Potion Balance and an idea for cracking down on it

[fresh raven]

It's no mystery that potions have been causing problems for game balance for the longest time now. While some systems have been introduced to try and alleviate the problem (ie. Healing Sickness), none have really provided a significant outcome.

First I'll identify the problems with potions as they exist currently:

• Healing/Absorption potions and other potions dedicated to direct sustainability are able to completely turn around engagements into the player's favor by how potent and accessible they are.
• Buffing potions, like Strength and Resistance potions, are able to boost player power to unbelievable new heights for a minimal cost (said cost typically being paid out by the content that the potions are being used for).
• The systems used to punish excessive potion use either not adequate to influence balance or do not even exist.

Here's an idea that I have based on systems I see implemented in other games to combat excessive consumable use adapted to work for Monumenta:

Potions are sorted into three categories
Support Potions (Healing, Absorption, Regeneration, Max Health, Resistance, etc.)
Power Potions (Strength, Cooldown Reduction, Speed, Jump Boost, etc.)
Hybrid Potions (Containing buffs from both categories)

When a player consumes a Support Potion, they gain 100% Support Sickness for 5 seconds (effectively Healing Sickness but applies to all related effects). After the 5 seconds, the effect decays at a rate of 5% per second for 15 seconds (reaching 25%) before dissipating. If the player consumes another Support Potion while they have Support Sickness, the sickness duration and potency is reapplied and the player receives -30% Damage Dealt and Speed for 20 seconds.

When a player consumes a Power Potion, they receive the Encumbered effect for 20 seconds. If the player consumes another Power Potion while they are Encumbered, the potion effect is nullified, the encumbrance duration is reapplied and the player receives -30% Max Health for 20 seconds.
.

Hybrid Potions activate both effects at once. Potions provided through external effects (Splash potions, Heavenly Boon splash potion transfer (NOT the innate Heavenly Boon potions)) activate Support Sickness and Encumbered as normal but do not apply the reduced Damage Dealt & Speed/Max Health penalty. Consuming potions in safezones prevents Support Sickness and Encumbered from applying. Support Sickness and Encumbered cannot be cleansed. Support Sickness does not retroactively effect duration based effects such as Regeneration.

With such significant changes to potion balance due to this change, assume that content where potions are borderline mandatory (Celestial Zenith A15+, Hexfall) receive balance changes to accommodate the loss of power.

This is not the end all solution, just a controversial idea I thought up. If you have a better idea or have criticisms about this idea, please include copious details.

[sand mauve]

its not even controversial ngl

[fallen terrace]

While not necessarily a part of the suggested rework I think it would be mildly difficult to explain the entire system to new players

[fresh raven]

perhaps but this is still a big change

[sand mauve]

could add an info lore line to each potion in some capacity like "Support Effects:" "Power effects:"

and explain those cooldowns in somewhere sensible

[shadow vigil]

At 100% support sickness would regen potions even work?

[sand mauve]

ideally no

[fresh raven]

yeah I had the thought like they get a second location tag style thing that specifies which one

[fresh raven]

that's a good point yea

could probably just move that to the other tag

[fresh raven]

in fact I moved it now

[fallen terrace]

I think that the Power Potion side of things is either ineffective (just, wait 20 seconds per potion drink) - or you accidentally just nullify a potion. the -max health isn't lengthy enough to matter when some buff potions are like, 8m+

also its a giant middle finger to any cleric player since they prevent you from using any potions ever in combat

[fresh raven]

Boon innate pots are already excluded from the existing Healing Sickness so I imagine that carries over, if you mean the Cleric is splashing extra potions then hmm

Boon kinda messes up this idea

[fallen terrace]

i mean playing with another cleric player

you drink a potion and you just don't get anything from them for however long

or yourself even

boon itself idk how it would work

[fresh raven]

my alternative idea for the Power Potion side is that you can only have one active at a time and any new potions overwrite the previous

[fallen terrace]

that's a little dubious too
then you just find The Best Potion(tm) and only use that

[fresh raven]

ideally potions aren't balanced in a way where there's one option over the rest

[fallen terrace]

fair, but is that actually possible for most content

you're gonna have one thing that's the best, or at least the best at the things you care about

sure, maybe this one loses some damage and gives res, but what if you don't care
then you only use one potion ever

[marsh meadow]

How is max hp and dr support but regen is power

[fresh raven]

Sickness would retroactively negate Regeneration

[marsh meadow]

Those do effectively the same thing

[marsh meadow]

Why not max hp and dr then

[fresh raven]

unfortunate effect

[marsh meadow]

I don't get it

[fresh raven]

well I was about to say they are an instant application but they also have durations so fair point

[marsh meadow]

What is the difference between max hp and regen that made you separate them

[fallen terrace]

well, it could just apply to regen after the first potion

[fresh raven]

yeah can work in a part saying no retroactive effect

[shell flax]

ngl i feel like just keeping the raw power of str/res/absorp etc pots in check and then scrapping traditional IH/regen for a wynn-style potion system is what ill always be in favor of

like i've said it before, i think wynn got potions in general right. No effect (that I know of) lacks a duration, and you cannot drink another potion of the same type and/or stack effects during that duration

[marsh meadow]

Wynn is even worse cause it's the same plain op bs but you don't even need to pay for pi

[shell flax]

being able to just click for 40%+ of your healthbar back is definitely more op than wynn

[marsh meadow]

Idk when the last time you played wynn was but clicking for 40% of your hotbar is exactly what wynn does

Healthbar whatever

It's just over like 1.5s instead of being instant but that changes nothing

[shell flax]

last I played wynn, potions were 3 instances of +hp, and not nearly your entire hp bar
and you couldnt just chug them, you had to wait for the duration
and you could be definitely be killed during the effect

and I last played post-rekindled

[rain owl]

the lvl 100 potions are basically the same as pi

[shell flax]

except wynn pots dont scale with your health

[fresh raven]

the healing is slightly lower but the potions have no cooldown between uses and can stack to 30

[shell flax]

that is fair
but

i was never syaing to just copy wynn's system to a tee

[marsh meadow]

If you run a build in which 4.5k hp is less than 1/3 of your hp that is on you my man

[shell flax]

you completely missed my point

[marsh meadow]

Ok, say monu pots healed you 8 instant hp instead of 40% and what would that change

[shell flax]

it would discourage +hp

but thats an isolated component

so its not even a good point on your part

[fresh raven]

I can understand the idea of making IH a quick but overtime heal but that's Regen on steroids basically

[rain owl]

it’s going to be like 30-50% hp in most average builds

[marsh meadow]

No normal build ever goes above 30 anyway and even if you do you usually think of other ways to sustain it

[marsh meadow]

Which is.. exactly what it is rn! Wow

[fallen terrace]

changing potions from % to flat won't really change anything

[fresh raven]

taking an extra ~3-5 seconds to receive the effects of IH wouldn't really change much unless you put yourself into truly deep shit in which case you shouldn't be bailed out

[fallen terrace]

yes that's good

[shell flax]

obviously there needs to be some sort of %healing available in some way otherwise builds with significant +hp will be dead in the water, but my point is that having non-stackable potions that heal in a handful of increments instead of a %chunk or standard regen is just a better system

[marsh meadow]

Idk how aggressively you need to hug every mob in sight to actually feel the difference between instant heal and heal over 2s

[fallen terrace]

ideally it would be over longer

[marsh meadow]

Then that's nowhere near wynn

Wynn is pretty much instant

It's exact same as monu

That's a flawed point

[shell flax]

you're again missing the point, the idea is to keep healing potions viable but not let you just pop them as a get-out-of-jail-free card

injector itself isnt even the issue, the problem with potions is that IH is obviously busted, and some pots just have grossly powerful effects

[marsh meadow]

Amazing but they are the same get out of jail free card in wynn lol

[shell flax]

also, again, you're mischaracterizing the point as "use wynn's system" when the point is actually "take wynn's system as a rough model and adapt it to something more in-place in monu"

[marsh meadow]

you've accused me thrice of missing your point eventho its literally this

which is plain wrong and im telling you exactly that

[shell flax]

that was a response to something you said, not my central argument or point???

[marsh meadow]

so what its wrong nonetheless

[shell flax]

also it is not plain wrong, like bro you can half forget potions exist as a warrior with ROTS in wynn

[fallen terrace]

do you disagree with the idea of "make potions not an instant heal" because I think that's the argument

[shell flax]

the fact that you cant seem to understand that the message in the screenshot is in fact NOT very relevant to my point that im arguing
is just proof you're missing it

[marsh meadow]

i disagree that wynn got them even a tiny bit better than monu cause its effectively the exact same
making them over time does not sound bad but comparing monu potions to wynn and claiming wynn ones are somehow better is wrong

[shell flax]

that is a standalone statement talking about how current monu's healing with IH is less balanced in-context than wynns

there's a reason IH II is called "copium injector" but in wynn they arent called "Coping Potions"

[marsh meadow]

yeah i dont have all day to write the 101 reasons why this statement is fucked up

[shell flax]

that? or you dont have 101 reasons 😭
furthermore, you still have failed to even make a counterpoint to the idea of adapting a wynn-esque system to fit monumenta, and have only attacked me on the false basis that im arguing we should flat out copy wynn's healing potions

[rain owl]

theres no vanilla regen in wynn 😭

if u dont use pots ur other options are
play a healing class/have one in party
wait 15 mintues between encounters for hpr?

[fresh raven]

the joke is that there is regen in wynn but it's so ass that it is not recognized by the community as a real game mechanic

[shell flax]

yeah wynn's natural regen is kinda buns

[fresh raven]

Placing a bet on this is true because we are more awesome and creative than the wynn community

[shell flax]

but if you're popping IH you wont be naturally regening anyways so ???

like you dont exactly pop a health potion when you have sat to burn

[fallen terrace]

i think that making instant potions at least partially healing over time would alleviate the major issue of Literally Zero Risk

[fresh raven]

the difference is that Monu IH is basically the best healing, only contested by Cleric because it accomplishes effectively the same thing while Wynn healing potions are either your only option or they are instantly overshadowed by healing built into your class

nothing stopping the Riftbender from pressing the Heal spell or Acolyte from using Aura

[shell flax]

yeah its not a perfect system, but (no offense intended) neither is Harambe's sickness debuffs
and yet both are almost entirely better ideas than the current system

[shell flax]

yeah wynn healing is wild cause before they shot tomes i offhanded rots and it was a trip

[fresh raven]

I deliberately designed my system to be pretty harsh on potions due to their relative place among healing options in the game

[shell flax]

like literally
hotkey -> spam charge macro -> full hp

[fallen terrace]

sug add Experimental Delve Modifier that makes all instant healing applied over 5 seconds

Rotting

[shell flax]

brilliant

lol

[fresh raven]

I'm not entirely convinced that healing over time is the solution since there

's not really a way to determine how long it should take to heal

[shell flax]

thats very fair

[fresh raven]

either the healing is too quick and we are in the same scenario or it's too slow and gets eclipsed by existing healing methods like Saturation or Regen LD

[shell flax]

but i still feel like any system with IH and regen separately existing is gonna be scuffed

[fallen terrace]

