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Staff Topic

Master Gardener and Potionmaking III

Master Gardener and Potionmaking III skills have been released. (In addition, 3 new potion recipes were made available to those of you who know Potionmaking II: Embiggenifying Potion, De-Embigennifying Potion and Trantsformation Fluid).

The two new skills work together well: there are 5 new gardening potions which are made with Potionmaking III  — but you can’t use them unless you have Master Gardener. There’s a potion to harvest an entire garden with a single pour, and likewise potions to clear, water, plant and fertilize all at once.

Since these are both high level skills and will probably take you a while to learn, we imagine some of you will be choosing one and some the other and there will be some buying and selling going on :)

The sixth potion for PM3, Draught of Giant Amicability, gives you 111 favor with a randomly chosen Giant, but you can “shake” the potion three times a day to switch it to another Giant.

Have fun!

Posted 4 months ago by Mart Lume Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

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  • I guess I didn't see it as confusing because the projects we put on our yards are labeled as gardens. It doesn't matter to me what I call a garden in RL, that's what those things are called in Glitch, so I'd assume if it said one garden, it'd mean only one of those. I agree it will probably settle itself in time, though.
    Posted 4 months ago by Little Miss Giggles Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Apparently the problem is that those people who live on that island over near europe call the entire backyard "the garden", even if there is no garden there at all.  
    Posted 4 months ago by WalruZ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Exactly right, WalruZ.  (Except when there is a "front garden" and a "back garden", neither of which needs to have an actual garden to qualify.)
    Posted 4 months ago by Eleanor Rigby Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Whereas in America a yard of the back or front variety frequently isn't a yard at all
    Posted 4 months ago by shhexy corin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I understand that, WalruZ. I was just saying it wouldn't occur to me to consider the potion working on anything but what is mechanically called a garden, since you have to put them in separately (if they were already in the yard when you expanded, it might be different for me). It's interesting to see the difference in thought in that respect.

    I call my RL backyard the secret garden; it's a sad one that needs work (damn the drought and my lazy self and busy life).
    Posted 4 months ago by Little Miss Giggles Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree that the Favor potion needs work. It either needs to be cheaper or have the reward increased if TS actually wants anyone to use it.
    Posted 4 months ago by Reirei Umezaki Subscriber! | Permalink
  • At first glance I think all of the gardening potions are overpriced and not worth making or using, but I can guarantee you that the harvesting on is outrageous.  Ignoring the complexities of crafting one (I'll do better analysis in the future) the base value of it is 3600 currants for 11 uses.  That means to harvest your 15 plot garden with one click you are spending 327 currants.  I timed a few harvests and averaged them, some of them containing slight lag, and found it took me 7 seconds to harvest a 15 plot garden.  No one is making 46.7 currants a second.  It seems very odd to me that the potions that saves you 7 seconds per use is more valuable than the potion that saves you 25-30 seconds per use.

    I know some people don't want to analyze the game and would rather make their decisions based on what is fun for them when they play.  That just makes sense.  But when the costing of things is really far off what it should be, the people who choose to play that way end up going broke without really knowing why.  Whether you do the analysis upfront or you wait for the decisions to catch up with you, being extremely overcosted is going to end up meaning that the potions go unused.

    The favor potion giving less favor than you would get by donating it also seems really ill-conceived.
    Posted 4 months ago by Humbabella Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I haven't finished PMIII, but it's sad that TS made these so over-priced/overly complex to make. It was touted as a fix for the grind of gardening, but if they just substituted a different (worse) grind, that hardly counts as an improvement.

    I guess it's back to the Ideas forum to post requests for a way to streamline gardening... :(
    Posted 4 months ago by Janitch Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I never read it as a fix, but rather another option.

    I don't think TS should make gardening automatic and fast without doing something about the way herbs work (or at least something significant to offset the profit from it). It's really easy to make money off them just by selling and/or shucking. I mean..ridiculously easy.

    Gardening being tedious does prevent everyone from just growing crazy amounts of herbs. Glitch’s economy is inflated as is (the players made something like 750 mil in a week with another 800 mil spent), and a huge influx of herbs would definitely make it way way worse.

