The skill of Brewing has arrived. This is the most complicated and in-depth of all the crafting skills in Lithmeria, and personally my favorite. Brewing is the art of creating potions. and is a skill focusing on experimentation, theorycrafting, and trial and error.

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"Was I meant to dice this leaf or crush it? Eh, can't make that big of a difference, right?"
-- Amateur Brewmaster Adri'on, well on his way to confining his entire unit to the latrines for two days

The brewing of restorative and enhancive concoctions was first practiced as something of an art form by the Shaman for their own purposes. The rituals they practiced to more in tune with the Gods, the power of elemental earth and the animal spirits often did extensive damage to their bodies and healing spells cast on oneself were simply too ineffective. The solitary Shaman attacked this problem by applying their innate connection with nature to discover magical plants that when treated correctly could replicate their own healing energies. Though their initial progress was somewhat haphazard and fraught with misfires, steadily a small body of herbal wisdom was built up for use by the Shaman.

The Sovereignty invasion of Teladir in 206 BQ forced the Shaman to engage far more closely in the world. For almost two centuries the Shaman fought alongside their fellow Teladir, lending their healing energies to the fight. Increasingly, Shaman began bringing the crude healing elixirs they’d created for ritual work into battle, granting them a huge advantage over their Mediator opposites who were forced to rely on vastly inferior self-healing or the aid of others when wounded. This did not go long unnoticed by the vigilant Sovereignty strategists.

A strike team of three Phantoms spent a week shadowing a young Shaman as he gathered herbs and brewed a batch of healing elixir. Subduing him in a horrific nocturnal running battle through the forest, the Phantoms stole him and his equipment aboard a small skunner and returned to Aspalaria. There, under hideous torture, the foundations of Shamanistic brewing were revealed to the Sovereignty.

The Grandmagus foresaw the great potential of healing concoctions to swing the tide of battle in favour of his own forces and threw the full weight of the Sovereignty’s resources behind their study. Herbs were methodically collected, catalogued and combined in innumerable combinations. The brewing container stolen from Teladir was studied, replicated and enhanced. Huge bounties were placed on the rarest herbs, promising fortunes to those that delivered them into the hands of the Arcanists working on the project.

Labouring day and night, often in shifts, the Aspalarian researchers gradually developed a stable set of basic recipes they could brew for battlefield use. The greatest breakthrough however, was yet to come. A lowly servant girl, utterly besotted with the handsome Imperial Arcanist in whose lab she toiled, memorized the steps he took in brewing his latest potion and replicated them overnight in order to please him. To his shock and the astonishment of all those toiling in the field, the batch brewed by a girl utterly lacking in magical talent was no less effective than the same recipe brewed by an Archmage.

The Sovereignty, faced with this shocking revelation contemplated the best manner in which to utilize their knowledge to bring a swift end to the costly war upon Teladir. A decision was made in 153 BQ to forgo secrecy in favour of overwhelming surprise. Every Aspalarian squad had at least one member pulled out and given a crash course in the basics of brewing. When they were redeployed onto the battlefield, the Sovereignty forces marched carrying crude, yet potent healing elixirs unmatched by their Teladir foes.

The strategy initially seemed to be a sound one, as the next four years saw massive gains by the Sovereignty, with Teladir almost completely conquered. The second generation hybrid revolt in 148 BQ shattered this paradigm and sent the Aspalarians reeling back across the sea, buying Teladir precious time to regain their place in the race for brewing.

In the present day, brewing is practiced as both an art and a science on both continents. Researchers, adventurers and merchants alike search constantly for newer, more potent and more versatile recipes. Through trial and error it has been discovered that the rarest, most difficult to obtain herbs often hold the key to making the most potent potions and the competition for such plants is fierce. As the Endless Siege begins in earnest, true mastery of brewing may well be the key to ultimate victory upon Lithmeria.

"The healing power of life itself at the fingertips of those without a hint of the mystical in their veins, this is either the beginning of a brighter future, or the end of it."
-- Paragon of Earth, Jaghon Rislin

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INGEST
Syntax: EAT <plant>

The first step to becoming a master apothecary is knowing how to unlock the power within a plant. Eating a plant will affect you the same as a single sip of a potion made solely from that plant. This is quite wasteful as you get much more use out of a plant by actually making the potion, but it is a sometimes effective way to gauge the strength of a plant.


ELIXIRS
Syntax: PREPARE <flask> FOR ELIXIR
Syntax: MIX <plant> INTO <flask>
Syntax: BREW <flask> <shortname> <label>

Brewing is a complicated process, every plant reacts with those mixed in before it, making the order of your mixing very important. The first step to making an elixir is to prepare a flask for it, then you will mix exactly 3 plants into the potion to get your end result. Once you've done that you can brew your elixir, the shortname must be one word and is a reference which the flask can be drank by, the label can be multiple words and will be the identifying name put on your flask.


EXAMINE
Syntax: EXAMINE <plant>

Extensive knowledge about the plants of Lithmeria enables you to examine a plant for knowledge about its effects and what sort of potions it can be used in.


CURATIVES
Syntax: PREPARE <flask> FOR CURATIVE
Syntax: MIX <plant> INTO <flask>
Syntax: BREW <flask> <shortname> <label>

Brewing a curative potion follows the same pattern as brewing an elixir, using 3 curative plants.


