills gathering calamine in the wild for it. just because it is not in high volumes where you are at does not mean you wont have access to it: someone will certainly want to sell it for monies.

sv would have to do their math to ensure its not an onerous task to get the basic regs but yea would be a step in the right direction.

-barcode

 

[AssassinOTL]

As the title suggests, I want mage reagents to be more valuable. There are already ways to get all reagents in decent quantity via pickables and extraction. Add a few more ways to get calamine, few more pickables and we good. I have stacks (getting stuff from pve is too easy in thsi game) of calamine with no use - from extraction. I have a few hundred hours on my mage, there is hardly any preparation to getting ready for fights compared to other archetypes. Gearing process is super fast and easy. It does not feel rewarding to spend time on building a thicc bank. It does not feel rewarding to kill a mage either in terms of their potential loot.

At the same time it is really lame how strong magic is in a group fight situation for how small the investment is. Just for the fun of it i was browsing the UO spells book and some reagents were a chore to get... Not 1 silver from a vendor in any town. I hope this currently is only like this for testing purposes and will change once servers go persistent.

On a tiny side note it would be awesome to have spell books or wands or something that enhance your magic. These items can be built with valuable materials to further put some investment into making your mage combat ready. More of a gold / time sink. Maybe enable parrying with these items maybe not. Make characters with well built wands get some sort of advantage for example better concentration (currently 40% chance to prevent interruption). Mages have a huge problem with getting casts interrupted while getting hit for 0 and handle hits. Having a cronite spell book could maybe eliminate this but ofc drop on death.

i see what you're trying to say, but then you completely make an entire vendor useless.... like what would they sell there if you take reagents away, and the mages are already the hardest and longest to skill up when the xp gain goes to it's normal level.

also not to forget most of those reagents are used as well by extraction teams in the beginning of their Extraction endeavors to get yield in the first place... how can you replace that if you take them off the vendor? I see a lot more Bad from good coming from the removal, and i wanted to ask if you had any solutions to the problems that would come up from that, and a few more from the others that have already been mentioned

 

[Kelzyr]

What is the point of getting reagents from other sources then? When you can just buy thousands for barely any investment.

No point, but it does save you money. In a lot of cases getting these reagents from extracting or picking simply save you some money in the future.

In reality the game just needs more of the magic schools to exist so people can stop obsessing over Ecumenical spells. Ecu should really be an afterthought and really nerfed as soon as there are enough magic schools to replace these spells. I think they should have their uses, obviously people will still want corrupt/purify and magic reflect so maybe keep those as an Ecu special, but all healing and damage should come from other schools IMO.

 

[ZVNII]

You know that flamestrike is already locked behind getting coal right?

I think it makes sense for mages to be able to purchase some basic reagents if all other archetypes can buy starter weapons/armor.

I could get behind removing more of the reagents if they are replace with more abundancy as pickables in the world, but they would have to add these pickables throughout all regions, you shouldn't be forced to travel half way across the world just so you can cast corrupt.

Yeah flame strike isn't a basic reagent though. Some might even argue only fat mages should use it due to high mana costs. There would be no harm done making it a "chase reagent", coal is nothing special. Worth about the same as any reagent just less availability. I think if all "basic" reagents should be kind of easily pickable near town or in town. Sort of like how sea dew is right outside of meduli or carrots and cabbage are in the gardens of fab, rice in MK etc. With basic i refer to calamine, sulf, nitre and ichor. Maybe make ichor come from granum idk. Just an example.

 

[ZVNII]

i see what you're trying to say, but then you completely make an entire vendor useless.... like what would they sell there if you take reagents away, and the mages are already the hardest and longest to skill up when the xp gain goes to it's normal level.

also not to forget most of those reagents are used as well by extraction teams in the beginning of their Extraction endeavors to get yield in the first place... how can you replace that if you take them off the vendor? I see a lot more Bad from good coming from the removal, and i wanted to ask if you had any solutions to the problems that would come up from that, and a few more from the others that have already been mentioned

If we remove teh reagents from the vendor, the vendor would be removed too, not useless, just gone. Better to have 1 vendor type less that was bad for teh games economy compared to having alchemical dissolvants useless, plus extraction of several side products and several pick-able locations pointless. Fixed? Mage skilling up is the least concern overall. Sure they have longer times to skill up with more reading but they read faster and this wouldn't be an issue after teh first 2 weeks of playing. You can do a lot with spurt and like i said before, getting basic reagents isn't hard it just forces you to leave teh city and walk for 10 mins every few days (maybe once a month depends on how much you do).

EDIT: My hope would be that players will help supply these items via the broker as long as teh population of the game is healthy. This will be based off of the demand and what players are willing to pay for their lazy ways of not wanting to leave town.
EDIT: END

If you mean the mage reagents are used as catalysts in extraction, yes some are. Very rarely though, most reagents like rock oil are teh worse alternative to something else. Most common catalysts are coal, coke, calx powder. Calamine is used in refining to make messing. Besides that there are few uses for salts and ichor for rare extractions. Off teh top of my head that is all i can think of. Calamine is a bread and butter reagent and should be very easy to get as a pick-able. Maybe put it next to the town or in obvious spots. I agree one shouldn't have to travel far for heals or corrupts. But it should not be on a vendor. It could be a great secondary income for extractors.

