I understand wanting to give the classes a new face, especially the herbalist who previously only served to become the cleric, but the amount of blocking he causes even in what the farmer can or cannot plant, makes a game that is already slow even more slow, and potter having to make clay pieces for basically everything makes playing with raya’s children painful, in a game that’s not very well optimized and that it’s not good to have many hearthlings if you don’t have a very good pc
1 Like
I suppose this sort of balancing is really a question of preference…
But I personally agree with you. Getting a herbalist to do things is such a hassle, and my potter is alllllways overloaded.
Not sure how much the balancing needs adjusting, or if it’s just the “challenge” that goes along with this sort of playstyle or hearthling choice…
its not challenging, just boring
It also feels strange to me that the potter was the only main carfter to get this treatment of making “precrafted crafting requirements materials”, i can’t see the previous unbalance that made it necesary.
With the hervalist i think the problem is the amount of recepies, it just makes tooo many items and too many things to do. Between finding new especies, healing warriors, tending garden, crafting healing items, crafting seeds, crafting headware, planters, beekeep, etc.
Some stuff should be given to other crafters:
-Headware to the weaver, or everything bee related to the farmer or the sheperd.
-Planters to the main crafter (carpenter, potter, mason) including the investigation areas.
I also believe that the brewer should be related to the farmer and not the hervalist, it feels like a more natural connection.
the potter was already kind of slow without ace because he needed to make the bricks to build structures but now he’s boring, I don’t think it’s a problem for the herbalist to do so many things, but having to depend on him and rng to unlock the farmer’s crops, it’s kinda meh, and the brewer I think it should be an evolution of the cooker.
I’m pretty sure herbalist and farmer crops are almost entirely separate. Also, crafting seeds is extremely rare now in ACE because of how the herbalist’s crops were re-implemented like a year ago.
Garlic is the only one I can think of with that issue, that you need to harvest wild ones, craft ten seeds to tame it and the farmer can plant it, but you are right, the rest of the seed are not that necessary to craft
The idea of the potter changes was to actually make it more efficient in the long run, let me explain how.
The three main bits of feedback we would get about the potter were:
- Too hard to level up (when not playing Rayya)
- Clay is not as common as stone, and they require too much clay
- Fuel requirements for their basic building material (bricks) are a problem
Additionally, we knew/had these two points we wanted to address:
- Clay crafts/furniture/decorations are often more valuable (which is intended, because the Rayya’s Children are the “trading people” of the SH lore; however this added value wasn’t properly balanced)
- Having no enhanced workbenches (like the Carpenter Toolbench, Mason Pedestal and the Bonecarving, stuff, etc.) they were the “simplest” of the basic crafters
So two “main” changes were made. The first was the addition of a new workbench for molding clay and the second was the addition of an intermediary crafting process through a generic “unfired pottery” or “molded clay” ingredient that can be turned into all their other crafts. It’s the same as the original game idea (implemented only for the fancy vase) of having the “raw” vase be crafted on the wheel and then burnt on the kiln; but we made it even simpler by having a “generic” item that can be used for most crafts instead of each finished object having their respective “unfired” version;
The goals of those changes, addressing the five points above, were:
- Easier to level up because you have an extra craft that is useful; instead of spamming a useless item (like making small crates to level up the Carpenter), the Potter can level up by creating something useful.
- Since clay is not so common without destroying pretty terrain, these recipes will actually “multiply” your clay, which is their main intention. Since one clay becomes two molded clay or unfired pottery, you can actually double the acquired resource.
- Bricks are now just molded and do not require fuel anymore, making early RC building much simpler.
- With this change we were able to balance the overpriced pottery items by having them require an extra step to be made, and also increased the value of the “low priced” pottery items by having them require less clay than they did before. For example, an item that only requires one “Unfired Pottery” is effectively costing 0.5 clay, so its value of raw resource to refined product is doubled.
- The Potter now has an extra workbench and is slightly more par with the other basic crafters in terms of workshop footprint. And the extra step represents a twist/unique gameplay that’s fair to their over-valued items/crafts.
Of course, nothing is perfect, so while the intentions were good, not everything worked as intended or had the intended results for everyone. While testing shows that in the long run the Potter did become more efficient, this also relied on certain parameters, like a perfectly optimized workshop with Finished Work Shelves and always restocked input bins, etc… And this is not always the reality for the average player. There are dozens of things that can change from game to game, like the distances needed to be traveled by crafters and workers, the places where people store things, supply/demand issues if the player fails to keep a clay stock, etc… And overall this results in a practical “slowing down”/overcomplication of the Potter more than an improvement.
But that’s why the upcoming update will also have a tweak as an attempt to further approach reality to the intended optimizations that we aimed for:
- The refined recipes will actually produce 3 items instead of 2, making each piece of clay even worthier. Now 10 clay will become 30 unfired pottery or molded clay pieces, which should make crafting faster and the value of items even greater; It’s also a lot less crafting and going around, which helps overall
This change alone was enough to improve the quality of life when playing RC in testing, but we’re also considering a “Bulk” recipe for molded clay and unfired pottery on level 3 or 4, which would allow you to make (for example) 10 of each per crafting, optimizing the value of items (and the time) even more.
2 Likes
I thought that too, until I ignored the herbalist, made a farmer and he only had 2 options and the others didn’t even appear as locked per level, you simply have to release them by the herbalist
I thought that too, I’m with raya’s children, really the balance for the price of items was very well thought out, my question is with the delay of basic items, to build something it simply takes a lot of steps for simple construction items.
Farmer crops are unlocked by level (and crops that are not part of your kingdom are learned through “seed boxes” that you sometimes get a trader offering.
The next update will also have a more reliable way to learn new crops, however, so that shouldn’t be a problem!
Herbalist Exploration Gardens will not unlock farmer crops at all (except the decorative flowers, but these are just - as the name suggests - decorative)