Getting rid of Alcholest to brew your own potions - yay or nay?

[AhmadMetallic]

Getting rid of Alcholest to brew your own potions - yay or nay?

I find it silly that, basically, I only need to gather the ingredients of a potion once, so I can create it. From then on, Alcohest (which is abundant in the game) will refill all my potions after meditation.
So I wanna sell all the Alcohest I loot so I would have to gather more ingredients to brew more of every potion, like in Witcher 1.

BUT, I'm worried ==> If CDPR designed the alchemy refills to rely solely on Alcohest, something tells me that the natural ingredients for the potions will be scarce in the world, because they're not necessary after the first time. Maybe some ingredients will even disappear from the game in later chapters!

What say you? Do you think the amounts of natural potion ingredients in the world throughout the game will be enough for me to keep gathering for potion refills, a la Witcher 1, or not?

--------EDIT---------
Nevermind, guys.... If you made a potion once, that's it, the game forbids you to brew it again even if it's depleted. "You already have this potion," it says.
CDPR did not include the option to keep manually brewing potions, they took it out. Meditation refills are the only way.
Wow.

Here's to meditating every five minutes and drinking twenty potions an hour.... *bitter defeat*

 

[Mephz.695]

From what I see there are tons of them, more than enough to make every swallow or whatever from x plants, if it was modded in or something I still think the game would function. However I'm sticking with the alcholest I like it, plus on death march I'm drinking those so damn fast

 

[Solid_Altair]

Can anyone see how much alcohol you have left? My stuff was being refilled with alcohest. For the life of me I couldn't see it on my inventory. But it kept being used to refill the potions. Was it infinite? I dunno. I'd like to know.

Then, I noticed dwarven spirit was being used. So I thought... uh oh, my alcohest must be over. I knew I didn't have a lot of dwarven spirit on my inventory, so I started saving potions. But maybe the change to dwarven spirit had to do with one of the upgrades I did for one of my potions. And maybe the use of the alcohols doesn't really deplete them from your inventory, as if you were using only a little of it. Anyone know?

I'm loving the system so far - using it a lot. But I wanna know if the stuff has some scarcety or if it's really infinite. I don't wanna be saving stuff when I could be using it. And I also don't wanna run out of alcohol in the middle of a dungeon.

 

[AhmadMetallic]

If by alcohol you mean Alcohest, which is the ingredient used to auto-refill your potions when you meditate, then it's found in your inventory, under Alchemy & Crafting (it's a red glass bottle).

 

[Solid_Altair]

Thanks. Maybe I was searching it in the consumable section and that's why I hadn't found it. Though I kinda thought I had looked everywhere.

This should be enough to clear some of my doubts. I wanna check my alcohols, meditate and see if they're actually consumed.

 

[AhmadMetallic]

Thanks. Maybe I was searching it in the consumable section and that's why I hadn't found it. Though I kinda thought I had looked everywhere.

Actually the same happened to me, I even started thinking the game used drinkable booze for the refills (lol), but then I came across a post that mentioned Alcohest and I went to look in the right category.

By the way, I'm thinking NAY regarding my idea of selling the Alcohest, because EVERY potion requires 1 Dwarven Spirit, and that s**t costs 50 crowns a pop from the herbalist.. It's a rare loot too so I only found like 5 bottles so far, which is little.
I dunno why the hell they made the potions require such an expensive ingredient, maybe it will become more available later on...

 

[Mephz.695]

You can make more alcohest I have the recipe for it at least. It requires a few alcohol drinks including dwarven spirit so it's like a bunch of them in one. I'm guessing it's just pure alcohol.

 

[Solid_Altair]

What happens if you brew alcohest. I'm still missing one ingridient. Can't find it to gather or buy, for now. Does the alcohest you craft last forever? Is it just one? Is it a batch of 3? More?

I'm now afraid I'm about to enter an alchemy crisis. :huh:

 

[Zaeccis]

About selling and manually brewing potions, can you guys even brew them more than once (first time I ran out of swallow i tried to brew it and it just said "you already have the item" and then realized it autofills when meditating.

So I think you can't brew them manually, correct me if I wrong

 

[AhmadMetallic]

What happens if you brew alcohest. I'm still missing one ingridient. Can't find it to gather or buy, for now. Does the alcohest you craft last forever? Is it just one? Is it a batch of 3? More?

This thread is anti-Alcohest and you're worried your precious Alcohest might run out?! (I'm joking)
I just had 2/3 Tawny Owl and 2/3 Swallow, I had x11 Alcohest -> I meditated -> Both potions are back to 3/3 and my Alcohest says x10. So I guess it's one Alcohest used per meditation refill, regardless of how much of each potion you had used.

