Poll: Do you bother with potion making/ingredient gathering?

[verdant monkai]

Fellow RPG fans I have to ask do you bother with these things? because I never have. You can generally buy all of the necessary health/mana potions from shops, and I find making potions via menus to be the least interesting/rewarding thing in these games.

My view on potion making can be summed up like this....

I could be doing this....

Spoiler

OR THIS!

Spoiler

Thats me. Yeah the guy with the beard poking over the eyepatch guys sword arm.

I honestly dont know why you would bother. So tell me do you guys like making potions? Have you played any games where you really enjoyed making potions?

Apologies for the poll something went wrong and it won't let me correct it.

 

[BeeGeenie]

Because sometimes you don't wanna be a badass. Sometimes you just want to tiptoe through the tulips.

Also, why buy the milk when the cows are free?... or something about how it's cheap and easy to just make your own.

 

[ThriKreen]

Odin Sphere... NEVER AGAIN.

Oh wait, I got Odin Sphere on PSN/PS3... but it won't retain my save from my PS2... dammit!

 

[Windcaler]

Depends on the game. Long ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth I played during the vinella days of World of warcraft and my troll mage was an alchemist. It was one of the more interesting trade skills I remember and one of the few that didnt require significant capital invested in a second trade skill. Kingdoms of amalur also had an interesting alchemy skill where you could experiment with different plants. The most interesting was Warhammer: Age of reckoning in which there wasnt any set pattern for potions. Different plants did different things but you could mix interesting potions beyond the standard healing, mana, or resistance stuff. It also had a chance system in place to make something better then the norm or amazingly better then the norm

So yeah sometimes I do it but a lot of the time I dont. It kind of depends on how it works and how useful it is

 

[Superlative]

You my friend, have never known the joy of hitting someone with Superlative's patented Day Ruiner poison.

Oh sure, you have to grind a bit to learn how to make it but once you do... its worth it and then some. the Day Ruiner poison in Oblivion causes fire damage, ice damage, and paralysis in the same shot. I'm basically hitting my foes with weapons grade icy hot, which is especially fun when you hit the guy with an arrow from 500 yards (in the knee). I've yet to figure out how to make it in Skyrim but when I do, all the bandits and dragons of Skyrim, and even the Emperor himself shall feel my burning, icy, para-hax of justice.

 

[IllumInaTIma]

In games like Skyrim or Fallout I just don't bother. I don't like crafting or magic. The only exception is when Crafting or Alchemy is the core of the game, like in Atelier Totori.

 

[daveman247]

The only game i've actually taken potion making/ crafting seriously is in the witcher 2. You actually NEED to do that stuff to do well in that game

 

[Lilani]

In Skyrim I like to make potions simply because it's a cheap and easy way to gain levels and earn perks. You accumulate ingredients wherever you go, and once you've got a good collection hop into an alchemist's store, brew up some potions, and then sell them to the store. Easy exp, and a small profit. And some of the potions even end up being useful, once your alchemy level is high enough anyway.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Yes althought it depend on how rare/ common the ingredients are in that perticular game and also how hard/ easy it is to gather gold/ money.
I do it if the ingredient are easy to get to the point that the inventory is full or max out thank to that ingredient and getting gold is hard to come by.
I don't do it if it's the oppersite to my above statement. However if it is a mixture like it got some rare and common ingredient then I will still invest some time to make the stuff out from the ingredients.
At the end of the day it's my time and my fun that are affect by this.

 

[King of Wei]

Why buy what you can make for free? All the money you save from making potions can then go towards buying more awesome gear later on. Plus poisons are awesome and they're always either not for sale period or ridiculously expensive.

 

[Muspelheim]

Well, I think it's fairly fun, mixing various substances and elements together to create useful little potions. I just like the feeling of finding a rare sort of cave fungus, mix it with some rare powdered lichknob and get a useful li'l potion out of it.

I do tend to feel a bit limited by the mechanics, though. I always feel the boundries start just where I'm about to really leap off, and create a stinkhorn/dragonwart gasbomb.