I really don't see any bad coming with it, if more pick-able spots are added smarty. Imagine if in fab you had white cavolo on the vendor instead of respawning in teh cabbage patch. It isn't hard to get but it feels completely different having it in the gardens. Same as rice in MK or Sea dew in meduli. Imagine Sea dew, one of the easiest to farm pick-ables as a vendor item instead. People are too lazy to gather and it will force player driven trade.

Not sure if you are asking me to make up bad situations that I debate against myself If you have any other concerns I can help find solutions.

 

[ZVNII]

No point, but it does save you money. In a lot of cases getting these reagents from extracting or picking simply save you some money in the future.

In reality the game just needs more of the magic schools to exist so people can stop obsessing over Ecumenical spells. Ecu should really be an afterthought and really nerfed as soon as there are enough magic schools to replace these spells. I think they should have their uses, obviously people will still want corrupt/purify and magic reflect so maybe keep those as an Ecu special, but all healing and damage should come from other schools IMO.

This is a fair point. As in If other schools get added that make ECU obsolete i would agree. However I don't want to wait 10 years ( ^_^) for teh 4th magic school to get added to fix something that would have a lot of positive impact when we can do it now. I find all suggestions valuable. Adding more magic is not like adding mechanics that already existed in MO1, it will take a while. Unless you think necromancy will fix all problems. For all of MO 1 ECU was teh corner stone of magic even with necromancy, elementalism and spiritism. No reason why it should not be "balanced / optimized". Lesser heals will probably always be a thing mages will have to do / be able to do, since it is almost free when having a decent amount of intelligence and supplies HUGE support for mana used.

 

[AssassinOTL]

If we remove teh reagents from the vendor, the vendor would be removed too, not useless, just gone. Better to have 1 vendor type less that was bad for teh games economy compared to having alchemical dissolvants useless, plus extraction of several side products and several pick-able locations pointless. Fixed? Mage skilling up is the least concern overall. Sure they have longer times to skill up with more reading but they read faster and this wouldn't be an issue after teh first 2 weeks of playing. You can do a lot with spurt and like i said before, getting basic reagents isn't hard it just forces you to leave teh city and walk for 10 mins every few days (maybe once a month depends on how much you do).

If you mean the mage reagents are used as catalysts in extraction, yes some are. Very rarely though, most reagents like rock oil are teh worse alternative to something else. Most common catalysts are coal, coke, calx powder. Calamine is used in refining to make messing. Besides that there are few uses for salts and ichor for rare extractions. Off teh top of my head that is all i can think of. Calamine is a bread and butter reagent and should be very easy to get as a pick-able. Maybe put it next to the town or in obvious spots. I agree one shouldn't have to travel far for heals or corrupts. But it should not be on a vendor. It could be a great secondary income for extractors.

I really don't see any bad coming with it, if more pick-able spots are added smarty. Imagine if in fab you had white cavolo on the vendor instead of respawning in teh cabbage patch. It isn't hard to get but it feels completely different having it in the gardens. Same as rice in MK or Sea dew in meduli. Imagine Sea dew, one of the easiest to farm pick-ables as a vendor item instead. People are too lazy to gather and it will force player driven trade.

Not sure if you are asking me to make up bad situations that I debate against myself If you have any other concerns I can help find solutions.

yeah i see what you mean there. But there's also the case of the new mage experience, where they would not know where these pickables are and would have to explore the world litterally empty handed with no way to defend themselves, and if only the mage population is out looking for reageants it wont fix that one issue you were debating with yourself about, making mage kills feel rewarding, they would just go picking stuff naked with nothing on them

This is a fair point. As in If other schools get added that make ECU obsolete i would agree. However I don't want to wait 10 years ( ^_^) for teh 4th magic school to get added to fix something that would have a lot of positive impact when we can do it now. I find all suggestions valuable. Adding more magic is not like adding mechanics that already existed in MO1, it will take a while. Unless you think necromancy will fix all problems. For all of MO 1 ECU was teh corner stone of magic even with necromancy, elementalism and spiritism. No reason why it should not be "balanced / optimized". Lesser heals will probably always be a thing mages will have to do / be able to do, since it is almost free when having a decent amount of intelligence and supplies HUGE support for mana used.

yeah we all are waiting on the new magic schools and all those reagents are the biggest chore to gather, and need other players to make, so yeah ECU wont be a thing much longer aside from discount spells and EQ for mounted

 

[agui]

I personally dont like the idea. That would put young mages so far behind in the begin of the game .

I always question propositions like this cause some places is easy to gather material that worth alot then basic stuff like calamine.

I.e. sulfur in GK ... extremely easy to gather on the ground and ppl used to sell in tindrem 40 or so for 4g ... imagine get a stack and move to tindrem and sell small quantities... easy gold.

So for me i like how it is today i woukdnt change it.

but What SV should do is change magic dmg against npc...

should do x2 or x3 dmg ( or higher) against only npc's (animals and monsters, not guards) ... to make mages abble to farm.

other thing is to make asap a shield protector spell for ecumenical book ... to be used by mages only on farming against npcs pourpose .... to help mages farm alone, negating so dmg made by wolfes and agressive animals in the wild.