observations on taste id
Eric A. Hall
When they said that Taste ID would be "difficulty based" I didn't really
understand what they meant. I've been playing with it some though and
yeah, it sure is a lot more difficult.
Number one: I have a craftsman that can make barrels, and I have
recently acquired a furniture dye tub, so I set up barrels for all the
different potions. My alchy/scribe can only make up to greater dex
reliably, so I buy the rest. I ran out of gcures, so I get my GM
merchant and go shopping, and found a vendor that had potions.
This particular vendor sells potions in lots of ten and twenty-five.
Each bag contains "an unknown orange potion." Great. My merchant doesn't
have any Taste ID skill (or room for it), so I have to go back and get
my alchy/scribe, taste a few of the potions to ensure they're really
gcures, then get my merchant char to buy them (my alchy/scribe is flat
broke).
This is completely at odds with the changes to weapon tags. Think about
it: they take OUT the potion tags, but put IN "exceptional" tags for
everything else! That's just so contradictary I'm blown away by it!
They've basically got "exceptional" on everything BUT potions now! What
do you professional alchemists think about this?
Number two: I want my primary to "own" the kegs, so I have him Taste ID
the first one and drop it into the keg. The alchy/scribe does the other
19 bottles because he has 60s Taste ID and can ID them quicker than any
of my chars (who will all fail before they can do it). I really don't
want to get into this habit but I've gotta play the game...
As the alchy/scribe is dropping potions into the keg, I'm seeing this
message about "you leave the bottle with the keg." Apparently the bottle
is going into the keg, even if I don't want it to. This is troubling for
a couple of reasons. First of all, if I need to "restock" one of my
chars, I can just double-click the keg and it will fill any empty bottle
in my pack. This is a good design I think.
But what about all the empties that I'm dropping into the keg? Sooner or
later I'm going to put more than 100 bottles into a keg, while I'll have
drawn out that much and refilled bottles in my pack. Will the keg keep
swallowing bottles past 100? That's 600gp worth of bottles, which I
could use with my merchant to make more kegs with. They just get
swallowed by the kegs forever? Does anybody know?
Number three: This is silly, but it's interesting. You can't just Taste
ID the same bottles over and over again like you used to. Once you
"learn" the contents of the bottle you "know" it and can't use Taste ID
on it again. This makes the skill almost impossible to macro. I'm
wondering if they're going to go this way with the other skills as well.
It might not work for Arms Lore since weapon/ar status changes often,
but it could work with Item ID (reporting the price would be the only
requirement of the modified skill), anatomy and eval int.
Erinn
>
>When they said that Taste ID would be "difficulty based" I didn't really
>understand what they meant. I've been playing with it some though and
>yeah, it sure is a lot more difficult.
>
>Number one: I have a craftsman that can make barrels, and I have
>recently acquired a furniture dye tub, so I set up barrels for all the
>different potions. My alchy/scribe can only make up to greater dex
>reliably, so I buy the rest. I ran out of gcures, so I get my GM
>merchant and go shopping, and found a vendor that had potions.
>
>This particular vendor sells potions in lots of ten and twenty-five.
>Each bag contains "an unknown orange potion." Great. My merchant doesn't
>have any Taste ID skill (or room for it), so I have to go back and get
>my alchy/scribe, taste a few of the potions to ensure they're really
>gcures, then get my merchant char to buy them (my alchy/scribe is flat
>broke).
>
>This is completely at odds with the changes to weapon tags. Think about
>it: they take OUT the potion tags, but put IN "exceptional" tags for
>everything else! That's just so contradictary I'm blown away by it!
>They've basically got "exceptional" on everything BUT potions now! What
>do you professional alchemists think about this?
That's very unprofessional of the Vendor owner:( Potions pulled out
of a keg by the character that filled it with ID'd potions come out
ID'd. If the Vendor owner isn't the Alchemist that filled the keg,
all the Vendor owner has to do is successfully Taste ID the Keg before
pulling the potions out and then the potions will be ID'd.
>Number two: I want my primary to "own" the kegs, so I have him Taste ID
>the first one and drop it into the keg. The alchy/scribe does the other
>19 bottles because he has 60s Taste ID and can ID them quicker than any
>of my chars (who will all fail before they can do it). I really don't
>want to get into this habit but I've gotta play the game...
