Revisiting Apothecary

captain_rogers

It's been a year since they introduced apothecary. They provided it as an alternative to revive farming.

Initially we all (or atleast most) of us are critical about Apothecary. But now most players do utilize it for revives, maybe due to the lack of other options. What do y'all think about Apothecary? I personally think it was a huge success since it eliminated the need of mindless revive farming on story content and provided a fair and accessible way to grind revives.

Wong_99

I feel like it would be better if it was a garenteed lvl 1 for the easy and lvl 2 for the hard, but it’s alright

Emilia90

Apothecary was a huge success

1 revive from here and one from daily events is pretty good. I got all my Necro revive stash just from doing this for a couple weeks

captain_rogers

Apothecary was a huge success

Wong_99 said:

I feel like it would be better if it was a garenteed lvl 1 for the easy and lvl 2 for the hard, but it’s alright

It is fair that you think in that way, but if we get a guaranteed l2 on hard difficulty, and we already have a l2 revive on 22h event, which will only result in overflow of revives and a disparity between l1 and l2 revives (we get twice the amount of l2, and hence fill the l2 stash faster)

Chuck_Finley

Apothecary was a failure

Depends who is deciding whether it was a failure.

Are you seriously telling me there is a summoner out there that was planning on doing end game content and said “so glad we got the apothecary- it’s way better than revive farming”?

lol… no.

Aecyn

Apothecary was a huge success

I think it works fine. When they first introduced it, there were a lot of posts on how they should implement revive acquisition by adding another way to farm as many revives as you could in story content but they were missing the point. Kabam needs to keep the revive supply in check so that content isn't trivialized by an endless free workaround.

They're okay with players using units because that comes with an opportunity cost in the case of farmed units or just a cash cost which is good for business. The opportunity cost is missing out on rewards from big events of course.

The current system with added deals for units once in a while allows you to stockpile more than enough revives for anything in the game. Necropolis might be on the cusp of that where an average run is probably in the 100 revive ballpark but that's where the revives bought with units come in. If you want to get a piece of content done, it's more than reasonably achievable with the current system given enough time to acquire the resources.

Emilia90

Apothecary was a huge success

Chuck_Finley said:

Depends who is deciding whether it was a failure.

Are you seriously telling me there is a summoner out there that was planning on doing end game content and said “so glad we got the apothecary- it’s way better than revive farming”?

lol… no.

I can’t think of a single piece of recent content that would need revive farming. Most stuff is incredibly easy to do

BringPopcorn

Meh I think most of the pitchforking was done due to Necropolis... There really isn't any big content comming out at a pace that requires extra farming.
I just do apothecary daily in the morning while having my coffee and usually end up selling expiring revives.

spidyjedi84

Apothecary was a failure

One of the biggest Ls made by Kabam, period, and a blatant cash grab mentality that spurred it.

Nemesis_17

I’m still on the fence. I do the apothecary as well as the 22h events daily, and I always am overflowing with revives. However that’s mainly because most of the content that comes around can be done in few or no items whatsoever. The thing is there’s such a large discrepancy between the amount of revives I’d need on a regular basis, as opposed to the amount I’d need if I were to prepare for a necropolis run.

For example if I had just done a necropolis path and used all my resources on that path. To get back to 50+ revives from 0 it takes close to 4 weeks of apothecary + 22h events. So to fully explore necropolis we’re looking at close to 6 months of preparation if you don’t want to use any units, and that’s assuming you can get every path done in 50 revives on average. I know many players who need more than that or would want more than that as a safety measure before going in.

To be clear, I don’t think the amount of revives you can acquire is an issue, 68 revives is enough for
most people to do all content, it’s just the time it takes to get there that I have issue with. In most cases I’d only farm 20-30 revives which I could definitely get with the current system, but it’d take 2 weeks to get instead of 2 days. If the cap for free revives stayed at 68, but I could get some of those revives much faster, I’d have much less of a problem with the apothecary. But as it stands currently, I’m not a huge fan or a huge hater.

DNA3000

Not to be mean, but if ever there was a useless poll, it would be this one.