[x amount of time] is better than 0
within reason

40% instant heal zero downsides is objectively stupid

in an mmorpg

[fresh raven]

yeah like instant heal will always be worse for balance

[shell flax]

regen/ld already kinda beats out ih in some cases
but for sat its not hard to outpace it really.

what i was gonna say is the bigger issue would be that % health chunks would be worse for low hp builds whereas flat would suck for high hp builds

but then i remembered fucking infernal origins and how there's the system that keeps healing viable: literally just flat below a certain max hp threshold and % above it

[fallen terrace]

could also do flat+%

[shell flax]

true

[fallen terrace]

Do what hol does

[shell flax]

also in any case
does sust apply to IH? cause at the very least that could be halved

[fallen terrace]

sust is not the problem

[shell flax]

its not

but it could become one if the system gets changed

[fallen terrace]

I think 10% more healing is a pretty unlikely balance issue

[shell flax]

10% per level though is a bit

[fallen terrace]

It's still 10% more per heal

ehhh

[shell flax]

just slotting nfailure takes for example healing 5 hp to healing 6.5

which isnt much

but thats 1 piece

of course, another case of r3, being the outlier problem child but still

r1/r2 really wouldnt give a damn if sus were to do less for IH, but it would be a good preventative measure in r3

[fallen terrace]

Ok but it is still using item budget

[shell flax]

im not saying across the board nerf sus, just for IH

or well, potions

[fallen terrace]

maybe

[solid oak]

the debuffs are stupid just blank the new potion effect or something

me when i accidentally drink two strength potions and gain cancer (stage 4) for 30:00

[steel kestrel]

i think if i am looting a dungeon or poi and i just drink whatever i find in chests i should not be debuffed for it

[solid oak]

Also these short debuffs are basically solely anti-IH, wouldn't do anything against longer potions which is mostly what people use for dungeons. You just need to wait 20s between drinking your 30min long potions to not debuff,

Aside from just nerfing consuables even more (if this is actually a goal), I think a simpler solution would just be to limit players to one active potion effect at a time. It would stop buff stacking by making you pick and choose buffs for each situation (res vs cdr vs haste vs str vs speed etc) and also lends a greater purpose to multi-buff potions instead of them just being convinient space savers.

IH is honestly seperate balance from other consus but i wouldnt be against them also counting towards the 1-potion limit, so you either choose between cope injector or damage (which basically means PI is banned for optimized content)

[thin raft]

if i spend money on pots

[solid oak]

or x-potion limit i guess, but i think just one makes sense, probably also easier to balance consumables if you dont have to worry about stacking

[thin raft]

i should be able to drink them

like

do we need to nerf cshuras fury

or do we only need to nerf potion of endurance

pi is a problem but i dont see a need to group it with all kinds of potions

the cheap ones dont do much and the expensive ones are well expensive

if the cheap ones do too much just nerf them individually but that has already been done

[warm notch]

I like this idea to clear stuff up better but I think it'd also require redesign like every potion in the game. Even stuff as basic as common buff potions like speed/strength 15 min R1 pots feel like they are designed to be drank together, having to wait out a 20s gap to drink the second would feel horrendous in practice, so either the debuff is applied for only dupe effects (which would still make dichen energy brews clash with swiftshield potions for example) or those potions need to be combined into one, or entirely rethought out

[solid oak]

i dont think cosus should be nerfed even more. theres no reason not to stack them even at +1% aside from price and price is honestly a fake limitation

[thin raft]

do we really need a debuff

[thin raft]

why do we need to prevent players from drinking consus again

can we like separate pi from all other pots? its clearly a very different issue

[solid oak]

i dont think anyone said to prevent people from drinking consumables, they are just strong

[sand mauve]

40% IH is strong

things adjacent to it are strong

[thin raft]

did you read my message

[sand mauve]

it causes some issues for boss design

no I literally didnt im just sharing my viewpoint

before I read anything honestly

[thin raft]

..

ok

but im talking about non pi pots

[solid oak]

i think a 1 potion limit is better than nerfs

[thin raft]

non pi pots arent that strong where most people dont really use them often outside of the ones u get on chests

[sand mauve]

oh I thought all pots could go in pi. or do you just mean using potions without PI

[thin raft]

im saying that

if needed nerfs could happen but i dont see a need to limit potions

but honestly i dont think we need nerfs

[solid oak]

because potion stacking is complete slop

[thin raft]

using pots without pi

[thin raft]

how

[solid oak]

theres no reason not to take all of the buffs always

its literally free brainless power

[thin raft]

the cost?

[solid oak]

cost is a fake limitation

[thin raft]

then answer this

[sand mauve]

also forwarding this from a previous thread

[solid oak]

and honestly pots are so cheap the cost isnt even a limitation at all right now

[thin raft]

do you full buff every poi

[solid oak]

no because i dont want pois to be easier

i do full buff optimized content

dps buffs anyway

[thin raft]

because you want to optimize it

you take buffs

[solid oak]

why wouldnt I want to optimize my gameplay

[thin raft]

but they arent strong to the point you drink potions on like

say group dungeons

[solid oak]

pots are extremely strong its just that normal/average content doesnt need them they are overkill

[fresh raven]

Intruder around release briefly prevented PI from being used and that didn't do much as people just manually splashed for the same effect just with a tiny bit of setup

was basically just PI but you dodged the cost of PI which is arguably an upside?

As for influencing boss design, Intruder also has a ton of antiheal

[solid oak]

i think every time someone says pi they mean IH

[thin raft]

yeah people use pots for harder content

is that a problem

[fallen terrace]

Pi is not the problem yeah

[fresh raven]

I was initially on the fence about a 1 buff potion limit but some deliberation later and I'm on board honestly

[thin raft]

tell me why using pots on harder content is a problem

[solid oak]

they make harder content not harder content

[sand mauve]

I dont think its particularly good game design fundementally to have instant 40% heal button with little to no downsides

[fallen terrace]

Personally I don't think there should be limitations on buff potions

[thin raft]

so the pots.. buff the player

[fresh raven]

the concern is the difference between having buffs on and off being too great and either unfairly punishing buffless players or allowing buffed players to pass through unchallenged

[thin raft]

the pots do their intended thing

[solid oak]

like im so serious brood speedless vs brood with 60% speed is a solid 50% easier, and then you have the other 10 dmg/res/regen buffs on top of it

[thin raft]

and im saying the magnitude of buffs are balanced by the price

[solid oak]

price is fake balance

[thin raft]

is paying some hcs to make myself stronger really a problem

[thin raft]

so you are rich and want every buff potion

[fresh raven]

Which is not entirely a reasonable or fair balancing factor as money is not an interactable downside in the content you choose to use the potions in

[thin raft]

then u can have them

i dont see a problem with that

[solid oak]

either they are prohibitively expensive to the point no one can use them or they are cheap (current situation) and are easy player power buffs

[thin raft]

or there is a middle ground

what potions do you even use

[solid oak]

no because the economy isnt stable

[thin raft]

do you consider 60% speed cheap

[solid oak]

40% speed is cheap

[thin raft]

i consider cheap potions as the ones u get from chest and the ones u get from content like cz

[fresh raven]

If I use 1 HAR worth of potions to trivialize the difficulty of a content that will pay me 5 HAR, I am still making a profit while also breaking game balance

[thin raft]

those ones are not that op

they make you stronger yes and their rates could be nerfed

[fresh raven]

"Oh but you make less money" I am still making money and I am doing so much more consistently because the buffs are making it dramatically easier

[thin raft]

but if you just make the pots not self sustainable

it will solve the "problem"

[solid oak]

40% speed, 20% str, haste 2, 10% atk speed, 10% melee dmg, 10% res, +10% hp, regen 1, -5% cdr, +boon effect
very cheap, all very good buffs

[thin raft]

haste 2 "cheap"

[solid oak]

free

6 times a day

[thin raft]

soulsinger is not a potion

[solid oak]

im talking about all consumables

[fresh raven]

calling soulsinger free is a little iffy but I mean it's one down payment and it's got many use cases so eh

[solid oak]

well non-infinite anyway

[thin raft]

mungfish can be nerfed fury could be nerfed ok

but i dont see an issue with the rest of them

emp ss could be 30% ok

[fresh raven]

From the perspective of the developer: How can you balance content around the fact that players can toggle 8+ different stat buffs at will?

[solid oak]

i dont want nerfs

[thin raft]

well if u think they are strong

[solid oak]

they would still be strong at 20% speed and 10% str and 5% atk speed

just less noticable

[thin raft]

but not as strong

[solid oak]

idc about that

[thin raft]

what

do you hate the concept of buffs

or do you hate the strength of the buffs

[solid oak]

20% speed and 10% str and 5% atk speed is still strong

and already crippled

you would need to nerf them even more and atp why do consumables exist

[fresh raven]

the potions are strong but don't need a nerf on the basis that they still provide value when used individually, the issue is preventing snowballing by combining all of them at once which is easily achievable

[solid oak]

consumables should be noticable effects but stacking them is overpowered

[thin raft]

consumables arent a problem to most people

[thin raft]

to like 5 players

[solid oak]

to every single 'endgame' player

[thin raft]

excluding races, high wave pushes, speedrun attempts

[solid oak]

i do not know of anyone who does hexfall buffless

[fresh raven]

unfortunately for this perspective, consumables directly dictate the balance of every boss enemy in the game

[thin raft]

thats a hexfallc problem

[fresh raven]

circling back to how Intruder has a ton of antiheal and an attack dedicated to removing player buffs

[thin raft]

i only know 2 people that stack all the buffs before hek

[solid oak]

or high cz, or high edd, or (insert sweaty content)

[thin raft]

let people buff in high edd

[fresh raven]

Vesperidys' Corruption meter is indirectly an answer to people who buffstack as it puts a hardcap on the amount of damage they are allowed to take regardless of whether or not they can survive said hits on their own

[thin raft]

high cz sure but u can also do them perfectly fine without potions on 3/4 players

although the shadow buffs could be seen as a problem but u can still do it without buffs it just makes it easier which is the point of potions

[fresh raven]

Saying that you could do something buffless doesn't discount the influence that buffs have over the game

[fallen terrace]

potions should be a force multiplier
You should never be able to do a piece of content with only potions

[fresh raven]

I could play A18 classless

[thin raft]

yes but the influence is not as big

[thin raft]

and outside of a terribly designed boss thats outside the scope of balancing atp

thats already the case

[fresh raven]

building off of this, content shouldn't dramatically sway in difficulty/accessibility due to the existence of potions

[solid oak]

? why is it not as big

[thin raft]

not as big as you make it seem like

i would say the only thing that its actually as big as you make it out to be is brood

[solid oak]

and vesp, and cz speedrunning, and all tanking (including intruder face tank dps), and hexfall, and optimized strikes

[steel kestrel]

what if instead of making potions prohibitively expensive (the top players can still use them) you made the potions real cheap and started balancing around having a baseline level of potions active

[thin raft]

i said

why do we need to nerf optimized strikes

speedrunning and optimized stuff are

you can let those people fully buff

[solid oak]

no then you might as well remove them and add them to base gear/class balance

[steel kestrel]

dont nerf optimising it's a useless task

[steel kestrel]

i think potions allow flexibility

[fallen terrace]

