Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-34030170-20191205161352/@comment-34030170-20191206134031

Drowsy Kitty wrote: Ooh, very nice! Would love to see more evil-aligned drinks added.

I do have some concerns though, with the reworking and addition of these drinks, especially in regards to balance and how they compare to other drinks.

Orc Draught vs Miruvor

As it stands, orc draught and miruvor are supposed to be pretty balanced effect-wise, with orc draught trading duration for added damage. This proposed change will reduce this damage for maxed draughts and even add regeneration to compensate for this, which might give evil players more of an edge when brewing potent drinks. If a player has food items to restore hunger that nerf will only add a minor inconvenience of having to eat more often, which people do in battles anyway.

The ingredients used are also relatively easy to obtain for evil-aligned players, especially with the removal of Morgul Shrooms from the recipe, they can be made basically from the start, albeit with double the brewing time, but that shouldnt really be a problem in the long run, and definitely worth the wait. In contrast, Miruvor requires three ingredients which can only be taken from Lothlorien, which is no stroll from the Shire either (I might add that Mallorn nuts are a real pain to get, and you need three of them xd), with a fourth to add complexity to the recipe.

Good players now have shorter durations of strength with no regen using a more complex recipe. This is compared to evil players having longer durations of buffs plus regeneration (for a minute at the highest potency). I doubt this is equal to the bonus of good players being able to restore hunger, especially if good players usually have access to better food that can restore more hunger and saturation.

Morgul Draught vs Dwarven Tonic

Another thing that has frustrated me greatly is the 'balance' between morgul draught and dwarven tonic. Similar to above, Morgul draught has the duration-damage trade-off which dwarven tonic lacks, but this does nothing to make up for the difference in cost of recipes. To brew dwarven tonic, one would require two rare plants and a mithril nugget, plus wheat just cos the recipe just needed that little extra touch of complexity. In comparison, morgul draught as it is requires two commonly-found ingredients, with the suggestion making it now require a third ingredient, which is also not too hard to find. I do agree that the Blue Mountains is closer to the Shire than Mordor is, but the time needed to actually find the dwarfwort and the time and danger spent acquiring mithril more than makes up for the trip that evil players require to get to Mordor, after which they no longer need to worry about trying to get ingredients again.

I might also add that dwarven tonic also adds alchoholicity into the picture which means that good players need to build up their tolerance to prevent themselves from becoming drunk for half a minute after drinking potent dwarven tonic, while evil players simply have to wait for their health to regeneate after drinking Morgul Draught, and when mining, evil players face no threats from any npcs that spawn underground in the dark, so the damage will not matter in either case.

In addition to that, Morgul-Draught is locked behind an alignment-requirement which means that good players attempting to drink it will be poisoned instead. This is not true for dwarven tonic, and killing good players or raiding their bases is all that is needed to loot and use their hard-earned dwarven tonic. All in all, I doubt that this doesnt need much change, and feel that the proposed change is insufficient to make up for the current imbalance.

A possible alternative

I do have something to propose in that regard though. Evil players currently suffer from an inability to get access to cheap, easy-to-acquire potions, while good players have access to Ent-draughts, which means that an evil player has no way to acquire simple regeneration, haste or waterbreathing. This means that evil players will need to resort to drinking athelas brew or the suggested changed orc-draughts to get regeneration in Middle-Earth, and the time required to brew those does not make them consumables that one would use all the time, unlike easily-replenishable ent-draughts.

I would actually propose the reworking of Morgul-draughts into the evil-equivalent of ent-draughts. The regular Morgul flowers could be replaced by several variants that spawn soley in the Morgul Vale and maybe and can be grown using bonemeal on grass there. In the vale, there could be new structures similar to Dol-Guldur altars with the crafting table replaced with a new item required for brewing these flowers/herbs, like a 'morgul cauldron' or something to that extent. Brewing could be identical to making ent-draughts, just using the new item, and the draughts can be consumed in a similar fashion, and would be otherwise identical to ent-draughts. I would not recommend adding the damage + duration boost, as the point of these items are that they can be consumed often and adding damage would make that unviable in combat scenarios.

Wow this turned out longer than I anticipated, but I hope that you consider these concerns that can hopefully make the suggestion more immersive and balanced. You definitely raise some good points. I was worried about how Miruvor in particular would be made significantly inferior by this. So, while I'm pretty happy with my improvements to Orc and Morgul draughts, I'll see if I can think of some ways to improve their Good equivalents, and maybe address some other balancing issues.

Orc Draught Vs. Miruvor Morgul-draught Vs. Dwarven Tonic So, those are my ideas. I found your Ent-draught equivalen idea very interesting, but I think it's too big a change for me to include it in this relatively simple suggestion. It could definitely make a good suggestion on its own, of course.
 * Miruvor could also have a regeneration effect, and perhaps drinking it would give some immediate health. At its most potent, I think the regeneration should last for about a minute and a half, and give back 6 health points (3 hearts). Meanwhile, perhaps Orc Draught's most potent regen effect could be reduced to 30 seconds.
 * I wasn't really familiar with Miruvor's recipe before this, but I agree this could definitely be changed. I think it was served in places well outside Lórien, but it seems basically all the ingredients can only be found there. I'm not entirely sure on what the new recipe could be, unfortunately. Perhaps it could feature more sugar, for one thing? Maybe it could also include a piece of Edhelvir, but I'm much less sure about that.
 * I've always found the required Mithril nugget ridiculous. It's expensive and doesn't make much sense. Perhaps it could instead use some glowstone dust? Works with the night vision effect, and is much less expensive.

Similarly, whatever makes Miruvor and Tonic balance well with my updated draughts I think would work better in a separate (but connected) suggestion.