    The potions aren’t bad, as while it does speed up gardening making the potions takes time and currants. This, so far, balances it out. The potions make it less tedious, but, generally, at a loss (that is, less profit than without. You can still make lots with them).
    Posted 4 months ago by Evelynddra Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Humbabella-- my guess is Dung-kicker is the one that people will want the most (based on how many I've had to make). Harvesting and planting, no big deal. Hoeing and watering, moderately annoying, but the upgrade card cards takes them down to mildly annoying. Spreading Guano-- VERY annoying.

    Dung-kicker could also be one of the cheaper potions (to make), if guano were't so expensive, because so few people like farming it. As it is, it's my most expensive potion to make.

    Evelynddra-- if you grow the herbs to make the essences to make the potions yourself, you certainly won't lose money, although you could probably be doing things that would make much more money. But, the group of people (want to hurry through gardening) to whom these potions appeal are not (my guess, worth what you paid for it) the people who are doing all their own work from scratch. Maybe my guess is wrong, but it's worth thinking about...

    FWIW,

    --Me
    Posted 4 months ago by SchWM Subscriber! | Permalink
  • If the cost of making potions actually "balances out" with the time saved then there is a much easier way to achieve the same result: just don't garden.  The majority of the ingredients to the potions are tinctures, so if making them is basically a wash then you'd be just as well off simply not having gardens.  If you like having gardens then presumably you don't hate gardening in the first place and the potions don't seem overly necessary.

    Imagine you could spend 50 chunks of sparkly to instantly harvest 50 chunks from a sparkly rock... I can't imagine people jumping on that deal.

    I'm not saying that's quite where the potions are (I actually think some of them are probably usable and others look like a dramatic loss).  I'm just pointing out that we can all be out there earning whenever we want since we live in a world of abundant piggies, butterflies, trees and rocks.  If turning herbs into tinctures and tinctures into potions isn't a net gain then we aren't going to be doing it.

    If Dung-kicker has 5 charges (I trust the person who posted that it does, but the encyclopedia does not indicate this) then it will probably be worthwhile, and it will be better the more expensive guano is.  It takes 50 guano to make but gives you, effectively, 75 guano back.  So the more expensive the guano, the more likely that extra guano is worth the other ingredients.
    Posted 4 months ago by Humbabella Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Dung-kicker is 5 uses. 

    To do a full yard it takes me 20 minutes. 10 on harvest, clean, plant, water (munching rubeweed) and another 10 doing dbl guano. Obviously dung-kicker is a benefit both in materials and time. 

    Having said that...I can see if people buy/make some the other potions for really quick gardening say in the morning. Pouring the 24 potions is about a minute and a half. 

    About the time it takes to load the game lol
    Posted 4 months ago by M<3tra, obviously Subscriber! | Permalink
  • SchWM - You do, by all means, lose money (perhaps not with guano) making them. The time saved could make up for it though, but I haven't looked too much into that. Keep in mind that even if you gather materials they are not 'free'. They still have a value. If you gathered everything for the hoe potion it’s worth at least 1724* (2385 if you valued herbs by their shuck price**). This isn’t including time spent gathering, nor what the potion could sell for (which would raise its value). It’s worth that amount because the resources used to make could be sold for that amount.

    Humbabella - Not sure if that was necessarily directed at me, but I'm going to clear up what I mean when I say balances out. I did not mean the time to currant balances out (that is 50 sparkly instantly, for 50 sparkly). I meant that while it lessens the tediousness (and time), it costs currants (and to an extent time). So it’d be more like…50 sparkly instantly for 10 sparkly and some gems. You’re paying for convenience, basically. That I feel is a good way to make gardens easier, without it causing more inflation. Whether potions are the way to go about it or not is unclear though.

    * This is rough napkin math based on the prices in remote right now.
    ** By shuck price I mean the amount you’d get if you shuck and sold the seeds to vendor.
    Posted 4 months ago by Evelynddra Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm reserving judgement on the potions themselves, but what I really don't understand is why Master Gardening requires Croppery 3 AND Herbalism 3, when we are penalized for learning more skills than necessary. In order to cut down gardening time for my herb gardens, I'd have to waste precious brain space on croppery knowledge that I have no intention of using. This seems rather odd to me (and I had just finished unlearning all of Croppery to clear up brain space, having realized that my completionist ideals of knowing everything would not serve me well when new skills came out - turns out that was a bad choice!).