Also true

[steel kestrel]

like if im not melee i do not use haste

[thin raft]

why do we need to nerf optimized speedruns

they arent regular gameplay

and we certainly dont balance off of them

[fresh raven]

the point being made is that the difference between regular play and fully optimized is too great to be able to balance content appropriately

[solid oak]

you can optimize without 10 buffs (literally) giving you effectively 2x player power

[fallen terrace]

This is kind of already the case minus balancing
There are a lot of cheap options with less effect

[steel kestrel]

you can just like

wolfswood's rage every encounter

you are now +10% stronger for free

[fallen terrace]

Hashtag normalize 15 minute buff potions in poi chests

r1 does it

[solid oak]

i dont like cheap buffs for that reason

[fallen terrace]

r2 and r3 should get some as well

[sand mauve]

r1 reigns as the best region once again

[steel kestrel]

monkey paw nereid essence in normal chests

[fallen terrace]

r1 consumables update is peak please give more effect foods in chests

[thin raft]

if the player wants to buff then why do we need to balance around it being challenging with buffs

[solid oak]

its a multiplayer game there shouldnt be an easy-mode button for intentionally hard content, theres already different easier and harder content for a reason

[fresh raven]

The difference is set right now to where you can realistically only balance it to either be trivial for buffed players or borderline unapproachable to buffless players

both options provide their own balance issues

[sand mauve]

we'd like to be able to actually design the difficulty of given content

[thin raft]

then you can go nerf the strong potions

[fresh raven]

going for a middle ground is only realistic if the difference is reduced

[sand mauve]

the swing is so vast at present

[thin raft]

i dont think the solution is to make it so you only drunk 1 potion

[sand mauve]

Or just fix the underlying system yeah

[solid oak]

this doesnt fix anything, the (real) baseline will always still be those +x% str speed haste atk speed dmg% cdr and everything else

[thin raft]

if they are weak then it reduces the difference between a normal and buffed player

it exists on a spectrum its not just black and white

[solid oak]

i dont really care about the difference between the two i care about the realistic ceiling

[thin raft]

so the ceiling is nerfed

[fresh raven]

this then introduces the issue of balancing potions around anything other than being thrown onto a 10 buff pile

Hard to release any new Strength potion when its sole value is competing with the highest potency potion in the Strength category

[solid oak]

yeah and another problem with stacking is that every potion that comes out is identical to other potions just in some different combination, we dont have any +80% speed -20% str because you can just balance out the punishment with a different potion

[fresh raven]

so you either dev time a useless item or power creep the game

[steel kestrel]

you can balance out the punishment with cleric

lol

[thin raft]

or competing with dura/accessibility

[solid oak]

its similar to charm stat locking, charm designs were limited by the ability to abuse stacking

[fresh raven]

the same two potential outcomes only under different terms

[fallen terrace]

what if: boss just starts the fight instantly and unleashes the most difficult attack if they see you standing on their lawn drinking six potions

[solid oak]

hycenea if she just casted reunion first 🤦‍♂️

[thin raft]

what

potion dura absolutely matters

[solid oak]

potion dura is just an extention of cost for anything longer than 1minute ngl

and even for really short buffs its qol more than a buff countermeasure

[fallen terrace]

while it is reasonable to want to limit the difference between min and max power I think that having only one potion slot is not the way to go about it

[solid oak]

what is your issue with it

cause i can think of tons of content where I want multiple buffs but would have one specific preferred buff that I would take over others (and still miss having the others)

[thin raft]

yep you have priorities

[solid oak]

could even incorperate it into your build instead of just being all across the board power increase like it is

[fallen terrace]

1. Makes it so that there is The One Potion that you use and nothing else
2. Harms newer players who are struggling but cannot buff anything more than one thing now because of endgame problems
3. Prevents just drinking buff potions in chests

[fresh raven]

The world if we just added God Potion to Monumenta

[solid oak]

no for example speed would be generally preferable for a lot of content but you still take str/haste/cdr to be better at your role

[fresh raven]

Alternatively we could add a cap on buffs provided by potions so like a Tepache gives 3 buffs but you can only have 5 so now you gotta find a second potion to fill out your remaining 2 buffs or two 1 buff potions

[thin raft]

I DIDNT ASK FOR FALL RESISTANCE AAAA

[solid oak]

like in vesp i would ultimately probably take haste even though I much prefer speed and its much safer defensively,
or in speedrunning speed is better but playing without res/regen is significantly harder
its really not an obvious The One Potion

especially if you also restrict IH, then its also PI vs buffs

[fleet crown]

PI is better then buffs, it is The One Potion

[solid oak]

^ is about 1
2. In the same vein there are obvious best picks for different struggles, e.g picking speed/regen/res over an endgame pick of str/haste. And since this is an alternative to nerfing consumables even more each of these buffs would still be good. And im suggesting one consumable not one effect, you still have the expensive multi-buff potions and ambrosias and whatnot
3. I dont see this as a seperate issue? You can drink whatever you want

[solid oak]

also no

[fleet crown]

I have a whole essay to drop later, but just stopping in to say now that I am skeptical of a buff cap system; especially if its limited to just 1 potion. Having a limit of say 3 or 4 is maybe acutally balanced, but it still has difficulties being implemented in a clean way, restricts design and ultimently is just less fun then having unlimited buffs.

[solid oak]

PI is extremely strong but the sweaty pick will still be strength, PI isnt good for sustained tanking, and even for something like speedrunning where it thrives you still want speed over it ideally

i dont think its overwhelmingly the best pick

[fallen terrace]

That's not the point I'm making
You will have a build and you will have One Potion which complements it the best for the piece of content you are doing - and you will never use anything else for that setup
I mean, there only being like 5-6 bis potions, one per stat, is a problem, but that's separate

[solid oak]

you literally dont have the one potions is what im saying. There is the one optimal potion for one optimal playstyle, but that doesnt make it the one potion. There is a reason >everyone< isnt running around in bis speed/damage even though it is technically The One Build, theres different levels of viability

[fleet crown]

like Terraria for example used to have a buff limit for balance (it was on all buffs though not just potions), the limit was 20 which was a lot in that game, but eventually over time with updates the limit of 20 kept getting in the way of even regular players rather then just potion stackers. The Buff limit was raise to 44 and then later removed completely, since players wanted it (modders also wanted it gone since it limited them). That did effect the games balance, but I still think removing it was the right call since it made the game less restrictive and also easier to understand (there was lots of problems with the game just voiding buffs in 1.3 terraria)

[solid oak]

Terraria is also a singleplayer game and you can give yourself godmode if you want

Should hexfall have an easy mode so that players who dont want to spend long learning it can just get their completion?

[fleet crown]

potion stacking is absolutely a problem in terraria with the limit removed (for goddness sake, it has become common practice for people to use "qol" infinite potion mods), but i'd argue its less of a problem over the old limit system

[solid oak]

it doesnt effect me or you personally, just nerf the loot, make the key more expensive

[fallen terrace]

that's not what I mean by the One Potion I mean that you will Only Use One Potion And Never Change It When Doing That Content
people who want damage will take BIS damage potion and nothing else
Lootrunners will find the bis speed potion
Etc, etc.
No difference, ever, unless said bis is ridiculously expensive for most people

[solid oak]

It breaks the integrity of the content

[solid oak]

Yes one person will have their own one specific preferred potion, just like people have their own specific one builds/charm sets that they like to run. Its not different especially if consumables get further balanced around being unstackable

Not everyone will go to the same One Potion

[fallen terrace]

2. I know that it's one consumable - but so what? What if they can't do the content even with said consumable? they can't change anything other than gear investment at that point which counteracts the entire point of what the potion cap tries to change

[solid oak]

and tbh they are already pretty well balanced if suddenly unstackable

[solid oak]

Afaik content isnt even designed around consumables, so again this goes back to the point of should there be an easy mode button for hard content? I dont think so

Yes consumables make content easier but there shouldnt have to be no-upper-limit to them just so john skill issue can complete content x and y

[fallen terrace]

what do I say if someone is struggling with a dungeon? Just get better gear? Get good? I suggest using potions, it turns out they're drinking 10% strength so they can't drink res or speed or any other of these helpful things that they have and just can't access because lategame based balancing

what's wrong with someone using 4 10% buff potions

[solid oak]

And if youre really worried about that then you can just make really good but really expensive potions like already exist

[fallen terrace]

slamming my head into a wall
what about the not lategame people

[solid oak]

I mean yes my first suggestion would be to get better gear

Who suggests to run around to the 10 useful scattered potion shops around the 3 regions

[fallen terrace]

if the problem is hard content then make a potion cap on explicitly hard content

[fallen terrace]

mfw I get buff potions passively playing the game

[solid oak]

I mean sure i guess but who really needs more than 1 good potion to do non-hard content

it seems like a non issue

[fallen terrace]

Even then that's kinda iffy given my other points
Everyone drinks The One Best DPS potion for hexfall

[solid oak]

i wasnt good when i first started monu and I didnt need any buffs to do story-line/basic content let alone more than 1 strong buff

[solid oak]

hexfall is the worst example because of the way that it is

theres no mechanics to it so yes str is the only relevant buff

[fallen terrace]

okay everyone takes the One Best DPS potion for sskt except the tank who takes the One Best Tank Potion

[fleet crown]

I think that in monumenta, potion stacking is right now not a particularly big problem as it is currently only being used for setting world records and clip farming. Potions are pretty expensive in monu, I think people really underestimate how much they add up and it adds up a lot if you are stacking them. It is not economically feasible heavily buff at all times; you will just be losing profits and thats if you dont die and lose like 3 har from buff time lost. Potion stacking is a problem in a vacuum, since its not balanced for a player to just decide to become god. Its also a problem for later item design as having buffs be stackable encourages making power creep or clones instead of new types of potions which has lead to massive amounts of potion bloat in the game.

[solid oak]

for real content speed/res/str are all actually helpful

crazy check mark

bro read that whole paragraph in sub 1s

[fallen terrace]

I skimmed then went back

still agree

[steel kestrel]

omw become god

(required to kill god)

[fallen terrace]

as for #3, why should I be limited on random 10% potions I find and want to drink
sorry, people in late game content COULD drink TWO potions. The horror

[solid oak]

Player power in general is very much a big problem and potion stacking is maybe the worst of it because its a generic absolute across the board buff compared to charm stacking/build stat stacking which has situational tradeoffs

[fleet crown]

I personally dont use buffs often, I don't use (non basic) potions almost ever. In most places in the game dying is free, I dont really see the need to spend 10 har when I could just die instead for 0 har; the only real reason to do so is for trying to preform a stunt like a WR. For perma death content, I will use powerful buffs but only if I feel like I really have too (like in cz, if my team is half dead; I will use buffs to try to secure a win).

[thin raft]

and this is what most reasonable players do

but idk maybe oracore always buffs every single content and thats a problem for the entire gamr

[solid oak]

I dont want to talk that much about cost becuse thats not my issue with potions but straight up for endgame content (aka money making content) I consume like 8 different stat effects because it literally is more profitable or at least breaks even in exchange for faster cleaner more optimized runs

[fleet crown]

that said I do use basic potions frequently and very often, I have PI in every single loudout I have. Just because I dont potion stack often doesent mean i'm not using potions. But this is a whole other thing.

