Willpower affects the radius of an alchemy explosion.
issueid=2304 08-25-2013 12:51 PM
Ancient Member
Number of reported issues by Stingray1: 97
Willpower affects the radius of an alchemy explosion.

When a player 'a'plies the alchemy skill and chooses the wrong ingredients a fiery explosion engulfs the character.

The radius of this explosion increases with a high value in the Willpower attribute.

This gives a character with fire immunity and equipment protection items the ability to create unlimited large area of effect fire balls.

As even 2 herbs mixed results in an explosion and herbs are easy to acquire in large quantities.

Willpower should not affect the radius.

I would like to suggest that when 2 herbs are mixed, the resulting explosion only occurs on the tile the PC is occupying.
Issue Details
Issue Number 2304
Project ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Category All
Status Fixed
Priority 6
Affected Version ADOM 1.2.0 pre 14
Fixed Version ADOM 1.2.0 pre 22
Milestone (none)
Users able to reproduce bug 0
Users unable to reproduce bug 0
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)




08-25-2013 04:14 PM
Member
I don't consider this a bug. This is how it was intended to be. Maybe making it an RFE, but it's definitely not a bug in the game.

08-25-2013 04:36 PM
Ancient Member
I don't get how Willpower affecting the radius of an alchemy error is not a bug in your opinion. The error results in a fire ball and the code uses the character's Willpower to calculate the radius for elemental balls. It is intended for spells and wands, because the character through willpower summons a bigger/stronger ball.
I think what happened is that the same piece of code is used.
Making an error in mixing the wrong ingredients, how is Willpower determining the size of the Fire Ball?
It is a scummy tactic and I don't want to be tempted into using scummy tactics.

Anyway, the creator will simply respond: Not a bug/ Intended bevaviour.

Yes, it would be an enhancement. If his response is: Intended behavior, then so it is and I will be content. I'm putting this in a bug report so he knows what the situation is, in case he did not intend it.

08-25-2013 05:55 PM
Ancient Member
So you're proposing to remove one challenge game (potions and alchemy only)? :/
http://www.adom.de/forums/showthread...Mad)-Alchemist

08-25-2013 06:05 PM
Ancient Member
Those explosions are obviously magical, if you can make two herbs or potions of water blow up. I think it makes sense that they would call the same code magic and be affected by the attributes of the person invoking them.

08-25-2013 06:59 PM
Ancient Member
@Sami Not me!!! I'm just reporting the current behaviour, its for the creator to decide. Anyway, your alchemist can still use alchemy explosions as an offense. In fact this fix will make the challenge a bit more challenging as the radius of the blast will only be 2. As I see your challenge, it's still easy once you get a herb farm and =Fire. Only challenge really after that is fire immune creatures.

08-25-2013 10:01 PM
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by anon123
Those explosions are obviously magical, if you can make two herbs or potions of water blow up. I think it makes sense that they would call the same code magic and be affected by the attributes of the person invoking them.
They may be magical, but the magic in question doesn't originate from the character themselves, and is not being directly controlled by them. Here's a counterexample: the radius of fireball traps shouldn't be controlled by willpower, should it? I certainly don't think so. They are set off by the PC, but the explosions aren't actually under the PC's control.

Personally, I think mixing two potions of water probably shouldn't cause an explosion to begin with. That may be more of an oversight than something that should be taken as a source of insight into how chemistry works in the world of ADOM.

EDIT: And I don't understand the explosions resulting from mixing herbs either. Shouldn't an alchemy failure there just create some sort of poisonous substance?

Oh, and I tend to think that alchemists are not magi, and that chemistry in ADOM is still chemistry, even if the effects are extremely exaggerated. Alchemy skills don't even use mana, do they? So I don't think willpower should play a part in it. You can't get a better reaction yield in real life by using willpower, for instance.

08-25-2013 10:09 PM
Ancient Member
A nice result would maybe having random explosions both in element(hey, magical explosions are weird) and radius determined anew each game. But the same two ingredients will give the same result during that game. I mean the recipes are randomizes each game, aren't they?

08-27-2013 09:24 AM
Member
In ADOM Alchemy is not just chemistry, according to TB it involves magic rituals (see here and here for example), so probably the influence of willpower is not a bug.

08-27-2013 09:46 AM
Ancient Member
Good find. Do you think a character with low Willpower should sometimes fail at alchemy?

08-27-2013 10:03 AM
Member
@Stingray1
An interesting thought, but it doesn't seem to fit with the other forms of magic (I mean, AFAIK Willpower just affects the radius of a spell). But I admit that the magical nature of Alchemy should be made clearer in-game, right now it is very easy to mistake it for some form of chemistry; maybe brewing potions should use some PP, like spells do?

08-28-2013 07:27 AM
Senior Member
I'm curious (since I've never had a PC yet with high enough Willpower, I don't think (never won)): are fireball traps affected, as Greyling seemed to hint? If so, then that definitely sounds very buggish or illogical and should be fixed or altered since you're definitely not doing rituals every time you happen to set off a trap!

08-28-2013 07:30 AM
Senior Member
Also, I'd think that even if this is intentional, that it should still be tweaked or nerfed in some fashion (maybe it should deal some kind of unstoppable damage to the PC like draining the PC's life or something, kind of like what can happen when you screw up reading a spellbook, after all you're making a magical error) since as mentioned it provides an opportunity for scumming. Perhaps a follow-up RFE, as opposed to a bug report, to that effect should be given?

08-28-2013 11:52 AM
Ancient Member
Thanks mike3 for your inputs. Yes I might invest in an RFE in future if necessary. As mentioned before, this report's intention was merely to notify development, in case they do not realize the current behaviour.

08-28-2013 02:04 PM
Ancient Member
Personally, I've only used offensive alchemy to Shift+Q unsatisfactory PCs - maybe I should try it more often :)

08-29-2013 03:41 PM
Ancient Member
My recollection is that vortex blasts may also be affected by Wi if it is >48. Don't remember about traps, but I don't think so. Have to double check though.

Personally, I've only used offensive alchemy to Shift+Q unsatisfactory PCs - maybe I should try it more often :)
I've used alchemy to clear a greater undead vault before. It was one of the ones where all of the liches were trapped in the little room in the middle. My merchant (!) had a bunch of potions of boost willpower, so I was able to buff Wi up to 99 and blast them all with alchemy fireballs without ever opening the room.

08-29-2013 05:12 PM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by JellySlayer
My recollection is that vortex blasts may also be affected by Wi if it is >48. Don't remember about traps, but I don't think so. Have to double check though.
I learned from the ascend from I:10000 challenge that vortex blast radius is affected by the level of the vortex.

08-29-2013 05:56 PM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by Grond
I learned from the ascend from I:10000 challenge that vortex blast radius is affected by the level of the vortex.
Yes, I learned that from grinding in the SMC.

04-23-2014 07:22 PM
The Creator
Actually I'm confused about the willpower thing. Willpower definitely is not factored into the radius of vortex explosions.

But for alchemy I now have randomized the radius.

04-23-2014 07:31 PM
Ancient Member
It is likely the Vortex's experience level that affect the radius then.

04-24-2014 04:08 AM
Ancient Member


Note how the PC took 45000+ points of damage despite having acid immunity.

+ Reply