Alright, a few things about trades and I highly doubt that I am the only trades person in the past few months that feel that Lusterneia is trying to screw them. First doubling the prices of almost all trade goods, and now herbs/alchemy. Can we have a good break? Please?

Alright so first off, a LOT of the trade artifacts available, are not justifiable to buy for our trades, alchemists do not even have a trade artifact (there are the enchanting gloves but that is not even justifiable to buy for them.) So, the artifact keg seemed like a good artifact for them, we get 6 kegs for the price of three, alchemists were happy and herbalists were happy because they did not have to harvest for all six of those kegs, this is no more however so alchemists and herbalists and those shop keepers who have to pay for herbs and alchemists, are no longer happy.

Suggestions:
Normalize trade artifact prices. Currently prices range from 150 credits to 500 credits (maybe justify that from 200 to 500 since the spoon really is not a trade artifact). Make artifacts for EACH trade that is actually meant for that trade.

The unlocked potential artifacts need to have their prices lowered to reflect their actual value, they are not worth 300 credits, and had I been planning on buying one I would not be getting it now due to the changes made. It simply is NOT worth 300 credits. (this has been like this since the artifact came out, so why it was called a bug I am unsure and should have been fixed right away, guess it is the same with jewelry heirlooms ((brooches)) and they unclassified as a bug, oh well).

Herbalism:
Take something from Imperian for this, but a limit on how many herbs can be harvested per IG month, the harvesting gloves let you get like twice as many. Before people moan and groan about this, you also have HAVEST 60 (whatever herb) so you get all herbs at once – herbs cannot be strip harvested, they will auto come back. This takes care of a lot of problems we have seen but causes on skill in nature to be useless – nature guard – make this instead, we can UP the number of herbs in the room at the cost of power so maybe instead of 60 herbs in a room, there are 75 or 80.

Alchemy:
These poor guys do not have an actual trade artifact to begin with, throw them a bone already! Maybe give them a set of their own gloves or a spoon that had a chance at getting more refills than what they brew for. Comparable to the jewelers hammer or cooks spatula SORT OF. Limit it to they have to brew at least a batch of 10, and give a chance to get up to 21 batches from the brew (same as jewelers can get from 1 cluster of gems). Of course this is incredibly rare but it would be a nice artifact for an alchemist, maybe guarantee 12 refills per 10 so there is always a bit of reward from it like the other artifacts and not just entirely chance.

Normalize trade artifact prices:
I do understand why so artifacts are cheaper than others and so on, however, having a gap as huge as there is, means that some artifacts really are not worth getting at all, I am looking mainly at artisan artifact here. Some of the trade artifacts need help to make them more appealing and to get them up to par with other artifacts. So I suggest normalize prices around 300 credits across the board, no one trade is worth more than another.

Gloves of Harvesting: 300 credits
- If you can harvest, cuts your balance recovery for harvesting approximately in half.
- Chance of harvesting extra of the same herb (or spices). Does not lower the original room count other than the original ONE harvested.

Magic Pantograph: 300 credits
- Used by artisans can fit 50% more furniture into a room.
- DECONSTRUCT yields 50% of the original commodities back.
-Increases the duration the furniture you create.
- Locksmith locks and keys cost 1 iron per.

Magic Spatula: 300 credits
- Must be wielded by a cook to use.
- Doubles the duration of all infused food.
- Always cook/bake at least 4 potions.
- Increases number of potions cooked/baked if you have Portions
- Does _not_ affect drinks like ale, spirits or wine.

Magic Poisoner's Gloves: 300 credits
- Allows poisoners to extract twice the amount of poison as usual.
(really at a loss but currently this is 400 credits and only the most dedicated of poisonist would EVER get this item)

Magic Scribe's Quill: 300 credits
- Produces unlimited magic ink for bookbinders.
-Half the cost for the gold outlay expense.

(Also lower the jewelry hammer, forging mallet and any other trade artifact that is above 300 credits.)

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Now to touch on another area… Commodities (since this is what messed up all our trades people to begin with).

We have been told the cities/communes are stockpiling commodities, if this is true and you do not want us doing it, please just put a limit on how many we can have in reserves for starters. Now we come into this problem that certain commodities are rare and hard to get in any amount thus it is becoming more expensive. Even Glomdoring has upped the price of Gems to 140 or something like that. Then let’s bring in Gaudiguch’s ordeal, they have been around for how long now and they still have not gotten ANY villages, so they have no commodities coming in what so ever unless they are running around buying and selling.

I like village revolts, so I would not suggest too much change to that nor the commodity quests, but how about adding a bit of non-conflict areas, hubs for commodities. Imperian has this nice system where you run caravans from their towns to a refinery in the main city/council. So for our rare commodities, maybe have like mines somewhere, where we can go in, buy however many we can, run a caravan back to our city/commune (of course you can get jumped by highway bandits and the like wanting your goods) and take it to a refinery in your commune/city so you can have a direct flow of what you need. Of course you will have to check which hub has what (price I would say keep it the same it does not go up or down and you can only buy so much each run as well). But do this for the rarer commodities and have a few of them, at least three areas for each type, you can even have different comms in the same area.

