I think a herb generation is 1d1000 turns. 50d4 turns would mean that, on average, you herb bushes would die out much faster than they grow.

Ok, please give die suggestions. I want to see about 3 generations on average. So we want to see 1400-1600 turns. I'm not brilliant with the math, I know.

But that's me.

The thing is, I don't want it so high, that if the Gardening suggestion comes into play, the whole exercise just becomes: gather herbs, garden seeds, plant seeds, repeat.

Also it must happen quite often that 2 adjacent bushes must die, not long after another, so that a 2x2 pattern will not survive indefinately anyway.

edit - the numbers aren't that important here. If this get implemented, the Developers will do the magical balancing math they are renowned for. Best case you might also see 200 generations on 50d4.

Is it 1d1000 turns between generations, or is it 0.1% chance on each turn? It doesn't make much difference for the first 100 turns or so, but at 500 turns, there's a 60% chance of no generation if it's a 0.1% chance per turn.

Anyway, I think the biggest issue is that there are completely "stable" patterns... so here's my suggestion: Give bushes a number-of-generations limit, rather than a turn limit. On creation, each bush will last for 2d3 generations (beyond the creation generation step). This guarantees that, should it have three neighbours, it will reach "blossoming" stage. It also maximises the life of the bush to 6 generations.

And, should you try to set up a 2x2 stable set, then there's a fairly reasonable chance that two bushes of the four will die on the same turn, thus ruining the stability.

There could perhaps also be the ability to give the bush more life, say by watering it. Perhaps each time you pour water (or holy water, but not unholy water) on a herb bush, it adds 1d2 (or maybe 1d3-1 for regular water and 1d4-1 for holy water) generations to its lifespan... perhaps those with Gardening could get more generations from watering (in this case, I'd make it 1d2-1 for regular water and 1d3-1 for holy water, and then make it 2d2-2 for gardeners with regular water and 1d4-1 for gardeners with holy water).

Good alternative to the turn based lifespan. It also give a little more predictability of when a bush should be picked dry, for the player to decide ofcourse. My main concern was that I wanted to give the PC enough time to reach all the bushes in the Big Room ,for example, before they die.

"Making raising stats, -piety and healing sorted easily without much perseverence."

So what would "much perseverance" be? Grinding for holy water/potions of stat gain, or settling for lower stats, less piety, etc.? Or what?

Playing the game and gaining enough items/living sacrifices to convert into piety, rather than pressing w5 next to a bunch of herb bushes for 3 hours.

Basically to limit the amount of herbs so that it is still sufficient for some stat raising, piety, food, healing and alchemy. PC's with Herbalism, maybe Gardening still benefits more.

Hmm. I'm fine with this suggestion, although I'd prefer nerfing herbs in a different way.

With a nerf of stat-gaining herbs (for example by making potentials meaningful as suggested in other thread) + making herbs either non-sacrificeable or reducing their piety output after sacrificing a certain number, the imbalances would be fixed without resorting to this.

Neither. It is something pretty absurd. The formula almost certainly has something to do with prime factorization or divisibility of the turn counter, something like if(number of prime factors of turn counter) >= 1d1000 then next generation or if((turn counter mod 1000) is divisible by 1d1000) then next generation.

I love the Game of Life engine that is in the game and would hate to see it spoilt. I think the effort should be to balance the end-use of the herbs rather than the generation of the bushes themselves. To that effect I've made 2 new feature requests to balance stomafilla and spenseweed. There is already a feature request to balance stat rises from herbs.

I, for one, am for the suggestion in the RFE you refer to. But, still do we really want to see every PC reaching those potentials with (boring)ease. By following the guidelines in my suggestion, farming herbs will be interesting and limited.

Yes, I did consider reducing piety gains as an option, but then they can still be sold which defeats that option. Making herbs not sellable is something that won't fly either.

As I understand my suggestion it only changes stable patches, making herb bushes to be mortal, rather than immortal. You can still do your explosions.

Herbs aren't worth very much to sell. You'd have to scum for an awful lot of herbs to be get enough to get anything useful out of it. Much easier just to use sis if you're really desperate for gold.

http://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=1117

Still no-one requested nerfing the stat-raising herbs? The suggested maximums can still be reached with boring ease and replenished after stat drains or corruption effects. I melee Lich King's, don't mind taking drains. It will be back up there in no time.
So, for now, this suggestion still stands.

makes much more sense than tweaking a feature that is already quite difficult to abuse for newbie players.

We are heading down the path where only extremely experienced players will be able to finish the game if you complete nerf out herbs.

If a player (character) decides "I shall raise my piety and get crowned before carrying on with the advancement of the plot," then it makes no difference (from an out of game ethical standpoint) whether they spend 3 hours standing next to some herb bushes to obtain sacrifices, or spend 3 hours killing things to obtain sacrifices.

Also, your answer to that person's question is not good enough. Your version of "playing the game" is to wander around MURDERING everyone you see and stealing their possessions. Not every character is an assassin, there also exist farmer and healer classes, y'know! Didn't I read somewhere that it is possible to win the game without killing anyone?

From a game balance standpoint, it's possible that one method is so much more efficient than the other, as to make everything else obsolete. And if that's the case, then I'd agree that some balance is called for. (In other words, if you can gain piety by farming herbs 10x faster than by murder, then even people who prefer murder will choose to farm, and those people will be unhappy, and will submit RFEs.) However, I've never noticed such a huge disparity, and I've never seen hard evidence to support such a claim.

This is not completely nerfing out herbs, it's limiting it and making it not as easy as it is. You can still play the Game of Life and use water and seeds if you want to make it unlimited herbs.

Personally, I never bothered( ran right over them, unless I had Alchemy) with herbs until I got spoiled and was still able to finish unspoiled, this is to make farming more interesting and reduce abuse of the system, if a new player can figure out herbs, good for him.

What I meant with 3 hours is for those pursuing pre-crowns, those that only farm for crowning wiil not farm for long(well they won't farm at all anymore) . The same amount of piety can be obtained by just continuing the plot, no grinding is needed to raise enough funds for a crowning. Those that wanted to farm for pre-crowns would have been able to as I explained above, but this has become a non-issue as Grey's RFE has been implemented. And farmers and healers both get the Herbalism skill and a healer can thus obtain Gardening( if the Gardening RFE gets implemented), because killing Keethrax is a noble thing.

Maintaining farms in the suggested system would have been Much (interesting as opposed to boring)Perseverence, but see below.

The piety gains is a non-issue:http://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=1382

If this gets implemented you would be playing the Game of Life to sustain your farms, where as all one has to do now is make multiple 2x2 patches.

Not all beings can be sacrificed - undead, unlife, and anything bred or summoned, for instance. It is possible to completely pacify a location, but it's not possible to prevent dangerous beings from generating while using live sacrifices.

Similarly, killing beings to obtain sacrifice fodder is a dangerous pursuit, especially if the bred/summoned exploits (like the gremlin bomb) are fixed.

I'm hopeful that the various measures taken to curb the power of herbs will be sufficient. If not we'll reopen the issue.