i think that would be great to be able to plant herbs

this proposal is three-fold, and I think, the combination is a quite good idea.

1.) make them plantable
2.) make fixed effects
3.) replace food flavor by spices

implementing only one of them will just reduce the complexity of the game without any gain of fun.

at the moment, the random effects are "necessary", because everything but flux (maybe naphta and flavour) is pointless.
later on, when alchemy is fully introduced, all herbs will be important. Then, the effects could be fixed.
One could argue that the "roleplay" part of finding out herbs effects will be lost, but it's simply not realistic that herbs effects vary.

I think, gathering herbs can be a two-pronged process, with a "gather in the wild" part, and a planting part.
Planting should only be possible in "flower pots" (probably of different sizes) or something like that - I don't think huge herbs plantations will be an asset for the game. The same with spices...

Finally. I been saying this for ages. Make them plant-able, make them less tedious. Make the game fun by changing alchemy all together. Some people like it, but please bring up something less random that allows players on the same server to see the same plants with the same properties at least. That makes more sense. If on another server, sure its different then on other servers. But all this randomness for each individual player just doesn't even make sense. Why wouldn't people of the same world see the same properties of the same plant. So please, change it, OR at the very least, make it an option for the server to allow individual player randomness or not. Whether players see the same plant as that herb or not. Options please !!!

I love this game as far as anything else is concerned, you guys have done a great job on the other aspects of the game. And even the graphics are awesome !

Once a number of players can trade herbs the tediousness should drop drastically. This is system that only works well with healthy population levels. So I don't think it should be changed at this stage.

The different recipes for each player is ingenious. It means every herbalist needs to learn by himself and that is important. I dare say this is the reason there are so few herbalists in the game because lots of people don't want to do it. That means it is working as intended. A herbalist will be a valuable member in the MMO I suspect.

Beside planting herbs would totally negate the harvesting of herbs in the wild. Personally I enjoy the herb gathering although they could probably make it more interesting with a mini-game.

StaalBurgher wrote:

Once a number of players can trade herbs the tediousness should drop drastically. This is system that only works well with healthy population levels. So I don't think it should be changed at this stage.

The different recipes for each player is ingenious. It means every herbalist needs to learn by himself and that is important. I dare say this is the reason there are so few herbalists in the game because lots of people don't want to do it. That means it is working as intended. A herbalist will be a valuable member in the MMO I suspect.

Beside planting herbs would totally negate the harvesting of herbs in the wild. Personally I enjoy the herb gathering although they could probably make it more interesting with a mini-game.

I must say, that you have some fair points but i don't agree.
Trading would decrease the tediousness but for sure not drastically. Trade would just split the profession of a herbalist in two, gatherer and herbalist. Also this kind of randomness is unrealistic. There are other ways to introduce some level of randomness: Mixing herbs should be more similar to cooking, not just mixIng two herbs together. There should be recipes like in cooking, but you could make it a bit random with how many herbs you need for a preparation. Make it dependant on quality of the herb, skill level, tools and so on. It is possible to have a learning curve and realism ;-)
Alchemy should be all about purification and perfection of potions and any other substances. There are hundreds of possibilities that would make it complex and realistic and fun at the same time. So why sacrifice on realism?

Planting would not necessarily make harvesting in the wild obsolete. I never said that we should make all herbs plantable. And you need to get the herbs in the beginning from somewhere ;-)

knoedelbrot wrote:

Planting would not necessarily make harvesting in the wild obsolete. I never said that we should make all herbs plantable. And you need to get the herbs in the beginning from somewhere ;-)

I think all herbs should be plantable - no point in differentiate that. But one simple reason why it will not make gathering obsolete:
if you can't make really vast plantations for herbs, like I proposed it - just "flower pots" of varying sizes - then you have to wait for a while until you get the herbs harvest. during the growing period, you will be tempted to gather more...

Making them need abit of treatment, like watering and cutting, could improve quality, and maybe make it so that if people don't want to bother with it, they can still go out and gather.

The reason flux is so valuable is that it takes a lot of time and effort to figure out and its painful. As soon as you make them the same for everyone then the reward for finding herbs is much less. Our guild sets up separate containers for each person; then only places the herbs that makes flux for them in each container (never using the last container). Then when we gather herbs we just place them in their appropriate container with 5 people we can us 60 percent of what we gather. The other 40 we can usually find a market for trade.

Improving the quality is simply a matter of putting down better soil growing a crop on it and then harvesting that crop without replanting.

I do like the spices vs. flavor and I think that there should be some herbs required for healing as well.

I'd agree at the least with plantable and spices (especially if spices can be used in a system to grant some small bonuses to cooked food.)

My imagination of the spice process:
Spices now come in three varieties, bitters, sweets, and savories. There are combinations of them that then yield results. This portion could be personal discovery, or just locked in. For example, 2 bitters, 3 savory, and you get an seasoning mix that is then called another name (say, contentment seasoning for this mix.) It then may be applied to food, and cooked foods can have an effect on how a seasoning works (certain foods work better with certain seasonings.) So, with a bitter/savory, a meat or soup dish would likely work well. This should be a universal system (aka, every dish simply works best with 1-3 things.)
Let us say that contentment gives a boost to stamina. In this case, it provides a small boost to current hard stamina (say, provides 5 hard stamina recovery, but if used in the wrong foods that goes down to maybe 1 or 2.) Similar seasonings could then give a reduction in stamina costs, or provide a temporary burst of soft stamina recovery (say, 3 minutes of extra soft stamina recovery rate, allowing you to potentially be just a little more active for a while.)
This would give the food system a nice boost to being more important for those who are not off dying and having to relearn skills in the game, as well as making the crafting aspects more interesting for interdependence.

@ stewbailey
May i ask what server settings your game server has? Because having 5 herbalists in one guild is not very efficient if the skillcap is set at minimum as it will be in the MMO. Furthermore you can only have a great monument without 'GM mode cheating' at the moment due to the lack of vostaskus steel, that limits your guild to 20 members. A quarter of them herbalists?
Yes, of course you can trade away herbs that won't produce flux, but soon it will be possible to produce potions and poisons and therefore all the herbs will become valuable. Your way of doing herbalism won't work as good as you describe anymore.
Also the mechanism of herbalism and alchemy is very simple compared to other professions. As a blacksmith you gather ores, leather and wood, then you craft charcoal and handles or other parts before you forge tools, weapons or armors. You can't do that alone. A herbalist just gathers herbs and mixes 2-3 of them together, finished. Alchemy is just the same, except that you now can use catalysts and in future preparations. That will become boring at some point.

My idea of herbalism:
Herbs should be treated before used in any preparation. You could introduce three ways to treat herbs (drying, fermenting, cooking in water/oil/alcohol) and every way would strengthen one of the herbs effects. To make a preparation you would then have to mix a certain amount of 2-5 different ingredients. Skilled herbalists can produce more Product with less ingredients of course. The ingredients don't have to be just herbs, you could also use lard to make herbal pastes, water for herbal teas or alkohol for some medicine and maybe some minerals for some powders. There is a lot of possibilities here.