Welcome to the first installment of an in-depth look at Warhammer Tradeskills, featuring Apothecary, Cultivation, and Butchering. Read on for all the juicy details!
Special thanks to Gary Astleford and Phillip Chan for writing this piece!
Apothecary
"Oooh, that's a nice one! Clear as crystal, and not a bubble to be seen in it! Where'd you say these came from, again? Tilea? How impressive! Fine, then, I'll take the lot of them. Best not be any broken ones! The last lot was half shards by the time it was delivered!"
-- Gertrude Weiss, Apothecary (overheard in Altdorf's market)
Apothecary is a crafting production skill that allows you to create potions that apply various temporary augmentations to your characters. A secondary feature in Apothecary is the crafting of dyes. By finding a pigment and grinding it down with a mortar and pestle, anyone can create a substance which is capable of dyeing cloth, leather, or even metal! Whether a Swordmaster or a Witch Elf, all players can benefit from the abundant selection of concoctions available.
The central item of the Apothecary craft is the vial. Vials are rated depending on their quality, which ranges from Apprentice to Master Apothecary. A vial provides the necessary container for the completed potion. Any merchant or vendor in the Age of Reckoning would quickly be put out of business without an unlimited supply of such vials.
"It's not all about black cauldrons, newt eyes, or ghoul essences! Which isn't to say those bits don't have their place in the profession, mind you, but these rumors make us sound like common witches!"
-- Vander "The Warlock" Kohl, prior to his arrest and execution
An empty vial doesn't make for much of a potion, so you must place a main ingredient, culled from Cultivation or Butchering, into the waiting container. There are other ingredients too: some that increase the number of potions you can create with a single vial, some that extend the duration of the potion's effects, and even some that make it possible to create something better than what you originally planned. Finally, the concoction must be stabilized. Throwing too many ingredients into a single brew makes it volatile and more difficult to concoct.
With all your ingredients in place, you can combine them together in a frenzy of maniacal whimsy, creating wondrous potions that do anything from enhancing your character to gluing your victims to the ground. So grab a vial, a main ingredient, and brew away! Be sure to experiment with different combinations, and share your homebrewed recipes with others!
Cultivation
"All the horrors of tomorrow are hidden in the seeds of today."
-- Chaos Proverb
Cultivation is a gathering skill that feeds ingredients to Apothecary. You can learn this valuable skill from specific trainers in the world. Cultivation has undergone some very interesting changes lately. For example, the merchants have tapped the market and are now hoarding seeds to sell to hapless players. How opportunistic!
Don't despair! The beauty of plants is their ability to generate seeds, thereby propagating their species. If a burgeoning grower is careful, he only needs one seed to populate an entire garden of plants that will sustain him indefinitely.
"That which grows from the soil represents a miracle from the bosom of Rhya, yet even it will sit idle and rotten if not for the gifts of Taal."
-- Father Eichmann, Priest of Taal and Rhya
Merchants in the Age of Reckoning are a shrewd bunch, and have hedged the market on the various plant-growing necessities: soil, watering equipment, and fertilizers are bought and sold across the world. Luckily, all their proceeds go to the war effort. Waaagh!
Recent reports from the front indicate that new types of plants are being discovered on a daily basis. Some are so powerful that they might become attuned to only one cultivator! How bizarre!
Butchering
"A sharp knife's the most important tool a butcher can have. Fine steel is the best choice, but beware of rust. Treat the edge like a delicate flower, and oil your whetstone between each stroke. After all, it's always less painful to slice off your thumb with a keen blade than to carve out a pound of flesh with a dull one."
-- Gerard Fleischer, Journeyman Butcher
Another gathering skill is Butchering. The Butcher's craft feeds ingredients to Apothecaries. Rather than spend time nursing seeds, a Butcher can exert his unfettered dominance over beasts in the Age of Reckoning. Kill for sport! Kill for purpose! Or kill because you want a Rhinox Horn for the rarest of brews! From the claws of the noble griffon, to the bile from the liver of a lowly boar, all beasts in the Age of Reckoning conceal some medicinal use.
"I met the most curious little man on the road to Talabheim. His cart was laden with all manner of goods: jars of tripe steeped in scented oils, unborn calves baked in clay, even the tender portions of a lion preserved in brine that was taken from the Great Ocean.
"The latter, he said, would make me irresistible once I'd imbibed it.
"Of course I bought one! It hasn't made me irresistible yet, but it did give me the bloody flux. If I ever find that filthy Halfling, I'll see his tender portions preserved in brine ..."
-- Overheard in the Ten Tailed Cat
Do you feel like drinking some strange animal's blood, or devouring the organs of your feral prey? You can also harness the multiplicative power of Squigs or the adamantine quality of insect chitin in your potions today!