[solid oak]

and by more profitable i mean in the time it saves and consistency it adds

[steel kestrel]

does "money making content" include anything besides cz

[fallen terrace]

So the problem that you have... is that it takes less time when you spend money?

and is more consistent?

[solid oak]

No i literally said "thats not my issue with potions" and furthermore i literally said its more PROFITABLE

you spend money to take less time and make more money overall

[steel kestrel]

i think this is only the case if you are very pro

reminder that most of the playerbase is not very pro

[solid oak]

so the cost arguement right now isnt even real is what im saying

though i persoanlly wouldnt care if it was actually less money because i play for optimizations

[fleet crown]

it is profitable too use potions too an extent yes. Although that extent isnt using 6+ potions at once.

popping wolfswood fury is profitable basically always

buffing to do a strike is extremely silly for example

[fallen terrace]

I don't think you're making more profit on any repeatable content after using several high level buff potions

[fleet crown]

using 3 augment potions is just your entire BM profit gone

[solid oak]

and yes at least for hexfall and cz (hexfall is better btw) and probably for portal/lootrunning (speed) though I dont like portal so i never grinded it to know

also intruder to a lesser extent because theres fewer useful buffs on bers

[fallen terrace]

doesn't hyc only give one reward per week

[solid oak]

no it gives one massive reward per week and then like 9har a run in rares/1mat afterwards

[fleet crown]

So I think potion stacking is a future problem rather then a today problem. Dont fall into clip based balancing. The way potion stacking could become a problem is when we get more and more power crept potions entering the game and the cost of buffs going down. Its also a much bigger deal outside of non dungeon content which is getting more common now.

Having the option to pay to win by activating all casino potion buffs is cheap and something I dislike, but it doesent feel right to call it a glaring issue.

[solid oak]

another way to look at this arguement of "just nerf them" vs some different system is that potions are literally just 1:1 to armor pieces. They give the exact same stats res, str, regen, speed, etc... If armor pieces were stackable in a similar way the solution of just nerfing them all to balance player power would obviously be worse than a different system like the 5 armor slots we have now. It doesnt have to be 1 potion limit though I think thats a very good solution but just spam nerfing potions is definitely NOT a good solution at all (just remove them if you're going to do that)

[fleet crown]

limit of 3 seems fine, if you MUST add a limit. 3 lets you use 2 buff potions and the choice of instant heal or a third buff. So you can do like strength, speed, instant heal but you miss out on haste. I do think such a system is less fun and also dont see a way to make it not clunky to implement.

[solid oak]

of all arguments I cant comprehend the fun arguement

whats fun about drinking every economical potion, theres not even thought behind it

[fleet crown]

a limit just means having a bunch of items you wont want to use anymore. Like you cannot even drink water breathing potions without it having a downside.

[solid oak]

thats just because water breathing is generally useless, if cz had an underwater floor the downside would be worth it. likewise it would still be worth it in places like shifting/lime end

[steel kestrel]

it is definitely not 9 har anymore

[fallen terrace]

man this is really just lategame perspective

[solid oak]

how is that lategame perspective?

[thin raft]

not even

[solid oak]

water breathing is LITERALLY useless in the air bro

[fallen terrace]

obviously

but not every game-wide system is balanced around cz lategame strike hard content

so why limit it because of those things

[fleet crown]

the less fun part is mostly about being rewarded with now mediocre or useless items though,

[solid oak]

i only gave a cz example because lategame is the only place where people bother using pots im ngl and i literally said shifting/lime end because people use water breathing there already

[thin raft]

a lot of people dont even bother with drinking poi pots lmao

[fallen terrace]

so if lategame is the only place where people use pots why should there be a blanket limit on potions

[solid oak]

like obviously you dont want to use water breathing potions for the 95% air content

thats not a potion limit issue

[solid oak]

where is the correlation

[fallen terrace]

why should early game players who want to buff for content they aren't certain about get slapped for Super Endgame CZ Lootrunner's actions

[solid oak]

hard content here being relative to the player

[fleet crown]

tbh i would be more concerned about the new player finding a new potion that they just never want to use, like sanctify potion would not really be used anymore if its competing with instant heal instead of being an extra option.

[fallen terrace]

okay, why shouldn't newer players be allowed to use the potions they find in a chest and get more than one minor buff

[solid oak]

and i already said im not even against loosing caps to normal content (or more realistically, adding caps to harder content) i just dont think its necessary

[fallen terrace]

is that game breaking if they deal 10% more damage in yellow

while having 10% res or fire res

[gritty swift]

what if we had an alchemy system

and chests dropped alchemy ingredients

🙂

[fallen terrace]

five trillion enchanted sugar cane + six million clicks on fish

[gritty swift]

the main reason i don't use pots is probably that i feel a little scared that i use them faster than i gain them

[bold zodiac]

Consumable balance around how fast you get them (I will never use my pomes)

[fresh raven]

You don't use potions because you are broke
I don't use potions because I was taught at a young age that Alcohol is dangerous, we are not the same

[gritty swift]

what's the full reasonable buff set

[solid oak]

like yes if the new player needs to go out and buy 10 different hyper-buff potions to clear story orange that is their own issue
and this is honestly a fake issue i dont want to argue about this without a player poll cause i cant imagine almost any new players are stacking pots so hard that they would notice a change

[gritty swift]

it's like 40% speed/10% aspd/haste 1/20% strength/regen 1/10% resistance?

[fresh raven]

can't imagine a player that needs potions to stay afloat being able to afford potions after paying for their shatter costs

[solid oak]

and cdr and damage type buff melee/magic/proj

and theres even damage type res melee/magic/proj to slap on

which isnt even that expensive

[fresh raven]

possibly related but is there a reason that type damage and general damage buff should be stackable?

[bold zodiac]

I fear the only solution is to explode the mungfish population once and for all

[fresh raven]

which one

[fallen terrace]

who tf is talking about hyper buff I mean Literally Just Potions You Find In A Chest Playing The Game

[bold zodiac]

The Cooked ones

And the fatty forest flounders they r not mungfish but i hate them

[solid oak]

you arent noticing this change if you are using potion chests. and you could simply buff the basic potions so that choosing 1 is equally as effective as having both

player who wants speed can drink the speed and player who wants str can drink the str and theres no other buffs in potions chests literally

[fallen terrace]

so now we reduced potion diversity in chests to zero yay

[solid oak]

?

[gritty swift]

just like make healing sickness more noticeable

i don't think there's much issue with buff pots

[solid oak]

is the person who suggested this in the room with us now?

[fallen terrace]

why should they have to choose its 20% speed 10% damage it does not break the game if they have both

[fallen terrace]

well I certainly hope I'm not talking to no one

[gritty swift]

i don't think the reasonable set of buff pots trivializes any content

[solid oak]

only for the technical increase of having exceptions

[fallen terrace]

what

[solid oak]

its harder to make a system and punch a bunch of holes in it to cater to specific situations

also i think its better that they get used to the new system instead of being on a different system until they hit actually hard content that demands buffs more

like i said if potion from chests are too weak you can simply buff them because stacking isnt an issue

players can (literally the whole point of the potion limit) choose if they want good speed potions vs good res potion vs good str potions

[thin raft]

i do 40 speed haste 1 regen 1 10 res 20 str

[solid oak]

instead of bad speed + bad res + bad str

all at once

[fleet crown]

theres honestly a lot of potions in loot chest, r1 has heal, fire resistance, absorb, sanctify, regen, speed, damage as just the basic ones. dont forget about the delve potions too (which offer things like +HP, heavy speed and attack speed).

[solid oak]

delve is not new players

[gritty swift]

probably the most useful parts of buff pots seems like the speed and hitting aspd breakpoints to me

like the res doesn't seem that good

[solid oak]

the res is good when you need to be tanky

[gritty swift]

str seems like you could do without

[fleet crown]

delve is not brand new players players but its still new players since your encouraged to delve everything and everything as soon as you can.

[solid oak]

which is like endgame lootrunning and actual tanking (where? idk add tanking content @tm)

[fallen terrace]

okay so why have that system in the first place instead of making a few exceptions where it apparently matters

I can't imagine there's more content where it does matter than where it doesn't

[solid oak]

dont say apparently like you arent the person suggesting it

i dont agree that it "apparently matters"

i dont think it makes a difference to new players mostly drinking out of chests

and for the amount that it does you can easily balance potions because of the non-stacking limitation

[fallen terrace]

???
I'm not suggesting anything, I like the system where it is
You're the one saying "add a potion cap" and I'm saying "okay a blanket cap is not fair when the actual problem is specific endgame content"

[fleet crown]

this changed in r3, where they started condensing effects as power creep but r1 and r2 have a staggering amount of buffs to find. Which is really the whole problem, game just has too many potions in it. The potions are self replicating too, since the only way to make new ones to act as new rewards is to keep upping the power level on them, or dip into more and more powerful niches.

[solid oak]

and IH is true with miracle bringing it up but that honestly a whole different type of consumable it could be on a seperate system

[fleet crown]

potions are so heavily tied into monumenta's design and progression its insane. For goodness sake the first dungeon is the ALCHEMY labs and it contains at least 80 potions off the bat.

[gritty swift]

what are people arguing about

[fallen terrace]

"Add a potion cap"
"No I don't think that's a good idea"

[solid oak]

youre suggesting that its problematic to new players i am not agreeing with you, when you say "apparently" you make it sound like its inherently part of the system

[bold zodiac]

Casino pots and its consequences

[solid oak]

afaik devs have said that consumables arent part of content balance

[fleet crown]

they are lying that is not true!

multiple quests showing me details instructions on how to produce drugs as the main rewards 😍

[fallen terrace]

I think you misunderstood me
You say it's harder to make a system and then make edge cases
I say, no, just make the edge cases for the endgame content in question, which is apparently cz and hf

[solid oak]

idk with how steamrollable content is with/without buffs it doesnt seem that unlikely

[bold zodiac]

It's true... they made u create jaguar buffs...

OR whatever they r called...

[fallen terrace]

and then you give drugs to a local town and get everyone drinking it

[solid oak]

no i dont think there are edge cases beyond the obvious necessary balance changes that come with a new system

i think the system can be globally applied and work fine

[fleet crown]

by not being part of balance, they just mean they are trying to ignore the problem by pretending it isn't real. but potions are inseparable from balance which how much they were baked into the game.

[fallen terrace]

okay so everything is perfect with a potion cap, there are zero problems with new players getting shafted and not being able to use multiple consumables because a person playing cz COULD use more than one potion

[solid oak]

well yes but isnt that the goal of this thread to fix? its talking about the problem of potions with balance

[fallen terrace]

I don't think that's fair to most of the players in the game

[solid oak]

new players arent getting shafter which is why them not getting shafted is not an issue

[fleet crown]

the problem I see with changing potion balance is that it is getting close to asking to change the balance of the whole game which is really hard and a lot to ask. I dont think you can do a band aid solution; it really does just require rethinking multiple parts of the game. This is the most obvious with instant heal 2, mobs do so much damage since they game has to fight back vs instant heal 2.