Anyways, this would help increase what we need, and not get what we do not need so much, and cities/communes who are unable to get villages that produce the commodities, they still have the option of getting commodities produced without the hassle of running all over creation buying places out.

I'm pretty sure alchemists and herbalists have no problem making gold....

Hmm. Speaking as a shopkeeper and a harvester, I have two things to say:

First of all, where did you see that you'd no longer get extra fills from a runed keg? The announce merely said that if you pour from a runed keg into an unruned keg, the volume halves (which I sincerely hope not to be true in all cases, but I sent a mail to them asking for specifics). If you fill a runed keg and place said keg in the shop (or pour into another runed keg), you will still have the benefits of the extra fills, as far as I understood it.

Second, limits to harvesting: While I wouldn't be averse to getting rid of having to replant and removing the possibility of stripharvesting, I think it works fairly well the way it does. Sure, some areas are less planted than others (inner sea/sea of despair, for instance), but in general, if you need a herb, it's generally available, aside from swamp herbs due to the low number of areas to harvest such (and the elemental plane herbs, of course). Putting limits on how many could be harvested would likely become extremely annoying (unless the limit was set high, but then it'd lose its purpose), as there aren't a whole lot of harvesters as it is. I believe Imperian released concoctions as a general skill instead of a trade skill, which means everyone can harvest if they want to, and I believe that contributed to limiting the herbs able to be harvested.

Seems like a lot of people are confused... Here's an example of why the keg change is a problem for some people:

Sylphas bought one of those kegs specifically to help the guild. I would give him an empty normal keg from the shop, and half the usual herbs. He would fill his arti keg, then pour it into my normal one. Thus we saved money. Now we can't do that, defeating his purpose for buying it.

In non-guild cases, where the person just wants to make a profit, he could charge 3/4 of the price of a normal alchemist, using half the herbs, and still make more profit. If they don't want to constantly be looking for an herbalist, so they don't provide their own herbs, there's very little profit since most people have this idea that they shouldn't have to tip for the tradesperson's time if they provide the herbs (or materials, in other trades).

EDIT: To that silly "just tap it or pour it into another arti keg" response, I guess I have to state the obvious: normal people can't afford 20 arti kegs.

Oh, I'm as annoyed by the keg change as the next person. I've got four kegs myself that I used to pour into other kegs. I was just pointing out that the change to kegs didn't actually mean that you got less fills out of the same amount of herbs from the viewpoint of an alchemist. Still pondering exactly how to fix my shopkeeping, but I suppose I'll just have to figure something out.

It does. It means I either get a shop, or use 100 vials and a system to emulate what I was doing anyway. When you make it so that people can't cut another batch of gems until they've sold their first batch, or can't make another robe in half the time until they sell the first, then I'll stop being pissed about alchemists getting screwed again.

Arimisia, a chance to proc more of a potion really just leads to waste. It would make life a lot more complicated for alchemists and their customers, since you'd never know how many kegs or vials to have on hand.

Hmm. Never saw it that way, I suppose. Then again, most contact I've had with alchemists involved me giving them oodles of herbs and kegs and waiting. Never had an alchemist just fill a keg immediately.

Besides mail orders, I usually meet someone at the alembic and fill a half dozen kegs or so and we both go on our merry way. I never expected the keg to pay for itself, but it saves everyone money and gets me more business, so I was quite happy with it. With this change, though, I've already asked for my credits back, since it makes the keg completely useless to me, and I only bought it after making sure it did what I thought it did.

The keg thing was definitely a bug. It just wasn't reported for a long time, apparently, as you all seemed to think it was a great way to do things.

Pouring from an artifact vial (100 or 110 sips) into a normal vial (50 or 60 sips) would always cut down the number of sips to the lower maximum. The kegs were not doing that, so you could get up to six times the value for the herbs you put in. Even if you consider that to be "the alchemist's trade artifact," for 300 credits you're getting about three times the value as other 300 credit trade artifacts like the herbalist's or poisonist's gloves.

So, yeah, it's fixed and complaining about it won't get it changed back. Sorry.

At most you'd get double back. And really, that's what the hammer does to gems and the gloves do to powerstones and the gloves do to herbs (kinda), so I don't see a doubling of returns as such a bad thing.

EDIT: Browsed the trade artifact list just now... These are the artifacts that at least doubles the production (unless I've misunderstood the ones I've not had personal experience with):

Gloves of Harvesting: 300 credits (kinda)

Gloves of Mastery: 400 credits (half powerstone usage)

Magic Poisoner's Gloves: 400 credits

Magic Scribe's Quill: 300 credits (this one's even unlimited)

Magic Spatula: 300 credits (doubles everything but booze, it seems)

Silver Jeweler's Hammer: 500 credits (never had experience with these, but it does give a good boost to gems cut, apparently)

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GENERAL TRADE ARTIFACTS
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Golden Paintbrush: 400 credits (this one actually both cuts usage and ups ink creation as well as makes palettes better. Which would mean more than a doubling)

Great Rune of Unlocked Potential: 300 credits (doubles fills, sixtuples capacity)

You obviously don't know how it worked, so please stop spreading misinformation. It filled twice as fast. You got double the value, LIKE MOST OTHER TRADE ARTIES. Pouring back into the keg did not double it again. It did not give infinite potions. It worked like every other trade artifact and it doesn't now.

