Alchemy

I know how controversial this topic is, but I don't care. I'm just going to compile an alchemy system right here.
*Note* This system has been completely taken from Ultima, but my goal is to make it compatible with Starbound by altering some recipes, adding new potions, etc.

Alchemy​

The art of making potions. Have you ever wanted to gain a slight advantage by poisoning your weapon? Have you been fighting a losing battle and needed a smoke bomb to give you cover to slip away? Are you bored with grenades and would rather throw an explosive glowing purple glass bottle? Are you tired of carrying that heavy cumbersome flashlight, and just want to see in the dark with your eyes enhanced by a night sight potion? Well you've come to the right page. Here will be a lesson on ingredients and recipes to make yourself some potions!

Tools​

Mortar and Pestle -- Made from stone, marble, or glass. An Alchemist's best friend!

This is what you will use to make all of your potions!​

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Empty Bottle -- Made from glass. This is where the completed product is held!

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Potion Keg -- Made from wood(Empty keg, barrel lid, and keg tap)(can hold 100 potions). This is where a large amount of one potion type can be held for those serious Alchemists. Can dispense many potions worth into your empty bottles. Can be dyed to easily tell what potion type is contained within.

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Intricate Pipe system -- (can hold 100+ potions) For the ultimate Alchemists who have taken to
and bigger containers? making a huge business out of their specialization.


Tool Suggestions and Alterations are Welcome!

Reagents*​

The reagents can tie into the gardening** system. Grow your own Alchemy ingredients right outside your lab!

**Some reagents may need to be harvested from animals​

*Most of these descriptions are just for details sake, you won't need to do anything to prepare the reagents besides grow/loot them.​

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Font in green is what the ingredient is used for​

Black Pearl -- One oyster in ten thousand will yield a black pearl suitable for potion making. It is usually crushed to a fine, iridescent powder before being combined with other reagents. It is a common reagent in potions involving travel, distance, propulsion or projection.

Blood Moss -- Blood Moss grows only in the driest of times, when all around it is perishing from drought. It cannot survive the absence of direct sunlight, and thus passes from the earth each night, only to return when the sun blazes mercilessly upon the land. Blood Moss seems to feed only in ripening grain - it can lay waste to an acre of corn in a single day and vanish without a trace as night falls, leaving naught but fruitless stalks swaying in the cool, night breeze. Blood Moss is used to increase speed and mobility.

Garlic -- Legends of its protective powers extend back through the mists of time. For the purposes of potions, the bulb of the plant is washed, peeled and ground into a paste.

Ginseng -- Ginseng focuses the powers of healing and enhancement. However, its bitterness belies its restorative nature. Before it can be used in potions, the root of the plant should be boiled in the freshest water, cooled and brought back to a boil in fresh water no less than forty times. With the last boiling, it is transformed into a heavy, strong-smelling syrup.

Mandrake Root -- The powerful Mandrake inhabits the dimmest groves of dankest swamps. Once found, great care must be taken in uprooting it in order to keep the taproot intact, for the taproot is its locus of power. The exposed root is then carefully boiled and dried. Mandrake Root is used in potions involving strength, power, and energy.

Nightshade -- The deadly Nightshade, another denizen of the swamps, was christened for its strange, waxen flowers, which only bloom at night. It should be carefully handled and prepared, for it is poisonous to the touch. As a reagent, nightshade focuses the powers of death, damage, poison and illusion.​

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Spider's Silk -- Spider's Silk is as common as spiders are, but as fine and light as air. Because of this, at least one ounce of it is required for a simple spell. The spider's silk concentrates the power to summon, conjure, and bind. Originally this reagent was harvested only from the albino ghoul spider, although later years it appears that other species were employed, and caches of webbing could often be found in the nests of common giant spiders.​

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Sulfurous Ash -- Sulfurous ash is the residue left by sulfur that has been set alight. It holds the energy of friction from the volcanic eruption that begot it. It is recommended that freshly collected ash be sifted through a fine mesh sieve, ensuring consistency and easy mixing. It is used in potions that create explosions, fire, or light.​

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Reagents Suggestions and Alterations are Welcome!​