The beasts of the Old World are fierce, but you are fiercer. Butcher them all, I say, and harvest the best bits for your own diabolical concoctions. Anything to make you meaner, leaner, and harder to kill!
Talisman Making
"Me mum, she was somethin' special. Could take somethin' what was downright ordinary and turn it into somethin' magic. She gave me this ribbon here 'fore I left for the front lines, told me to tie it on my spear 'n never take it off. I've been in a dozen battles since then, 'n I ain't never been hurt. Not so much as a scratch.
"It's mum's ribbon what keeps me safe, I tell ya. If Sigmar himself told me to take it off, I'd tell the old boy to stuff himself."
-- Corporal Alfons Hirsch
Talisman Making is a crafting production skill that allows you to transform magical objects found in the world into useful trinkets and charms. Talisman Making trainers can be found everywhere in the world, and with a little practice an amateur curio collector can transform himself into a powerful hedge wizard.
Curious objects, gold dust, and primal magical essences, once placed into a relic box, can yield spectacular results with only a few chanted words. Such products include trinkets to hang from your sword that make it sharper, or charms to place in your staff that open your mind to the Winds of Magic.
"I am unsure as to the nature of this power. Is it the faith of those who use such charms that makes them so effective? Or is there some other magic at work? I must continue my research. I shudder to think that some otherworldly influence is
at work here, corrupting the brave men and women of my village."
-- Father Josef, Priest of Schwarzmarkt
Is a Sorceress making your life difficult? Place a charm in your armor that will make her blood run cold when her spell bounces harmlessly from your chest. Laugh dismissively when that pesky Knight of the Blazing Sun swings his sword at you, then cleave his skull in two with the strength of twenty men. Any advantage can be the deciding factor in wartime.
Talismans are things of incalculable value in the Age of Reckoning. Their ability to enhance otherwise mundane equipment can go a long way towards making a deadly warrior even stronger. Test out a variety of Talismans and watch your power grow.
Salvaging
"Gimme dat choppa, ya lout!"
"Why for should I, Worglob?"
"'Cuz I's bigger'n you, Iggrul, 'n if ya don't I'm gonna stomp yer guts out! Dat's why!"
"Oi, dat's as good a reason as I's heard all week! Here ya go!"
-- Worglob gets his due from Iggrul somewhere in Barak Varr
Salvaging is a gathering skill that allows players to break down equipment into its basic elements. As they crusade for their causes, great warriors and life-giving healers are always finding powerful artifacts and magical items. Such items, once discovered, render their dented shields, bloodstained swords, and cracked staves obsolete.
Why throw out or sell old equipment when you can siphon out its base magical properties and use them to make your new gear that much more effective? Want a little more oomph in your swing? The power within the sword you used in Saphery can always be transferred to a new weapon that you can employ in Caledor. After all, waste not, want not!
"So few people know the worth of their weapons. Some blacksmith worked for weeks, maybe months, to forge the blade, to sharpen it. And for what? So a pea-brained, self-titled 'hero' can toss it aside when a better one comes along? How pathetic!"
-- Karsten Vogt, Quartermaster
Salvaging the magical properties of equipment can be a difficult and risky business. The energy within magical items is elusive, and can often escape even the best salvager's efforts. Even when successfully collected, some small amount of power will always drain away into the Aether. Oftentimes a salvager must focus on only one property within an item. Some salvagers are lucky and find that they can maintain the potency of a property with no loss of effectiveness.
Scavenging
"How ya 'spect ta make any Karls if'n ya don't crack the gold teeth outta them jaws? Ain't like the dead need 'em no more."
-- Dussel, Bone-Picker
Scavenging is a gathering skill that allows players to obtain Talisman Making ingredients from the bodies of the dead. If you though that your enemy's Superstition or misguided faith was only there to warm the cold nights in High Pass with laughter and jeering, you were wrong!
Scavengers are encouraged to rifle through the pockets of their victims in search of treasured keepsakes. When following this calling, you should feel free to callously loot the dead bodies of your foes. Claim their sacrosanct symbols and valuables for your own indulgent purposes!
"I'm constantly amazed by the sentimentality of these Empire curs. It seems like every single one of them carries a pendant or a symbol of some kind. For all the prattle and pomp of their faith and conviction, I'd expect their gods to pay some attention to them when I'm cutting them down like chaff."
-- Morvass Dreadsong, Blackguard
Wasn't there a soldier in Reikland that wore a locket given to him by his long lost love? Or a greenskin in Barak Varr that wore a scorpion sting for luck? Take these things because you can! Take them because you enjoy it! Take them because their original owners won't be needing them ever again! This is war!
The Age of Reckoning is filled with many humanoid creatures, but not all of them carry religious or superstitious symbols. Don't be disappointed if you don't find an interesting curio -- instead, take their extra gold!
