Most useful potions

New Players
1

I don’t know if this has been covered before but what would you suggest as being the best potions to learn if you’re choosing to be completely apothecary. I’m guessing that for a healing apothecary, master medicinal, the winter moon and the assassins gate (for antidotes) would be a good start. For an apothecary working with a group of magicians, philtres of the high peaks and the potions that help with rituals would be useful. I just want to hear what other people would recommend because I’m honestly just guessing.

Thanks

(Note you have 5 experience points to spend on extra recopies if you choose chirurgeon and apothecary initially)

2

The Philtres of War are fairly high in demand, Skop’s Mead especially.

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3

I would suggest against the 2 deadly poisons. They are VERY specialised and wont come up very often. I would prioritize the tonics higher. They could make you a bit of coin in the day.

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4

I have only heard of the Assassins Gate/ Winter Moon poisons being used on the field once in 5 years of playing Empire.

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5

So is this a good idea in your opinion

  • Philtres of War
  • Philtres of the High Peaks
  • Master Medicinal
  • Tonics of the Deep Forest
  • Tonics of the Open Sky
  • (Apothecary Potions)
6

My other question is: what do you intend to do with your day when you aren’t brewing and selling potions? Do you want to reserve a couple of XP for other things, such as Shield Use, Dedicate or Magician to give you access to other areas of the game?

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7

Well I’m a classically trained musician and I’m pretty interested in the social side of LARP aswell so I might become a bard, composing music and playing in taverns. Luckily that would mean I don’t need to save Xp

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8

Being a bard myself I endorse this! I mostly stick within my group these days as I found busking being a bit lonely, but it is fun to do it for a bit.

In case you hadn’t found it already: https://www.profounddecisions.co.uk/empire-wiki/Music

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9

How do you go about finding a group of people to play music with? Also, do you have any idea what archetype to choose for an apothecary or a bard in Dawn?

10

Troubadour would be your best bet for a bard. They are bard-priests who weave the glory of Dawn and the Virtues together in song.
https://www.profounddecisions.co.uk/empire-wiki/Troubadour
https://www.profounddecisions.co.uk/empire-wiki/Dawn_religious_beliefs

I’ve found finding people on the field quite difficult. I spent most of my time in Dawn playing things solo with occasional forays into trying to play/sing with others. There’s usually no time to rehearse IC, and most people are amateur musicians, so expecting them to sightread stuff is not really going to work. That being said, I haven’t played in Dawn for four years now, there will almost certainly be other people and other musicians around now who weren’t there then.

I’m not so sure about apothecary. You may find work as a yeofolk will suit you best if you are going to be trading as nobles don’t tend to deal with money.
https://www.profounddecisions.co.uk/empire-wiki/Yeoman_of_Dawn

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11

Thank you very much for your help :grin:

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12

If you are planning on taking an instrument to the event (Nothing too expensive), The Holburg Houdagen pay handsomely for musicians and entertainers. (I do mean handsomely. I’ve seen some musicians walk away with a throne before)

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13

What is the Holburg Houdagen?

14

Its my group in the league. We are a mercenary free company dedicated to wisdom and prosperity. Most evenings we try to get some entertainment for the group.

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15

So first a disclaimer: Apothecary is one of the skills in the game that quickly becomes redundant, you only need to know one apothecary who can make X, to serve large chunks of the game. Unless you plan to be really proactive with herb trading and potion services, basically playing a trader*, your skills end up probably being underused. If you have aspirations towards the nobility it interacts terribly with that game (it’s one thing to have a few potions as a physik another to have just potion sets), I’ve seen a fair number of Noble Apothecaries quit the game (and in one case when they came back as a non-apothecary had a lot more fun.)

I’d seriously consider looking at the Priest skills considering how far into the musician you seem to be wanting to play, and going more into the Troubadour role is an obvious option.

Philtres of War -These are the most popular potions in Dawn, that being said I can think of 7 Apothecaries with that recipe set.
Philtres of the High Peaks - Also fairly useful, becoming more so, to my knowledge the supply is lower.
Master Medicinal - If you want healing potions the base set is far better.
Tonics of the Deep Forest - Dawn tends to prefer more uses of Unstoppable over more hits.
Tonics of the Open Sky - The changes to unstoppable, and increased cost means that use of this has gone down, not quite to nothing but it is certainly less valuable than it was.
Infusions of Feathers - This has the advantage of having a fun RP option, that I think you could interest Dawn in

*Also I managed this perfectly well without any Apothecary skills, but it would still help.

