CF: alchemy imbalance?

[Hwei Sheng TEOH <hsteoh@cs.toronto.edu>]

Hi! the recent discussion about alchemy reminded me of a really cheesy tactic
I use to make money for a low-level character, by exploiting a flaw(?) in the
alchemy system. Just thought I'd mention it, in case people might want to fix
this in the next CF release. :-)

Basically, the flaw comes from the fact that completely random items (albeit
cursed) are produced when you invoke alchemy over a cauldron that contains
junk (ie. random ingredients, not any real formula). So what I do is, I start
with a silver coin, and invoke alchemy over and over, until I get a block of
true lead or a block of fixed mercury. These, of course, will be cursed, since
by no means my ingredients will ever match the real formula for these
products.

The catch is, if I DON'T identify them, nobody will know they are cursed, and
shopkeepers seem eager to buy them at a high price... If the character has
enough mana, he can easily earn lots of money (a block of fixed mercury, even
unidentified, gives about 200+ plats or more, depending on your Cha).

For low-level spellcasters, I found this way ideal for making money to buy new
spells, since the game is so biased against spellcasters that it's very hard
at low levels to find enough treasure to buy new spells.

I *did* notice that if you ever identify any of this 'junk' out of the
cauldron, their value is always 0 even if you pray over an altar to uncurse
them. At least this part makes some sense... :-) But *unidentified* items,
especially the true lead and fixed mercury, are worth so much even when
unidentified. In terms of fixing this flaw, shopkeepers should at least quote
a much lower price for these items when unidentified, since they would be
suspicious whether these items are cursed or not.


T

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