[solid oak]

and youre exaggerating i never said my off the dome idea was flawless and perfect its just an improvement over keeping the current system and just nerfing pots

[fallen terrace]

also the other problem I mentioned
Now the cz runner has one clear potion and one boss potion, every other potion is ignored

[fallen terrace]

Okay then there should be edge cases??

[solid oak]

any specific cz runner, on a specific class, doing a specific playstyle yes, not every cz runner
which we already went over, everyones "one potion" can be different literally just like builds are different between players

[fleet crown]

Potions shouldnt be the reward for doing everything, thats a start. That alone reduced the amount of potions the game needs to make by a ton.

[solid oak]

wdym why

[fallen terrace]

Obviously
That still doesn't solve the issue
There are now 3-4 endgame meta potions no one uses anything else

[fleet crown]

less potions means the ones you do have matter more and reduces power creep by not needing to invent increasingly powerful or convoluted buffs to keep up the demand.

[solid oak]

i think any new system shouldnt have edge cases because thats clunky to implement and for players to have consistent gameplay mechanics

[fallen terrace]

If a blanket system is not perfect then there should be edge cases to smooth out the gaps

[solid oak]

literally just a balance issue

not a system issue

[bold zodiac]

Is the 3 min 10% str really causing that much damage to be reduced/taken out of the loot pool

[fallen terrace]

"just make every potion equally viable and unique"

not happening

[solid oak]

yes this is the goal with balance

should we abolish armor sets

because armor balance isnt perfect

[fleet crown]

It could happen, you would just have to be willing to change so much about the game. Mass culling of the bloat potions to start.

[solid oak]

also because consumables are individually less impactful its honestly even less of an issue

[fallen terrace]

Armor =/= potions so no

[solid oak]

in what way?

in what way is 20% speed potion and 20% boots different

drip difference?

they are both sources of stats and nothing more

the only difference is cost

cause consumables are consumable

which you can argue armor has anvil subscriptions so like even there its only a difference in cost and not a new feature

[solid oak]

also no but idk who you were directing this to

[bold zodiac]

This statement

[fallen terrace]

well, are those boots equally statted to an identical pair of boots minus 20% speed from a piece of content at the same progression level

do these boots disappear after a certain amount of time

[bold zodiac]

Though I assume they meant reward from side contents which that would make more sense

[fallen terrace]

are these boots drinkable

[solid oak]

yes, anvils

[solid oak]

yes, anvils

[bold zodiac]

I feel like the variety of hour long pots has goinked non-endless difficult content

[solid oak]

no, neither are potions

there is no potion of the same cost/rarity that is directly worse than another potion afaik, theyre either more common or cheaper

[fallen terrace]

that's not permanently disappearing + it depends on how much you get hit, not time

[solid oak]

shatter 3 boots are effectively unusable

[fallen terrace]

so?

[solid oak]

its equivalent

and the cost to "rebuy" is an anvil

the cost to rebuy a potion is 6ar

or 2har doesnt really matter its mechancially equivalent

and who isnt getting hit over time

[fallen terrace]

ah yes
repairing a pair of boots is exactly the same as drinking a potion
there's no other way to get durability back, like empowered, or mending, or extend the duration, like colossal, or reduce the amount you get shattered, like hope

[solid oak]

how did we go from new players suffer most to TAS perfect bot doesnt need to repair gear

[solid oak]

ok, then quench

[fallen terrace]

how did you go from "there should be a 1 potion limit" to "armor sets are potions, actually"

[solid oak]

i didnt i said that pretty early on

they are effectively equivalent

in r1 if you drop an armor piece but drink 10% res 20% dmg and 20% speed you probably literally have better stats overall

[fallen terrace]

so you can only have one potion per slot and it's semi-permanent and has no duration except for when it shatters except some pieces don't run out of durability

[solid oak]

they are both just sources of stats the only difference is upkeep cost

[fallen terrace]

okay if they are just stats then what is the problem with more stats for a higher upkeep cost

[solid oak]

thats not something I care about because its a fake limitation

[fallen terrace]

??????????

[solid oak]

you can always be rich and just tank the cost or have some super end game money making method that justifies the cost (already exists btw)

[fallen terrace]

welcome back Literally Just An Endgame Problem it's like you never left

[astral sky]

honestly pi sucks

[solid oak]

yes actually true. because no new player is paying for expensive pots

[fallen terrace]

what is the problem with an endgame player using their money to buff themselves on dungeons

[solid oak]

so yes literally

[fallen terrace]

yes but the problem is mainly ih

pi just makes it more convenient with a slight drawback

[solid oak]

i dont want to scroll so:

Afaik content isnt... should content have an easy-mode button? i dont think so

[astral sky]

fair, if people were using smth like dichen energy brews in pi i wouldnt have a problem with t

[fallen terrace]

so why should there be a blanket cap

https://tenor.com/view/guy-arguing-guy-talking-to-wall-talking-brick-wall-gif-18667615

feels like this rn

[astral sky]

but 40% instahealth BEFORE sustenance levels? this is NOT dead cells bro

[fallen terrace]

people do though

[fallen terrace]

dead cells is not insta health you have to sit and drink and then it restores over a period of time

relatively short, but still a period

still true though

[fallen terrace]

but it's not a "button" that they just press they have to actually pay or find the materials for said buffs or use limited resources like tlaxan record

[solid oak]

i dont think I should ever be allowed to spend 500har and gain 3x player stats to roll content just because its "expensive enough"
and in the current system as well i dont think i should be allowed to spend 10har and gain 2x player stats for like a full hour regardless of if its money effective or not
it breaks the integrity of content

[fallen terrace]

i guess it boils down to "do you care if someone can make it easier by buffing themselves" and I do not and you do so
ty for discussing

[astral sky]

Honestly PI is so op that future content will have to be balanced around pi

we've seen this alr with intruder with the sword thingies

[bold zodiac]

Depends on the content really

If you are turbo 10x uber buffing yourself to clear an 18pt Tolumaeus, more power to you I think

But if a content advertises itself on difficulty (ie intruder, cz, hexfall) then you do undermine the integrity

[solid oak]

well its also just throwing to not use the pots especially in the endgame
and sure i can just not use them but most endgame content is team based so what 4 players are willingly kneecapping themselves consistently just to play the content as intented in the first place

[fallen terrace]

i mean tbh it's a symptom not the problem

[bold zodiac]

But theres the funny middle ground of endless where you want to push the games limit and go as far, even with the 10x buff (although that'll generate too much moolah)

[fallen terrace]

the reason why intruder has a lot of antiheal is a consequence of players having so much healing

[solid oak]

isnt anti heal like solely parasomnic mist/failed dps checks

[fallen terrace]

if it is throwing to not use potions then I think that is on the content's balance not the potions

[rain owl]

wat when do u get anti healed

[solid oak]

this is the same thing as the ironman argument of "why not just limit yourself"
It isnt the same when it isnt an ingrained forced part of the content

[astral sky]

parasomnic has antiheal cause u could just hit pi when u step outside of the circle and not get punished

[rain owl]

who is struggling with parasomnic

you have to go afk to die to that

or run like -60% speed build

[fallen terrace]

there is para and cogni like you said but there is also a few other sources iirc
gray floor, lucid rend I think?

[rain owl]

oh yea the swords do i think, or they did

[fallen terrace]

maybe one of the elites does, but it is more than just those four

[fleet crown]

anti heal in intruder is very tame, its mostly just there for attack mechanics to make sense. the bigger thing that stands out, is how much damage the attacks have to do

the spam move hits for like 85; its used every second thats crazy but it needs to be crazy with how good player healing is...

[fallen terrace]

what, cerebral triangles?

[fleet crown]

lowkey dont even remember what that is 😅

[fallen terrace]

the three x 3 way pink lines

before cerebral overcharge

thats the only spam move I can think of

[gritty swift]

i didn't even know intruder antiheal was mechanic ngl

[rain owl]

its only spammed for like 3 seconds every 30 seconds

[solid oak]

sword swipe spam

the antimelee of all time

[fleet crown]

I dont know what the attacks are called tbh. I am just referring to the floor spam (also mob spam)

[gritty swift]

i like saturation heal in intruder unless i'm playing with a new player

[rain owl]

the swords are so annoying if u ever even try to eat

yeah the floor spam is only spam for like 3 seconds

and then it does the big charge up floor attack (overcharge)

other than in those 3 seconds its much less frequent

[fallen terrace]

it does 3 3 3 6 4 i think

[fleet crown]

okay essay time, its 1337 words honestly could maybe just be its own feed back post

but I promised an essay and its on topic, as I am focusing on instant healing potions.

I have been trying to think about instant heal / potion injector solutions for a while now, but it's tough and I'll explain why. Instant heal is very centralizing, but it got to the point where it is now due to how the server was built. Monumenta combat is extremely fast paced, only getting faster the more you progress throughout the game. Mobs don’t have much health relative to the player, relying on numbers and special abilities to come ahead. The player’s attacks are all extremely fast, nearly all spells in the game come out on frame 1 and the few that don’t are either extra powerful or still relatively fast. You can react instantly to any upcoming threat as long as your spell(s) are off cooldown; this means you can push forward very fast and also maintain your momentum as it's difficult for mobs to ambush you since seeing them first means you can kill the mobs before they can reach you. The player also heals fast in addition to attacking fast, at first it's just the vanilla healing system (already super fast) but it gets quicker and quicker with new restoration mechanics unlocked. By end game you have several items which heal more effectively than normal food while having additional powers, enchants and abilities to restore hp and of course instant heal potions; much of it crucially all comes back with you into the first 2 regions as well. With everything being so fast paced, eventually the game resorts to using primarily high damage to threaten the player; attempting to overwhelm the players or at least catch them off guard.

With the sheer speed the player can attack and heal, this basically has to be the case as otherwise the player would pretty much never die. Instant heal is the strongest of the player's healing capabilities, as it is one click to restore nearly half of your hp bar. You can heal more but doing so takes longer and the game is usually trying to kill you very quickly; when you want health you want it right now and that's exactly what it was designed to solve. This is rough on design since the only way to really counter this is to just kill even harder! Encounters have to resort to greater and greater lengths to win, doing even more damage so not even instant heal is enough sometimes, turning off the player’s healing or capabilities to attack, segmented the damage to get around burst healing or simply just killing the player instantly! When you get to the endgame activities multiple of those things are happening at the same time.

So monumenta is fast, very fast and instant heal plays a large part as to why that is. The question is just, is this a bad thing. I am very conflicted, since I do like the game being fast but I also recognize that the current design is very polarizing and difficult to expand and make new things for. Combat may be fast but the maps are very large and combat could slow down to a painful crawl if it was just reduced in speed recklessly through careless nerfs. I think just deleting instant heal would be a careless nerf, at least as far as endgame is concerned; mobs simply are too powerful for the player to be able to stand a fair fight without using either meta or instant heal (or both in the case of the really hard stuff). Instant heal in particular is centralizing though, very centralizing. Potion injector is the best item in the game, simply too good to not use, it saves more health then any food item does and more time then any weapon could. With hotbar space being such a big issue in the game too it can be annoying to feel like I always have to run PI (side note, without PI the problem is worse since players just put the potions in their hotbar having even less space). I don’t see how you could ever make potion injector not so powerful though as long as instant heal is a thing; even cutting instant heal in half is not enough since even healing 20% of your health instantly is too good to pass up on in such a fast paced game. I know this since I actually use 20% health potions on the rare occasion I get them, I don't throw them away and I have played high points with these weaker health potions and they still helped me greatly.. But making nerfs does nothing to address why instant heal is spammed so much, which is just mob damage output.