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Potion Recipes​

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The strengths of the potions for now will just have to do with the amount of ingredients used. I think that there should be some sort of limitation used to keep from using the highest strength right away just for balancing reasons. I also think that since the original ingredients for these potions needed only one type of reagent because it used to require Alchemy skill, and since there won't be a skill system by default in Starbound there needs to be another kind of limitation as this shouldn't be so ridiculously easy to make such awesome potions.​

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Key: L = Lesser Potency​

M = Normal Potency​

G = Greater Potency​

D = Deadly potency(for poison)​

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Heal -- Ginseng L:1,M,G:7 -- Instantly repairs user's injuries. The stronger the potency the more it heals.​

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Agility -- Blood Moss M:1, G -- User gains a boost of speed for (?) seconds.​

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Cure -- Garlic L:1, M, G:6 -- Instantly cures user's poisonous intoxication. The stronger the potency the stronger the poison it can cure.​

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Strength -- Mandrake M:2, G:5 -- User deals extra melee damage for (?) seconds.​

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Poison -- Nightshade L:1, M:2, G:4, D :8 -- Can be applied to weapons or food. Deals damage over time. The stronger the potency the more deadly the damage.​

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Explosion -- Sulfurous Ash L:1, M:5, G:10 -- Can be thrown. Explodes upon impact. The stronger the potency the bigger the explosion.​

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Night Sight -- Spider's Silk M:1 -- User's sight is highly enhanced in the darkness for (?) minutes.​

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Confusion Blast -- (?) -- Explodes upon impact. Those affected in region of cloud will become confused and wander aimlessly, forgetting what they were just doing.​

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Smoke Bomb -- (?) -- Explodes upon impact. Creates a giant cloud of smoke for a chance to escape.​

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Water Breathing -- Black Pearl M:5 -- User can hold breath for an extra (?) seconds.​

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Invisibility -- 4 Blood Moss , 3 Nightshade -- User gains perfect invisibility for (?) seconds.​

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Potion Recipe Suggestions and Alterations are Welcome!​

Maybe get inspiration for a potion recipe from current reagent descriptions!​

 

Thanks for submitting a new suggestion!

Please remember to give your opinion on this suggestion by voting on our suggestions page.

 

And I agree completely. By the end of this I intend on flipping what I started with entirely on its head to make it completely Starbound oriented.

Yeah that's in the back of my mind, but I LOVE medieval themed everything and I don't see why not keep potions. Maybe change some things to powdered/pill form and keep others liquid potion intake. I'll see where it all leads me and just go from there though.

 

Also change the tools to be more sci-fi, with beakers, ambelics, heating pan things that I forgot the name of, and others as well.

 

I like the idea, but think it should be called medicine or chemistry instead of alchemy. Mainly to fit in more with the sci-fi theme.

 

alchemy is a valid point BUT
it would have to be from a list of plants already in starbound and if for say an invisibility potion was being made itd have to be some rare hard too occur space plant on the moons of some place heal would have too have a buffer cooldown or it could be a regenerative effect.
if alchemy was added i think it would have to be added as something not so magical maybe call it herbalry or something.
if they were added theyd just have to be so there not completely overpowered

 

I'm liking the idea of Alchemy, but it should be one that's unique to Starbound. Anything that brings some extra depth to the game is good in my book.

Edit. the idea that randomly generated plants etc on the worlds would have slightly different effects/strengths is exciting.

 

Chemistry probably because medicine is connected in my mind to healing, not adding benefits and / or de-buffs, if there is a poisoning system in place of course.

 

I take it that these syringes pictured here are not good enough for potion bottles? I'm sure there's something similar to this in game already, it's just a matter of how it is presented.

 

I didn't notice those, pretty cool. Nice find.

I like potion bottles, but it'd be cool to have both as options just for vanity-sake.

