Rethink alchemist's cupboards and/or barrel sealing

[Ostentatio 1,970]

The short version: Due to barrel-sealing mechanics, alchemist's cupboards are essentially worthless. I think we basically know that by now.

 

But let's compare them to another piece of furniture for a more thorough analysis: Barrel racks.

Small barrel rack:

• Single piece of furniture
• Requires basic carpentry materials to create rack & barrels
• 30 creation difficulty
• Holds 30 small barrels
• Barrels can store 45 liters of liquid each
• Barrels can be removed and added to rack at will
• Barrels can be sealed with pegs (essentially for free), completely eliminating decay

Alchemist's cupboard:

• Single piece of furniture
• Requires basic carpentry materials, pottery jars, and beeswax to create
• 50 creation difficulty
• Includes 10 vials
• Vials can hold 2 liters of liquid each
• Vials cannot be removed from alchemist's cupboard
• Vials reduce liquid decay by 1/2

 

I just can't see a good use case for the alchemist's cupboard. It's harder to make, holds vastly less, and reducing decay is unremarkable compared to completely preventing decay forever with a peg. An alchemist's cupboard might be useful for short-term liquid storage, but in those cases, you don't care about decay anyway, making the feature irrelevant.

 

Let's face it: Sealing small barrels costs nothing, because pegs cost nothing. With a free and convenient method for storing liquids decay-free in relatively large quantities in a container that is easily transported, stored in racks, and held in inventory, there is simply no reason to use anything else as far as decay is concerned. Amphoras seem more well-designed in this regard, since sealing them costs something slightly less trivial to make, at least enough to push it beyond "essentially free" the way pegs are. I've always had the impression that sealing was meant for long-term storage and fermentation, but it's so easy with small barrels that there's pretty much no reason to ever not do it.

 

I don't know what the most appropriate change here is. Make alchemist vials prevent all decay on contents? Add some other benefit to them? Make sealing small barrels less overpowered or have them require the same sealing parts that amphoras use? I honestly don't know, but right now, small barrel sealing is absurdly good, free, and by its very nature, inherently better than absolutely any partial decay prevention could ever be.

Edited April 30, 2018 by Ostentatio

[MrGARY 12,421]

I'd go with make vials prevent decay

[Ostentatio 1,970]

5 minutes ago, MrGARY said:

I'd go with make vials prevent decay

 

I'd prefer making small barrel sealing more costly (to keep it viable as long-term storage but not so convenient for short-term usage), but yeah, vials stopping decay is probably more likely. Hard to take Wurmians' toys away after they've been handed them.

[Eobersig 1,005]

I'd agree that the alchemist cupboard should prevent all decay of liquids in the vials .. a place to store blood, metallic liquid, potions.

 

[Flubb 773]

No decay in vials sounds about right to me. Especially if I could finally put that blood somewhere safely except the overfilled bank.

[Muse 2,222]

I think the cupboard could be more useful if / when we can start mixing up our own alchemical compounds. 

• Perhaps to start off - some new in-between shade dyes from crushed lingonberries / belladonna / carrots / lovage etc - maybe a pink, cyan, orange and a yellow. Yes we can already mix these shades painstakingly, but lets do something else with lingonberries and belladonna. 
• Maybe bring in some new alchemical recipes using everyday materials, which could be discovered in the same way as the cooking recipes.
• Perhaps healing potions and/or poisons
• Maybe enchanted potions that can affect items in new ways.
• It might be interesting if the vials would hold 'essences', powders and pastes as well as liquid solutions

Just a thought.  At this stage anything is possible.

 

...and remember - every experiment worth doing needs smoke and particle effects

[Ostentatio 1,970]

1 hour ago, Eobersig said:

I'd agree that the alchemist cupboard should prevent all decay of liquids in the vials .. a place to store blood, metallic liquid, potions.

 

 

Agree, but even then I'd still rather build a barrel rack and hold 30 of them instead of 10. At least, there still wouldn't be much advantage to using a cupboard.

[Eobersig 1,005]

33 minutes ago, Ostentatio said:

 

Agree, but even then I'd still rather build a barrel rack and hold 30 of them instead of 10. At least, there still wouldn't be much advantage to using a cupboard.

 

Correct. Just a more snazzy place to keep that stuff than a plain and regular barrel rack.

[Etherdrifter 2,518]

A better notion would be to make the alchemist's cupboard actually useful for alchemists:

 

Add in a small BSB used for storing "reagents" (animal parts, herbs, items used in dyes)

Add in a box for storing healing covers (no decay)

Add in a resevoir so an alchemist can store some water in there (20kg?)

Allow users to attach a measuring cup to the table (and forever link it to the table decaywise)

Allow users to rename vials, and prevent all decay in them (they're small enough)

 

[whereami 564]

+1 to Etherdrifter's suggestions, plus that I think it should hold a bit more than 10 vials. 20 sounds s bit more reasonable considering the amount of liquid they actually hold. After all, it's supposed to be a sort of bulk-storage unit..

