Saturday 8 June 2002

Pic of the day: Catgirl on the bridge. Unknown artist, ca AD 2002.

Morrowind alchemy journal

All I wanted was to learn to make my own potions. Alchemy and enchantment are skills in this game; and conjuration is expanded to a whole school of magic too. I'd like to summon my own protectors and weapons, concoct awesome potions and wield an arsenal of multifunction magical items. I still think that one day I will, but it won't happen anytime soon unless I cheat. (Cheating is made exceedingly simple, while the game itself is made rather hard.) A more realistic goal would probably be to be able to make the most basic potions myself; but even that is beyond me after almost a week playing this character.

(On a side note, you know you've role-played a cat girl for a while when you notice that you LIKE to play with the rats before you kill them. Khajjiiti are masters of hand-to-hand fighting, and this particular style allows you to knock your enemies down without killing them, though you can kill them when they are down.)

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Potion making works as follows: You have from 1 to 4 pieces of alchemical apparatus. The most basic is mortar and pestle, and then you have a retort, an alembic and a calcinator. If you own a mortar & pestle or more, you can activate it anywhere on the road (if you are willing to lug it all around – it can weigh around 20 kilo all together). Just drag the mortar onto your paper doll and the potion making starts instantly. Pick reagents from a list based on your inventory. Each reagent has 4 magical effects; at levels 15-20 only the primary effect is visible. If two reagents have the same effect, they will make a potion. But! If they have a hidden effect in common too, then this effect will become apparent in the potion. Often as not the extra effect is a negative one. By default it is just as strong as the positive effect, unless you have an alembic to reduce it.

The quality of a potion depends on the completeness and quality of the equipment, as well as the skill of the alchemist. A high quality potion has stronger effect and lasts longer, and have less negative side effects. (Ideally there should be no side effects, but even if there is, a high quality potion has a better main effect and less side effect than a low quality potion from the same recipe.) It is also worth noticing that a high quality poisonous potion sells for around the same price as a healing potion at the traders. I guess it's none of your business what they do with it, right?

Now my character is level 9, and still unable to mix a simple "restore fatigue" potion. Well, I've succeeded once or twice so far. I've also succeeded in getting the "water walking" effect from eating an appropriate mushroom. (Don't try this at home kids! I mean, don't eat mushrooms and walk on water in real life. Only in the game.) I've managed to buy training in Alchemy from skill 15% up to skill 19%, and then I got another 1% by reading a book. (Yes, you can increase some skills by reading appropriate books, but only once per book.) But even at 20%, I almost never succeed with any alchemical experiment. Even the simplest ones fail much more than 4 times out of 5, so those skills can't be correctly calibrated.

You can buy training, but it costs more and more as your skill goes up. And there are no obvious sources of wealth in the game, except for killing aggressive people and sell their belongings. Or you could pick alchemical ingredients and sell them, but most of them don't sell for much raw.

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I'm glad my character joined the Imperial Cult, though. This is the worship of the small gods we know from Daggerfall, plus the first emperor Tiber Septim. (Yes, the emperors all have the surname Septim, which is exceedingly ironic since in Latin this means something like "the seventh". It gives the distinct impression that The Elder Scrolls is made by people who flunked their History badly and then decided to make their own. Not that they haven't succeeded.)

The Imperial Cult has 3 different kinds of tasks, and I choose the Lay Healer branch. You can be a Lay Healer and at the same time be a Shrine Sergeant, but the quests are very different and you get them from different people within the temple. To my surprised pleasure, the initial quests of Lay Healers are all related to alchemy. You are sent to fetch various ingredients, and in the process are told the composition of those potions. As you progress, you are given more and more pieces of alchemical apparatus, and encouraged to practice. But unless you have alchemy as a major skill, you won't be able to make actual potions at this point in the game. Still, a nifty approach.

And! I've also gotten two enchanted items from them. The Mara Amulet boosts my healing skills, and the Stendarr Belt boosts my fighting skills. The effect is moderate (5 points to various skills) and only lasts half a minute real time. But at this point in the game, these boosts can mean the difference between success and failure.

Oh, and! Each time you successfully invoke an enchanted item, you get a tiny bit of experience in the skill of enchantment. So if I keep using these things every time they could make a difference, I should eventually start to get some enchantment skill of my own. Enchanted items in Morrowind recharge over time from the ambient magicka of that world, so you can use them again and again if you just space it out.

But enchantment is a skill all of its own, and I haven't really come that far yet. Perhaps a week from now ... if I'm still playing ...