You have to both nerf mob damage and player healing at the same time, only doing one just makes the game even less balanced. But doing that is not simple in the slightest, it's asking for large sections of the game to be rebalanced. It would also have to be paired with other healing nerfs, since there's other powerful sources of health regen too that would take the place of instant heal. Golden apples, heavy regen potions, kapple and absorption potions all come to mind as substitutes. It's just so much to change that it feels unreasonable to just ask “redo the whole game”. This is why I am sort of stuck, since I know the game ended up this way do to its core design and I don't see how change can be done with just a band aid fix, it needs to be a soft redesign of fundamental building blocks of the server (speed of combat, mob scaling, the entire health regen system).

I cannot just say, do nothing though, even if it's tempting since change is risky on an already established server and I do like the combat the way it is now. So what are some things that can be done? For starters, I think class design should stay the same, not class balance, which is another thing but the classes all have fast paced gameplay. This is because I don't think a slow combat system is a good idea for game mostly based around mob spawners and gargantuan maps; I’m not about to spend 6 hours per dungeon waiting for my abilities to come off cooldown before triggering the next 1 spawner that creates mobs that take 30 seconds to kill. Natural regen should be nerfed but it should also scale to reduce down time. What I mean is that saturation healing should start slow but if you spend enough time either not in combat or not getting hit it should get much faster; this stops the player from having to completely pause before progressing which is just not fun (a common problem, super old school CTM maps have, where the old slow regen just meant a lot of sitting around doing nothing). Doing this also rewards the player well in boss fights and encourages the player to keep trying rather than just giving up since playing better for long enough means getting all of your health back. To make this work, mobs should do less damage; several spells should be weaker and delve scaling of their raw damage stats needs to be weaker. Losing fights would be more about taking too many hits and not being able to sustain it all, rather than being overwhelmed and killed in a second. Lastly, instant heal potions should go. Completely, not nerfed but destroyed. If mob damage and player sustain is done well, then we won't need them as a crutch anymore and they can be retired. Trying to balance them is a losing fight in such a fast paced game.

That is just a set of ideas I had though, if anything I just hope that ranting for this long just shows how this is a complicated problem that can not be solved with a band aid fix.

[placid cosmos]

can someone throw me to the top of this thread i cant scroll to there somehow

[fleet crown]

if you open the thread in full theres a little button

[placid cosmos]

:o thanks bout that

reading time

[fleet crown]

I almost want to make another essay about the other potions, but i'll stop myself. I said the gist of what I think already . That I dont view potion stacking as a major issue right now, although I acknowledge it becoming a bigger problem later,. I also think that there is too much of a bloat in potions and that potions being one of the main rewards for content is a problem since it leads to more of a need to keep pushing potions further and further to justify printing new ones. Lastly the game itself would need to change, rather then trying to just jam a limitation system of some sort as the game is right now.

[thin raft]

i think potions are fun

[snow slate]

Curse of phone

[solid oak]

40% IH is just so overpowered its absurd. At a minimum for anything that isn't a one-shot its equivalent to a 1.4x hp potion, and yet the highest hp potion is only 1.2x with an anti-heal debuff? And if you live more than like 4s you get to use it again?? And half of them come with an extra resistance or regen effect, because why not? Literally nothing is balanced around instantly healing 40% on command, you can shoot IH dead let alone giving it a nerf and it would be for the better.
Potion stacking only raises the actual baseline of player power. It either shouldn't exist at all or should be more involved than an unconditional ~1.1-1.2x multiplier on every single stat in exchange for money.

Both are problems already and I don't see how "later" would change anything. What "later" are you waiting for? New potions haven't been better potions for ages they all just fall into the same 20-60% speed 10-30% strength 10-20% res regen 1-2 that have always been accessible. Afaik the only upgraded potion effects in the last 2 years was the CZ 10% cdr potion and the hunts KBR pot. The only direction "later" is going is the creation of an HSB-style god potion.

Potions need to have a real mechanic/restriction/drawback, or at least have their limitation be accessibility and not money. The monu economy/any mmo economy is too inflationary (and people can get too rich) for NPC-fixed costs to be meaningful. Theres a reason why people spam easy augment/npc/casino/reynarts but not shulker souls/EC pots which are much better.

And limiting accessibility is way too late, so its really only a potion rework thats an option to prevent potion spamming. (well maybe not, the soul thread IH potion cost increase worked well)

[fleet crown]

by later I think its better to focus on other things first, I also dont really want to see a lazily slapped nerf (again) instead of something more thought out. Reducing strength to like 5% doesent really fix anything. Potions should be good if they are being given out as rewards for over half of the games content anyways; gutting them is just making a new problem (lots of items made useless, making playing many parts of the game unrewarding) that I would argue is worse then what we have going on right now (potion stacking is far from required to do well currently),.

if potions are not going to be a big part of the game, they need to be rethought completely

bigger (balance) concerns in my eyes are, instant heal in particular and the games toxic relation ship with the health economy and ever increasing enemy damage to try and combat it (I hope I explained why well enough before). Class balance being very iffy atm, in particular defensive play styles being ether op or unviable like everywhere and support being very underpowered as a whole. The fact that you just cannot build defense in r2 anymore is really bad (really feels like play meta class or spam instant heal if you want to play any hard delves/dd).

support being underpowered does let me point out that hierophants spec skill is worse then 1 strength potion in many circumstances; which is pretty sad.

[fallen terrace]

hiero rework... save us, hiero rework...

(and then they made hierophant extend buff potions)

[fleet crown]

like to clarify a little, potions are THE reward for doing so many things. The main reason you do hunts bosses, is for potions, delve mobs all drop potions, exploring the regions unlocks more arenas, which sell you potions, half of the chests, have potions. The price floor for world bosses mats, are partly potions (and infusion materials). Pulsating materials, craft potions so your getting potions in chests and then items that you can sell to buy potions, or craft into potions.

I maybe should of listed what does not give potions, since thats way easier. They are everywhere absolutely everywhere and making potions just bad as an attempt to stop stacking is devaluing a lot of the rewards you earn.

They should be useful and somehow not stackable, while maintaining value so they arent spammed on everything; while also not trivializing the game when they do get used. Very tricky, thats why I am so cautious around the idea of just blanket nerfing them.

Making potions not the reward for everything is something I would support though. I think that is a good first step to take in toning down their influence on the game. It makes what potions remain more special anyways.

[fallen terrace]

I am all in favor of adding more goofy potions

[placid cosmos]

isnt instaheal potion dropped like from all content in r3?

considering the difficulty obtaining them they just look op as fuck

1 left click and boom your hp is all fine

[unique gate]

I buy them

[south sonnet]

as a sort of meta complaint, i think healing availability issue and buff strength/availability issue being lumped together is detrimental to discussion on the topics

they're both being mostly caused by potions yeah, but the two problems are pretty distinct in their effects and solutions

[thin raft]

^

[tame finch]

what is this post supposed to mean

why put a cooldown on buff potions this does not solve anything, on top of a debuff??
the healing sickness is overly complicated and the extra debuff again

how were you able to come up with something like this

[thin raft]

i agree stupefied steve

[novel trellis]

just kill potions atp

[covert stone]

Am I the only one who thinks consumables are a great sink, their use should be encouraged, and endgame content should be tuned against them existing and practically require them to complete?

I think the loudest opinion right now is that consumables are a crutch and playing well means they aren't required, and content should be tuned assuming they dont exist. But why not lean into it? A prominent example in my mind right now is dias irae in hekawt, it does %HP damage scaling off the crystals remaining, and can exceed 100% of your health, killing you unless you have an absorb potion on hand. This behavior was emergent and not intentional, but could be made intentional in future content.

Boss that does 10% HP/s and constant hunger debuff? Better have IH pots or youre not clearing it

[fallen terrace]

no I think this should never be the case unless it is explicitly the endgame of endgame contents with special debuffs

it's fine to have some content designed like that and could provide an interesting challenge but I'm sure 99% of people will not want to do that ever

[remote valve]

hexfall...

yeah 99% dont

huh

[fallen terrace]

"we made content designed for the uber rich why is no one but the uber rich playing it"

[covert stone]

Hexfall is really popular

[fallen terrace]

hexfall doesn't require max potions nor does it have content that specifically encourages them, it just means you win faster or have to deal with less attacks

[covert stone]

Would be cool if it leaned harder into it, and the health was tuned so that pre strangling is now the new full boss

[south sonnet]

I think most people would be extremely against content being added balanced for such a small % of the community

[covert stone]

Endgame content is endgame content

[south sonnet]

For something like that to exist, it would be significantly more realistic to get added if it was content that was able to scale itself into that level of difficulty, such as EDD

[covert stone]

Its going to be a small community regardless

[south sonnet]

And well, EDD was basically the poster child as well for this scenario too

[fallen terrace]

I do not think making it so that something that is a high stretch for the average party should be the standard for content because "it works fine when I do it with max pots"

[covert stone]

Hard content would be nice.

[fallen terrace]

sure

[covert stone]

Yes, it would filter people who cant do hard content

You cant have something hard and also have a lot of wiggle room in the tolerances, because you can juice the crap out of yourself and trivialize it

So it has to be tuned against the upper end possible

[fallen terrace]

or it could prevent that in a different way that doesn't require you to have 10 har every time you want to make an attempt
it could block potion effects it could give potion effects passively it could periodically wipe effects

[marsh meadow]

Consider ascensions in cz

Ncz is like a walk in the park and a15 is easily the hardest content in the game

And it's the same dungeon

You don't need to have 1 content be either for newbies or for the top 1%

Even skt/sskt tries to adapt to that, albeit failing at it nonetheless but it has its age to blame for that

Returning to cz, maybe going past a15 into a18 could be balanced around having potions instead of a pointless gamble that it is right now

Which would have no effect on whoever is not the top 1% running above a15

[tame finch]

dont think it should be a requirement, instead being an option to have an easier time or you can go potless for cheaper runs

[marsh meadow]

I mean yeah I don't think potions being required is a good thing either, in fact potions rn are in a good state imo (instant health excluded)

Just proving the point that IF some content was balanced around the rich players it wouldn't have to be the entirety of that content

[fresh raven]

ngl I'm not hearing this sentiment shared with anybody that I talk to

[remote valve]

half the players who completed indigo completed hyc

[fresh raven]

Hycenea has been released for about 10x longer

[south sonnet]

hyc is also being propped up by rentals

[fresh raven]

additionally that stat does not account for replay frequency

[south sonnet]

the playerbase solved the playrate issue, not the devs

[covert stone]

why does that matter tho

you dont "have to be rich"

since things exist

[rain owl]

isnt cz also propped up by (charm) rentals

[south sonnet]

it would be significantly less popular if there was still a several stack har entry fee

[rain owl]

and maybe also gear

[marsh meadow]

In fact I don't think this whole thread has a purpose aside from asking for pi nerfs for the 2848835th time. I mean, how many players are using potions that aren't swiftshield or wolfswood or some other cheap and short npc bought potions? And is it really enough players to be a problem? If somebody rich enough wants to spend har to make their runs of whatever content go smoother, let them. The content is perfectly playable and clearable within reasonable time without any potions as proven by the remaining 99% of the community.

