The Age of Decadence October Update

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Written by Eric Schwarz on October 31st, 2012

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Opinion #1:

[Alchemy] is very situational. In places where you go into one fight followed by another, like the Militiades encounter, the Aurelian Mine, etc... Healing is really useful. In all other circumstances it's useless. Acid is excellent against heavily armored enemies. But it makes you lose 7 AP (3 to throw, 4 to switch weapons, unless you're using a one-hand weapon and no shield, which is an unusual combination), takes time to work, needs the throwing skill and is not THAT helpful against multiple enemies. Gunpowder and oil flask have very small range, requiring enemies to be bunched together, although both have interesting effects (oil flask is good to separate enemies and gunpowder can knock people down, it seems). Not only that, but alchemy is a one-time use that depends on the ingredients, while other skills have more stable bonuses.

Overall alchemy can be very useful or very useless and it varies wildly, depending on the encounter. Crafting, for the sake of comparison, feels a lot more consistently useful throughout the game. I'm not saying that I don't like alchemy, mind you. Quite the contrary, it's fun to play with and trying to find uses for all those things.

Opinion #2:

It's most definitely not underpowered, though I think it's still going to need a bit of polish. Also the actual availability of ingredients in the final game is going to be important factor on its usefulness. I like how all the effects are very minimalistic, but can still completely change the perspective of a combat encounter.

I've yet to play a very high (50+) alchemy skill character to know whether you can actually dish mortal damage with things like oil flasks or bombs (by my observations thus far, not really), but the ability to break enemy placement can really change the tide of the battle, especially as they tend to attack you in ideally small, tight formations.

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