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16

Yeah… looking into the huge excess of apothecaries has made me much less keen on it. I know literally nothing about priests and I’m not even sure Dawn is the nation I definatly want to choose. I’m definatly keen on the music so a path using that would be great. I’ve looked a lot into magic rituals involving music of the spheres but I’m still unsure about what archetype, nation and skills would be best. I will look into being a priest though and I read that getting anointing and insight was a good idea but idk what it does. Also, how good does my singing need to be because I’m not great lol

17

Enthusiasm counts for alot!
Being able to carry a tune is useful when trying to spread your songs by teaching others, but a strong voice, or fancy singing lessons are not necessary.
You get a bonus for being able to play accompaniment or pick out the tune so that will be one up on many too.

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18

Good plan, highly viable. Some characters end up hardly using their game-system skills.

Think about what sort of thing you mean by “bard” though… in larp, people often use the word to mean any musician or singer, though the real-world-historical kind of bard isn’t much of a thing in Empire, at least in most nations (though maybe the Wintermark skop comes close to the Icelandic bard)… but all Empire nations have their musicians, storytellers and suchlike entertainers, and good ones find themselves appreciated and rewarded by Empire characters (whose players enjoy the entertainment as well, after all).
Just as an example:

I can vouch for that… though the Houdagen are far from the only ones, of course.

My League character is the “theatre-troupe magician” archetype, but first and foremost he’s a violinist, and he has built up a good IC reputation as a violinist, through a mixture of self-promotion and playing well. (He does sing occasionally, but it’s not serious.)

There are plenty of different kinds of settings for music: not just in someone’s camp or tavern for tips, not just busking on the street, but also in proper concerts, or being paid to supply music for dancing (or dancing lessons), or to accompany a play, or as part of a ritual: my character often uses Silutaris’s “music of the spheres” approach when casting a ritual solo (but when working with others it’s more often dramaturgy, as is typical for the League).

Um… good enough that people will enjoy it! But since you’re “a classically trained musician” I take it that you play at least one instrument well? So you don’t necessarily need to sing anyway. What do you play?

Well, my character found some at the first event, and over the time since then they’ve come and gone but there have always been some. Really the limiting factor for me has been my time and enthusiasm rather than people, because the top priority at each event has always been the troupe performing at least one play. Sometimes I’ve done some organising/planning with other musicians leading up to an event, sending emails to represent in-character letters, and sharing copies of music, so that at the event we can get away with just a little bit of rehearsing. Once we did some rehearsing for a violin duo on the Friday before time-in.

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19

Thanks so much for your detailed response. My idea of a bard was someone who plays music and/or sings. I assume you have to have ritual skills to participate in music of the spheres right? I am definatly trying to avoid singing at all costs so I’m happy it’s not required. I play violin and piano well (but I assume I can’t take my piano) and last month I picked up a cheap lap harp that I though is easy to play and learn, fits well in dawn, can provide harmony for other instruments, is cheap so can be replaced. I’m not sure I’d feel great carrying around my violin where it could get broken unless there are cases that are more period looking. My whole game is probably going to be around music because I don’t have the budget for spears or armour or a staff and I’d like to see the different skills in the actual game before I choose. I think I’d just like to find 1 or 2 people to play music with at each event.

20

I think… I think personally I’d be more likely to refer to that in-game as a “musician” or a “singer”. Though people do talk of bards as well.
“Minstrel” might be a useful word too.

Well, you need the relevant lore skill to be able to use crystal mana to contribute to the ritual’s magnitude, or more generally to participate in a magical sense…
In principle though, there’s nothing to stop a non-magician character contributing to the music that someone else is using for a ritual. (In fact I sort of did that once… an Urizen coven was doing a ritual, and one of them was using a glockenspiel, and my League character spontaneously helped out by playing the “drone” note at the bottom end of the instrument, leaving the other person free to play other parts. My character was not using any magical skill.)

Indeed, taking a piano would not be practical. For a while I’ve been wanting to build a pipe organ small enough to bring to events, but I’ve been struggling to really get going with it.

Small harps can be good, yes.

I bought a cheap violin and bow for LARP (so I don’t need to worry what happens to it), improved it with some good strings, and then got one of those old-fashioned sturdy wooden “coffin” style cases for it. No accidents so far in, oh, 25+ events. The cheap bow twisted after a few years so I replaced it with a carbon-fibre one.

Should be doable in most nations. That includes Dawn, since you mentioned it, and the League of course. Even easier if you’re willing to work across nations. Though naturally it’ll depend on how much time you want to spend playing, and what kind of music and so on.

There’s some good music for unaccompanied violin, but a far larger repertoire for violin-and-accompaniment (Kreisler’s just not the same played alone), and for duos, quartets etc… and it can be really joyful to pass a tune back and forth, taking turns to play melody or improvise countermelody/accompaniment.

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