[JakeRivers 2,921]

18 hours ago, Ostentatio said:

 

I'd prefer making small barrel sealing more costly (to keep it viable as long-term storage but not so convenient for short-term usage), but yeah, vials stopping decay is probably more likely. Hard to take Wurmians' toys away after they've been handed them.

 

Oh great idea, lets nerf the small barrel rack to make the useless cupboard seem more useful but not really solve the problem of the useless cupboard at the same time.

[Ostentatio 1,970]

1 hour ago, JakeRivers said:

 

Oh great idea, lets nerf the small barrel rack to make the useless cupboard seem more useful but not really solve the problem of the useless cupboard at the same time.

 

I'm just spitballing ideas here. No reason to be hostile about it.

 

It's not as if that needs to be the only aspect of the solution, regardless. Etherdrifter has some good ideas, for example.

Edited May 1, 2018 by Ostentatio

[nicedreams 1,035]

24 minutes ago, Ostentatio said:

 

I'm just spitballing ideas here. No reason to be hostile about it.

 

It's not as if that needs to be the only aspect of the solution, regardless.

 

The only purpose Jake has is to troll people on forums.  I'm starting to think he doesn't even play the game and just waits to pounce on people in forums.

[JakeRivers 2,921]

Yup I don't play the game, I just troll people when they come up with requests to nerf a feature rather than request that another feature should be improved.

[Ostentatio 1,970]

Two of the possible improvements I suggested were making alchemist vials prevent decay entirely, or adding other benefits to the alchemist's cupboard. So yes, I am requesting that another feature should be improved. I also specifically said I don't know what the best solution is. I'm trying to point out a current issue with how this stuff is implemented, not just take your toys away out of spite.

 

I don't expect you to agree with me, but being needlessly caustic about it and misrepresenting what I'm saying does not help and is not productive.

Edited May 1, 2018 by Ostentatio

[JakeRivers 2,921]

Rather than whine about how easy it is to seal a small barrel you should be asking for the ability to seal large barrels and huge oil drums, not everyone wants to use large amphora's and the huge oil drum is perfect for those who go to the extremes.

 

 

 

 

[Ostentatio 1,970]

Again, I am not prescribing a specific solution here, nor am I just whining about small barrels. I'm identifying a problem - alchemist cupboards are relatively useless due to ease of barrel-sealing making them obsolete - and trying to brainstorm some potential ideas to rectify that, which may involve making the cupboards better, or sealing harder, or both, or something else entirely.

 

If you're not even going to make a good faith attempt at understanding what the thread is about, I'm just going to stop responding to you altogether.

Edited May 1, 2018 by Ostentatio

[JakeRivers 2,921]

the use of the alchemist cupboard has absolutely nothing to do with the ability to seal a small barrel, your argument is pointless in using this as a comparison

 

rather than going this way you just needed to point out that if the cupboard had larger containers it would be more useful

[Ostentatio 1,970]

How useful something is is completely relative, and depends on how useful its alternatives are. If one option is strictly better than another option, the worse option could hardly be called useful. This matters.

 

In this case, the reduced liquid decay from alchemist's cabinets was made obsolete pretty much instantaneously when barrel-sealing was introduced, as there is no longer much of any reason to use the former, if there ever was.

Edited May 1, 2018 by Ostentatio

[armyskin 930]

I had forgotten what the alchemists table even was. I saw one after months of having forgotten they were a thing and looked at the wiki article about them and decided they are for decoration. Even if they did prevent all decay I would have zero use for one other that it's ambiance. Again this is because it's purpose has been made obsolete by more convenient options. The real question is, does it need to have a purpose? If it happens to hold things then it's sort of a bonus. I have a bedside table that I put all of my gems in. Not for any other reason than it exists. I never have more gems at any time to need a larger container it is just that the bedside table is convenient because I know that I can't put much else in there so it is easy for me to remember that it is where my gems are. It would be much easier to have my gems sorted by quality to know what I actually have but that issue hasn't come up. I feel that the alchemists table is sort of the same thing in the way that it doesn't do anything better than other containers but rather it is easier to remember that certain items are being stored there.

[kochinac 1,395]

I'm in favour of removing decay completly on cupboards As for the barrels maybe dificulty can be increased by using wax and peg for sealing, beekeeping needs some love anyway

[JakeRivers 2,921]

8 hours ago, kochinac said:

beekeeping needs some love anyway

 

needs more than love, my hives have not been emptied out since Jan 2017

 

 

[kochinac 1,395]

1 hour ago, JakeRivers said:

 

needs more than love, my hives have not been emptied out since Jan 2017

 

 

Yeah love is not appropiate term, don't bother to empty mine either except on rare occasions when i'm realy bored. Also mead doesnt age like it should which makes it even more useless compared to other drinks which are already useless compared to excell pizzas which makes honey totaly useless...

Edited May 3, 2018 by kochinac