Mar 22, 2009
Warhammer Tradeskills Feature
Mar 11, 2009
Warhammer Tradeskills Feature: Part 1
Welcome to the first installment of an in-depth look at WAR 's Tradeskills, featuring Apothecary, Cultivation, and Butchering. Read on for all the juicy details!
Special thanks to Gary Astleford and Phillip Chan for writing this piece!
“Oooh, that's a nice one! Clear as crystal, and not a bubble to be seen in it! Where'd you say these came from, again? Tilea? How impressive! Fine, then, I'll take the lot of them. Best not be any broken ones! The last lot was half shards by the time it was delivered!”
– Gertrude Weiss, Apothecary (overheard in Altdorf's market)
Apothecary
Apothecary is a crafting production skill that allows you to create potions that apply various temporary augmentations to your characters. A secondary feature in Apothecary is the crafting of dyes. By finding a pigment and grinding it down with a mortar and pestle, anyone can create a substance which is capable of dyeing cloth, leather, or even metal! Whether a Swordmaster or a Witch Elf, all players can benefit from the abundant selection of concoctions available.
The central item of the Apothecary craft is the vial. Vials are rated depending on their quality, which ranges from Apprentice to Master Apothecary. A vial provides the necessary container for the completed potion. Any merchant or vendor in the Age of Reckoning would quickly be put out of business without an unlimited supply of such vials.
“It's not all about black cauldrons, newt eyes, or ghoul essences! Which isn't to say those bits don't have their place in the profession, mind you, but these rumors make us sound like common witches!”
– Vander “The Warlock” Kohl, prior to his arrest and execution
An empty vial doesn't make for much of a potion, so you must place a main ingredient, culled from Cultivation or Butchering, into the waiting container. There are other ingredients too: some that increase the number of potions you can create with a single vial, some that extend the duration of the potion's effects, and even some that make it possible to create something better than what you originally planned. Finally, the concoction must be stabilized. Throwing too many ingredients into a single brew makes it volatile and more difficult to concoct.
With all your ingredients in place, you can combine them together in a frenzy of maniacal whimsy, creating wondrous potions that do anything from enhancing your character to gluing your victims to the ground. So grab a vial, a main ingredient, and brew away! Be sure to experiment with different combinations, and share your homebrewed recipes with others!
“All the horrors of tomorrow are hidden in the seeds of today.”
– Chaos Proverb
Cultivation
Cultivation is a gathering skill that feeds ingredients to Apothecary. You can learn this valuable skill from specific trainers in the world. Cultivation has undergone some very interesting changes lately. For example, the merchants have tapped the market and are now hoarding seeds to sell to hapless players. How opportunistic!
Don't despair! The beauty of plants is their ability to generate seeds, thereby propagating their species. If a burgeoning grower is careful, he only needs one seed to populate an entire garden of plants that will sustain him indefinitely.
“That which grows from the soil represents a miracle from the bosom of Rhya, yet even it will sit idle and rotten if not for the gifts of Taal.”
– Father Eichmann, Priest of Taal and Rhya
Merchants in the Age of Reckoning are a shrewd bunch, and have hedged the market on the various plant-growing necessities: soil, watering equipment, and fertilizers are bought and sold across the world. Luckily, all their proceeds go to the war effort. Waaagh!
Recent reports from the front indicate that new types of plants are being discovered on a daily basis. Some are so powerful that they might become attuned to only one cultivator! How bizarre!
“A sharp knife's the most important tool a butcher can have. Fine steel is the best choice, but beware of rust. Treat the edge like a delicate flower, and oil your whetstone between each stroke. After all, it's always less painful to slice off your thumb with a keen blade than to carve out a pound of flesh with a dull one.”– Gerard Fleischer, Journeyman Butcher
Butchering
Another gathering skill is Butchering. The Butcher's craft feeds ingredients to Apothecaries. Rather than spend time nursing seeds, a Butcher can exert his unfettered dominance over beasts in the Age of Reckoning. Kill for sport! Kill for purpose! Or kill because you want a Rhinox Horn for the rarest of brews! From the claws of the noble griffon, to the bile from the liver of a lowly boar, all beasts in the Age of Reckoning conceal some medicinal use.
“The latter, he said, would make me irresistible once I'd imbibed it.
“Of course I bought one! It hasn't made me irresistible yet, but it did give me the bloody flux. If I ever find that filthy Halfling, I'll see his tender portions preserved in brine …”
– Overheard in the Ten Tailed Cat
Do you feel like drinking some strange animal's blood, or devouring the organs of your feral prey? You can also harness the multiplicative power of Squigs or the adamantine quality of insect chitin in your potions today!
