*A herb garden can be upgraded using weirwood obtained from the Bourse. Each time a herb garden is upgraded, the owner chooses a single herb from the list. The herb garden produces 2 additional doses of that herb from then on.
To upgrade a herb garden requires Imperial Wains of weirwood equal to the level the herb garden is being upgraded to. So the first upgrade of a starting level 1 herb garden costs costs 2 Imperial Wains of weirwood, from 2 to 3 costs 3 Imperial Wains, etc.*
Unlike most other personal resources, Herb gardens produce several types of a unique material that has a wide variety of applications.
However, unlike any other personal resource, when it is upgraded the benefit only extends to one of these materials.
If we were to go on pure economics, there is no point to ever upgrading a herb garden - since it is dramatically better value to instead upgrade a forest, mine, or any other personal resource. The pay off of a couple of additional measures of one specific herb is a jaw-droppingly small advantage compared to the brain-shrinking task of securing the imperial resource in the first place.
Iām not bringing this up because weirwood is notoriously difficult to come by at the moment, as that can change. But Iām not sure why it only upgrades a single herb when every other resource benefits from unanimous advantage - even the āpot luckā resources, Military Unit and Fleet, gain from increased overall production. I could better understand if it cost more to upgrade a herb garden per level, but the benenfit extended to each herb. But it just doesnāt seem worth it to spend an imperial resource to get another two herbs from this resource.
Unless, in the quote from the wiki, āper levelā applies to each herb - meaning that for every wain of weirwood we can increase one herbās production once? That works out alright, I guessā¦But if the cost increases to upgrade subsequent herbs, a herb garden simply isnāt worth upgrading.
The increase is equal to 1/7th of the herb gardenās production, which is similar to the increase gained from one upgrade to a mana site, for instance. Bearing in mind also that you are effectively doubling the output of a particular herb if you pick one other than True Vervain. That is a feature of other boosts like Ruthless Vigilance, Healthy Crop that adds +2 of each herb, which strongly favours the non-Vervain herb types.
It is slightly efficient than a mine, forest, business or farm which gain 1/5th production per upgrade, but I suspect that the specialisation is part of that cost. If the upgrades for a herb garden added 3 herbs per upgrade itād be on par with the others, alternatively it could alternate perhaps, like mana sites (so +2/+3 or +4)?
Mana sites are weird, because of the odd-even upgrade progression (if you can afford to upgrade at all, you want to upgrade twice), and youāre better off looking at mines and forests for your baseline.
And Fleet isnāt pot-luck - itās versatile, paid for with an average decrease of 1 resource versus a mine or forest.
If you had upgraded your garden at E1 you would now have 8 extra herbs. I suggest that they would have gone a significant way towards repaying the sort of price you would have paid for the weirwood. Starting right now? I agree it looks like a longer term investment but to my mind that is because you are looking at the economics of an area of the game many players are giving away the product for free.
Hehe, the look on peoples faces when you charge them for herbs used to heal them would be priceless
Letās see, most people seem to want to charge around a crown for a resource, probably fair assuming weāre not talking true vivain, then something for your time, crafters seem to want 3 crowns per month as that makes them up to the 9 crowns a farm/business earnsā¦ So weāll call it a crown per pop. So 2 crowns to be healed? 1 crown if you supply your own herbs. 4 crowns for a traumatic wound?
Just need warriors to charge 9 crowns each to go into battle and weāre about even!
Prices are widely widely variable on the field, and shouldnāt be discussed too much on the forum because that breaks the game of roaming around the field finding bargains.
Having said that, some of your suggestions are quite out of whack with any price Iāve yet heard.
Going back to the main subject, though, the primary point in upgrading herb gardens is the benefit for apothecaries. Herbs are not (trivially) interchangeable, and as a result some upgrades for herb gardens are very valuable, while others are quite pointless - and exactly which is which depends heavily on what herbs you use in the main potions you make.
