Bring back qualities to herbs

[Brightrim]

So back when, herbs used to have individual qualities. I feel this brought more life to the herblore in the game, unlike now where every herb seems to be of top quality and equally useful in alchemy. So my proposal is to bring it back. This is a proposal for a future milestone, not something immediate. It's more or less a rough draft and definitely needs to be fleshed out in how to do things in detail, so I may go back and change/make additions to things like the pros and cons for better oversight if people have good criticism to come with.

Old state:
Herbs would not stack as we did not have the required technology to work with, so each individual herb having a quality meant individual inventory slots for the herbs. A druidry rune would be used by alchemist to identify the qualities of the herbs, something which added to the skill level of alchemy (Now only brewing will level up alchemy).

Current state:
Qualities were removed so that herbs could be stacked, currently up to 1000 like any stackable item.

Proposed state:
Using the same approach as with magical gems, we can make 10 different stacks per herb. 9 qualities following how the alchemy system qualities are designed, plus 1 for unidentified herbs.
Meaning, any herbs currently owned or harvested after the change, would appear as, EG: "Sun herb(???)"
Then one would use a tool, rune, or whatever makes sense, to identify these herbs, making them seperate into 8 possible stacks.
EG: Sun herb(Outstanding), Sun herb(bad), etc, for all 8 qualities.
These qualities could then effect the quality of the potions brewed by them, and make the quality of potions less randomized as well.

Optionally the analyzing part could be skipped and any harvested herbs would automatically get assigned a quality visible for everyone, making only 8 stacks needed. However I'm not sure how existing herbs should be dealt with then. Plus analyzing could be tied with in herblore, making herblore skill effect the analyzed quality RNG, or be tied in with how only alchemists with the perception and touch with nature being able to analyze them like in the past.

Rough concept of how analyzing could look like:
A tool, either static or handheld, could be used to identify qualities through a crafting interface to make it less work.
Or a rune, tool, or even gems like with potions, could be used to identify them individually like with the potion approach, though that seems a lot of extra work for the alchemist given the amount of herbs needed per potion, while it wont necessarily help with the attention to detail it would provide the game.

Pros:
Gives more life to herblore with more attention to detail.
Makes the RNG of potion quality in alchemy more consistent, based on good materials rather than only luck and skill level.
Could add an additional skill to alchemy, fleshening out that some more.

Cons:
Makes it more work to mass-produce potions (Not sure this is really a con though, as potions are magical and don't really feel all that rare right now)
Herbs will take 8-9 times more bagspace.
Potential problem with herbs and cooking(?)

Please keep in mind to keep the criticism constructive, whether you like the proposed change to herblore or not.

[Jupiter]

I would like to bring it back. There is also the possibilty to create a new alchemy skill for that. Actually, we used to have one pre-VBU. Alchemy will have more skills in the long run anyway, so why not implement one already?
Secondly, the easiest way how to handle analyzing right now would be: Hold gem in your one hand. Hold a stack of unidentified herbs in the other hand. Use gem -> analyze herbs. This should take some time. Maybe 1 second per herb or so, but the whole stack would be went through automatically.

One problem that just came to my mind: We might have some difficulities including herbs with datas in cooking. Its not impossible, but we need to keep that in mind.

[Brightrim]

One problem that just came to my mind: We might have some difficulities including herbs with datas in cooking. Its not impossible, but we need to keep that in mind.

A bit off topic but a question in relation to that.
Is there really no way to make one recipe that has the option to replace one ingredient with another?
Like right now we have four different recipes that make ash, because we have four different logs, when in most games you would find only one recipe that accepts any type of log for the creation of ash. From my very basic and limited knowledge of coding, I'm curious why you cant just write for it to look for log type 1, then if not found, look for log type 2, then after having found one, make that into ash, or after not having found any, give the message that "You need either A log, B log, C log or D log to make ash."
Because if you could do that, you could also solve the cooking issue in the same way by just including all different ids of the herb and make it use any herb at all. Because I know in the case of magical gems who has the id of the gem still but a different attribute, there is already a crafting that involves such items with the gem crafters.