The beasts of the Old World are fierce, but you are fiercer. Butcher them all, I say, and harvest the best bits for your own diabolical concoctions. Anything to make you meaner, leaner, and harder to kill!
Dec 2, 2008
Warhammer crafting system
Mark Jacobs did a very nice little video that came out in the newsletter that covers pretty much all of the stuff I would be talking to you about, so I'm going to try and see whether we can find some other little things to talk about that he just mentioned in broader terms. I think the best way to talk about crafting is first of all to admit that there's gathering, and then there's crafting. There is how you get your stuff, and that's how you turn your stuff into other things. The skills that we're talking about at the moment, we have four gathering and two crafting. The two crafting are Apothecary and Talisman-making, and the four gathering are Butchering, Scavenging, Cultivating and Salvaging. Some of them function like skills you might have seen in other games, like Butchering, and Scavenging is extracting stuff from corpses.
Warhammer Cultivating is a pretty new idea for an MMO. Essentially you start off with something useless and spend some time and attention, nurture with love, and water. Eventually your seeds can grow into something that is much more useful and someone else will want to buy off you and use to make potions. You can, of course, use your own materials. Salvaging is taking something that you have, that maybe you don't want, hitting it with a hammer lots of times so it breaks apart. Then you have some stuff left over. Apothecary is potions lotions and powders, it's essentially our combat consumable creation system. Talisman-making is making stuff that goes into slots, where those slots are on weapons and amour. I don't think Mark touched too much on how those skills basically interact with one another, I've seen a few people asking questions about that.
Just as an example of how resource gathering works. Butchering is where I go out into the wilderness and see a wolf or a boar, and I kill it and some flies start buzzing around it, and I interact with it. Then I get some loot! And the kind of loot you get from Butchering is - mostly - going to help you out with the Warhammer apothecary system. So ingredients you might get to make potions are like guts and blood, and goo and all kinds of disgusting things. Scavenging on the other hand feels basically like the same kind of skill except that you're doing it on predominantly player races. Anything sentient, like Mark said "anything with pockets". When you Scavenge from them you get things that are slightly less disgusting, things like gold teeth, you might get fleas and ticks, that sort of stuff that's stuck to their body. Generally, the stuff you get from Scavenging will help you out in Talisman-making.
There is a bit of crossover, if you do Scavenging there are some things you use in apothecary that aren't available elsewhere, aren't as easily available elsewhere. The same thing with the other two resource skills. Cultivating is growing stuff, and stuff you grow in Warhammer Cultivating generally ties in to apothecary too. Salvaging - that stuff generally ties in to Talisman-making. So we give players a choice, they can have one gathering, one crafting. At very low levels there's enough to just get started at your local crafting vendor. Once you get above that, you need to go and do stuff on your own. With your one gathering skill you can pretty much get just about everything you need, but there are going to be some times where you need to trade with other players.
You only have the option of choosing one gathering and one crafting? You can't do two gatherings?
No. Definitely one and one, Mark replied to someone asking that question on one of the boards today. The primary reason is just that we don't have that many skills at the moment. The other thing we've tried to do with all of these skills is - I'm not a big fan of chasing yellow dots on a radar screen. When I play our game I want to get into a scenario, I want to get into a keep siege and I want to kill people! I don't want to be doing rings around the edge of the zone or looking for yellow dots on my radar to go and interact with not-people. I want to get in to RvR and kill people. So - developing the entire crafting system, which is based on Mark's design, we tried very hard to make sure that if you want to do crafting, it's not going to impact your ability to do RvR. It's not going to soak up time, you're not going to have to go to specific places and do it. If you want to do it, you can just do it. If you've got 10 seconds downtime? Make a potion, or start something growing, while you're waiting for the scenario timer to kick off so you can get in and start killing people. That's been a very important, conscious choice for us. I think we've pretty much hit it on just about everything you do in the game to do with crafting.
Mark in the podcast was emphasizing the exploratory nature of the system, and that's the sort of thing we've been trying to ensure all the way through. We don't want the system to be as simple as in some games, where if you find a recipe or unlock a recipe then it's the same set of four items you need to make it. In our system, there are many different ways to arrive at an end product. The interesting choice we give to the players is to kind of figure out the best way to get the ingredients they need to make that, based on their own play-style.
I've artificially given myself 100 skill at Cultivating, which has opened up three of my four plots already. The first thing you do when you get the cultivate window to open is you stick a seed in a plot. The low-level stuff grows pretty quickly, and you can have multiple things growing at the same time. When you back out, it shows you which state which ones are - all of these are at the beginning stage at the moment. There's an overall time, there's a time per stage. What we can also do is input additives that will reduce the time taken as well.
You can use one additive per stage?