[fresh raven]

cost to play the content effectively involves dedicating a chunk of money to a set that you'll only use for this content, not many people are up to that

rentals let you skip that

[remote valve]

hyc and brown chall have nearly the same amount of players who have beat them

[south sonnet]

this might genuinely be a "you're too rich to understand poor people problems" moment needs

[covert stone]

🙁

why dont the poor just get money?

[fresh raven]

I'd like to disagree and say my intentions were to provide a start to making potions a more significant and healthy mechanic for the game but I haven't read every message here so idk what other discussions are happening

[marsh meadow]

Hycenea was designed for this though me thinks. I don't think it's a good bossfight, but that's not because of the difficulty or reliance on builds. It was designed to be absurdly hard and beaten by rich enough players to invest into it specifically rather than random John over there who just rolled into r3 and has 1 build to his name. Rentals do exist now for better accessibility and people seem to take it for granted while they shouldn't imo.

[fresh raven]

Unfortunately right now there's hardly any presence for potions because they are either used as a cop out or a way to undermine content difficulty with the only inbetween being if you decide to self regulate

[marsh meadow]

In fact, nothing is locked behind hycenea aside from a handful of niche epics and.. lore? There is no quest or further content that requires it, you never have to beat one if you can't

[tame finch]

dont think you need infusions to clear hexfall

[marsh meadow]

You really don't

[fresh raven]

I mean argument made that all of the rare items are also locked if players prefer not to shortcut the content and buy from another player

[marsh meadow]

Hell you don't even need a meta comp because people did spell and steel squad with forced off meta teams just fine

[tame finch]

yeah so 1 stack of har for mw costs and u are good to go

[rain owl]

i’ve seen ppl run hf in unmasterworked

[marsh meadow]

It's a funny placebo effect where people look at the big scary number and all the good players who have infusions and think they need them too

When infusions aren't what makes a player able to clear hf

[novel trellis]

I 100 percent agree with this assessment of potions in monumenta

[fresh raven]

not needing infusions for Hexfall can be a made statement but you still have to give credit to their relevance since they directly contribute to how many boss mechanics you need to learn and coordinate to clear which can be a significant roadblock for groups

[marsh meadow]

I'm willing to bet I could do that in a couple tries had I found other 3 good people to do it with me

It's far from impossible

[south sonnet]

hexfall can be completed in significantly cheaper gear, at significantly increased difficulty

but you still have to consider, this is content designed to be repeatable

doing it once, twice, thrice, doable but man that sounds absolutely tedious to try to do to get all the relevant items

[marsh meadow]

Judging by the mat rates it's designed to be completed once a week at which point a couple more hours poured into it won't be detrimental

[south sonnet]

there's a bunch of other issues that crop up long term when you have content balanced around a high entry key cost too (which is effectively what potions would do if you balanced content around them)

Just as an example, i brought up WoW... somewhere. Might've been earlier in this thread, might've been the last time a feedback thread on this topic popped up, don't remember

The highest level of raiding there involves downing extremely copious amounts of high value consumables before every attempt, on repeat every week, forever

You physically cannot sustain that level of resources consumption, realistically

It's pretty much an open secret that a lot of the highest level raid guilds engage in RWT to fund the rate of resource consumption

In a game like monumenta where all the loot is generally tradeable and soulbound items are rare, that issue is partially sidestepped by being able to sell the loot at a price that makes up for the cost of consumables but now you've just pegged the price of loot to the price of the consumables

[remote valve]

i dont understand how this relates to monumenta. most consumables are very cheap

most expensive is prob ec pots

but none use em

[south sonnet]

most consumables are cheap partially because most people don't use them

[remote valve]

hexfall potions are augments and wolfswood fury

[remote valve]

which are really easy to get by just playing

[south sonnet]

and you're assuming the content is being balanced for commonly available pots

[remote valve]

augment potions are not even required

[rain owl]

it also drops more of those than you use ..

[remote valve]

yeah

with amount of money hexfall gives on weekly you can buy shulkers of pots

[south sonnet]

pouring a few more hours into something every week sounds pretty detrimental to me

if you don't value your time, I guess it might not be

[solid oak]

it doesnt make sense to balance content around consumables. That removes potions sole purpose of buffing the player when the buffs are actually the expectation. The only difference between just deleting all potions and keeping normal balance is that youre forced to pay-to-play content with consumables. And we already have a pay-to-play mechanism with key costs, why would you ever turn consumables into forced fetch quests?

[remote valve]

i have ii in all my builds. my ih barrels are filling up at constant rate. and i dont restrict myself on ih use. its bit worse with absorb potions but those are still up

i dont buy potions

[south sonnet]

why are you bringing up instant heal

this specific conversation was about buff pots

[remote valve]

wolfswood fury

then

[solid oak]

it actually isnt btw devs literally said they didnt care about replayability when designing hexfall

[south sonnet]

the fight itself might not be, but the rewards certainly are

[remote valve]

same thing. i use them in hexfall and skt mainly. both of these reward more than i use. consider that avg indigo run gives 2-3 shulkers of pots

[south sonnet]

the fight is not "only the first time you ever complete this content you get loot" like SKT story mode is

[remote valve]

those shulkers dont include lesser dichen brews and wolfswood rage

[remote valve]

by cheap you mean in marker price or obtaining through gameplay? because the latter is enough for all my potion needs

[south sonnet]

both

they're cheap in market price because most people do not use them most of the time and thus have excess to sell off

of the people who even bother to hold onto them anyway, i know a fair amount of ppl just immediately drink them or toss them onto the floor to make space

[remote valve]

so how is that wow point relevant

[south sonnet]

you are assuming "regular" potions in your point

I am referring to the "highest end" of consumables

Just as a hypothetical example of the shenanigans that could be brought into play if desired, and not a claim that they will

There was once a stupid raid in a different long dead mmo i can no longer remember the name of but i remember this specific instance because it was so stupid

the boss did attacks that % hp dmg of your max hp over 100 and you had to chug shield potions to overheal your max hp to survive

the monumenta equivalent of this would be boss atks that did 190% hp atk requiring hekawt 100% absorption pots to survive as a gimmick

i believe the intended mechanic was to have your healers apply shields to survive but finding healers was so difficult most parties ended up with uneven comps due to the waiting times for partyfinder and had to use unconventional methods, as additional context for that particular example

[remote valve]

the thing with monumenta right now is the high end pots dont give better buffs than regular ones but instead have longer duration

[south sonnet]

I think we're defining "high end potions" differently then

Back to the WoW example

there is a specific potion that drops off what would be normally an obscure world boss in some corner of what would normally be a long dead content zone that just happens to drop a buff item with a specific stat that is best for its slot

that singular item keeps that enemy relevant to the meta

the monumenta equivalent would be if some random potion that spawns in a celsian isles poi brewing stand was made meta

[remote valve]

sunshard brew meta fr

[south sonnet]

there probably in fact is a potion like that in celsian isles but no one cares about it probably since it's not relevant

[remote valve]

or is it suncloak vile idk

[south sonnet]

or one did exist at one point and got nuked in one of the numerous potion rebalance passes

[remote valve]

there is a 30s haste 3 pot

but the problem is

[south sonnet]

it's 60s

[remote valve]

even hf players dont use outside wr runs

[south sonnet]

because hexfall doesn't warrant it

[remote valve]

that one is unusable because of jump boost. the real is 20s just checked

[south sonnet]

for something like this to come into play you'd need something like a situation where if max point strikes gave rewards proportional to the level of risk

EDD was, as i previously stated, the former poster child

but we have better ways of making money now

re: cz where you get copious amounts of the potions you use in it from... itself

i would consider that questionable design personally

that type of thing is kind of what lead to this thread in the first place? those potions spill out into the rest of the game due to how common they are for their level of power

[remote valve]

besides healing/absorb/regen monumenta pots are not that powerful

[south sonnet]

duration is also a type of power

[remote valve]

defensive pots are probably more op than offensive

not counting instant ones

[rain owl]

theres nothing that needs a duration more than like 5 minutes

[south sonnet]

ppl generally do not chug ironvein tinctures in gameplay, I think

as an example

[remote valve]

because its not sustainible and hard to utilize

[south sonnet]

the soul thread fire res potions are generally considered balanced too, due to their short duration

[remote valve]

you need to know in advance that will take dmg

[south sonnet]

at least by the devs anyway, given it was allowed to survive when all the fire res got shot

[south sonnet]

funny story

[remote valve]

flamekissed ichors are great for their purpose

[south sonnet]

one time we wanted the sanguine halls WR and we resorted to filling the entire party's echests with shulkers of ironveins for the last few rounds

and tossing them at the cleric as they ran thru them

easy 4.5 minutes of 30% res per shulker for 2 hours per echest

nowdays we have /mail, so if someone was insane enough you could have an external player just constantly supplying more ironveins

[remote valve]

the dubious 14 transactions per 10 min limit iirc

[south sonnet]

can you not mail shulkers

[marsh meadow]

You can

[bold zodiac]

Time to disable mail in endless content !

[remote valve]

you can also technically mail an equipment case with 27 firms in it

[marsh meadow]

Or cheaper just a lockbox with 9 shulkers hotbar

[remote valve]

pretty sure that wont work

[south sonnet]

you can lockbox potion injectors i think

[rain owl]

you can

[south sonnet]

you only need 18, mail the lockbox of empty PIs back to be refilled and swap the two lockbox of PI hotbar back and forth

[marsh meadow]

Yeah it will I do it

Well idk about mail but you can lockbox shulkers and you can throw it to other people

[remote valve]

regular shulkers might not work

[marsh meadow]

Likely mail as well

Fym might not work I literally use it to store more items

Mail may not work, shulkers in lockboxes do

But even for mail I don't see why it wouldn't

[rain owl]

i thought mail has an nbt limit or smth

[remote valve]

you can also send out many shulkers and slowly retract them

[gritty swift]

hyc probably most important part seems like comp to me

i think if you had the right comp and the dps has reasonable gear then you can always like get things done by chains

[covert stone]

Yes. That is good, decoupling the value of items from raw currency and letting currency be used as the medium of exchange is like the entire goal of making an economy function

[dark ferry]

what if we had some kind of really strong potion that gave us all the buffs for a few days

some kind of... god potion

[covert stone]

The goal of currency is to allow the relative valuation of different things to be expressed, if the value of consumables floats with their perceived utility then the economy is serving its purpose, fixing their cost in currency is whats strange

'An apple is worth three oranges' doesnt care whether the currency used is dollars or crystalline shards or IOUs

[south sonnet]

i have no idea what that's about

[covert stone]

The message I replied to seems to put the cart before the horse

Yours

[south sonnet]

what i was referring to was that you've increased the price of the rewards by the price of the supplies needed but the seller isn't getting anything from it because they still have to pay for the supplies

so the price has gone up, but no one has benefited

[covert stone]

Yes, that creates demand to supply

It is the foundation of an economy

Its the engine

Thats about as fundamental as it gets, create a demand so that people have incentive to supply it, and in doing so create activity