But then again, I usually play the spindly mage/priest type of character, reading every book I find, examine the dungeon murals in the torchlight and displaying the priceless historical artefacts in my house like a museum. I think I just like playing the academic, scientific type of character.

The thing to remember is that fun is a very personal thing. I do find it fun to just stand around in my little workshop making things.

 

[Norrdicus]

Depends on the game, usually I do use alchemy though.

I've never found a really good reason to craft potions in D&D computer games (and I hope someone here can give me one). They usually either consume godly amounts of XP or gold for the luxury of... letting a non-magic companion cast a buff on themselves that they don't usually learn, once?

REALLY?

But yeah, when doing alchemy yourself is way cheaper, and the effects are either potent or you can mix and match effects, I'll definitely mess with my potion bottles and weird herbs

 

[Kopikatsu]

I pretty much never do crafting or alchemy. Ever. The only exception is if it's required to get better gear, and even then I only do it when absolutely necessary.

 

[Elfgore]

Nope. Hate everything about gathering materials to craft potions and items. This is why I have to play The Witcher series on easy because they are required to play on anything higher. Which is Bullcrap.

 

[BrotherRool]

The only time I've ever done it is in the Witcher where the game was designed around people doing it. Normally it's seems like a massive fuss and inconvenience for not much reward

 

[New Frontiersman]

Usually I do depends on the game I'm playing and the character. In Skyrim and Oblivion I'll gather ingredients as I go and make potions with them. I don't have much use for most of the potions but I use what I can and sell the rest. In Monster Hunter gathering ingredients is a bit more time consuming so every once in awhile I'll go on a resupply mission and collect ingredients and craft healing potions and other useful items until I have enough and then wait until they're all gone then do it again.

I kinda enjoy collecting ingredients making potions. Its a nice bit of relaxation after a long day of questing and it's kind of a fun little activity to do. Plus it saves me money.

 

[boradam]

It depends on the game, in Fallout I'll be crafting me some stuff up for roleplay/gameplay reasons, everyone eats, and food heals more than stims with high enough survival. In others, it depends -- like for Dragon Age I'll craft something as a substitute for something else if I can't use it, like if I was a rogue with no spirit healer and needed those revival bombs.

 

[Pebkio]

Yeah, it really depends on the game. I don't like your choices either... so much, in fact, that I'm not answering your poll. Only one response for people who find it a neat mechanics sometimes... and that answer is a mocking depiction. You might as well have made that choice say "Yep, I love wasting time".

I used it in Morrowind and Oblivion but not so much in Kingdom's of Amalur. I do it on the Sims 3. Collecting aliens for interrogation beyond the needed two (or three) is basically the same thing, and I went out of my way for that. I do it for most MMOs.

A well-designed game with potions will feature potions that can do stuff magic can't... and the game won't make itself pointless by selling the same potions you could make. I also find your pictures kinda dumb because that blue frothing drink might turn me invisible or let me levitate while you like being a meatshield who just swings a pointed metal stick around. And then you could do some parkour crap and try to slice me up, but I've made a potion of steel-skin, and also laser eyes. It's just such a versatile mechanic (when made correctly) to which swinging a penis-extension around just can't compare. To me anyway, maybe you like doing the xxxy combo a lot.

 

[Gottesstrafe]

Sometimes, depending on how time consuming or skill intensive the alchemy mechanic is. In games like Monster Hunter, they're just throwing ingredients at you and it's a very economical alternative to buying things from the shop, especially since many of the items are either unobtainable otherwise or only obtainable late in the game. In the Elder Scrolls games, Alchemy was essentially a license to print money, and incredibly useful for us thieves who are pretty much on a 24 hour Feather potion drip. Hell, in Morrowind I usually had at least 10 each of industrial strength levitate and invisibility potions on the side as part of my bug-out bag. I'm also an unscrupulous pack rat so I usually end up with a lot of ingredients in my pack on my way out of dungeons, might as well do something with them.