Yes, at specific times. Basically what happens in Cultivating is, you're growing stuff. We'll also fill in some little surprise things in, like you can have criticals and supercriticals, and the chance of those happening can be modified by the additives that you use. If you find a special sort of soil, maybe that makes criticals happen more often, or maybe it makes supercriticals happen more often. We're also trying to do things like hybridization. Essentially most of the seeds you grow give you ingredients that you're going to use to make something. We are reducing the amount of types that you can immediately get, and make them happen as a result of say a supercritical in cultivation. So you might say "oh, let's grow a respiration plant" and then grow ten of them, and one's a supercritical and suddenly it gives you a healing seed. You haven't been able to make healing potions before, and you can't find them anywhere.
You've created the healing seed as a hybridization byproduct of the respiration seeds. Cultivation's also going to be a way that we can put in more weird stuff. You might be growing some particular plants and you might get an insect at the end of one of the products, which you can grind down and use as a pigment, Or, you get a sap or some goo that you can use as an ingredient for something else. Once it's fully grown, at the end you can harvest it. Oh, I got one of those back. I'll try to see if it's in a stack ... I got a failure! There's a common mushroom there, which ultimately will get sold to a vendor.
Some of the seeds can also come from Scavenging, some of them come from just killing particular types of animals. Usually ones that have hair, because thematically, it's stuck in their hair. We have the starter stores mostly as a customer service for our players. Once they get into they game, they can start out and get their first few skill levels in a particular skill, at no risks, the guy in the store will just sell you as many of the skill level 1 stuff as you want. Then when you outlevel that, you're on your own, and you have to go find stuff. So particularly potent or rare seeds, find more PQ bosses, any particularly hard piece of content, as well as regular drops and Scavenging.
So not only do the gathering skills work with the crafting skills, but they also overlap with each other?
Yeah - there's a little bit of overlap all over the place. Like earlier on, when I was saying Scavenging mostly helps you out with Talisman-making; there are edge conditions and all sorts of weirdness that we put in. Hopefully players will find it interesting, particularly like killing someone and finding they had a leech on them. Then you loot the leech and you say "Oh, this can be used to make healing potions, because it's a leech!" Stuff like that. So apothecary is a potion-making system. As a skill level one player I learn this skill from a trainer, and then I go to this guy here and he can give me some stuff. First thing I need to do is put it in a container, and then put in my main ingredient, and then there's a little thing that tells me whether the mixture is stable or not.
So it's completely stable with these new additives. I press 'Brew', and we get a potion out at the end. It's real quick to make something as an Apothecary. Now the really cool thing about the system is we have a main ingredient which goes in that slot, which basically can determine what kind of potion we're making. In this case, you can check on the tooltip and know that this guy always makes intelligence potions. However the problem with the main ingredients is that they're very, very unstable. So as soon as you put them into a container, you are going to have a battle to make sure the overall stability of the concoction is positive. So, to do that, I've just used the three basic ingredients that I know have good stability. Other ingredients can also do other things, like the two basic other types which I'm going to show you today can increase the length of an effect on a potion, and increase the number made. It's a little bit difficult to be designing potions early on. Once you get into the swing of it, and you are starting to find more gatherables and you also have more money, you can buy stuff and you can can trade from players. It enables you to start designing the sort of potions that you want. Mark used a really good example in his podcast where he said "I'm going to make some potions for my guildmates ...
What are we doing tonight?" "Well, we're just going to run a bunch of scenarios. We're going to be doing RvR." In RvR, you don't survive very long, it's just a fact of life. You die every five minutes. It's fun, but you die every five minutes! So, it would be pointless for me to use my ingredients that lengthen the effect. Every time I revive, I take another potion. So, instead I'm going to concentrate on adding extra potency in, or maybe, concentrate on adding ingredients that will make more potions. Conversely if I'm going to solo, if I'm going to try and get a couple of levels tonight, do a couple of quests, maybe join some other people in PQ. I'm not really expecting to die all that often - it's PvE! So, I might concentrate on my ingredients that super-lengthen the length of the effect. Instead of making intelligence by ten, for ten minutes, I might make intelligence for ten, for two hours. In which case, I only need to drink one, and I can save all my ingredients for when we go RvRing and make the short powerful ones.
Is there a similar mechanic on the Talisman-making side? You mentioned breaking down materials based on their item bonuses, but is there any sort of balancing that goes on there?
It's similar, but it's... it's the same system, but there are some differences. For example, for apothecary - apothecary is all about managing your stability, making sure your overall stuff is stable, and we give the players a little bar on the side. For Talisman-making, it's all about making this minor object of power as potent and powerful as they can possibly make it. So there's no real stability involved in that, it's just brute force power. Conceptually it's very similar, you're sticking four things into a container, pressing a button and hopefully awesome pops out the end. The types of things you need to make a talisman is a fragment, which is the thing you get from Magical Salvaging. Presumably as a player you've already made the choice about which bonus you're trying to make. Then you need some gold essence, gold in Warhammer is traditionally the color of hedge-wizardry, talisman, magic, that kind of stuff.
