Dynamic Herbalism
by Mr. SlackPants


Dynamic Herbalism?
Yes, in that I find vanilla herbalism very simple and static. You pick a plant, always succeed, and always pick a certain amount of plants parts each time. I figured I change that. and here we are. So now you can fail or succees and gather different amount of plants. Your success will depend on your survival skill.


How does it work?
There is no garanteed success you'll harvest any plant parts from plants. There are a couple factors that weigh in to determent if you will be successfull or not. First is your survival skill, the higher it is, the bigger your chance is at harvesting a plant part. Another thing that factors in is the difficulty you set for the mod. There are 5 difficulty levels, vanilla not counted, that will decide how difficult the mod will be.


Am I stuck to the difficulty level I chooce?
Not at all. When the mod loads you will receive a config item. You can use it at any time to set your difficulty when you don't like the difficulty you picked. The difficulty levels are as following: Vanilla – Very Easy – Easy – Normal – Hard – Very Hard. Though if you intend to pick vanilla, you might as well uninstall the mod.


So, there's chance at failure?
Yes, and the lower your survival skill, the higher the chance is. So building your survival skill is essential for being a successful herbalist. With low survival skill you'll fail very often and you'll find you can hardly pick any plants. But as your skill grows, so does success.


But just chance at failure is hardly dynamic.
Indeed, that's why there's also a chance at gathering more or less plant parts. Without any perks, when sucessfull, you will gather 1 – 3 plant parts from a plant IF you got enough skill to pick a particular plant. If you don't have enough skill to pick a certain plant, there's still a small chance you'll be able to gather a plant, but it's highly unlikely.


Anything else this mod does?
Yeah, you will NOT be able to gether all the different plants from the beginning. All plants have a certain minimum survival skill needed in order to pick them. The skill required depends on the difficulty setting you chooce. If you chooce difficulty Very Easy, you will be able to pick every plant at survival 60, with Very Hard at survival 90. Each of the perks you can get will lower the value with 10 points. Meaning that if you have both perks and are playing at Very Hard, you will be able to gether every plant at survival 70 instead of 90.


A perk?
Yes, I added 2 perks actualy. 1 perk you can pick and is called “Herbalist”. With it you increase your chances at picking plants and you'll find you gather more parts from each plant.
The second perk is an earned perk called “Herb Collector”. You can not pick this perk, but it is given to you when you picked a certain amount of plants succesfully. It will further increase your chance on success as well as increasing the yield from picking plants.


Do I know when my skill is too low for picking a plant?
No. If you find that you are failing to gather at a certain plant a lot, it's very likely you lack the skill for that plant.


Then what is the easiest or hardest plant to pick?
The difficulty levels of plants is as folowing from easy to hard:

• Maize
  
• White HorseNettle
  
• Broc Flower
  
• Barrel Cactus
  
• Xander Root
  
• Buffalo Gourd
  
• Prickly Pear
  
• Jalapeno Pepper
  
• Honey Mesquite
  
• Banana Yucca
  
• Coyote Tobacco
  
• Pinto
  
• Nevada Agave

Wont this break Sunny Smiles quest “By a Campfire on the Trail”?
Nope, unless you want it too. The mod wont start unless you choose a difficulty level with the config item. As long as you dont do this, plants will act like vanilla. So you're free to finish that quest before starting the mod.


Anything else this mod adds?
Yes it does. It will add 6 more aid items for you to craft. Brawn, Fortify, Haste, Hyper, Insight and Reviver. Each requires survival skill to craft at a campfire ranging from 50 to 75. They are not drugs since they dont have an addiction chance, however they do have another adverse effect. They will either add a considerate amount of hunger, thirst or sleep to your character while they are active.


What do each of them do?

• Brawn – lasts 5 mins
  
  [-]Inc. Carry weight +50
  [-]Inc. Strength +1
  [-]Inc. Unarmed Damage +5
  [-]Dam. Starvation +250
  
  
• Fortify – lasts 5 mins
  
  [-]Red. Limb Damage -50%
  [-]Inc. Endurance +2
  [-]Inc. Health +100
  [-]Damage Dehydration +200
  
  
• Haste – lasts 5 mins
  
  [-]Hasten (+25% runspeed)
  [-]Dam. Sleep Deprevation +300
  
  
• Hyper – lasts 5 secs
  
  [-]Inc. Damage Threshold +5
  [-]Inc. Strength +2
  [-]Turbo +1
  [-]Dam. Sleep Deprevation +200
  
  
• Insight – lasts 3 mins
  
  [-]Inc. Intelligence +3
  [-]inc. Medicine +15
  [-]Inc Science +20
  [-]Dam. Starvation +150
  
  
• Reviver – lasts 2 mins
  
  [-]Regeneration (1HP/Sec)
  [-]Inc. Health +50
  [-]Dam. Dehydration +200

I Dont like it.
Either Un-install the mod and dont use it, make your own mod or give me some decent feedback why. Any of those options will do.


