A thought about the roadmapped alchemy system

[Guimoute]

It has to do with solvents. 

Kingdom Come: Deliverance has 4 solvents: water, wine, oil, spirituous.
Vintage Story has many types of liquid and it does have several variants of water, of wine, olives and sunflowers to make oil, brandies and aqua vitae. 

I believe borrowing a page out of KCD's book in that regard would allow several existing mechanics in VS to tie together nicely. Not the whole system, just the solvents. Then you can give value to:

- Aqua vitae production, beyond just booze for fun and improved linen bandages. 
- Wine, beyond fruit calories preservation.
- Oleaginous crops found in warm climates. In 1.21 you have un-hardcoded the fruit press so that it can press honeycombs and not just mash. It could press sunflower seeds and olives.
- Water filtering. Only that one is new. I'm sure a part of the team is a big fan of primitive survival videos on Youtube. Having to make one of those rock/sand/gravel/charcoal/fiber water filters would be how you convert random still water from the world into potion-tier water. The best part is that it's not dramatically different than the distiller we already have in the game. Change the model and texture, remove the heat requirement, then you have a system that can take dirty water at the top and slowly drip clean water at the bottom. 

Edited June 17, 2025 by Guimoute
typo

[MagpieOAO]

You could even just do a lot with water and herbs;

Clean water heals a bit over a long time. You can get clean water by boiling it, from a well or by purifying it with a filter. A basic filter is a barrel with gravel, sand and charcoal, producing clean water over time from dirty water. 

By combining herbs with water you get tea! Good for a while until it becomes lukewarm tea which is less effective. (Whatever properties of the herbs)

Herbs with alcohol can produce wines and ales with their properties (preserved for longer) or essences which produce a smaller but far more potent product that can then be added to clean water to produce the tea. 

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Example:

You get a bunch of Mint and produce tea for immediate consumption which provides some healing and warmth. You start a batch of mint alcohol in your cellar and using some existing leftover alcohol, through a distiller you create mint essence. 

Now as you wait for your mint alcohol to finish (ingame months) you can create mint tea by adding essence to clean water, making it a lot more convenient to enjoy while you have the mint alcohol for long trips or trading.  

[Maelstrom]

Alchemy is no longer on the roadmap.   It's been replaced with herbalism/brewing.  It could just be a renaming of what they had in mind originally.  OTOH it could be a rethinking of what they want the game to do.  It seems to me that the change is to envision more of a medicinal mechanic than a mystical chemistry one.  Given that the alcohol bandages came out a number of releases after poultices did, I would anticipate/theorize/speculate that this mechanic will be using different herbs (flowers and/or mushrooms) with different kinds of spirits to create different healing effects, especially considering the change to healing coming in 1.21.  Perhaps we'll see a weak long lasting poultice with ingredient set 1 while ingredient set 2 produces a stronger but short lived healing.

I hope that other effects could be created.  Such as low light vision (similar to the night vision goggles) or strength tincture to increase jump height and damage from melee weapons.

[Guimoute]

On 6/20/2025 at 8:03 PM, Maelstrom said:

Alchemy is no longer on the roadmap.   It's been replaced with herbalism/brewing.

Fortunately that does not change anything for me. In fact, it's probably a much more accurate name than alchemy because it's grounded in the real. 

[Maelstrom]

I was hoping for a psuedo-scientific alchemy to create some almost "magical" status effects.  Not exactly potions and not exactly magical outcomes.

[Guimoute]

It's still likely! I don't think a simple renaming means those ideas have been thrown in the bin.

[Thorfinn]

7 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

I was hoping for a psuedo-scientific alchemy to create some almost "magical" status effects.  Not exactly potions and not exactly magical outcomes.

Probably going to be pretty limited. Even bog-standard healing has drifted away from "magical" to "quasi-magical". I don't think the plan is to make herbalism a better boost than the class system, or there's not much of a reason to choose any class over any other. Maybe one of the better early game classes, knowing you can get the bonuses from the late game classes through herbs? I don't see that happening.