We're going to require you need some gold essence. Gold essence is the thing that is created by apothecary people. We'll allow you to have some really crappy gold essence probably from the store or from some early on PQs. That said, to get the superpowerful talismans, you're going to want to have a friend that's into apothecary. Talismans thematically are kinda like good luck charms. It's funny ... in the Warhammer world, they're not necessarily inherently magical themselves. They're magical because you believe they're magical - which is kind of a weird concept to get your head around initially. The Empire soldiers will nail two brass pennies to the front of their shield as a good luck charm. Are the pennies actually magical? No, they're not, but because they think they are, they become magical. It's like a lot of trust and belief and all kinds of nonsense.
So talismans work a bit like - thematically they're a bit like that. If you believe all this stuff's going to be magical, you can make something cool. So the third things you need, we call them curios, they're things you get from Scavenging. Like you Scavenge some player races, they might have in their pocket a lucky charm - a rabbit's foot pendant or a four-leaf clover. The third ingredient for making a talisman is something that someone considered to inherently have some power to it. Then the fourth thing is another magical type of essence that predominantly occurs as a byproduct of Salvaging. Take all this stuff, squish it together, and if you have the best versions of each one of those four things, you get a really good talisman at the end of it. If not, you get a crappy one.
What kind of support does the Auction House offer for people who want to offer their goods and services from these kind of products? Is there an easy way to run down a potion based on the length of time?
Yes. Our Auction House functions like you think it would. However, we have extra levels of filtering available that you can use to search for. There's not just a pulldown that says "Potions" and it will show you all the potions in the Auction House. You can actually get down to the level of clarity that you would need, given that the crafting systems themselves can create stuff of that level of granularity.
This is obviously a question looking out a bit ... do you guys see adding in more crafting elements as the years go by?
I think we would be foolish not to!
It seems like you're aiming to launch with a very tight, very core element...
We wanted to concentrate on - I don't want to use the word 'consumable', it's not an all-encompassing term - wanted to focus on the things that are the most going to help players out in RvR. Viscerally. Like - drink a potion, and suddenly you become stronger on the battlefield. That's the kind of effect you want to have. One thing about talismans is I'm not sure if it's been mentioned - is while some of them last forever, some of them don't - and that enables us to put better abilities in them because we know they're not going to last. They're not going to stick around for that long. So, with that respect, they're also consumables. We want to give players as much ammunition for augmenting and specializing their characters for RvR.
The choice to not include a weaponsmith or armorsmith is interesting. Was that based on just how the designers wanted to itemize the game, or was it so you didn't have people doing really passive activities in the game?
I think every game I've ever played, I've always been a little bit upset with how blacksmithing / weaponsmithing works, in that they never give me the end results that I really want. A lot of games there'll be the discussion whether crafted stuff should be better than the stuff I get elsewhere. Not necessarily even high-end content, but just my normal, going about my business doing quests kind of thing. I don't remember ever playing a game where I thought that mix was "right". Personally, I'd love to put in a system where you could do crafting and that was the pinnacle of stuff in the game - but there are other aspects to take into account. I'm not sure the main reason why we didn't do it. From my point of view, being in charge of the team that had to do it, we know we have this awesome exploratory system of apothecary and Talisman-making. We have the associated gathering skills, and we just want to knock those out the park first. We'll give you the tools that impact your initial RvR experience the most, early on in your lifetime in the game. After that, we'll see what happens. We're probably going to be around for ten years, it's going to be five or six expansions ... we've got to hold something back!
Nov 19, 2008
Apothecary Guide
In order to craft a potion with apothecary, you need a minimum of 3 items: a container, a main ingredient, and a stabilizing ingredient. Basic containers, and level 1 sub-ingredients can be purchased at merchants (not quartermasters) and craft merchants. As you gain levels and move up to different tiers, a more advanced container can be purchased from the merchant.
Here's a breakdown of the process of making potions:
- Place the container in the container slot
- Pick a main ingredient from your inventory and put it into the main ingredient slot
- Put a stabilizing agent, usually cloudy water to start, in the first slot, and check the bar on the right labeled "Potion Stability" above. If the arrow is at the bottom, crafting the ingredient will cause the vial to shatter and the synth will fail. If it's halfway up then you have a good chance of getting a potion but it will be volatile. Volatile potions have a chance of doing the opposite of what they say they'll do (Example: you lose 25 action points instead of gain them).
