Alchemy balance, brainstorming

[Chickenudoom]

I'd eventually like to give potions a much longer duration, and reduce their maximum useage from 3 to 2 before refilling. For duration, I'm thinking an average of 5 minutes for lvl 1 potions, 7.5 minutes for lvl 2 potions, and 10 minutes for lvl 3 potions.

Toxicity degeneration would most likely need to be readjusted.

Unfortunately that would also mean there's a pretty good chance that we'd completely remove the skill "Delayed Recovery" I'd also suggest changing +5% potion duration for every skill point spent to something like +5-ish max toxicity.

Another pretty simple way we could prevent excessive decoction-chugging would be to add +2 to toxicity regen (positive numbers are BAD for toxicity regen, since it's actually a DEgen) into every decoction. Though adding it to regular potions wouldn't be good since you'd run the risk of drinking too many and pushing your toxicity regen into a positive number.

_this thought isn't finished, will come back to it_

[Lknechtli]

This is, of course, pre-build-in-a-bottle. Whenever I get around to it, it will probably be a complete overhaul.

[TriangleAuthority]

The toxicity regen thing sounds interesting! Never thought about that.

Could envision having low initial toxicity per potion, with toxicity generation attached to each one over some duration. It would make white honey useful! This would let you stack more potions to prepare for a single hard fight, or have just a couple up for the length of an entire dungeon.

examples: Before a tough fight, you take tawny owl, thunderbolt, and black blood. If you waited for the full toxicity duration to elapse, you would die. But if you finish the fight in a timely manner, you can purge afterward and avoid the full toxicity cost.

Before a long dungeon, you can only take tawny owl, as the full toxicity cost doesn't leave much room. However, this does leave enough room that you can take swallow on top of it for a tough fight in that dungeon, as long as you purge afterward.

So basically, you pay more in toxicity to keep potions up for longer. Toxicity degen's role also changes a bit, since now it lets you keep multiple potions up for a longer fight. Toxicity degen would be a good candidate for green branch passive bonus I think. I like this better than tox threshold increase, because that feels too discrete to me. More tox is not useful until you hit a critical point where you can take another potion.

This would also add some good tension as you watch your toxicity climb during a fight. Makes it easier to get above your threshold.

I will see about adding a toxicity cost per second and duration to the xml this week. I like it!

EDIT: Could add a stagger and/or other vulnerability to white honey usage, too. If geralt is forced to vom in the middle of a fight, he better have some points in quen.

[BardBlue]

High toxicity generation as opposed to instant toxicity gain for drinking potions is an interesting idea. Might also consider alternate ways to decrease toxicity than white honey. Something like consuming adrenaline points to decrease toxicity (whether instantly or its rate of decrease) would be cool. Or losing toxicity on kill. Or throwing bombs decreases toxicity. Or affecting enemies with signs decreases toxicity (probably by a pretty small amount).