Sounds good, I want to try it, where do I get it?
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37863

Broc Flower and Xander Root are pretty far down o_o, but they are also part of the tutorial, seems like a weird choice

Not if you took the time to start up the mod. In the help message for the mod you'll notice that you have to enable the mod yourself. Where i explain that you can wait with starting the mod untill you finished Sunny's quest. Giving you the oportunity to finish that one normally.

But weird choice? no. As you know they are using in things like stimpaks and a few chems, which i consider quite an advanced ability. As such, being able to make things like that should also be high end, hence them being so far down the list.

good someone's working on this. i suggested something like this for ART and Arwen seemed to like the idea but i dont know if its implemented yet. i'd also suggest a few more things i also suggested in ART's thread:

have the same system for gathering animal parts (yes i know this is called Herbalism so another mod may be necessary) which are also always successful and not tied to the survival skill. Im thinking that characters low in survival shouldnt know how to skin beasts or extract teeth, claws and such or at least have a hard time doing so or wouldnt get as much material. and there could be skill level requirements for getting different animal parts.

lol, i didnt put it in because if it made the tutorial impossible to pass i wouldnt want it .

That sounds like a great idea as well, but not something to include in this mod. Though i would like to see a mod like that myself, where someone first need to teach you how to skin an animal and only then can you skin an animal. Or how to remove their teeth or show what parts of the body make for good meat and such. Maybe i find the time... hehe.


Fair enough, i suppose i could have included a note like that in the description. Which would made it a little clearer that it wont break the quest. (unless you want to)

Sounds like a fun mod and a good addition to making the survival skill more dynamic and useful...

However, I do find the order of plants by difficulty to be... well not to my liking, if nothing else.

In my opinion, the justification that broc and xander are used for stimpacks is flawed - since the creation of the stimpack already requires a high skill level. There is no need for the gathering of the materials to ALSO require a high skill level. Especially not when they are also required for healing powder... something not nearly as powerful, and specifically designed to be a "low level chem".

Further, I'm not terribly fond of the idea of the progression not following any liklihood of what a new character is going to find in order. That is to say, you can find a ton of broc and xander before you're going to find much in the way of prickly pear, and likely before finding any coyote tobacco.

So for my part, I'd rather see the difficulty progression be something more like:
- maize / broc / xander (as the easiest)
- horsenettle / barrel cactus / buffalo gourd (all at the next level)
- prickly pear / honey mesquite / jalapeno (at the next more difficult)
- banana yucca / coyote tobacco / pinto / agave (at the highest difficulty)


That having been said however, I personally am not really in favor of "you have no chance to pick this because your skill is too low". To me having hard lines in the sand like that is the opposite of feeling very dynamic. I would rather have all plants have a chance of picking 0 - 3 at a time (rather than 1 - 3) --- then have the chances of how many you pick be influenced by the difficulty of the plant, and the level of your skill.

So someone with a skill of 10:
- when picking maize, has a 50% chance of picking 1, a 35% chance of picking 2, and a 15% chance of picking 3
- when picking agave, has an 90% chance of picking 0, and a 10% chance of picking 1

Someone with a skill of 50:
- picking maize has a 25% chance of picking 1, a 50% chance of picking 2, and a 25% chance of picking 3
- picking agave has a 20% chance of picking 0, a 60% chance of picking 1, and a 20% chance of picking 2

Someone with a skill of 90:
- picking maize has a 40% chance of picking 2, and a 60% chance of picking 3
- picking agave has a 50% chance of picking 1, a 35% chance of picking 2, and a 15% chance of picking 3

Note: These numbers are pulled out of my backside, and are presented only as an example of how I could see the progression moving.


Just my own thoughts/suggestions. Love the fact that you're working on this, either way.