- Keep stuffing stabilizing agents in until the potion is either halfway or at the top (I usually go for the top for potions that I want)
- If you have extra spaces, you can put a sub-ingredient in. Sub-ingredients fall into 2 categories: Makes more potions and Increases Potion Potency. Also listed under sub-ingredients are other stabilizers not available from the vendor. These stabilizers are generally more potent and can reduce the number of waters you need so that you can afford to use sub-ingredients in your synth.
- When you've got the mix that you want, hit "Brew", then enjoy the fruits of your labor!
You can read even more about apothecary here.
Nov 3, 2008
Warhammer Apothecary Guides You Should Know
Warhammer Online is hot now, and beginners maybe should wanna know Warhammer Apothecary Guides!
Potions can be very useful in game, at least in my experience. Most of the beginner potions are going to add +10 to a stat for 5-10 minutes. If you compare that to level 5 gear, you're talking about being able to add a bonus comparable to two or three pieces of armor that all buff the same stat. Want to heal? Beginner for warhammer apothecary potions will give you a quick recharge of +250 hp if you know where to get the materials. Overall it appears that Mythic intends apothecary to be the number one utility crafting skill. If you don't want to invest a lot of time in raising it, you don't have to: every merchant who sells apothecary supplies sells enough materials for you to grind out restoration potions.
What you need:
Every potion has 3 basic components. First you have to have some sort of container. The basic container is a used glass vial, which costs 5 brass at a vendor. You also need a main ingredient, these can be purchased at a basic vendor as well. Vendors in the low-level towns will have elvish parsley for recovery (heal over time potion) and bear claws for strength. There are also some intelligence materials I believe. Bear in mind that as you progress in level, the quality and type of ingredients vendors provide will change. Finally, you have three slots where you can add additional components. When first starting out, don't waste your time adding anything other than cloudy water. Again: until you get your skill to 25 adding anything other than cloudy water to your potions is a waste of materials that will be helpful later. Simply put, you don't yet have the skill to make more than one potion at a time, and you don't have the materials to make potions that last longer than 5 minutes.
How to get it:
There are two gathering skills that contribute items usable as a main ingredient. Butchering will give you main ingredients as well as some ingredients with varying miscellaneous effects (stabilizing effects appear to be the most common). Cultivating will allow you to grow plants and fungi which can then be used to create potions. Which is better? Well each has its benefits. Butchering is great because if you know where an animal spawns you have an unlimited supply of an ingredient, provided you are willing to farm long enough to build up your stock. However, butchering's strength is also its main weakness: you have to have animals to butcher, which means higher-level components will not be available right away, even if your skill would be high enough to harvest them. Cultivation is the more peaceful alternative to butchering. I've found that every monster component has an equivalent plant. But it's worth noting that each skill point you want to raise in cultivation will take approximately 90 seconds. Butchering an animal has a duration of 5 seconds. This means that while cultivation requires nothing other than seeds, it takes much much longer to raise skill in cultivation compared to butchering. However as far as I can tell butchering has nearly nothing to contribute to dyes; I am reluctant to comment any further on this because my experience with dye-making is non-existent.
How to get good potions quickly:
Here's how I did it, which may not be the best way, but it got me to making some good potions after about 15 minutes of skill-raising. First off, you're not going to be able to use any green ingredient you have until your skill is at least 25 (this may change, I'll explain more later). Your best bet for getting skill from 1 to 25 is to simply figure out what potion will benefit you most from the ingredients available at the vendor, and then just get enough materials to make this potion 25 times. Remember you only need the main ingredient, a used glass vial and some cloudy water at this point. After buying 25 of these three items, open up your skills by pressing 'V', then select warhammer apothecary guides from the top of the alphabetized list under the general skills tab (it's the hammer icon on the far right).
The warhammer Apothecary Screen:
As you can see, apothecary is pretty intuitive once you know where to get ingredients. The screen has 5 slots, with each one clearly marked as to what goes there. On the right side is a little bar which you can pretty much ignore. What you want to pay attention to is the text at the bottom which will read one of three things: 1. This potion is unstable (will definitely fail) 2. This potion is volatile (may succeed) 3. This potion is stable (will definitely succeed). At this point, every potion you make will be volatile. That's okay, because that's the best you can do with only cloudy water**.
Here's where WAR crafting deviates from other MMOs you may be familiar with. As far as I can tell, each main ingredient has a set 'stability value'. If the items you have in your three additional slots do not provide enough stability to meet that required 'stability value', any attempted potion with that ingredient will always fail no matter how many times you try. As a correlate to this, any potion which is volatile but succeeds will always succeed and produce a potion.
Volatile potions have a small disclaimer stating that they may produce a negative effect, but at the time of this writing the chance of this happening is negligible enough for it to be ignored. I have used scores of volatile potions, and have yet for one to backfire and produce a negative effect.
