ive recently dsicovered the joys of alchemy ( and working...with all the joy and free time that comes with that...) and i was wondering if anyones figured out a way for characters in teh game to possibley creat their own potions, remedees, wepons and armor? basicly from raw material found and obtained in the wild by fights and treasure chests. if anyones thought of a way to do this please let me know!

-chopper

I successfully did collectable potion ingredients in "Raiders Of Lekunder"
(see below). The idea was for the player to find ingredients while
exploring, and then bring them to a friendly sorceress in town (a friend of
the heroine) who brews potions for you.

Each ingredient is a treasure item with a variable that says how many of
that item the player has. In each event where you find an ingredient, that
item's variable gets increased by 1.

That's the easy part.

The friendly sorceress was tricky to do. It involved a lot of event
transitioning. She pretty much operates like a custom-made shop (with
the potion ingredients operating as currency to get potions). Because
there's no visible counter for variables, there's no way for the player to
know how many ingredients he's collected while out exploring. But I
wanted to provide a way for us to keep track of what we have. So I had
the sorceress tell you how many of each ingredient you have. To do that,
I had to use a lot of Val Condition Branches and a separate text block for
each possible number of ingredients. "You have enough Jabgo Berries to
make 1 potion." "You have enough Jagbo Berries to make 2 potions."
And so forth.

Then she asks if you'd like to turn in an ingredient for a potion. Simple
Yes/No branch. Then she displays a menu of the four potions that she can
make. Select a potion, and if you have at least 1 of the required
ingredient, she takes 1 ingredient and converts it into a potion.

It's one of the most complicated events in the entire game.

Unfortunately, it's not possible for a player to make potions on the fly (mix
ingredients anywhere). You need to have a place that you can go, with an
event that handles the turning in of ingredients for potions. This concept
would also work for making weapons, armor, and any number of other
creative things. But the player isn't gonna be able to do it on the fly.

ok, that works, ill just have to have a shop in every town that has an alchemist in it and bring x number of ingerdiants to make the desired item. thanks for that though it'll be a big help!

The problem is (Crythania can keep me real here) that while you can give treasures through the monster units of random battles and Treasure Chest type events, you cannot do it in way for the variable to be tracked so any time that a player gains an ingredient to be used in mixing, it has to be done as a treasure item by a Standard Event only (so that you have the ability to modify the variable number).

But I don’t see why you can’t make a Standard event that looks and acts like a Treasure Chest event and gives them the ability at the chest to mix items through a yes/no option and an event take over. Since you are going to have to use a standard event anyways, you might as well make it look like a treasure chest, and I don’t see why you would have to go back to town to have someone mix it when you can provide the option for another event (essentially the sorceress event) to take it over.

Also, while I agree with Crythania that you can’t mix items on the fly (like through a menu command), you can allow item mixing after any completed (non-escaped) random battle by creating an auto event in the field or dungeon that only functions when the party has a certain treasure item.

You always give this item with any monster unit assigned to this field or dungeon and so long as the ingredients are already in your possession you can always provide the option immediately after battle only to mix ingredients (amongst any other kind of event command). Part of the event code no matter what branch or option is chosen is to always remove the treasure item so that you don’t run into an auto event loop when the code is done executing, and then the auto event won’t trigger again until after the next random battle (when the monster party again gives you the treasure item which as before is a condition for the auto event to trigger).

You can also create a variable that is 1 when the ‘alchemist’ is in the party and ‘0’ when he/she is not.

Then after a completed random battle, you can provide the option to mix items only if the alchemist is in the party by using a variable branch (EDIT: You can also do the same for the "treasure chest" Standard Event addressed above).

But again, remember that you cannot track any treasure items given by the monster units of a random battle, you would have to mix what you already had, not what you gained during battle (EDIT: As any items that you gain during a random battle cannot be used as an ingredient for mixing as addressed above).

But if you use Event Battles instead of random battles, you can do everything from giving and mixing ingredients before or after battle all depending on whether or not the alchemist is in the party if you want, all of this at the battle location without having to go into town.

Event battles and treasure chests are the best ways to implement the alchemy system without too much headache.

Well...

Okay, while I agree that your ideas are sound in theory, Bo, that would be
a lot of redundant event coding. It'll work if you code each separate
event correctly, but to offer the option to use the ingredients all over the
place, in lots of different events... A lot of redundant code taking up space
in the database.

The potion-making sorceress, a vending machine, and a guy who buys
valuable treasure from you are the three most convoluted events in my
game. Each has numerous modes and a LOT of transitioning to a second
event that doubles as a piece of deco.

Just getting it up and running once (and flawlessly) was a feat of RM3
programming. I wouldn't want to have to duplicate it (something I'm
dreading having to do in the sequels).

In my humble opinion, the better idea is to have a place where the player
can go at any time to turn in ingredients for potions. The same would
work for a blacksmith who you bring raw materials to, and he crafts
weapons and armor. That way, there's only one chunk of complicated
code taking up space in the database.

Edit: By the way, I hid my potion ingredients in barrels and boxes,
usually seen among other barrels and boxes used as deco. Makes for a
nice treasure hunt atmosphere. I have lots of stuff (not just ingredients)
scattered all over the place, in every town and dungeon you can go to,
and there's even some stuff on the field maps too. Doing many events
that give items like that is easy compared to the code that operates the
exchanging of ingredients for potions. It's just a message display, sound
effect, obtain item, add to variable if applicable, and modify to Mode 2
(which has a message that says there's nothing else there).

I like to fill my database with as little redundancy as possible, especially
where convoluted code is concerned.

@Crythania,

I agree that your idea is the better idea. I was just trying to also provide an alternative that allowed mixing to occur where enemies are at.

Why can't you have a single event like the sorceress and at the treasure chest have

give treasure
change variable
yes/no sorceress?
yes-take over "mixing event"
no-no action

true the mixing event or events would have to be rescripted for every field/town/dungeon because you can only take over an event in the same respective location, but if you use 3 fields, 4 dungeons, and 3 towns, that is only 10 times you need to make the "mixing event".

Also, if you have less locations or decide to not use the option in as many places, then maybe you only have to create it a handful of times.

When I say treasure chests, I just mean finding ingredients in them.