 

I would rather have a chemistry system, where you mix sci-fi sounding chemicals together, explode your lab if you mess up (or just flood it with poisonous gas if you only messed up a little.) And most importantly, if the player knows his/her chemistry, they can predict what is going to react with what, removing some of the guess-and-check, now you just have to drink it and hope it doesn't turn your insides into mush.
Also, different parts of chemicals are transferred between each other, which means that under the right circumstances, you can convert chemicals with all the right ''parts'' into nearly any combination. This would mean that ridiculously complex piping and manufacturing units could be created. Though for those who aren't very hardcore about this and only want one thing, that's possible to get without too much effort

 

How about something that is definitely along these lines, but a little more scientifically advanced, and a little more fit for Starbound (in my opinion). How about molecular decomposition and composing?

All of the Starbound biomes, tree, plantlife, etc., vastly differ. Why not have it so that you can extract a set of elements from certain materials and recombine them into medicine for healing, buffing, and detoxing?

I say this as opposed to alchemy because alchemy is something that I find very 'fantasy', and chemistry (or in this case the mixing of certain things you find on planets) would not suit the randomness and diversity of all of the obtainable things in Starbound, while giving each thing a few elements it decomposes into would.

This wouldn't require the developers to break down everything, but simply dirt, ores, and plants.

 

I don't think it'd be that hard to have everything break-down-able, simply have a bit of code that if it's not assigned an element/chemical, it'll use the elements of its components (minus a little for inefficiency). Certain uncraftable items don't break down at all, because they're not assigned an element and they're not craftable, so it would be a sad idea to break them down.

 

Most of the things you would be breaking down would not be craftable, though.

You might break down a piece of fireleaf (example; fictional name) for the phosphorous, sulfur, and carbon in it. Then you could mix the phosphorous with some arsenic for a temporary poison that is applied to a weapon. (I'm not a chemistry major, nor do I have a strong background in poisons, thus I don't know if this is even a thing.)

 

Usually the vast majority of items and blocks are craftable in games like these. Most guns, furniture, items probably all are craftable, and if they are they can use the above system. So rather than having thousands of items to code, you'd only need a few hundred.
It would also serve to generalize the stuff, rather than having hundreds of different items, you might only have a dozen base chemicals that can be combined to make more chamicals (144 different chemicals just from that, if you can only combine 2 at a time, 1,728 if by 3s) and then those could be combined too, if they added heat mechanics, then you could get even more chemicals out of that, and create an extremely complicated and in-depth system, but it could easily be separated into bite-sized chunks for dabblers, and then higher tiers would have randomized properties (where every player in the world has the same seed, so you'd have ''explorers'' that are trying to discover the few useful pockets of potions out of the millions of different possible potion combinations as you go from 12 to 144 to 20,736 to an incredible number, just from a dozen different basic chemicals.

the math for the combinations of different chemicals starting from 12, would be 144 tier 2 chemicals, not bad, that's a lot of useful potions and where most people would stop. For those wanting more variety and better potions there's the tier 3 chemicals, with 20,736 different combinations of the 144 tier 2 chemicals (though this could be expanded to 24,336 different chemicals by adding the 12 tier 1 chemicals.) I'd expect thost to go by rather quickly, as players start realizing just how daunting of a task it is, they'll probably build complex automated machines to accelerate the process and collaberate with each other to find interesting pots from the mountains of ones with nasty effects or are just wierd results of the random generator (it heals you but it damages you first, things like that would be funny though.) They're not necissarily better, just have ore specific properties, though some will be really good, or be extremely specialized in certain situations. Then there's the tier 4 chemicals, with a whopping 599,858,064 different combinations of potions. That's a big number, and will take a long ass time for even the most dedicated chemistry organizations to sort through, some will have amazing effects, and those ones will spread through the internet, because if you know where they are, they are easy to get to, requiring just 4 steps, and others will be tossed away as duplicates or things just plain useless.
But Starbound is about exploration, and this could be an easy frontier to let the players push, and with proper coding it could be literally infinite, players seek out the gems that a somewhat wacky random generator throws out there, laugh at the awkward or wierd potions, and bask in the glory when they find something amazing.

 

dude thats a fantastic idea full support! hey and if you have time check out some of my suggestions!

 

Fair enough

 

I like the rationalization of both of these ideas and it would definitely take some work in-game to actually organize something of this nature in order to bring the ideas to their maximum potential.

I don't really have much to add for now except thanks for contributing!

I'm going to mull over this...