Oct 17, 2008
Warhammer Tradeskills Information
Warhammer Online is retaining a very similar warhammer tradeskill profession such as the older massively multiplayer online role playing games. In World of Warcraft, gathering professions were first introduced but now Warhammer now currently has more gathering tradeskills than crafting. There are currently 4 gathering skills and only 2 crafting skills. The 4 gathering skill consists of cultivating, magical salvaging, butchering and scavenging. The 2 crafting profession currently available is apothecary and talisman making.
The Warhammer cultivating tradeskill in WAR allows the player to grow their own weeds and fungi which are used by the apothecary for ingredients. Cultivating requires seeds and spores that can be otained from monsters, scavenging and from most merchants in cities and towns. A pot is needed as well obviously. To get better results from cultivating, you can add soil, water and nutrients. The better you treat your plant, the better your plant will treat you.
The Warhammer magical salvaging tradeskill in WAR is the ability to break magical items into small magical fragments. These magical items can be obtained from PvE, RvR, quests and variety of other places. When salvaging an item, you can choose the type of stats to extract from that item. Along with the fragments you will also get what is known as essences. Both fragments and essences are used to make Talismans.
The last 2 gathering trade skills in WAR is butchering and scavenging. They are very similar in many ways, both skills are used to gather resources from a dead mob that has already been completely looted. Butchering is used on non-sentient mobs while scavenging for the more socially active mob, in another words, beast or humanoids.
The Warhammer apothecary trade skill uses ingredients found through cultivating and can turn them into potions, powders or lotions. It would be wise to be able to pair your characters or friends with different professions to gain the maximum benefits off each profession. There are many different type of potions and can provide various abilities. Some can add very low stats but have long durations while another of the equivalent level have higher stats but shorter duration.
The Warhammer talisman making profession hasn't been fully released yet but it allows you to create talismans. Talismans are known as the minor items of power which can be attacked to certain armors, weapons and grants permanent bonuses to that item. Only rate and powerful items are able to have talismans placed onto them. To create a talisman, you will need a contain along with the magical fragments and essences received from a player with the magical salvaging profession.
Every profession will yield its benefits. Gathering professions are better during the beginning of the game since you do not have any resources to craft nor yet may want to spend that gold to level up your crafting. A gathering profession can definitely reap its reward early. The crafting skill may be what you prefer mid to end game when you have all the resources at your hand. Whichever profession you should decide to go with, it's always best to pick one up early on the game. You can learn these trade skills from a trainer as early as the second Chapter of each faction.
More Warhammer Online Hacks
Oct 14, 2008
Warhammer online crafting system
With Warhammer Online releasing on September 18th, many of you may be wondering about the Warhammer crafting system. I was able to do some crafting last weekend during the Preview weekend and would like to share what I have learned.
Warhammer crafting is pretty straight forward. There are two different types of warhammer crafting - harvesting and finished product crafting. There are four types of harvesting crafts. Scavenging is scrounging usable stuff from humanoid type mobs after you have killed them. Butchering is pretty much the same thing as scavenging only from dead animals. Cultivating is farming or growing items to be used to make finished products. Magical salvaging is breaking down items into crafting supplies. There are only two types of finished product crafting at this time. Apothecary is basically potion making and can be pretty handy. You can make healing potions, stat buffs, or cause damage that can really help in RvR. Talisman Making creates adornments to be added to armor and weapons.
I would recommend everyone get a harvesting craft early in the game. Around level 5, you will come across a quest camp with crafting trainers in it. As a beginner Warhammer craft I would recommend Scavenging. It seems there are more humanoids to be killed than animals and even if you don't plan to craft right away or ever, you can scavenge items to sell to a merchant to make money early on. You can even scavenge from other players after you have killed them in RvR. It also makes sense to have your first character scavenge because it doesn't require anything but dead bodies to skill up and you gain items usable in cultivating, apothecary and talisman making.
Finished product crafting is pretty easy and skill ups come fast. There are no recipes in Warhammer crafting so you just open the crafting window, put the items in there and see what happens when you combine them. In Warhammer Apothecary, for instance, you put in a glass vial to hold your potion, you add a basic ingredient like Elvish Parsley (to make a healing potion) and then you have three more slots that you can buy items to enhance the combination, increase the number of potions created or make it more stable (more likely to succeed). This is where your scavenging comes in. If you have scavenged something that says it does something interesting, you can just throw it in to the mix at this point and see what you get from the combine. No recipes to search for or buy.
According to Mythic, Warhammer crafting is not necessary but is meant to enhance RvR. So it's all about being tougher or better at attacking or more resistant to magic, etc. Everything in the game is centered on killing the enemy.