About selling and manually brewing potions, can you guys even brew them more than once (first time I ran out of swallow i tried to brew it and it just said "you already have the item" and then realized it autofills when meditating.

So I think you can't brew them manually, correct me if I wrong

Oh wow, you're right, I just checked... Even if I sold my Alcohest and wanted to brew my own potions, it doesn't let me.... Wow, this is pretty bad.
The potions have lost all their significance now, preservance-wise. I'm meditating left and right to fill them up and drink them again, like I'm downing glasses of water. This is pretty bad, a whole aspect of the Witcher gameplay is gone.

 

[Solid_Altair]

This thread is anti-Alcohest and you're worried your precious Alcohest might run out?! (I'm joking)
I just had 2/3 Tawny Owl and 2/3 Swallow, I had x11 Alcohest -> I meditated -> Both potions are back to 3/3 and my Alcohest says x10. So I guess it's one Alcohest used per meditation refill, regardless of how much of each potion you had used.

Thanks dude. That's precisely what I wanted to know. Now I gotta find that guy who sells alcohest. I should have made a precise note of where he stays.

I think alcohest is cheaper than the other alcohols. And I wanna buy a lot of it, cause alchemy is fun to use... a lot.

 

[Gerudon]

I'm meditating left and right to fill them up and drink them again, like I'm downing glasses of water. This is pretty bad, a whole aspect of the Witcher gameplay is gone.

They wanted to make alchemy more accessible and the useful. It would just be annoying having to farm the ingredients over and over again, specially in such a large open world. Yes, the new system isn't realistic, but it lets you use your potions when you need them, without thinking twice if or if you not take it.

 

[PPCLI]

They wanted to make alchemy more accessible and the useful. It would just be annoying having to farm the ingredients over and over again, specially in such a large open world. Yes, the new system isn't realistic, but it lets you use your potions when you need them, without thinking twice if or if you not take it.

It worked. I am finding myself using potions, oils and bombs more in this game than I ever did in Witcher 2. I find the system just more fun than the previous game.

 

[AhmadMetallic]

They wanted to make alchemy more accessible and the useful. It would just be annoying having to farm the ingredients over and over again, specially in such a large open world. Yes, the new system isn't realistic, but it lets you use your potions when you need them, without thinking twice if or if you not take it.

One word: option.
They did not include the option to re-brew potions with more and more ingredients, like in previous games, for those who don't want meditation refills. They designed the system to forbid you to brew a potion you already have.
I'm very upset about this..

 

[Tomice158]

I understand their motivation and I'm glad they did what they did. Sure, it takes away a bit of immersion, but it's much better for fun and gameplay.
They explained it like this in one of the pre-release interviews:

In TW2, you'd always save your ingredients, not knowing what you might need them for. You were afraid to use the less abundant ingredients. You might happen to use some rare ingredient for some potion that seemed cool early on, just to later realize they are the core ingredient for the best armor ever -> fail.
Also, when you finally created potions, you always saved them up for later, being afraid to waste them against foes you could handle without alchemy. This resulted in most players finishing the game with their pockets full of unused ingredients and potions.

Those problems are mostly gone, now. You can freely use your bombs and potions in combat, while the limited stacks take care of balance. And you still care about gathering ingredients and alchemy. It is even more rewarding, because creating specter oil once permanently improves your character. You are also more encouraged to experiment with certain potions or bombs, not having to fear wasting them.

Oh, and let's not forget the balance issue of potentially having 50 bombs ready - You'd have to make each individual bomb very weak, because otherwise you could bomb every difficult enemy to death from a safe distance.

The new system is much better overall IMHO. And as far as options go, it would just be to much work creating two well-balanced crafting systems.

 

[Anelikital]

I love it, it makes it more fun for the gameplay, and it limits the use as well, so it's not like we can spam potions and bombs.

 

[Sethanor]

The potions have lost all their significance now, preservance-wise. I'm meditating left and right to fill them up and drink them again, like I'm downing glasses of water. This is pretty bad, a whole aspect of the Witcher gameplay is gone.

exagerating much?
its as the devs said: they WANT you to activly use those things, hence the easy refill ... in most games you collect stuff but hardly use it cause your waiting for "a better situation" to use it in.
in any case: you probably end up having TONS of materials that never get used ... i rather have this new system tho... you still gather plants for "whatever recepies i might find in the future" but you dont need to run around like a headless chicken to get some basic healing pot every time you want to fight something xD

 

[wildspirit]

Also this system allows for the upgrading potions part to be more intuitive.

I'm not a huge fan of this method as an hard core rpg player (both video games and PnP) but it's not the worst, and quite frankly, in my actual situation, I wouldn't have the time nor the wll to go farm for hours for brewing potions.

So I guess i'll have to be satisfied with this system