The Potion Stand Sucks

[EpicAaron]

Potions are really useful, but they are a pain to make. You have to gather the necessary sequence of items into your inventory, drag click them into the brewing stand or split a stack (can't shift click single items), and then wait a while for the stages to brew.

Wouldn't it be so much nicer if we could just throw these items into a cauldron, stir it a bit, and then scoop the juice right out of it with a bottle? No GUI, more immersive, and capable of automation.

Flowerchild would often say that he didn't want to reuse preexisting blocks just for the sake of giving them a purpose, but the vanilla cauldron seems just about made for this sort of thing. I'm not much of a programmer, so this concept is merely a dream unfortunately.

[jakerman999]

While I agree that potion brewing could have a potential upgrade, I find it hard to see a version of cauldron brewing that would fit in with the mod. Dumping all the ingredients into a cauldron is already how cooking is handled. Chalk this one up to my lack of imagination, but stirring is only a hand crank(possibly disguised as a ladle) or a powered axle. Copying an existing system to get rid of gameplay just doesn't feel constructive to me.

The tech level is also something to be considered. The brewing stand is available only through exploration, so I consider potions to be gated behind netherwart and nether access. The cauldron, even the vanilla one, is something a player can make earlier than that; leaving no gap between unlocking potions and automating them. It also removes the need the go out and find a brewing stand(or multiples).


I'd rather see something more akin to an upgrade to the brewing stand, or a new interaction with it that can load single items in a novel way. I'm all for fixing brewing, but let's do so in a way that adds gameplay and makes the potion system more engaging.

[Niyu]

I would say there's already a good solution for this. Use multiple brewing stands. One for each ingridients and move the bottles arround. That way you can shift click them. And having multiple working at the same time also makes it faster.

[jakerman999]

Setting up an array of brewing stands certainly goes a long way to alleviating the tedium that is the brewing experience. I've found with four stands I can get a loop that brews twelve potions per iteration without much downtime...

But it's still a sizeable timesink in the portion of the game where night is no longer oppressive. Having a process lategame (gated somewhere in villager trading maybe?) to automate potion making is something I see as valuable. Another excuse to build a building, and another system to design around. I think it fits with the theme of automating chores that goes on throughout the game. But that's also why I feel manual potions have to be around for a while. It needs to be a chore for long enough that automating it feels rewarding. Perhaps even add potions to things a villager buys? Requiring a lot of tedious potions before getting the capability to automate them seems on brand to me at least... There might yet be a more inspired way to go about it though, and I've not speculated on the mechanisms all that much yet.

[EpicAaron]

The tech level is also something to be considered. The brewing stand is available only through exploration, so I consider potions to be gated behind netherwart and nether access. The cauldron, even the vanilla one, is something a player can make earlier than that; leaving no gap between unlocking potions and automating them. It also removes the need the go out and find a brewing stand (or multiples).

I am not opposed to keeping the potion cauldron exclusive, though part of me thinks having an extra little activity to do at night isn't such a bad thing. Especially if potion recipes were randomized per seed or something, then experimenting with various ingredients and brews could actually be kind of fun.

The physicality of the activity also matters to me. The potion stand is just a GUI. Flowerchild showed us that crafting can be so much more than navigating menus--you can carve and knit and chop etc. The idea of swirling around a broth and scooping out samples of it throughout the night just seems plain fun. Dropping in ingredients and having the colors change or splash just seems more stimulating, and would certainly help the nights pass a little easier.

[jakerman999]

I'm 100% onboard with getting rid of GUIs, and putting that in words actually gives me a thought: Removing the GUI might be enough.

Just right clicking with water bottles to mount them, add a single brewing ingredient by right clicking(even with a stack) which causes a particle effect, when it ends add the next, repeat until you right click with an empty hand to take all the bottles off. This would go a long way with immersion and tediousness. Adding additional processes to refine ingredients might be something worth pursuing, but personally I'd start with something simpler.

[EpicAaron]

That is an elegant solution! Reduce all the work to right clicks.

[EtherealWrath]

Since the block dispenser automatically cycles through its contents in order- would it make an appropriate solution to automating the brewing stand?

[dawnraider]

Github issue opened here: https://github.com/BTW-Community/BTW-Public/issues/37

Automated brewing is definitely something to consider. Personally I think a significant revamp of mechanics, especially making them random, would be better as an addon if anyone wishes to tackle it. However, some way to automate brewing would be nice as I agree that it can be quite tedious.

[EpicAaron]

This github thing is very interesting, I am eager to read through all these notes.

I don't think random potions would ultimately be very fun unless there were some analogue thing in place to make potions both good and bad. Like, discovering a potion that causes weakness and night vision and then having to work with it to nullify the weakening effect could be cool. It would be complicated to do right, however, and I think having fixed recipes is just more straightforward in the long run. Making potions just isn't that fun in the first place, it's a waiting game.

[jackatthekilns]

Could I add that the fact that potions brew in 3s and stack in 8s is as annoying as the pack of Hot dogs v Hot dog buns? Is there a way to either add another bottle to the brewing stand or make the potion stack size 9?

[dawnraider]

Hmmm that is a fair point. Will think on it.

[Hiracho]

I think making the potions use random ingredients might be very very tough to balance. specific potions are hard locked behind special creatures. Although it works nicely in a lot of games, don't think randomized ingredients fits BTW at all. BTW just isn't a simple roguelike enough for that.

I like the GUIless proposals Jake made.

For automating, Simply having the brewing stand accept hopper items might be enough. technically seen you could make automated potions then by having a tower of brewing stands and complex timers to suck up the brewing stand with a BD to dump the bottles into the hopper below. It'd be pretty complex but worth figuring out how to do exactly for tech lovers(think about turning off the hoppers or else itll dump all the stuff down/ dump a second item in once the first one is done), plus it'd be gated behind block dispensers and finding multiple stands.

It might be nice to make the brewing slots only accept a single item, and the bottle slots only accept bottle items..

[dawnraider]

You know, GUI-less actually sounds like a good way to go. The brewing stand already has support for showing what bottles are in its inventory, and update to make that have a color layer wouldn't be too hard to do. Then it'd just need some way to indicate 1) that there is a brewing item in it, and 2) that brewing is taking place.

[Gilberreke]

Bikeshed: water bubble particles for brewing taking place would be really fun.