You're asking if the apothecary was "successful" but no one is going to judge it on whether it was actually successful, they are only going to judge it on whether they like it or not. But it wasn't meant to be liked. It was meant to manage and curtail the supply of revives so that the game didn't need to balance between the players who didn't grind for them and had only a limited supply, and those who did and had an effectively unlimited supply. In that, it was highly successful.

But you're still going to get tons of people who don't like the fact the farms were removed, which was intentional, and you're still going to get the tin foil hat lunatics who will only look at every change in the game through the lens of Kabam being "greedy" or "out of touch." I haven't even looked at the results, and I can probably predict them being overwhelmingly negative. But no one would ever look at such a result and think the change was a mistake. At least, not the devs, and not the players who actually care about difficulty design balance.

I have had a lot of players who were originally skeptical or downright negative about the change initially later tell me that after they had a chance to cool off, and started thinking about how to do difficult content within the limits of the revives available with the apothecary and the 22hr objectives, they started actually *doing* the content within those limits, even those they initially thought they couldn't possibly do (like Carinas). To me, that's a success, because that's what it was intended to do. But of course, for every such player there's probably lots more that never tried, or will just be salty indefinitely.

ahmynuts

I think it's pretty good depending on how bad your FOMO is when new things like necro drop. Though i would love it if Kabam maybe gave valiants like a l3 revive on like sundays or something just to spice it up and let us get some more in the inventory

captain_rogers

Apothecary was a huge success

DNA3000 said:

Not to be mean, but if ever there was a useless poll, it would be this one.

You're asking if the apothecary was "successful" but no one is going to judge it on whether it was actually successful, they are only going to judge it on whether they like it or not. But it wasn't meant to be liked. It was meant to manage and curtail the supply of revives so that the game didn't need to balance between the players who didn't grind for them and had only a limited supply, and those who did and had an effectively unlimited supply. In that, it was highly successful.

But you're still going to get tons of people who don't like the fact the farms were removed, which was intentional, and you're still going to get the tin foil hat lunatics who will only look at every change in the game through the lens of Kabam being "greedy" or "out of touch." I haven't even looked at the results, and I can probably predict them being overwhelmingly negative. But no one would ever look at such a result and think the change was a mistake. At least, not the devs, and not the players who actually care about difficulty design balance.

I have had a lot of players who were originally skeptical or downright negative about the change initially later tell me that after they had a chance to cool off, and started thinking about how to do difficult content within the limits of the revives available with the apothecary and the 22hr objectives, they started actually *doing* the content within those limits, even those they initially thought they couldn't possibly do (like Carinas). To me, that's a success, because that's what it was intended to do. But of course, for every such player there's probably lots more that never tried, or will just be salty indefinitely.

Apothecary was introduced as an alternative to revive farming, after the removal of revive farming in story quests. I just wanted to know whether apothecary was successful and is actually useful to the FTP playerbase.

Also when Apo was introduced, it received a lot of hate from summoners (including me), and I wanted to know whether players still share the same sentiment about Apothecary.

Maybe I should've worded my poll in a better way, my Bad lol.

captain_rogers

Apothecary was a huge success

ahmynuts said:

I think it's pretty good depending on how bad your FOMO is when new things like necro drop. Though i would love it if Kabam maybe gave valiants like a l3 revive on like sundays or something just to spice it up and let us get some more in the inventory

A revive arena would be really great on sundays

Chuck_Finley

Apothecary was a failure

Emilia90 said:

Chuck_Finley said:

Depends who is deciding whether it was a failure.

Are you seriously telling me there is a summoner out there that was planning on doing end game content and said “so glad we got the apothecary- it’s way better than revive farming”?

lol… no.

I can’t think of a single piece of recent content that would need revive farming. Most stuff is incredibly easy to do

Guess you don’t need the apothecary then either…

Sorry us lesser summoners have to acquiesce to some revives for things like necropolis. We must be an incredible burden to put up with.

captain_rogers

Apothecary was a huge success

Ok for anyone confused about the poll, this is what I meant to ask

--> Do you play Apo daily and actually use the revives from it, or you just skip it?
--> Do you still hold a negative opinion about Apo/Miss revive farming?

