Great game; patiently waiting for 0.1.3.
I have an ... idea.
A permanent stat increase optionts.
WAIT!!! Wait! wait, put down the pitchfork, let me explain.
There would be 2 type (tier) of potion: lesser and greater.
For example:
Lesser strength potion would increase youre meele attack damage by 1 and the greater by 5, the greater would cost 4 time more to create then the lesser.
Speed: 10 and 50%.
HP: 1 and 5 ETC
How can you obtain the recipe:
All the "bosses" (the goat, the poison wyvern, the shadow spawnin skeleton) have a 1% chanse to drop 1 lesser and 0,1% chanse to drop the greater recipe. These recipes would be unique so you would't get a duplicant of them.
The real kicker come from the cost of the recipe.
I'm talking like 1000 metalic 500 holy 500 fey and similar cost for the lesser.
Easy to obtain: no
Easy to farm: definitely no
Would give a further goal: for some definitely; others ehh not so much.
Would be some crasy people out ther how would grind it like crasy:
absolutely (including me).
This is just an idea, but maybe you can considered it puting in somting similar, I know it supposed to be a difficult game, but it would be a great reward for thos who put a lot of time and effort in the game and
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I JUST GOT AN EVEN BETTER IDEA:
Who about if you put this in the 1 life mode because you have "the knowledge of all mortal languages" so you can read this ancient books about the recipe.
Viewing post in Sulphur Memories: Alchemist comments
A high fixed cost for permanent stat increase might be difficult to balance. I have a better idea: not make the potion cost high, but as you drink more of the same potion, the effect of each additional potion will get lower.
I think a square root or cube root diminishing return is good enough. That means the total effect scales with the square (cube) root of the amount of potions drunk. For certain special stats that have a large influence, you can use logarithm.
For players that want to grind, they can get relatively high stats, but not too high that would break the game. (A mage with 100 melee attack is certainly broken.) And for players that don't want to grind, they can still benefit from the potion.