POWDERS
Syntax: SPRINKLE <powder> INTO <flask>
Syntax: GRIND <plant> INTO POWDER

Powders can be sprinkled into any flask which has a potion being made into it. The powder reacts with the plants mixed before and after it so it can only be sprinkled in after the first or second plant. The most common source of powders to use in potion brewing is by grinding up a plant. Powder made by grinding up a plant will introduce an effect of that plant into your potion at a very weak strength, able to be awakened by plants that react well with other plants.


SALVES
Syntax: PREPARE <flask> FOR SALVE
Syntax: MIX <plant> INTO <flask>
Syntax: BREW <flask> <shortname> <label>

Like potions, a salve is made of 3 plants mixed into a solution to get the end result. Salves however can only be used once every half minute, though their effects last for an equally long time. Salves are more passive in nature than potions, seeking to boost or protect the user in some fashion rather than healing or curing them.


VATS
When preparing, mixing, and brewing a potion or salve you can now use vats instead of flasks if you so choose. Vats allow you to make larger quantities of a potion at once, though you will also need to use proportionately more plant matter. A small vat can make five times as much potion as you can make in a flask, a medium vat 10 times, and a large vat 20 times. It should also be noted that while a flask can only have 200 sips mixed in it, it can hold up to 1000 (the size a small vat can have mixed in it).


EVAPORATE
Syntax: EVAPORATE <container>

By applying heat you can evaporate the majority of liquid from a potion in a flask or vat, producing a salve from it. The resulting salve will have the properties of the elixir or curative used to make it, but will be spread out the effect over the duration of the salve.

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Examine
You can examine a plant to see what types of brews it can be used in as well as tapping into your herbal knowledge to recall what you can of it. I think a few examples will get the point across best.



Figuring out the exact numerical effect of an herb can take a lot of experimentation and knowledge. Every herb in a potion does not merely have an effect seperate from the whole. The exact impact each herb has is determined by those that have gone before it. Which brings us to...

Brewing Process
There are three steps to making a potion of any sort.

1) Prepare a flask (or vat for mass-production) for the type of potion you wish to make: Elixir, Curative, or Salve
2) Mix 3 herbs into the flask to create the effects of the potion
3) Brew and label the potion

The first and last steps are fairly simple, merely providing a type and name for your potion, the true depth of brewing is in the recipes. Every combination of three herbs produces a valid potion, there are no set recipes. Herbs react with previous herbs in the potion, making the order in which you mix herbs as important as the herbs you use. I'm not going to go into depth with any recipes because the real fun of the system is in discovery and exploration. I will say that with the current herbs in the game there are roughly 100,000 possible potions to be made, and this number will only be increasing as we approach release.

Powders
Powders are a way of diversifying your potions by introducing additional properties or modifying those that already exist within the brew. Powders can only be introduced in the middle of the mixing process, either after the first or second herb in the potion. And only a single powder may be added to each potion.

The most common source of powders is to grind an herb up to create an herbal powder. Herbal powders are differentiated by the primary property of the herb used to make them, and when added to a potion they will add that property (very weakly) to the brewing potion. This is most useful with those herbs that react well with other herbs, and through experimentation you will find some very powerful uses for powders in your brewing.

Salves
You can apply a salve once every 30 seconds (unless modified by an herb used in the brewing). The effects of salves will also last for 30 seconds, and operate like short-lived defenses. This effectively gives you a special bonus you can change every half minute.

There are two ways to make salves; you can either prepare your flask for a salve and brew with those herbs specifically used to make salves, or you can evaporate an elixir or curative potion. A normal salve will have a variety of benefits possible, such as increasing resistances or other characteristics. Evaporated potions, on the other hand, are regeneration salves of a sort. The effect of the original elixir or curative being spread out over the 30 seconds of the salve.

Registering
When brewing a potion and labeling it normally there is no restriction on what you can call it. Someone else could make an inferior brew and give it the same label. Registering a potion is a way of preventing this. To register a potion you must create several flasks of it, labelled identically and send them in to the Apothecary Guild. This is a sort of approval process similar to that found in other realms for tradeskills. Your recipe, and the exact details of your brew will not be visible to the approvers, so your secrets remain your secrets.

Registering like this will reserve your potion name to that exact brew and to those who have the license. You can create copies of your license for a potion to be able to share a registered formula with your allies, or those who are helping you keep your shop supplied. Furthermore, shop owners can hire an Apothecary NPC to be able to produce those potions you have a license for on demand.

Gardens
Herbs have a variety of sources, the majority of them coming from the villages around the world where the common herbs, as well as some uncommon ones are grown. Other uncommon herbs and all of the rare ones are found in various places around the world, generally dangerous places, providing the hunters, explorers, and questers of the world an important place in the economy. However. master apothecaries have learned the value of keeping a more steady supply close to hand.

Maintaining a garden for the magical plants of the world can be an expensive situation, as each herb has their own temperature ranges, favored environments, and other factors in their growth. More common herbs have less demanding requirements to grow, this is after all, why they are more common, but the rare herbs can be expensive and difficult to grow in the privacy of your own garden. Because of this, the demand for herbs from those who find them in their natural habitat will never fade, but neither will the resourceful apothecary be unable to brew their recipes should they keep a well-maintined garden.

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Our next update will be in a week and half's time, roughly, instead of the usual week we aim for (if fail to hit by a day or two sometimes). The next update will feature the system of soldiers, guards, troops, and the general going ons of warfare outside of the solely player-vs-player combat of a skirmish.