Fruitful Staff is OP

Has anyone else abused this thing? You can craft it at Level 5 Alchemy and from then on you're drowning in Alcohol, Aqua Vitae and Zorkmids.

Blast an enemy with magic and give it a quick smack => 1 x Apple/Pear => 9 x Brandy => 18 x Aqua Vitae => 1044 Zorkmids (on Going Rogue).

Definitely needs a random chance instead of a guaranteed drop on every kill.

 

And what have you been buying with this vast supply of wealth then?

 

Hahaha, yes... I've definitely used this after learning about it a while back. Infinite money with it, quite funny. Might need a nerf .

 

@jareddm

I haven't bothered to convert it all to zorkmids. I was just giving an example of the many options this staff provides. You get reliable healing, mana regen, unlimited aqua vitae for potions and unlimited money.

 

This is my alternative to stacking MP regen, especially early game. The cash value of it is amazingly high, but not that much worse than throwing around CotGR or some of the other cash gains. You can't spend your zorkmids on much, so it puts little value on them. Main bonus I see to this is the ease of getting nice mana regen, which can be obsolete if you get enough MP regen anyways.

 

Personally I think that any long skill tree that <i>isn't</i> OP by the time you get to the end of it needs buffing. You've just invested five levels getting there (1/4th to 1/5th of your total levels!), it damn well better be powerful.

 

^
Well not OP but powerful.
As you can get 5 levels up, and max a skill tree so fast.
Having it OP would mean from then on tedium, whereas as powerful/balanced wouldn't be as tedious.

 

There are a bunch of balance issues that do need some tweaking, mushrooms are also a near infinite supply of money, and curse of the golden ratio gives atleast 100 gold per cast from my experience. Lockpicks and spores being sellable or lutefiskable too. (Would be nice if you could actually buy lockpicks more often though!)

We will see some balance changes coming over the next couple of patches i suspect. Ive never used the fruit staff, but if your calculations are true, then thats certainly something that needs balancing.

Granted alchemy level 5 is a huge investment in skill points. So there should be some advantages. 1000 gold per kill is probably a bit too much though. Not sure how to fix that with the way the crafting tree is setup either other than to give a % chance to drop and make it fairly low.. like 5-10% which would put it on par with the mushrooms currently.

 

FYI, @Ratha, Golden Ratio gives gold per damage, so if you're killing mobs with a lot of health, you'll get a lot of gold.