Fallen Earth: QotW #21: Drink Me!: The Potions and Poisons Questions!

How will the Botanist crafting work? Will we only be able to make set recipes, or can we mix and match like in Oblivion? Will we only be able to make healing items, or will we have more useful stuff like poisons? Will Vistas be able to make more poisonous mixtures, or will we just be able to make these things earlier than anyone else?

All manner of botanical crafting falls under the Nature tradeskill, which is also used in harvesting useful components from animals such as leather and meat. Players can use Nature to get a wide variety of components from plants, ranging from acids to healing accelerators to pain killers to toxins, some of which can also be gained from animals (though not all). Nature will allow players to turn low-level versions of some components into higher level versions, so you can still use low-level components at higher levels by turning them into other components. For example, there may be a cactus that secretes weak toxin, which is of questionable usefulness to a person with an advanced Nature skill, but with the right knowledges the Nature crafter can collect a few doses of weak toxin and turn them into a higher-level toxin.

Like all crafting, Nature uses set recipes, though these may not always be easy to find. Some knowledges will only come from specific sources, like conflict towns that have specially trained herbalists that can train players who are part of the faction that controls the town in how to make special poisons. Players will discover other knowledges on their own through research, which requires spending time and resources experimenting to unlock a new knowledge.

One of the main strengths of the Nature tradeskill is the creation of poison, which can be made early on. Players can learn to make a variety of poisons, from simple damage poisons to poisons that drain attributes or inhibit Stamina recovery. Most poisons that deal damage do so relatively quickly. While all players have access to the most basic poisons relatively early, after that the Vistas have a marked advantage in learning poison knowledges. Vistas teach all Nature knowledges before other factions, including poison knowledges, and while other factions can get almost all of the same knowledges eventually, there are a few special knowledges that only the Vistas can learn.

While a lot of the plants harvested by the Nature skill are used in healing and can be used raw to some effect, the most efficient use of these plants is making items with the Medicine tradeskill. Thus the Vistas often work closely with the Lightbearers, trading raw healing components for training.

The opposite number to the Nature tradeskill, Science, allows players to make acids that may be used in combat. Acids do their damage over time as opposed to the quicker nature of poisons. Science can also be used to refine components, such as turning wires or glass into better-quality components. Geology covers the refinement of metals into better-quality metals.

-Posted by Cynagin