    What is the rationale behind this?
    Posted 4 months ago by Caiyot Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @ Caiyot-Would it make more sense for Master Gardner to require Croppery but not Herbalism?

    The potions are used on both types. 
    Posted 3 months ago by M<3tra, obviously Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Does one use of Dung-Kicker replace a single application of guano? or a double application?
    Posted 3 months ago by Lorikeet Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It would make more sense for MG to require Herb3 and/or Crop3 so that both branches are not a prereq. Some glitches want to specialize in one or the other.
    Posted 3 months ago by Feldspar Gravity Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It may cost a bunch in resources and what-not to make the potions, but once you've gardened with the hoe and watering potions you'll never go back.   

    One thing to keep in mind is that these potions still take energy.  When you use the hoe potion on a 15 plot garden you will expend the same amount of energy as if you had hoed each plot, same with watering.  They don't replace the energy expenditure, they just make it faster. 

    One dung-kicker application is the same as one guano application across all the plots in a garden..  If you use dung-kicker and you appreciate the speed-up of hoe and water, you won't need as much water potion as you do hoe potion since one watering will handle multiple plantings.  

    I wish I didn't have to learn croppery either, but whatever.
    Posted 3 months ago by Sue Chef Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Assuming my math is correct (and I'm bad at math, so I'm not confident it is,) making one set of Soak-All and Liquid Hoe while staying even in seeds, and not relying on super harvests, requires 56 plots if I'm letting things sit overnight, or 43 if I replant gandlevery shortly after harvesting the hairball flowers and gandlevery.  Before, working four large gardens per cycle was roughly the limit of my patience, whereas with the potions I can tend more than twice that without getting bored, meaning a net gain of plots dedicated to non-potions.  Of course, the time spent harvesting trees, gassifying, tuning, tincturing, and compounding means I'm taking longer overall, but aside from the harvesting, those are background tasks I can do while paying attention to something else.  Manual watering and hoeing are tedious to me in the same way mining is (requiring constant monitoring of what is effectively doing nothing) and I'm willing to take a little more effort to be rid of it.

    Dung-Kicker is convenient, but I don't fertilize often enough to keep more than one bottle on hand at a time.  Manyharvest and Seed-Dibber would need some extra benefit to be worth using, either by working an entire location full of gardens (and trees,) guaranteeing super harvests, or using fewer seeds to plant.
    Posted 3 months ago by Guts Duodenum Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Lorikeet-- One use (of the 5-use) Dung-kicker potion replaces 1 application of guano. You have to use it twice (out of 5) to get things to 90%

    --Me
    Posted 3 months ago by SchWM Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @ M<3tra, I think it would make more sense to have it be one or the other, since many Glitchen only do one and we're penalized for learning extra skills. Here, I would have to learn all of the Croppery skills even though I don't want them taking up precious brain space, so I was wondering what the rationale is for that.

    Since we're in Beta, I believe now is the time to ask these questions and express opinions.
    Posted 3 months ago by Caiyot Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Manual watering and hoeing are tedious to me in the same way mining is (requiring constant monitoring of what is effectively doing nothing)

    I have recently found that if you are on a street with lots of rocks, you can actually read a good book while you mine.  You just press the enter key rhythmically and check every so often to see if the rock is gone yet. 
    Posted 3 months ago by WalruZ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • WalruZ: I have recently found that if you are on a street with lots of rocks, you can actually read a good book while you mine.  You just press the enter key rhythmically and check every so often to see if the rock is gone yet.

    Time for gardening/mining bots?
    Posted 3 months ago by Janitch Subscriber! | Permalink
  • When I talked about changing 50 sparkly into 50 sparkly, I did so because you use herbs to make the potions and then you use the potions to farm your herbs.  There is some other stuff in there but people with herb gardens are keeping them for the herbs, not the rubies.  I'll add it all up soon, but exactly what percentage of your yield you have to spend back into potions is an important question.
    Posted 3 months ago by Humbabella Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I for one hope they don't 'automate' everything.  If I wanted a chatroom with an animated GIF running in the corner and 'you win' banners scattered around the page, there are plenty of other sites for that.
    Posted 3 months ago by Feldspar Gravity Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Walruz, I was doing the same thing until I noticed that things were going missing from my bag.  ribs, allspice... yes, the batterflies were getting in the way and i was feeding them stacks of ribs and all my allspice. 
    Posted 3 months ago by Miss Parsley Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Humbabella - Ahh, I see. The way I've been looking at them is from a pure currants way. I'm less concerned about the ingredients, than I am about the value of the potions (in currants, of course). And how much the potion cost would affect my profits, and if my time is worth that cost.

