So Ethereal, Water and Earth all have various plants for herbalists to harvest, but what about Air and Fire? What kind of plants should these planes have, and what effect?

My idea is that Fire and Air could be home to berries that brewmeisters can use to create juice extracts whose effects... I haven't quite determined yet. If the plants themselves are to have an effect, perhaps it could be to give the fire and frost defense, but not cure the respective illnesses requiring fire and frost potions.

Other ideas? It's always bugged me a little that Air and Fire don't have anything fun growing there, so it'd be nice to get some ideas.

They can have plants that help with toxic shock!

Cloudberry.



Fire blossoms as harvestable herbs would be interesting too.

Fire blossoms!

Sparkleberry

How about Aloe? If we're adding herbs, I mean.

Somewhere out there, not that far away, in the PK Haven, there are combatants screaming and trashing in their light sleep at the idea of yet more additions to combat balance.

The fire/frost defences are a nice idea but why overcomplicate things? Perhaps we could make use of Fire/Air herbs for non-combat purposes entirely, like colewort's usage to preserve food.

Fire blossoms could have their essential oils distilled by Brewmeisters (skill) and said oil could be used to enhance properties of food or drinks. For example, the effect could be similar to that of weed, just ingested/drank. It needn't necessarily be hallucinogenic per say, more like give a lingering feeling of warmth and fuzzies spreading over the body and making the blood rush excitedly, in a fashion similar to alcohol perhaps (could be a few flavour messages before it wears off! Also see it more for teas and wines, stronger alcohol would get too out of hand with it, then again...). Aside from flavour, having the blossom boost could perhaps, umm, cut balance cost on craftwork? You'd be so hyper, you could mix that tint or sew that dress a bit faster!

Aloe/cloudberries/whathaveyou, the Air plant, could perhaps be used to make silvertint? So often I end up having to use the much more expensive silver to justify 'silveriness' of my designs, that I would welcome some silvertint with joy. It wouldn't have to be required for palettes though. Or, similarly to fire blossoms, it could either/additionally be used to enhance food/drinks but with a cooling power, one which lends focus. Oh, said focus could perhaps allow one to learn 20-30 lessons at a time instead of 15, but since it would be a lingering boost, one would have to keep on sipping/eating.

Perhaps it should just be used to offer alternative sources for herbs that are currently too easily locked down by an organization. For instance, faeleaf can be hard to get for city harvesters on bad terms with both communes, and earwort hard for anyone on bad terms with Magnagora. (By no means impossible, of course; it's not like those places are guarded. But we'd only be adding more "contended" areas so it wouldn't totally take away the "you need to be sneaky to harvest" factor, just make it more diverse.)

Trouble with that is it doesn't make much sense for tainted ear-snails to grow anywhere but Earth, and we don't want to make a second herb with the same exact use, but neither do we want to make the game more complicated with even more herbs. I don't really have a solution for this conundrum.

This would be a nice idea, but not totally necessary. Some designers have been using faeleaf successfully to this end for a while now - outr a piece some time and probe it.

EDIT: Faeleaf has good RP reasons too, considering the source.

Make sparkleberry grow on Fire and Air.

I know it's silvery. Doesn't mean I know the Charites would accept it and don't quite have the will to bicker with them over yet another thing. These things shouldn't be some grand secrets but openly stated rules.

Everything's worth a try, if you think it might work! It makes more sense than any other herb in the game, after all, and is a component of goldtint for a reason. But yes, a cheat sheet of such things would be nice, or simply to have the tint altogether. And I think that if we go out of our way to make an actual silvertint, faeleaf should be a component of it too.

Good point, would be silly to make silvertint out of anything but faeleaf actually. Slap to its silvery leaves, if you will. As for a cheat sheet, been just thinking about that. Will start a topic later.

I agree with Nariah on the combat balance thing. Hopefully new herbs would be component parts of this or that, and not have any direct impact on fighting.

Maybe for teas, or at some indeterminate date in a possible future, for the org specific brewmaster potion.

Maybe they can be used for new cooking infusions. We have one for con and dex now - fire blossoms can be used to make str delicacies and cloudberry for making int delicacies. Or maybe switch out cha for one of those. It allows more custom tailoring for buffs, since these wouldn't stack with a herofete (much like how con platters and dex kabobs don't now, so it's not necessarily like we're adding a new buff either) and just allow a bit more flexibility to those who want to have one or the other. Herofete food requirements can then be adjusted as necessary to reflect this shift in availability.

The above perfectly illustrates what I've been thinking about. We can surely come up with awesome ideas without them influencing combat drastically, if at all. We already have int and str boosts through other means, so this would be pretty great to do and much, much easier than my convoluted idea (which I struggled with just to sate Kira's plead for a BM boost!).

I actually had that idea myself, and I think it can easily be combined with a BM boost because cooking infusions use a vial of something. Str, int and cha boosts could require special juices, oils or brews that only the BM can make.

For example, to make brainfood, you also need a vial of... say "cloud liquor", which is made from 5 cloudberries and 3 juniper. It wouldn't have to be useful for anything else, except perhaps it could have a "myrrh" effect, for those who recall ye olde days, of quickening the time it takes to learn lessons.

Could also have them be included as replacement herbs in some alchemy formulas, for example a potion of fire could use 1 fire-flower, instead of 3 horehound or somesuch. Perhaps have them useable in perfumes as well.

And of course both could be used in White/Silver/Metaltints.