The poisoner gloves always seemed like an overpriced artifact. Unlike herbalism, poisons are a quickly renewable resource that results in a nearly endless supply in most cases. The few exceptions are where a poison needs a quest to trigger production (anatine, pyrotoxin) or can only be only found in enemy territories (senso, crotamine, pyrotoxin for a Glom). Even despite those constraints, I have no problem keeping stock.

That's to say doubling poisons upon extraction doesn't quite fill a need (since I can persistently hunt). Perhaps if poisons were only available in a truly limited supply (like ezcozul), doubling gloves would make sense. Or, if mechanics were set so a poisoner could fail an extraction, then having gloves to increase the likelihood of an extractable poison also makes sense. Though that is the far, far from what I am suggesting. Gloves are too expensive and don't meet the needs of a poisoner (which are quite few indeed).

Dropping them in price from 400 to 300 seems sensible to me, though I probably still would not personally make the purchase.

The one problem with this is that DECONSTRUCT isn't actually done by artisans, but by whoever controls the location (manse owner, GA, or Minister of Culture). Unless that person happens to be an artisan, odds of them having the pantograph are slim; and if they're going to borrow it from an artisan, the artisan's getting no value whatsoever for his investment in credits. Even so, it's better than what we have now.

Not too keen on the "increases the duration" idea, actually. That'd actually cut down on our potential revenue since no one would pay more for it (they already aren't willing to pay for the longer lifespan of an omnitrans crafter).

The only thing that'd really get a pantograph to be even roughly comparable to the other trade artifacts is if it made comms go farther. Jeweler's hammer makes gems go about twice as far, for instance. While alchemists whine about the bug-fix nerf, gloves still make the only thing they actually supply go twice as far. If a pantograph just made wood, and only wood, need half as much, that would be a fraction as useful as gloves to an alchemist, and still be ten times more useful than they are now.

I'm rather upset about this, myself. I bought the 300cr one specifically for use in stocking a shop more affordably. I'm going to hold onto it for a while, but if it doesn't get changed back, I'm definitely going to expect a refund. The artifact description didn't mention a thing about reducing its quantity when poured off (unlike vials, an omission I thought was intentional) and I had no expectation that my intended use was incorrect.

Estarra and crew, please, run the numbers? Look at the additional profit versus artifact cost, and reconsider whether it was too good to be allowed. I admit I'm coming from a biased position, but the quantity of refills I have to sell to make up the cost of the rune is rather significant. This change means I'm limited to only one potion type while trying to make up for that cost. And in my mind at least, the rune just dropped off the 'worthwhile' list.

If you're that aggravated, issue yourself and ask if they'll consider a full refund.

I don't really have a horse to beat in this race, but let me make sure I understand this.

If you refill a regular keg from an alembic, you get 100 fills.

If you refilled an artifact keg, you got 200 fills (let's say).

Now, you still get 200 in an artifact keg but if you try to pour it into a regular keg, you only get 100? So you only have 200 refills if you refilll a vial from an artikeg?

I believe that's correct.

I don't know if you can workaround by pouring into a vial then into the keg. If you can, I expect that's a bug.

I could make a system to do this in about 10 seconds. And I'm really not sure what they could do to break that. But they obviously want artifact kegs to only be an overpriced shopkeeper artifact that no one is going to use, so I just asked for a refund instead.

Lendren, I know the pantograph isn't the greatest, but seriously, half wood being a fraction as useful as gloves to an alchemist is offensively stupid. If the pantograph said "You use ONE LESS COMM per thing you make" it would save you as much money as gloves save me per keg. 400cr at 200g saved per keg is 14,000 kegs to break even. Even at 10 kegs per day every single day, it would take almost four years to break even with that, and you simply don't make that many kegs. I didn't make even nearly that many when I was actively advertising that my kegs cost half as much.

Gloves of Mastery for an alchemist are just a pair of resetting, non-decay gloves. They are almost entirely worthless and it's a sick joke that anyone considers them the artifact for alchemists. It's like saying the aetheric keystone is the artisan artifact because they can make keys.

He has a point.

Gloves of mastery save you a whole wood comm's worth of powerstone? Seems awfully generous!

The flip side of that is that the 300cr keg arti doesn't save you 200 gold per keg. It saves you 3-5k on a health keg. That's more like 600 keg fills to break even. That's a bit disproportionate in comparison to the others.

The reality is that either 1) alchemists are back to not having a trade arti, or 2) this system is going to be circumvented. Neither is ideal.