    As I can’t actually use them yet, I haven’t gotten around to seeing exactly how much per plot per use it would cost. I also want to wait a bit to see what price the potions settle too, once there are more people able to make them.

    I wanted to keep my example of what I meant in line with yours. Perhaps it would be better if I said that I’d get 300c (and20 seconds, or so of my time) mining one sparkly rock manually. But if I had an instant potion (one use) that I bought for say...100c. My thought would be, would the 100c currant loss be worth the 20 seconds I saved? Mining isn’t terribly good for this…as it definitely would be way more beneficial since rocks tend to be more or less unlimited. With herbs, even with the two guano used I’m waiting 15 minutes minimum and I’m limited by the size of my gardens.

    P.S. Sorry if I’m so wordy on this! I find markets in games very fun to play with, so I generally get really into them.
    Posted 3 months ago by Evelynddra Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It appears that the Trantsformation Fluid doesn't work on Egg Plants? Or am I doing something wrong?
    Posted 3 months ago by Ozlaine Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Giant Amicability makes no sense at all. It gives 1221 total favor. If you use one charge of the EHSP and toss the essences and krazy salts into a shrine you get 1115 favor and still have four more charges of EHSP to use. This feels more like a trap for non-mathy players than a useful item.
    Posted 3 months ago by Lucille Ball Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Except that you would need 4 charges of EHSP to toss the essences and krazy salts in the shrine (there are 3 essences in the potion) since you can only throw in one of a kind at a time. Yes? So the potion could still be better.

    Edited to add: I still have another day before I complete PM3, so I have no idea how this potion works. I will definitely give it a whirl and check out its numbers as soon as I can, though.

    Howsomever, if you were to take 4 of 5 charges of the EHSP called for in the recipe and use it instead to donate the other items, you would get:

    11 Krazy salts : 363 favor, 871 iMG
    5 Ess Silvertongue : 340 favor, 816 iMG
    1 Ess Rubeweed : 307 favor, 737 iMG
    5 Ess Yellow Crumb : 645 favor, 1548 iMG

    Total: 1655 favor, 3972 iMG

    I'm not too mathy myself, so if these numbers need correcting I won't be offended. :D
    Posted 3 months ago by Flowerry Pott Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oh, right.  I forgot.  But your math still shows that using the shrine powder and donating the ingredients is better.  The potion gives 1221 favor over 11 Glitch days. If you throw the stuff in a shrine using the EHSP you get 1655 favor immediately and you still have an EHSP charge left. 

    It's not clear from the item description whether using the potion gives iMG either. Making it only gives +1800 iMG at a cost of 250 energy, so If it only gives favor and not iMG it's even less favorable to make the potion rather than donating the ingredients using the EHSP becasue you give up energy and 2172 iMG.
    Posted 3 months ago by Lucille Ball Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Be honest, was my Mad Tea Party the inspiration for these? ;)

    www.glitch.com/snaps/PA9L3P...
    Posted 3 months ago by Kitsune Kyomoon Subscriber! | Permalink
  • So, the potion gives 111 favor each Glitch day for 11 days? If that is the case, wow - it really doesn't do much for so expensive a potion, does it?

    According to the magic number I use (0.416667) 111 favor would get you 266 iMG, while 1221 favor equals 2930 iMG total - spread out over 11 Glitch days. Still not too impressive.

    If you donate the potion itself with EHSP, you will gain 1833 favor and 4400 iMG. That may be the best application for it!
    Posted 3 months ago by Flowerry Pott Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm still trying to parse all this so this is all very helpful, but I'm curious about the favor and iMG totals being used in the examples. Wouldn't these figures vary from Glitch to Glitch depending on their level?

    I'm mainly concerned about the currents and grinding time involved but it did occur to me that these other figures might not necessarily apply. I'm have PM3 in about 36 hours so I might be able to see if I get the same numbers.
    Posted 3 months ago by Wrong Way Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I pay a lot more  at the grocery store irl for convenience foods but they sure are convenient and save me loads of time.
    Posted 3 months ago by Addi Bee~♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Wrong Way: As far as I know, the favor value of shrine donations has nothing to do with the level of any Glitch. (Perhaps you are thinking of the favor quoins.) The favor value of a shrine donation is derived from the value of the donation as listed on it's "Info" card; the favor given is 1/10th of the "Info" value. 

