If you ever thought I worked as harder as an alchemist for the same profit as my herbalists, you're sadly mistaken. I could boil down 1200 herbs in 42 seconds and turn 9400 gold worth of herbs into 18k of readily sold health potions several times a day and still have demand for more.

Anyways, I'm not sure tradeskills need to go overboard with benefit. I'm sure artisans would rather have something better than prize return (hey, a leadership skill--sexbeds increases the rate of novices "accidentally" assigned to the wrong guild via an elusive "bug," i.e. yours) and cooks would like a personal benefit, but really, they're tradeskills.

I completely understand the desire to make tradeskills profitable, but a lot of that depends on mechanics beyond the influence of the tradeskill. Cooking would be profitable if infusions weren't so expensive for such a transient (and stat-weighted) effect, slightly less than half the playerbase had skills to feed themselves, and slightly over half of the game's long term players didn't need food anyways. Artisans don't have much to sell to people without manses. Baskets and pipes? With my spatula, my preserved food lasts longer than the baskets I put it in. Poisons are probably better now that we have monks, but there just isn't demand for it. The problem, except with bookbinding and maybe cooking infusions, is that there isn't demand.

That's a good point, too. Meh, I was liking the way this was going.

Umm, that doesn't count.

You don't need an alchemist to pick herbs.

There has to be a cost/benefit thing going on.

You sure do. Without an alchemist, you're not emptying your rift, which means you can't pick any more. And, as Xavius said, an alchemist can make the same profit as an herbalist (most alchemists tend to sell at about 2x the herb cost) for a fraction of the time spent.

Thats why IRE invented pocketbelts.

An Herbalist puts X amount of TIME in, and get y amount of MONEY out.

An Alchemist puts x amount of MONEY in, and gets y MONEY out.

The less MONEY that is required to put into your tradeskill, the more TIME you put in instead.

This is how it works for just about every trade skill. (except for non-metal forging designs, I guess)

The number of people you have to give MONEY to in order to produce anything is also a factor. And then ofcourse there is the whole dynamic supply and demand curves, but thats a different story.

In that case, tailors and enchanters are the trades herbalists depend on.

I don't think you understand. Without alchemists, the amount of money an herbalist gets is cut down by about 3/4, if not more. There would be a huge amount of excess herbs, just because they aren't disappearing all that quickly. The value of the remaining herbs would go down, because demand would be a heck of a lot smaller. Alchemists create demand. Without alchemists, herbs will make pretty much no profit for the time put in.

Your equation also completely fails when applied to, say, forging-- thus, it's an invalid foundation, and has absolutely no purpose.

Getting the same *profit* (note, that's the amount you have left over after buying the herbs) as an herbalist, for 1/1000th of the time, is Pretty Good.

An alchemist doesn't need a large initial investment to become a market tycoon. You take the 10k you got from Newton, you buy herbs, advertise on market that you're selling a health keg, make an easy 18k, buy more herbs, advertise on market that you're selling a health keg, make an easy 18k, buy more herbs, advertise on market that you're selling health kegs (plural now!), and cease ever being without money.

My time as an alchemist is still sponsoring free herofetes and private submissions for Shadowfeast.

The formula works for forging as well. Because the cost to reforge an all metal item is 0.

So the initial investment is 0 as well, now? Because, as Xavius just said, that's all that really needs to be 'invested' for alchemy-- an initial investment, and then it pays for itself.

I'd love to know where I can get steel and iron for free!

Well, to be entirely fair, all trades do that. Two of them just happen to do it a lot faster than the rest.

Eh, someone prompted me to float ideas. I've floated some. With luck, there's a keeper or two in that huge mess of an original post.

And yeah, this would have to wait for so many other changes to happen first. Glom monks and monks in general, race tweaks/specs/overhaul, and I'd put an all-around guild skills tweaking (particularly tertiary worth relative to each other within a guild) as higher priority. But I'm of the opinion that some few (or one?) tradeskill(s) are markedly superior to others.

steel and iron are only needed to produce a weapon.

The fact that the market demands "the best" stats, does not negate the fact that forging a weapon doesn't really take all that long. (roughly 90 seconds for a masterweapon)

It is the reforging which is time consuming, and unless you are using a non-metal design, that reforge cost is 0.

And it still has one (very large) initial cost-- a larger initial cost and more time than it takes to, say, fill a health keg, to make a semi-decent weapon. Your point really doesn't have any substance here...

I'm sorry you think that.

But you aren't really comparing comparable trade skills.

Also, a useable weapon and a health keg cost about the same amount to make, and take roughly the same amount of time. Though ofcourse because of demand, you can't make nearly as much.

Everybody knows that Forging is a messed up trade skill which was directly ported over from Achaea. (Roark often mentions that when we ask about stat ditribution)

No, I'm pretty sure his point is that alchemy is a blanketly better skillset for making gold than forging is, at least until you reach the point where you can hack into the server, learn Rapture, find the piece of code that handles forging, and insert a bit of code that lets you (and only you) set the stats of your forged weapons. Until that day, an alchemist makes gold 1) faster, 2) with a lower investment, and 3) with greater demand than a forger.

And so does an herbalist, a jeweler, and a tailor. Probably even a poisonsist as well.

But his original point was that being an Herbalist A) -required- an alchemist, and needed beefing up because it took too much time.

And my response was that tradekills have a time/cost balance (except for forging)

Just as a note, you're the one who tried to make a blanket "equation" for all tradeskills. I was pointing out that it was wrong-- and right here, it looks like you're agreeing with me by saying they're "not comparable". After all, if they aren't comparable, an equation can't cover them all.

Further, my point was not that Herbalism needed a reduction in time, per se. It was "If everything else is being redone, I hope herbalism is included." You haven't said anything which would dissuade me from that viewpoint, nor have you even tried.

Finally, again, you have yet to say anything at all to the whole supply-demand argument on herbs, except to try and say "But herbs without alchemy would be just fine!" I think that it's pretty silly to even try to say that. Without the huge herb sink that is Alchemy, herb demand would be pretty darned low.

The tradeskills are perfectly fine sept artisan. Which is lame expensive has no combat bonus and isnt in demand.

Let me guess. You're an artisan.