Game Development: Theatrum Chemicum

[Sidran]

Giving all players 5-10 glass panes and 10-15 oil boards would be nice and beneficial for actual testing, ASAP. Not kidding.

[tweenprinc3ss]

They've made Glutting slightly easier because now it's one easy stop at the Alchemy table, instead of possible weeks of grinding.

Uh no. Its not one easy stop at the Alchemy table. The Alchemy Table seems to be another tool used to hopefully reduce the grind of increasing purity.

[Shizen]

But first you take Glutting, which was kinda hard and made it "super" hard.

Easier. We made it easier.

In this case I was referring to the patch two weeks ago. The changes to invariance from the words used to describe it will not really make glutting easier, because the benefit of multiple foods pales compared to the irritation in having to make a wide variety of foods combined with dealing with the vagaries of random element events screwing up your glut math. This fine point is rendered moot by the lack of purity food in the first place. But at least you made walls weaker, so the have nots can get run over more easily. That bit made me laugh.

As for proffing not being fun... Well, *I* enjoyed it. No significant specializations will emerge now, however, given how the profs will raise in blocks. But at least they'll be really high.

Humors super valued. Profs super devalued. Very nice.

[n0kturnal]

A problem i see with alchemy, and i don't know if anyone else agrees with me but i think the effect it has on items is way too small for someone wanting to take the effort to do it
edit: why would anyone want to switch the lowest purity to the next lowest? gee
edit after reading colesies post:
why would anyone want to move the lowest purities? gee.

I think if you look at it on a small scale, yeah alchemy is just moving numbers around. But for a new player like me, if I can have a shot at getting some decent freaking clay so I can eventually make purity lumber, it will be worth the time/effort.

For more established players, bulk alchemy could transform their purity level, grinding out cereal back up to where it was, making crafting supplies more powerful, and making building materials for purity constructions (compost now, but eventually other things I'm assuming)

Just need a way to start making our own glass and alchemy constructs will be a part of the purity cycle themselves, like the pressure cooker.

[eiokh]

Procifiency ... I LOVE IT.
Alchemy .... have to try it 1st i guess.
Wall HP reduce ..... hope i could knock down some of my walls

So i guess well purity is not implement yet ?

Jorb do u mind if i ask u something about the bin after the worm patch ?
I find that the red bar on the right of the bin menu will still continue to drop even when
the bin is full with humus . Before the patch , the red bar will stop if bin is humus full.
Is this a bug or a new features ?
If its a feature then i don't see the point of keeping the red bar always full as it just waste the
materials that we forage since it will just drop to 0.

[loftar]

A problem i see with alchemy, and i don't know if anyone else agrees with me but i think the effect it has on items is way too small or way too slow for someone wanting to take the effort to do it

It seems to me that the basic problem you, and some others, seem to hang up on is that it's hard to reach 100% purity, unlike previously. That's not a problem, however; that's a large part of the intention behind these updates. 100% pure goods are not supposed to be a norm, but something extraordinarily rare.

The discussions around alchemy would be much more meaningful if you instead started to assume that things will normally be far less pure than that, and instead tried to reason about what that means for other game mechanics. That was, for instance, our reason for lowering wall HP and soak -- that is, because we assume people will generally reach lower humour values than the previous (broken) ones which may only have been possible with 100% pure (broken) crops to back them.

[loftar]

Jorb do u mind if i ask u something about the bin after the worm patch ?
I find that the red bar on the right of the bin menu will still continue to drop even when
the bin is full with humus . Before the patch , the red bar will stop if bin is humus full.
Is this a bug or a new features ?

If that's true, then it's a bug. I'll investigate.

EDIT: I can't seem to reproduce it, at least. Are there any special circumstances under which it happens?

[Shizen]

I think if you look at it on a small scale, yeah alchemy is just moving numbers around. But for a new player like me, if I can have a shot at getting some decent freaking clay so I can eventually make purity lumber, it will be worth the time/effort.

For more established players, bulk alchemy could transform their purity level, grinding out cereal back up to where it was, making crafting supplies more powerful, and making building materials for purity constructions (compost now, but eventually other things I'm assuming)

Just need a way to start making our own glass and alchemy constructs will be a part of the purity cycle themselves, like the pressure cooker.

It doesn't, however. Because you aren't really improving the elemental base. What you are doing is tricking out the purity, by making the materials involved more polarized. This is a combinatoric nightmare, however, because let's say you want to make a sulphur pot.. for some reason. You want to purify 8 clay, a granite and a lime. Each will still have the same sulphur cap they always had (assuming you start with sulphur clay, lime and granite), but they will gain purity by becoming more polarized. The trouble is, now you have to make sure not just that they are sulphur mats, but that their second highest element is also the same, or when you combine them, all the purity gains you made via alchemy will be wiped out (because the elements will average out again). Even if you do do all of this, you are only gaining a very small quantity of purity, perhaps 2% total over the whole process (including cooking the combined pot). And this purity will help for inspirationals, but won't do **** for your humus, because that's based on its element.. which, if you recall, was sulphur, and *that* hasn't changed. The most you could possibly hope for would be a pot that was equally sulphuric and something else, which would cut your need for pots in half (and would be actually useful). But cookers are so ineffectual in their actual impact, that this will not happen. Basically, you're wasting your time.

But, you know, gerbil wheel it up, if it makes you happy.

[Yourgrandmother]

Do you 2 even play this game at a competent level?

All this wrinky dink alchemy tools is small time.

You know what it takes to gluttony a village of fighters? Set aside some time and cook thousands of pumpkin pies, make hundreds and hundreds of cabbage crumbs. hundreds and hundreds of cabbage cakes. Storage of 1,500+ just for gluttony.

These time based alchemy tables won't do ****.

We lost the ability to MASS PRODUCE crops and mass cook food.

Fields and humus is the ISSUE and this alchemy / pressure cooker **** is not a solution not even close. How the hell are people going to penetrate 500 brazier hearth vaults when they have to sit there with stupid alchemy tables waiting on values to change and micromanage all compost bins and worms to get 10% of the results of the past?

[Viackura]

It seems to me that the basic problem you, and some others, seem to hang up on is that it's hard to reach 100% purity

No, i mean i've been playing from zero regarding these updates, buying 0 purity seeds, before worms i produced humus of at least the purity my forageables had, now i can't even do that because no worms in my bins. now i havent' tested worms but pythons take too long to eat and the values raised are very low while feeding them forageables

i just hope these alchemy updates make it less of a hassle to get 1% purity crops. I see no problem with having low-mid purity food, my complain is that the effect is slow and small it has to be fun and there is no fun in waiting a day for your stuff to raise .1 in salt