As I understand, you shouldn't have to ID each and every potion you
add. You ID one potion and put it in the empty keg. The keg is now
of a known quality. After that, just drop your potions on the keg.
If it's the same quality, it'll go in. If not, it won't.
>As the alchy/scribe is dropping potions into the keg, I'm seeing this
>message about "you leave the bottle with the keg." Apparently the bottle
>is going into the keg, even if I don't want it to. This is troubling for
>a couple of reasons. First of all, if I need to "restock" one of my
>chars, I can just double-click the keg and it will fill any empty bottle
>in my pack. This is a good design I think.
>
>But what about all the empties that I'm dropping into the keg? Sooner or
>later I'm going to put more than 100 bottles into a keg, while I'll have
>drawn out that much and refilled bottles in my pack. Will the keg keep
>swallowing bottles past 100? That's 600gp worth of bottles, which I
>could use with my merchant to make more kegs with. They just get
>swallowed by the kegs forever? Does anybody know?
The empty bottles *should* be stacking up in the same container the
keg is in. That's what 'stays with the keg' means. That's how it
works for me anyway. But the empty bottles aren't going into the keg
in any case. I'll have to try with the keg *not* in a container
(secure) and see what it does.
>Number three: This is silly, but it's interesting. You can't just Taste
>ID the same bottles over and over again like you used to. Once you
>"learn" the contents of the bottle you "know" it and can't use Taste ID
>on it again. This makes the skill almost impossible to macro. I'm
>wondering if they're going to go this way with the other skills as well.
>It might not work for Arms Lore since weapon/ar status changes often,
>but it could work with Item ID (reporting the price would be the only
>requirement of the modified skill), anatomy and eval int.
I complained about this a few days ago because I've been trying for GM
Taste ID to go with GM Alchemy for last few months. One of the Dev
team members answered about it. He said that all potions in the world
now are considered 'known' potions and are therefore easy to ID. That
the changes made to Taste ID are for the new Alchemy system they're
working on. From what I understood, I can forget about trying to GM
Taste ID at the moment as it doesn't look like it's even possible
right now.
--
Erinnyes Dragon -==(UDIC)==-
Erinn, Grandmaster Alchemist, Moonglow, Atlantic
Antium, Master Tailor, Moonglow, Atlantic
Cricket, Master Miner, Delucia, Atlantic
Erinn
>On 05 Dec 1999 23:06:57 EST, "Eric A. Hall" <eh...@ehsco.com> wrote:
<snip>
>>Number two: I want my primary to "own" the kegs, so I have him Taste ID
>>the first one and drop it into the keg. The alchy/scribe does the other
>>19 bottles because he has 60s Taste ID and can ID them quicker than any
>>of my chars (who will all fail before they can do it). I really don't
>>want to get into this habit but I've gotta play the game...
>
>As I understand, you shouldn't have to ID each and every potion you
>add. You ID one potion and put it in the empty keg. The keg is now
>of a known quality. After that, just drop your potions on the keg.
>If it's the same quality, it'll go in. If not, it won't.
Scratch this. I just tested again and you do need to ID an 'unknown
potion' before adding it to a known quality keg. I wouldn't buy
'unknown potions' under these circumstances. To much of a pain for
the buyer to deal with. I mean, the seller only has to ID the keg
once (and then only if s/he wasn't the one that made the potions and
filled the keg to begin with) while the buyer would have to ID each
and every potion they buy.
I'm going to try adding an 'unknown black potion' to an 'unknown black
potion keg' and see if that works. Ah HAH! If both the keg *and* the
potion are unknown to the character, the potion will be added to the
keg if it's the same quality:) It said:
You don't know what's in either container, but the contents look
similar...
While if the potion is unknown and the keg is known to the character
it said:
You don't know what that potion is, so you decide not to pour it into
the keg.
I did find it interesting that having my Lumberjack taste ID the keg
(and all the potions came out ID'd to her and others afterwards)
*didn't* make the keg unknown for my Alchemist (who filled the keg in
the first place).