Crown per herb? Someone needs to get out on the field =D
Good luck trying to charge for healing or for herbs when the Hospital trades at 1:1 for herbs and donates plenty for free for battlefields~
Now, while that stops there being any chance of profit for herbalists, it DOES mean that when you upgrade that herb garden, those +2 herbs could be -any- herbs from the list. So itās actually a better upgrade than almost any other resource!
For the record, I hand my herbs over to my grimnir every event. Iām just wondering whether anyone else thought it was odd that Herb Garden seems to beā¦kind of mehish in the upgrades department.
Iād say the balance of value of potions is pretty solid. I think thatās why it is the way it is. Herbs are used to make things that are greater than the sum of their parts. Not a complaint, just a query. But on pure economics, herb gardens are the short end of the stick.
Itās less good in terms of raw numbers, but for quite a lot of builds you end up wanting specific herbs a bit more, which is where the upgrade shines. If you just want raw numbers, turn your weirwood into mithril and sell it to mages in exchange for buffs.
Waht tea said, or have one of your mates run a mana site and the others run herb garden. Convert mana into herbs using Ruthless Vigilance, Healthy Crop, upgrade Mana site to be able to spam this. The enchantment for Herb Gardens is great, upgrading, less so .
Looking at it from a strategic perspective though, itās better to have more herbs out on the field as a whole, because there tend to be shortages of specific ones. I wonder if it might be better as upgrades giving you 4 Vervain or 2 of any other herb, or something? The thing about the upgrade is itās a lot better for anything thatās not Vervain because you start off with effectively 2 free upgrades there.
Herb Gardens are already a more complicated resource to set prices with as everyone gets a mixed bag. The upgrade seems to reinforce the impression that Vervain should be cheap and other herbs worth more so you should spend your precious upgrade on them. However it doesnāt give you more Vervain than other stuff if you upgrade, so yeah itās a bit underwhelming.
I mean, personally Iāve never encountered a shortage of specific herbs on the field; even with rituals during battles and having to run off and find a random sales person, I have never spent more than 15 minutes doing so because you just ask who is trading or consult advertised sales. Herbalists in my group often find themselves just carrying extra herbs. There was a time, indeed when there was a variance in prices, but that generally falls off.
The fact of the matter though, is that the hospital do 1:1 herb exchanges; so any resource you take is for convenience and then adjustable from there, there is no fluctuation in price between herbs because of that; all herb values are equal to the cheapest herb
Sure, but that assumes that they have the ones you want and will take the ones you donāt which may not be the case. While in terms of number crunching it may not be the most efficient more herbs is still well more herbs and as said above people will favour the ones they use the most either in potions or in healing depending. And while I have never noticed a shortage, some herbs are in higher demand than others.
My statement is not an isolated comment, it is in relation directly to the comment made by Jim that āthere tends to be a shortage of specific onesā To which both you and I agree, is not the case =3
I absolutely agree that, in principal, the hospital is able to run out of herbs, Iāve yet to find them in low supply, however, and donate plenty to them anywho.
Equally, Iāve yet to have a situation where I canāt find all herbs I want at a uniform price, or someone who still thinks vervain should cost less and get to purchase that at a lower price to trade on, or exchange 1:1 with *another *member of the hospital who knows that they will be able to 1:1 trade at their leisure
Iāve done trades in individual potion purchasing, as well as in 20-70 herb lots; I find it rare I canāt find herbs locally, but then often I will choose to use it as a good excuse to go visit the Navarr, Brass Coast or Marchers who have lots of them (and a few record keepers who travel around and keep notes on many of the trading herbalists).
Iād suggest investigating the field more; I was playing a non-com all the way up to E4, so it is not the case that all the traders disappear at battle times, and at E4 I was managing people on the field and doing plenty of grunt work and still able to get my herbs in order =3
How worth it, from a purely economic perspective, is upgrading resources? With the insane prices wains command, it would surely take years - quite a lot of them - for your investment to pay off. If you have the money, the way Iāve heard it, itās far more economical to fund a sinecure and get it assigned to you.
The enchantment for Herb Gardens is great, upgrading, less so