    So the Giant Amicability potion has a stated value of 6,111 currants, translating to 611 favor when donated to a shrine. This is then tripled to 1833 when under the influence of EHSP.

    The iMG gain I worked out by trial and error, coming up with favor gain divided by 0.416667 to determine the amount of iMG given for that donation. (Conversely, iMG gain multiplied by 0.416667 will give the the amount of favor that will be gained. This is useful for determining how much to donate to shrine(s) to hit your daily donation cap.)

    If you try it yourself and come up with different results, then I'd be happy to be corrected. But these calculations have served me well for quite some time now.
    Posted 100 days ago by Flowerry Pott Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Great, thanks Flowerry Pott! The whole thing was kind of making my head spin so I wasn't sure but I have faith in your numbers :) Like Addi Bee, I'd rather pay for the convenience, but there is a tipping point so that's what I'm waiting to find out.
    Posted 100 days ago by Wrong Way Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Can someone mail me when Humbabella makes her final pronouncement on this whole deal? Not that the debate isn't darling, but you know--you pick a statistician and stick with em. Especially if you have no effing clue what they are talking about.
    Posted 100 days ago by Booknerd Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The only way in which donations are related to level is that there is a daily cap on imagination earned which is based on your level.  The potions of giant amicability definitely let you exceed your daily limits on favor for donations, but not by enough to particularly notice.
    Posted 99 days ago by Humbabella Subscriber! | Permalink
  • There is only one slight tweak to what Humbabella said. The "daily cap on imagination earned" is for imagination earned from shrine donations only. There is theoretically no limit to the iMG that a player can earn in one day, just a limit on the iMG that comes from donating at shrines.
    Posted 99 days ago by Flowerry Pott Subscriber! | Permalink
  • 22 minutes until I can both make and use the new potions!
    Posted 99 days ago by Booknerd Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Time is worth money.  You can process and grow the ingredients for super-hoe and super-soaker yourself and make a half-dozen of each pretty quickly.   IMO, for the player who is time-limited - and a lot of us are - these are totally worth it, no matter what some spreadsheet tries to prove.  
    Posted 99 days ago by WalruZ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Forget spreadsheets, try a stopwatch.  It takes longer to harvest a garden with the potion than it does to do it manually.  Pouring the potion takes about 8 seconds, I can harvest it manually in around 5-7 depending on lag.  I'm just getting the numbers together to do an analysis of the others, but the Manyharvest Cordial is actually worse than nothing, so it certainly doesn't justify the cost.
    Posted 98 days ago by Humbabella Subscriber! | Permalink
  • 0.416667 is 5/12ths, for those who like fractions
    Posted 98 days ago by Sturminator IX Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Yeah, I don't see the point of the Cordial (other than it looks cool) or the LIbation.

    Super-Hoe and Soak-All make me like gardening more, though. I'm not using the Dung-kicker much (just because of the cost of guano).

    --Me
    Posted 97 days ago by SchWM Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Absolutely... those 2 potions seem to be relatively affordable for the speed they bring. 

    Don't like the fact that the potion and my aggressive hoe upgrade don't work together though.

    And I'm not sure about bonus drops... I don't think I've ever got more than one item from using a potion on a 15 plot garden, but I do occasionally when doing it by hand. 
    Posted 97 days ago by shhexy corin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • After a week or so of potioning, I've decided that I love the soak-all and hoeing potions for early morning gardening. I will harvest and plant by hand, because that's just lots of arrow keying and entering, and I can do that super fast. But the hoeing and watering are sped up CONSIDERABLY with the potions. I used the time I was learning the potions to lay in a supply of essences. Once I feel like I have a good supply of potions built up, I'll switch back to mostly growing crops.

    Glitch is a journey, not a destination. Right now I'm focusing on herbs. Down the road I might focus on crops, or mining, or whatever. I'm in no hurry. Except in the mornings, because my boss doesn't want to hear that I'm late because my high class hoe broke again from overuse. ;)
    Posted 97 days ago by Aliera Subscriber! | Permalink
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