[Jupiter]

The crating dialogs are constructed in a way that they demand a specific item as an ingredient to be displayed. In case of ash, we could do it as you propose (with changing the cores of our crafting scripts, though) , BUT the ingredient which would be displayed would always be a specific kind of item. So we cannot display that you cannot subsitute x for y. Since it is rather confusing to demand Naldor wood as an ingredient, but actually allow all wood types, we made an own recipe for each wood.

[Katharina Brightrim]

I like it, especially for being able to brew better potions on purpose.

[GolfLima]

* die verschiedenen Qualitäten der Kräuter waren damals recht angenehm und ich fand es schade das sie verschwunden sind --> also warum nicht wieder einführen, würde der Alchemie (wenn sie denn wirklich einmal Teil des Magiesystems werden soll - für mich ist sie es bis jetzt nicht sondern eher Teil des Handwerksystems) gut tun und diese ein wenig aufwerten

[Drugar Stonesmasher]

Hello,

considering that we will have 10 level of herb quality:
That means I will have 490 stacks of herbs. Ok, anybody will just dispose of low quality ones i guess.
How then will be the potion quality defined? By the lowest quality herb, or the average?

[Lafadiel]

Alles in allen hab ich kein problem mit der Idee das die Qualitaet der Kraeuter wieder zurück kehrt waere sogar ganz nett. Aber wie wollt ihr das handhaben das die Kraeuter trotzdem stapelbar bleiben. Den sonst hast du wieder Taschen voller Kraeuter.

[Jupiter]

considering that we will have 10 level of herb quality:

That is not a fixed value. PreVBU we had 9 qualities. The normal quality of items can be between 0-9, so ten values. 0-9 might be nice because that is how quality works normally. Yet, alchemy is different from other things ingame, so why not be different in this matter as well? 9 is a nice number because we have nine possible concentrations for active agents (including). Somewhat nice to mirror that. However, 4 would also be a nice number (we have 4 positive and 4 negative concentrations). Herbs could be bad, normal, good, perfect. The excact number is up for debate, but consider that we have nine qualties for potions. So maybe that is an additional reason to stick with 9.

How then will be the potion quality defined? By the lowest quality herb, or the average?

The lowest quality herb was what we had preVBU.Right now, the quality is determined by the alchemy skill and attributes using a strange, probably somewhat broken formula. Reworking the qualit calculation is on my to-do list anyway.
There are various ways to do that, you mentioned two. The question is if the skill and attributes should play no role at all or if skill+attributes+herb qualities determine the potion quality. I am always a fan of attributes having a great impact on what you do, so I wouldn't like to drop them out completely.

[Lafadiel]

Wenn ich das richtig verstanden habe wollt ihr für die Kraeuter analyse einen neuen skill wieder einführen. Ich weiß nicht ob das wirklich nötig ist ich denke das gehört einfach zu den Alchemieskill. Und vielleicht kann man es ja so Handhaben das es mit Alchemieskill steigung eifach die faehigkeit gibt? Oder evtl könnte man es auch gemeinsam mit dem Kraeuterkunde skill verbinden so kann ein Kraeuterkundler eben seine Kraeuter auch nach wertigkeit verkaufen.

[Jupiter]

Der Punkt ist, dass es irgendwann so wieso weitere Alchemieskills geben wird. Da könnte man direkt schon enem einen Nutzen geben. Aber das ist letzlich zweitrangig, wie man das genau macht, ob neuer Skill, Alchemieskill oder Kräuterkunde.

Noch zur Stappelbarkeit: Kräuter selber Qualität werden stapelbar sein.

[GolfLima]

die Stapelbarkeit halte ich nicht für problematisch - man kann ja weiterhin Körbe und Taschen in Körben und Taschen benutzen ... und mit Labels sollte dies eigentlich recht einfach zu handhaben sein
über die Qualität der Tränke - ich denke das Kraut mit der "schlechtesten" Qualität sollte den Hauptfaktor ausmachen mit möglichen Abweichungen nach "oben / unten"