DarkUncleBoh's ideas sounds good to me

While i do not entirely agree with your reasoning about one being high level skilled already, so that the other should not. To me it makes more sense that they both be high skilled in that case. However, i do know that broc and xander are used as well in healing powder, so that's one reason why i *could* make them lower skilled plants. However, you do make an excellent point with what you find in the beginning area and what you'll find in later, higher level areas.

In any case, i just made an initial progression tree, not neccecarly the one i was gonna end up using. So i have to say i agree with you and will change the skill levels of the plants for a future version.

In regards to how many you pick, i liked the fact that it's not static, however my method has certainly room for improving. But i have to see ho exacly i can implement it in a way that i like. Though i agree that it has to become easier at higher levels to pick more, than it is at lower levels.

Thanks a bunch for the feedback. Given like that it certainly helps with improving the mod.

Always happy to provide feedback where I can.

I tend to have what is often referred to as a "strong personality" - meaning that I can come across as if I'm trying to tell you hod to make your mod, rather than just offering suggestions... but the reality is that I am very thankful for the efforts of other modders, even those whose work I don't really care for. The effort is much appreciated, and in this case the idea is a great one.

So I'll put out all of my thoughts and suggestions, knowing that you might take some, and leave others - I'm never bothered by my ideas being rejected (just inspiries me to go make my own mod instead).

The difference between telling someone what to do and usefull feedback is being constructive. This all falls under Constructive critisism. Which is exacly why i post my mods quite soon in development. Spending hours on a mod makes you blind for alternatives and you often get stuck in a way of thinking that doesn't help. Henece it's good to get response to refresh your view ... or spend time on other projects and get back to a previous project later.

cheers.

[edit] btw. i re-aranged the skill needed for plants now. And i changed the amounts formula, though i need to test and tweak it more. I also changed that you can now pick plants with too low skill, though you'll get a hefty penalty for it.

Groovy. I feel that having no "hard limit" as to a skill needed to pick a plant, just have it change how likely you are to succeed at all (let alone get multiple) gives a much more dynamic feel.

Agreed. But I'm keeping persistent chance at failure in though. At low skill there's quite a chance at failure, while at full skill it's easy to succeed. Ranging from Very Easy to Very Hard, with full survival skill, you'll have a 1-5% chance at failure. Call it a useless plant if you will. One that didn't have the parts you need and can use.

Considering that...
1) I always seem to end up with a massive overabundance of plants in vanilla (except horsenettle and xander root), and
2) That is withOUT the chance to pick multiple of all plants

I don't really see there always being a small chance that the plant didn't actually grow anything useful this time around for whatever reason (disease, bugs got into it, whatever) as a problem. Sounds like a good balancing point to me.

It might be a good idea to increase the costs of plant parts you need to make things. But i have to find out what i think is a good chance at success and amount of parts you get. As i tested it out so far though, seems in general i get way too many plants. So i have to play and test more.

Could set it to a straight up percentage skill check something like the old pen-and-paper BRP system (Call of Cthulhu, Stormbringer, RuneQuest, etc.) where success was indicated by a 1d100 roll under the skill %. Course- characters with a low Survival skill might really be gimped doing it that way though.

Number of plants picked could be based on degree of success: GetRandomPercent less than 1/2 skill = 2 plants picked; GetRandomPercent less than 10% of skill = critical success, 3 plants picked.

Edit: Skill check could also be modified based on "plant tier" as laid out by Uncle above.

That's roughly the method i used. There's a base chance at failure, bigger at harder difficulty, but lowered with survival skill. If you pass that check you have a chance at picking the plants. Then you'll get a plant part if you pass a random roll, which uses skill and difficulty mostly. It will be harder to pick at higher difficulty, but again, easier with more skill. I haven't implemented a critical success formala though, but i'm not going to, since it would increase your yield too much. (based on how i implemented it currently)

I'm currently trying to find a decent fail/success rate for my formuals, so that requires testing. Also i implemented the option to set the respawn rate of plants manualy. So you could go nuts and have them respawn every hour .. or set it too weeks if you wnated too. I'll probably realease an updated version within a couple days, after doing some more testing.

I updated the mod.

• Added various herbal concoctions (Aid items)
  
• Option to change respawn rates of plants
  
• Chance at picking plant without enough skill, though with big penalty
  
• Changed looting amounts and formula
  
• Re-aranged plants and their skill requirements

Sounds like some interesting changes. Will certainly be checking this out on my next playthrough.


...I'm a bit leery about the added herbal concoctions however. At a glance they look like a bit too much