Lets go to the facts:
-Both TW1 and 2 potions weren't necessary (except letho 1st fight, maybe)
-Both games were really hard at early game and really easy late game
*This was because the equipment and talent improve were far higher than monster one
*Also practice with games mechanic were a thing
-Almost everybody that drinks potions is for swallow, almost everything has big side effects, specially for your defense, making you easier to kill, and I'm most sure this was the pain in the neck of tw2, losing damage weren't such important (also using spells makes your attacks weaker, and some people didn't notice it even)
-everybody that finished the witcher 1 had 320 drowners brains
*that's because there were tons of them
*AND almost all the potions that uses an ingredient that his brains contains has really bad collateral effect
-ingredients in previous games were expensive
-there's an ingredient of swallow and other key potions that were such used and at the same time so rare that obbligated some people to search, in tw2 you ended up finding 80 of that white flowers for each important flower found
-it's tedious searching for all this collecting
Then solutions
Solution 1, with auto refill
Auto refill:
Pros:
-No more boreness
-it save up money, since money gained is pretty restriced almost for quests, and the quests you can do for your level zone are limited
Cons:
-Is unrealistic
-You'll end up having 500 ingredients of each type
*unless they make them rare, but then for the first 30 minutes you don't have any potions because you can't reach the minimun required
*unless you already start with basic potions, but is dumb
Option 1
Some features that maybe are in the game that could solve everything:
Imagine there's ingredients named a,b,c,d,e
For potion X to initially brew you need:2a,3b,1c
Then you upgrade the potion to level 2 (slight more powerful and/or more potions avaiable):4a,6b,2c. That's the double
Then level 3: 8a,12b,4c. Again, the double, but the double of level 2
OR LEVEL 3: 6a,9b,3c. The triple of level one
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Or
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Option 2
Potion X: 2a,3b,1c
Then give more power to the potion: 1d,2e
OR just use the same ingredients for the base potion with random number:2a,1b,1c
So you use the basic ingredients but more expensive to create another refillable potion, and then the potions upgrade would be individually for each one or globally for all the identical potions
For this system
Pros
-alchemy could play a big role then, so if you upgrade a potion, with specific alchemy talent the improve would be bigger (also for potion 2 of ption improves option the numbers of improves could be infinite, but for balancing issues,MAYBE, each upgrade would be more expensive)
-harvest herbs and monster's organs would still be important
-If searching ingredients would be a boring thing for someone, they only need to do the basic potion and not more. They don't need to upgrade. They will have a harder time for not upgrading, but the unbalance for this kind of person wouldn't be that big
Cons
-unrealistic as hell
Solution 2, classic way
Bring the original potion brewing, gathers ingredients then brew
To solve some issues:
Make flowers/monsters that contain important ingredients for key potions more common
Make monsters drops more ingredient, so someone lazy could have all ingredients doing fun:killing monsters, but it would be good if the ingredients dropped would be considerably higher, so you always get enough ingredients by killing monsters you normally kill while doing quests
Side effects of potions less letal
Pros
-Realistic
-Balanced
Cons
-it would be harder to make alchemy tree more powerful, and then more balanced with the other 2 trees
Solution 3
As someone stated in this thread (can't rememb who)
Re-use the ingredient, but then weaker, but this reuses has limits
Then with alchemy talents you could make more reuses possible or each reuse weakens less your ingredients effects
Pros
-Good for lazy people
-Could make alchemy tree as powerful as the other 2
-Realistic
Cons
-some may not find this realistic at start
-after some reuse, the potion is so weakened that you make a new one, so a good thing is if you can implement an "discard potion" option, but need to take care, lazy people will change potion only after a long time, and they will have disavantage for using old potions, then they should put more ingredients in the world to the gather and change more frequently, but if someone doesn't,it ends up having to much ingredient.resuming:hard tk balance offer with consume