Rework Food merchants into Brewing merchants

Suggestions
Rework Food merchants into Brewing merchants
effort 3.666666666666667 3 quality 4.0 3 reasonability 3.4 5
1

Proposal

Lets be honest, who uses Food merchants?
They are kinda good if you’re a new player and for ranking up your cooking level but as long as you play the game you will never run out of food so as soon as you leave Redwake you will probably never go to one of these shops ever again.
That’s why I propose to rework all food merchants into a much more exciting and fun part of AO, Potions!

Details/background on your proposal

All Food merchants will be turned into Brewing merchants and will instead sell Catalysts and Reagents with each next sea having more/higher rarity stock and will each come with their own brewing cauldron to make it easy to know where exactly you can brew on an island.

You can also talk to each merchant and they will explain how brewing potions works in the game.

Could also have some Brewing merchants have side quests where they are low on stock and need you to gather ingredients from islands.

Maybe some merchants could even outright sell you potions but il shelf that idea for now as I want them to just sell the ingredients so new players can have that “Brew it yourself” Mentality

I’m also aware that having this feature will remove a very helpful side quest at Redwake where you learn to cook so instead that side quest will be after completing Estrid’s main story quest. You talk to her afterwards and there will be a cooking pot outside where she will teach you how cooking works in AO. Simple change and you get to chat with a side character that you helped out more.

Reason to add/change

This is to make potion brewing easy and more accessible to new players and also help alot when it comes to getting ingredients for potions.

Right now your only tutorial for potion brewing is one side quest in sailors lodge, an island thats near the end of the Bronze sea. Meanwhile for cooking, an inferior version of potion brewing has a tutorial and an entire stall where you can buy ingredients and try out cooking on the first big island in the game.

It just doesn’t make sense that learning how to brew and obtain potion ingredients is almost obscure considering it’s just cooking but way better and more rewarding.

Pros:
Could cause new players to experiment with brewing given that they can easily access materials for the right price.

Learn about potions in AO earlier

Easy to remember that you can find a potion cauldron at each Brewing merchant because duh lol

Make it easier to get certain potion ingredients

Cons:
A very off chance that you could starve to death in AO without having easy access to food since theres no more food merchants

Since you learn about potion brewing in AO early on new players could cheese some bosses by getting their hands on some potions really early on instead of learning the fundamentals of AO combat.

Will be harder to max out cooking level (but hey potion brewing will be easier tho!)

Conclusion:
Let me know your thoughts on how this could be expanded upon or any other flaws you noticed with my suggestion! :).

2

Man I aint gonna fish, camp around food spawns, open chests for food rng just to fill my hunger. Npc shops are decided whether they’re necessary or not, food shop npc is necessary for people who dont have time to camp, fish or grind chests.

Introducing brewing isnt a problem either considering you quite literally get a quest on learning how to brew in sailor’s lodge along with jewelcrafting. Having a brewing shop npc could be a nice way to permanently buy low tier ingrediens only but replacing a necessary npc shop? Eh…

Because players below lvl 90 doesnt need potions, a huge skill issue if they cant defeat bosses around their level cough Elius cough

3

you can’t take 5 steps ingame without walking into a pile of food what do you mean.
the only time hunger is ever an issue for anybody is when they start the game, and even then dawn island is absolutely covered in food items.

4 Likes
4

So true

5

Why not both? keep the food merchant but have them sell reagents and catalysts as well.

1 Like
6

I NEED MY BANANAS (complete sentence)

7

Both could be an option! But with the islands in the bronze sea already being built it could be a bit tricky to set up an entirely new type of shop.

8

Well for me there’s an abundance of food you collect, as long as you play the game and not sit around doing nothing food is easy to come by

The introduction to brewing still is later on into the bronze sea, imo it would be better for players to learn about it early on

Also you do realize there’s not just damage type potions right? Tons of other potions exist that are fun to use without combat like luck or revealing.

9

Again, new players dont need those at their current level which is quite literally why the quest is at sailor’s lodge when you get near that part of the story

My guy prefers finding food than getting what’s always there, one point from hunger gets reduced every 30 seconds and you’re telling people to quite literally grind food first just to focus solely on their game for long periods of time, the food shop npc doesnt need to be removed or reworked

10

Much more reasonable to just make a new merchant. If vetex added a dyer merchant, he can certainly make a brewing merchant without the need to outright remove food merchants.

1 Like
11

Fr, im not really against the idea of a brewing merchant just that this suggestion wants to remove the food merchant for the reason that “food is everywhere so just get them”

12

another con: players will get confused really quickly by the sudden bombardement of brewing (it has alot more features than cooking)

13

water breathing and revealing potions are vital to underwater exploration which is a great way for new players to earn XP.

14

There is no reason to replace or remove food merchants (which is the core idea of the suggestion). But the rest is pretty fine I guess?

1 Like
15

Yea in hindsight this suggestion probably would have been better if I added the Brewing merchants as a feature rather then getting rid of food merchant.
I was just thinking that out of all the shops food merchant is the weakest link so why not change it.

1 Like
16

that might be true, but at lower levels it’s better to complete island tasks at that level than to dive, cuz people below lvl 90 die very quickly to sharks. besides, both actions give a percental amount of xp

1 Like
17

Man new players arent even aware of those unless they reach the huge level wall which forces them to explore the world, this moment is again when you reach the sailor’s lodge story part where players by then runs out of quests around their level. New players are supposed to first and foremost level up from main story and side quest, exploration xp rewards are second.

You’re making it look like vetex doesnt think too much about his updates considering potions are introduced along with the underwater update frfr. Relating potions in the need of a faster alternative to level up is irrelevant because it’s been addressed by vetex already that there will be a faster way to level up files to max due to the fact that level cap is increasing every major update.

18

That’s the issue that needs to be fixed.

There’s all these different ways SURROUNDING players that hit the first level wall but they have absolutely no way to know about any of them unless another player tells them.

19

Bro the first level wall is literally the sailor’s lodge part and it isn’t going to be a problem because the level wall forces them to explore. All the new players know at the start is to follow the story and do side quests, when they run out of quests to do, only then would they try to explore everything there is in arcane odyssey.

Ao isnt a baby game my guy, not everything is spoonfed from the start when the target audience of the game is 13+, if you would argue kids can lie about their age then that’s their problem not the game. If you think 13+ year olds cant figure out the game, you’re highly underestimating them.

20

the level wall everyone’s always complained about is the level 40 wall at frostmill.