So, I love the herbalism skill path. I have uncovered all of the uses of my 66 herbs. All my guild wants me to make is Flux, some Naphtha, and some Food Flavor. That's fine, but I wanted to test the full scope of herbalism. This request will talk about what herbalism can do, and why it needs to be rebalanced to ensure that the game is as fun as possible. At the end a suggestion for how to improve Herbalism will be offered. Now, some of the things in here may be bugs, but maybe not. I'm going to put them anyway.

So, lets start with the known. In total there are 18 different possible effects. Each herb has three effect possibilities. And each effect has 11 herbs that contribute to it. which herbs do each is random, but those stats are not.. There are 6 poisons, they are all on the third effect an herb can give. Of the 66 herbs, 11 contribute to each poison. There is no overlap, so you cannot make any preparation with more than one poison on it. There are 12 more beneficial effects which take up slots one and two. There is complete overlap with these so that every single effect overlaps with the other 11 available. Of the 12 beneficial effects, 3 are special materials that help other crafts. 5 of them are ability boosters which improve your body as a whole. The last 4 are healing potions, of a sort. Duration seems to be based on quality. This request will lay out each of the effects in detail and then go into how we can improve herbalism as a whole.

Poisons
When eating poisons they lasted for several minutes. When being struck with them from a 1 handed bladed weapon though, they lasted only about half the length of time as eating a preparation, I think. each application of the poison only works for 1 strike and then you need to leave battle mode by pressing "R" to apply a new coating. You cannot coat a second poison on the blade as it just replaces the original.
Lower Max Soft Stamina Completely useless. It lowers the point soft stamina can recharge by 1. for a short time. not at all useful
Damage Soft Stamina Regeneration This did effect the regeneration a little bit, but not anything dire. I wouldn't think it was worth it.
Damage Hard Stamina Actually works as described. Every second or two, it lowers your hard stamina by 1. Eating it would be really bad, being hit with it on a blade though, it won't do too much.
Lower Max soft Hit Points So... for 20 seconds the person hit can't regenerate their soft hit points to max after being hit. Assuming a battle situation their hard hit points will already be below max so, I think this is useless as well.
Damage Soft Hit Points our first time fighting, I had an agility boost going and this didn't work. The second time fighting it dropped me unconscious in a matter of 30 seconds. when I ate it though. it reduced my soft hit points by 1 per second. I don't know if it would have knocked me unconscious as I ate a restore soft hit points and stopped it. I didn't feel like knocking out again.
Damage Hard hit points Never tested in combat too dangerous unless I have an enemy to try on. When I ate the preparation it reduced my red hit points to 1 and stopped there, thankfully. I honestly thought I was going to die, but it did not kill me. Soft hit points did not reduce with it, but are assumed to not be able to recover when it's down.

Special Materials
Flux The most useful thing in herbalism according to everyone anyone talks to. This is the only way to make mortar or steel. The guild is never happy with flux production and always wants more.
Naphtha Useful if you guild likes lights. We do, a little. but it's not used all the time.
Food Flavor My cook likes it, but it's fairly easy to keep him supplied

Ability Boosters
When taking an ability booster, open up your person window and it will show the new score before the backslash. Very useful. What's not useful is the fact that they don't seem to actually do anything. Probably a bug, but when upping Willpower it doesn't increase what the abilities should increase. and it does not help improve crafting even when you eat the maximum number of preparations to modify the ability as much as possible for crafting.
Strength Does not effect the weight that you can have equipped. May effect damage with a weapon (I don't know for sure)
Agility May effect speed and rate of fire, slightly
Constitution Does not effect hit points... I don't know what it does effect honestly
Willpower Does not effect carrying capacity.
Intelligence does not give you temporary skill points.

Healing Preparations
Antidote What it says, this cures any poisonous effect.
Raise max Soft Stamina Completely useless. a +1 to the soft stamina really doesn't help
Restore Hard Stamina Very nice when it gets low from crafting. Could be good in a long battle, or if you were crafting and someone is attacking.
Restore Soft Hit Points A very fickle effect. It did not work when I was wounded. It did not work when I had a different poisonous effect on me. It did not work several times actually. It did stop bleeding from bleeding me. It did stop the damage soft hit points. but it would not revive those points afterwards. On the other hand, it definitely revives the soft hitpoints on injury from a blade practice blade, and even brought someone back from being unconscious. (very thankful for that)

Usage
Preparations can only be used outside of battle. but they can be on your hotbar so that you can click R then 5 and instantly eat a restore Soft Hit Points, then click R again and resume the match. Poisons can also be applied instantly from hotbar like that.

Improvements

Visual Effects
The first improvement I'd like to see is the blade a duration for the poison, though it is nice that it says what poison is on. Basically give me something to see to know that it's still there when I check. Also a visual feature of green or something on the blade itself would be nice as both the attacker and defender could see that it was actually poisonous.
Poisons
Honestly, I think some are amazingly powerful and others super weak. The lower max stamina and hitpoints are completely useless. you could up the magnitude significantly, or better yet change them to effects like Slow attack speed, weaken strikes, slow speed movement speed, or lower defense. I'd actually put damage stamina regeneration as one of these too, because it's barely noticeable.
The other three, damage hard stamina is great for making it so that you don't have to kill or knock an opponent out, but they can't do anything anymore only antidote and restore hard stamina can save you. Damage soft hit points will knock them out, unless they have an antidote or restore soft hitpoints with them. and damage hard hit points will definitely bring them to the brink of being killed, and may kill them only antidote can protect you. I don't think that there is anything you can do that is more effective than these three poisons. if you're fighting, 1 on 1 and the other person doesn't have preparations and you do these will mean that you automatically win.
Special Materials
Still the most sought after resource, especially flux, as it's needed for building everything. I have no suggestions here.
Ability boosters
First off, I'd up the magnitude to 5. That way they're truly useful and can be consumed before doing crafts, upping quality and stuff. but more importantly, I'd double check to ensure that they're programmed correctly and using the modified number and not the original....
Healing Preparations
Um antidote is necessary to fight off the most powerful poison. The other two good ones can be used for other purposes, as well as fighting off the second and third most powerful poisons.
Raise max soft stamina though is again useless. This could only be made useful by increasing the magnitude to about 10 or 20. 20 is a single additional attack. it will let you run a good distance longer, and overall turn this potion into something that can actually be appreciated. The healing preparations will not win you a battle, but will help keep the enemy from destroying you with the top 3 poisons in game.
Last note
some preparations are more useful than most people give them credit for. I currently have no use for 8 of my herbs, which isn't bad. exactly half of my herbs have a useless number 3 slot. only 21 have a useful number 2 slot, and 11 of those are Naphtha. So that's 45 with a useless second slot. Now, 45 have a useful first slot, and only 21 are useless there. So, that I only have 8 that are completely, including ability boosts as currently useless. I find it amazing that so few herbs are useless, actually. That I only care about 9 of the 18 possible traits, and that 25 herbs only have 1 of those, is disheartening. Furthermore, there are only 3 useful combinations, which means I only have 3 herbs that I'll be using in combination mixtures, Antidote with Restore hard stamina, Antidote with restore soft hit points, and restore hard stamina with restore soft hitpoints. The rest I might as well use only two at time unless I want to increase magnitude. making the abilities boosts work, making half the poisons actually do something, and increasing the magnitude of Raise Max Soft Stamina will drastically transform herbalism to a path that is beyond useful to the community in both crafting and war. It will make every herb have 3 useful traits and change the world as we know it.