Opinions on Scholar - generally and with recent changes

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General Thoughts
I've played scholar essentially since A1 and I've enjoyed its various iterations. Generally I think the exp gain is relatively well balanced for medium to large groups (with 2-4 dedicated scholars) and recent changes mean that solo/small group scholars can make money both from quests and the market.

My only real pet peeve with the profession has been the really large effort crafts and weird exp skew toward parchment. The large craft issue has gotten worse with the active vs passive stamina regen change and the parchment skew is both better and worse for the addition of the Svim quests (T1-T3 bark/parchment disappears so quickly...).

Recent Patches
The recent additions/changes to potions has been both a good and bad thing in my opinion. The health potions before the recent patch were a really good money maker and continue to be so even with the decrease in value. Unfortunately, this value is entirely attached to the Alesi quests and has nothing to do with their utility, and the crafting/stamina potions are virtually useless. If the devs intend for potions to stick around they need to do some serious balancing with food buffs, or make some system changes to the buffs (allowing buffs to stack or have different buffs between potions and food).

The addition of the catalysts, especially as a supply option, is a literal joke. No one in their right mind would use catalysts for supplies when the drop rates for fish oil are so bad and lower tier seeds are required for higher tier plants. The recent issues with higher tier resource respawn makes this even worse. Related sidenote: that catalysts are required in potions means making anything above T2, maybe T3, is a waste of time and resources, especially since quest rewards scale linearly and the input costs will scale exponentially.

[feral pelican]

I agree make elixirs stack with food

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Oh sidenote I forgot to mention -- move the textiles to scholar, having it be the only non-scholar reagent is a pain in the behind

[feral pelican]

Literally

[near scroll]

Its such an annoyance when tiering up the claim and stations...

[feral pelican]

I could see that

How do you think they could fix chemical catalyst?

What if was a funnel up

With wild fiber plant, wild embergrain, and wild star bulb

Because I saw another post complaining about their uselessness

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I would use mushrooms instead of either seeds or fish oil, allowing wild seeds might work but with the current UI it would muck up the recipe list

[feral pelican]

True

[feral pelican]

Mushrooms would be very good

Especially since only used in potion or food

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as for the other input for catalysts maybe sugar? there's a lot of tree sap being 'wasted'

[feral pelican]

Hmm

A mushroom sugar catalyst?

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and they don't really get used rn

as for funnel up, maybe require t2 catalysts for t3 (so and so forth as tier increases) -- changing the inputs to mushrooms and sugar would make this less painful than if it stayed as fish oil and seeds

[feral pelican]

I was more talking the wild seeds since they are only used t1

I think a mushroom, wild seed, and sugar catalyst would be good

With funnel up

[nova anchor]

whattt the crafting speed elixir doesnt stack with food?

[tranquil tundra]

+1 on the catalyst addition. it's quite mindboggling, they assume I have spare fish oil just ready to waste?

the elixir stacks for sure

[feral pelican]

That’s what I’ve heard

[nova anchor]

i heard they do

[tranquil tundra]

they do

[nova anchor]

i think the only issue with the elixirs is how painful they are to make vs how much time you get with the buff per craft

would be nice if there was a gatherer potion too

[tranquil tundra]

gathering speed potion would have really poor uptime, and would inadvertently waste itself

(gathering a node faster means more time spent travelling, which increases the downtime of the buff)

[nova anchor]

but until theyre not so painful to craft theyre not really available in the way food is. maybe there will be a market for them in a month or so when the degenerate empires get xp gated for tier ups

since all those commie players will shift to market things at that point

[nova anchor]

you spend so much time gathering at nodes at higher tiers that its fine

[tranquil tundra]

any sort of gathering elixir should probably buff X # of swings, rather than working duration-wise. they're working on adding a durability system that would increase the power of a tool for as long as it has durability, so gathering is already due a buff

[nova anchor]

takes me 25 mins in a cave to fill up on t5 ore with a rare tool and thats only t5, t7 wood is probably going to take me 30 mins + to fill a wagon up

[tranquil tundra]

sure, if you're in a cave that conversation changes. (Caves are broken)

[nova anchor]

my only experience is mining and forestry really but i did just have a forager say in my ear that gathering potions would be nice for him too

[tranquil tundra]

yeah, i mean, any increased rate of production is going to be welcomed by pretty much everyone, it's just that the buff itself is likely to be clunky

[tranquil tundra]

very curious, how many scholars do you have working in your settlement? outside of the largest, it seems like it's mostly 1 scholar : 1 settlement

are you just delegating effort costs downward? (low-tier guy makes your pigment, ink, etc)?

[feral pelican]

Yeah even Kramerica has one head scholar

I’m trying to become the second

But it’s very hard to coordinate

[tranquil tundra]

i think scholar is uniquely bunk in that regard. i'm trying to imagine sharing resources and especially XP and I'm grimacing pretty hard

it's been pretty okay at low tiers, but Scholar is the only profession that needs to be overlevelled, progessing up to tier 6 or 7 without a commensurately levelled Scholar means you can't make codices

[nova anchor]

at least scholar xp is super easy to bank thanks to bark be absurdly fast to come by

but if youre not being fed by a few degen carpenters then it can definitely get rough

[tranquil tundra]

yeah i uhhh. have worries

feeling like I need a bark guy

[nova anchor]

yeah just depends on how many carps you have, they have nothing else to do with their bark theyre just passively getting other than give it to the scholars

or i guess sell it to scholars but bark A) barely sells compared to the volume you end up having and B) sells for pennies due to the volume you end up having

[tranquil tundra]

¯_(ツ)_/¯

c'est la vie

[near scroll]

I'm in Legion, so R8 Aquila, myself and Lanidae are the main scholars and an additional 1 or 2 help out as scholar secondary

[tranquil tundra]

what tier is your settlement?

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T6 research was started yesterday

as for delegation, the low tier crafts were delegated to the '3rd/4th' scholars

we recently built an airlock to protect/safely share progression materials which made it much easier to have multiple scholars with mismatched activity times

[feral pelican]

Then who runs Sakura?! If not Sakura?!

[tranquil tundra]

hrm, okay that makes sense

going into t6 i'm still our settlement's only scholar, wondering when the pin drops

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😆 That's been a literal inside joke since that claim started day 1 or 2

and honestly I have no idea who owns the settlement/empire

I'm not over in the breezy grasslands very often

[nova anchor]

yeah thats rough

[near scroll]

its going to be a huge time sink as the only scholar, fair warning, even with a main (fully dedicated) and 2 secondaries (I'm also on foraging) it took us a while to get everything done

the shear number of low tier flowers and carvings was ridiculous

[nova anchor]

yeah youll be time gated waiting on scholar crafts unless you plan significantly ahead and deal with all the logistics of getting the scholar ahead

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also bark...so much bark...

[tranquil tundra]

eh ill get it done

carvings is going to be the biggest pain in the ass for sure