[Maelstrom]

I was thinking more along the lines of effects that aren't available through class selection, something like a jump boost to allow jumps of 2 or 3 blocks.  Not exactly magical flight, but not exactly scientific either.

Again, that is my hope; but with the roadmap changing the verbiage to herbalism/brewing, new bandages when distilling was added and the recent change to healing; we might have a more detailed system of creating poultices/bandages.

[LadyWYT]

27 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

I was hoping for a psuedo-scientific alchemy to create some almost "magical" status effects.  Not exactly potions and not exactly magical outcomes.

I think stuff like that will stem from Jonas tech, with herbalism producing different kinds of medical supplies or stimulants to help you in combat(like a strength potion). Gadgets like a Jonas pogo stick to help you jump higher or a Jonas scuba tank to let you dive deep underwater are a little more grounded in reality, plus they give the player a fun tinkering gameplay loop to toy with. Gadgets can also be something that you refuel or repair occasionally to continue using, instead of a consumable item that you need to constantly restock.

[Guimoute]

About Jonas scuba, I'm definitely hoping this becomes a thing (rather than water breathing potions):
More uses for fat, resin, brass, leather, glass.

 

Back to herbalism: I hope we eventually get a solution to depth-sickness. Either we go full dwarf lore and ale restores temporal stability, or grandma remedy and specific comfort foods and herbal teas can take that role. 

[LadyWYT]

3 minutes ago, Guimoute said:

Back to herbalism: I hope we eventually get a solution to depth-sickness. Either we go full dwarf lore and ale restores temporal stability, or grandma remedy and specific comfort foods and herbal teas can take that role. 

We already have a solution to stability loss--temporal gears. You can sacrifice a bit of your health to destroy a temporal gear, in return for restoring a large chunk of your stability. Granted, temporal gears don't stack, but how long does one really plan to hang around in an unstable area? One or two should be enough for a prolonged underground expedition, and while they're somewhat rare early in the game it's not hard to amass a small fortune of them by mid-late game.

[QueenGeeBee]

I think it would be pretty fun/thematic if alcohol improved stability since otherwise there's not much point in making the stuff other than rp. Getting drunk while messing with stone blasting bombs hundreds of blocks underground sounds fun.

In terms of herbalism though, I would feel a bit sad if it was all limited to different healing options. I know its not the most realistic, but I would prefer a few more gimmicky potion effects, like some stamina potion to increase woodchopping/mining/working speed for a time, or a potion to juice up the seraph and make them do more damage with melee weapons.

[Facethief]

4 hours ago, QueenGeeBee said:

I think it would be pretty fun/thematic if alcohol improved stability since otherwise there's not much point in making the stuff other than rp. Getting drunk while messing with stone blasting bombs hundreds of blocks underground sounds fun.

In terms of herbalism though, I would feel a bit sad if it was all limited to different healing options. I know its not the most realistic, but I would prefer a few more gimmicky potion effects, like some stamina potion to increase woodchopping/mining/working speed for a time, or a potion to juice up the seraph and make them do more damage with melee weapons.

1. Alcohol can be made in order to increase spoilage time, but it isn’t great for that, so I get your point.

2. I agree. We need to petition Tyron to add the magical potion of coca tea, to “increase efficiency”.

[Guimoute]

7 minutes ago, Facethief said:

1. Alcohol can be made in order to increase spoilage time, but it isn’t great for that, so I get your point.

I see what you mean too. Some alcohols are purely made for fun (which is fine). As much as I have fun making berry wine, there is no nutritional need for that if you have 3 apple trees because they store for a year. Ale is the worst offender in that it's annoying to grind the grain into flour, then you get 10L of ale for 50L of water which takes room, and the grain or its flour could have been stored for 15 years anyway so again, not a lot of food preservation value in ale. I make it only for roleplaying.