Your wording seems to imply that this state of affairs is undesirable

But its exactly what an economy needs to thrive

It also makes the assumption that the marginal utility of a potion is uniform across the entire player base, which isnt true at all

Different people gain different value from the same potion used at different times

So its not as simple as 'well, the price would perfectly cancel out the benefit'

The value changes

[south sonnet]

to clarify

i meant from the perspective of the person buying the loot and the perspective of the person doing the content

[covert stone]

Its creating an entire side economy

Input cost goes up, output value goes up, extra value is created for people farming other resources to fill the demand

[fleet crown]

making potion stacking a feature is certainly a solution

[covert stone]

Perhaps it is not immediately apparent. But. When everyone can be trivially self sufficient, an economy off of anything other than status symbols isnt likely to form

[south sonnet]

i do not consider that "value" desirable in this scenario

[fallen terrace]

won't someone think of the shareholders

[covert stone]

Im thinking of the playerbase, for sure

[fleet crown]

the thing I would be worried about is players not wanting to farm for potions just to play; many of the best potions cannot be stock piled and supply of them is very short (just 3 groups doing a few high wave gallery of fear runs was enough to spike casino potions for a month)

[covert stone]

Creating reasons to play to fill demand

[south sonnet]

in other mmos, the "added value" generated by this specific scenario has traditionally gone to bot farms

[fallen terrace]

I think the average player would hate content they need to buy potions to even stand a chance doing

[fleet crown]

if a dozen players can suck up the supply of those potions really fast, making them more important would be really bad for accessibility

[fallen terrace]

regardless if they can make more money or not

[covert stone]

Casino potion stonks are not particularly well funded, partly due to storage space issues. With more liquidity (on stonkco levels) it wouldn't be an issue.

[south sonnet]

what i left out in this scenario is that this item is mostly farmed by bots camping the spawn on every instance of the location

[covert stone]

Liquidity is the big issue with volatility

It fixes the problem

[fleet crown]

but the other thing is that if you make the potions just easily avaible form npc then you are just making potions the base line for stats. Theres no real point in doing that, when you could make a less complicated balance around not having them be apart of the base line.

again terraria comes to mind here, in many of that games mods they were balanced around potions which just leads to players being ether perma buffed or underpowered if they dont use them. This kinda just defeats the whole purpose of them being buffs outside of early game; since you just always have the stats.

[covert stone]

Not wanting to farm potions, and therefore buying them from other players, is part of creating an economy, yes

[fleet crown]

if its to expensive to play content many people wont do it

[covert stone]

If everyone can be trivially self sufficient there is no economy for anything but luxury/status symbols

You need to have friction

[fleet crown]

I would argue potions are acutally pretty expensive right now and thats with the current low demand

[covert stone]

That 'I would rather do X' is what creates a market

[south sonnet]

are they?

how much are ppl paying nowadays per shulker of wolfswood

[fleet crown]

many are yes, jump boost comes to mind as a very expensive effect. So is high level speed

[south sonnet]

isn't that because a lot of the high lvl speed effects got shot

or am i confusing it with haste

[fleet crown]

I would love to run spectral Schnapps more often, but they are rather rare and it would be prohibitively expensive

they are fun potions to put into PI, its like an instant drink oceans gate

[south sonnet]

Do we have a way to trade delve mod mats for their respective potion yet

[rain owl]

no

[fleet crown]

haste is somewhat expensive, it used to be very accessible but now the main source is just the cz potion and augment potion. 40% speed runs you 9 CCS from npc

[rain owl]

if you mean the cosmetic mat

[south sonnet]

That’s unfortunate to hear

[south sonnet]

That theoretical scenario seems like it would be severely hampered by a bunch of issues

[remote valve]

swiftshield/enderblood is easy 40% speed for 2min

[south sonnet]

Like a bunch of popular pots being npc only and thus directly pegged to a static currency price

Or some potions just being effectively impossible to targeted farm

[fleet crown]

2 minutes is not a lot of time, its not at all feasible to run enderbloods for really anything besides boss fights.

[south sonnet]

I use PI for short duration buffs instead of heals personally

[tacit estuary]

6ar per pot (literally npc price)
the same price for emp swiftshield

[south sonnet]

Feels somewhat less cheesy

[south sonnet]

…npc price is better value than any of the other alternatives?

That’s wild

Kinda curious what would happen if that trade was removed

[fleet crown]

very little, since you get wolfs woods fury for breathing in the architects ring

[tacit estuary]

could because of there isnt a stonk (that is widely used by playerbase) for those pot

[south sonnet]

Oh true

[tacit estuary]

i once set it up but then got immediately bought out by few (2) players
3 stx of pot per barrel and i had 3 barrel filled

[fleet crown]

a stonk was recently made for r3 potions (pig store). I dont think its that popular though since people have so many

[south sonnet]

Shrug

There’s also a lot of ppl buying too no?

At least for wolfswood, i always see ppl offering in trade chat

[fleet crown]

potions dont sell frequently, when they do its just an endgame player buying them in bulk

[south sonnet]

I see

[fleet crown]

I may or may not be guilty of roaming the market and sucking up all of the potions I see sold

potions that are not directly sold are hard to get in bulk, your encouraged to hoard them hard

[south sonnet]

Wonder if potion trading would improve a lot if we had a custom behavior for carriers of 27 of the same potion

To make log checking easier

Any item you trade in bulk, even

[tacit estuary]

i personally also use the 2 hour delve pot when i do cz frush with constant team not sure if they also useit or not

[fleet crown]

I have used haste 2 hour for long sessions before too ya. Those kinda only work in cz where you dont lose them on death though, since the potions are nearly 2 har (more economical to use the 3 minute haste if your not going to be using haste at all times)

I think using reinheart potions in normal gameplay is kinda unfun though, since you die to like lag or something you just lose so much money. They kinda just exist so you have the option to super buff and get 2 armor pieces worth of damage to crush whatever new boss they released; honestly they are lame and stick out to me as problem potions (expect haste and XP potions, you guys are cool).

[tacit estuary]

when i think about problemmatic consumables ones really stand out are atks (haste, atks) and pi (ih, absorp), regen at high lvl has the potential to be pi but most of them are not so cheap (in terms of price and difficulty to produce in bulk). besides of those, buff stacking doesn't seem so bad, since the additive rework has already significantly reduced the difference between not using and chugging every single one possible

stacking the dirt cheap ones does not offer you gamr chaging advantage, reasonable costy ones maybe, money burning ones doesn't even improve much dps from reasonable costy ones
dirt cheap: ww fury, emp swiftsheild, emp azure
reasonable costy: aug and most soul strand ones, mungfish
money burning: delve pot, extreme mobility ones for races

[dark ferry]

the existence of atks buffs is pretty questionable yeah. you're only ever using it with a build that requires that buff to function and it has zero place in normal gameplay

[covert stone]

You priced them too low, and should have had more in storage to sell at a higher price after they sold out.

At some price, people will stop buying. At another price, people are incentivized to sell what they have.

If you maintain a stonk for long enough the market will find it's stable point

but you have to have supply on both sides until it decides what the price is, if it runs out the only thing you know is it is "lower" or "higher"

[tacit estuary]

well i dont see a reason to price them any higher than npc, that would be a scam
i had more in storage like half a potion barrel, but after a few times of restock i dont see other people sell them i kinda lost motiv to keep the shop running (it start as experiment to see if potion stonk is sustainable without or with minimum shop managers action involved)

[covert stone]

That is quite interesting actually. A couple notes from my experience.

1. Stonkco has encountered a similar issue and we "resolve" it by putting a barrel above or below NPC price with a sign in it saying not to use it.
2. Some people are willing to pay for the convenience of not needing to find an NPC in-world, and having supply available at some price is "useful", even if on paper it looks questionable. The existence of both a buy and a sell price justifies the market, it isn't a scam. It's just the market doing it's thing. If people buy it out, you can buy from the NPC and pocket the difference as compensation.
3. If you have a stonk that always has money in it for people to sell their stuff to, people will eventually realize that it always has money in it. And they will sell to it. Because they want money. Simple as that. If you want people to sell, all you have to do is wait, and be consistent. It's the thing most shops are missing that keeps people from coming back - consistency.

I really really want potion stonks to start being real

Casino pots being commoditized would be so great

[solid oak]

i wish
but they still havent fixed the potion loss on final death bug its been months

[fleet crown]

ya that bug does dissuade me from using long potions in cz very often. I used to use haste a lot before they deleted pureshard adze from the game, now I just run evanescent and no haste at all.

I just only use drask potion now and then wolfswood fury for boss

[thin raft]

uwuwu

i want a potion carrier stonk

[covert stone]

They do not use carriers/potion barrels

[thin raft]

like u buy in carriers

[covert stone]

yes, piggy does now

[thin raft]

i hate

the margins and price are just not it

[covert stone]

They have to get supply somehow

[fleet crown]

I agree with attack speed potions being pretty powerful, but I also feel like attack speed is too hard to get in this game (especially in r1/2). kinda feels like you need those buffs to make some builds work, since there is so few armor pieces with attack speed across the game. feels like we still have not recovered from the removal of flat attack speed. That said requiring a mungfish to play the game is annoying and I would be happy to see the fishies go if we get compensated with item buffs instead.

[fallen terrace]

Consequences of attack speed having a hard limit I guess

[thin raft]

attack speed will always be strong

[fallen terrace]

and that it feels awful to play unless you're at that limit

[thin raft]

its so much more dmg to use ats consus

although the gap between haste 1 and 2 have been deceased recently

like 3%?

[novel trellis]

Sure though there is a chance that "your build isnt meant to exist" for some configurations possibly and that would suck even though I would love to see potions get shot

[fleet crown]

I disagree, building slow weapons is weak in most of the game since it makes you too frail and investing in attack speed is not powering your melee aoe skills. I dont see any issues with buffing like frost giants weapons or their support.

[thin raft]

i would hate to see potions get shot

[novel trellis]

Slow attack speed definitely needs to be more worth it i think but maybe out of the scope of this for me to continue

[fleet crown]

I am okay seeing potions getting shot of adequate compensation is made and its not just done overnight and they acutally think through all of the consequences it has on the game (not just balance, but also their place as primary incentives to earn)

[thin raft]

i dont see an issue with potions

mungfish might be a bit too op tho

but yeah just remove mungfish and give compensation

[fleet crown]

they limit future design, which is the main problem I see with them. Currently I dont believe they are that problematic (expect instant heal but I went on a whole rant about that already)

[novel trellis]

Atm they dont do anything bad since the game clearly pretends they dont exist

[fleet crown]

like how could you add new late game r1 content if I can just bring the other 2 regions potions over and quadruple my stats. (reinheart potion is 2 whole armor pieces worth of damage in r1, that would break an intruder style boss in r1)

[thin raft]

reynart pots are reynart pots

they are meant to be strong with a steep price

[fleet crown]

Reynart in particular to me just stands out as excessive, we dont need anything even stronger then augment potions. They dont even get used for anything besides WR chasing due to the cost, they just exist to be a future problem.

to be clear I am talking about the 25% damage potions

[south sonnet]

Isnt that their whole point

kinda