Matty_Ice

Apothecary was a huge success

I constantly have revives in overflow from apothecary and 22hr events. Doing long content like necro just takes a bit more planning.

For me, I’m also ok taking breaks between runs of stuff like necropolis.

Emilia90

Apothecary was a huge success

Chuck_Finley said:

Emilia90 said:

Chuck_Finley said:

Depends who is deciding whether it was a failure.

Are you seriously telling me there is a summoner out there that was planning on doing end game content and said “so glad we got the apothecary- it’s way better than revive farming”?

lol… no.

I can’t think of a single piece of recent content that would need revive farming. Most stuff is incredibly easy to do

Guess you don’t need the apothecary then either…

Sorry us lesser summoners have to acquiesce to some revives for things like necropolis. We must be an incredible burden to put up with.

You’re misunderstanding me. Most recent content is on the easier side and the stuff that does need revives like Necro and potentially WoW/SoS are doable with just revives from the apothecary. I didn’t say that I didn’t use revives or that revives weren’t needed at all. I was saying that most content now is much more fair and skill based and that any revives you’d need can be acquired with the apothecary. Revive farming used to be more needed when Kabam released a lot of content that would kill you regardless of how you’d play

DONZALOOG1234

Maybe they should reduce the energy cost or number of fights now.

Rayven5220

Apothecary was a huge success

I do it daily. Generally I have revives in the overflow so I try to time my stuff out, and don't claim my 22hr rewards immediately.

willrun4adonut

Apothecary? What's that?

I picked the one that was closest to "I don't care". I grind them out regardless, but now my other secret spot has gone bye bye. Luckily my Carina's tab now looks like this:

phillgreen

I tend to keep 20 lvl1 revives in stock all the time and more if content is coming I might need it for so it's useful for burning spare QE.

Kabam could've quite easily gave us nothing to replace the farms so on that basis apothecary is better than nothing.

I do my revive farming via arena anyway so it's never really been an issue for me either way.

DrZola

I’d select a middle ground—something like “Apothecary isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I’d still prefer the ability to farm.”

Dr. Zola

Priyabrata

Apothecary isn't bad ofcourse but they're being WAYY TOO STINGY with the revives in there

Sceptilemaniac2

Apothecary was a failure

Just add the autocomplete button.

PT_99

Apothecary was a failure

What bugs me is Kabam removed farming by saying, "hello hello, we noticed players are depending on chance based farming, we think that's bad, so how about we give guaranteed revives !!!! 1 daily 🤣 and also give you CHANCE to gain 1 more revive 💀."

So they removed chance farming and introduced the worst possible chance farming in Apothecary.
But it's whatever, 1 revive from Apothebruh and 1 from 22h.


Day #217 of asking Kabam to make L-1 revives purchasable with units.

Little_Crocodili29

Apothecary was a failure

captain_rogers said:

DNA3000 said:

Not to be mean, but if ever there was a useless poll, it would be this one.

You're asking if the apothecary was "successful" but no one is going to judge it on whether it was actually successful, they are only going to judge it on whether they like it or not. But it wasn't meant to be liked. It was meant to manage and curtail the supply of revives so that the game didn't need to balance between the players who didn't grind for them and had only a limited supply, and those who did and had an effectively unlimited supply. In that, it was highly successful.

But you're still going to get tons of people who don't like the fact the farms were removed, which was intentional, and you're still going to get the tin foil hat lunatics who will only look at every change in the game through the lens of Kabam being "greedy" or "out of touch." I haven't even looked at the results, and I can probably predict them being overwhelmingly negative. But no one would ever look at such a result and think the change was a mistake. At least, not the devs, and not the players who actually care about difficulty design balance.

I have had a lot of players who were originally skeptical or downright negative about the change initially later tell me that after they had a chance to cool off, and started thinking about how to do difficult content within the limits of the revives available with the apothecary and the 22hr objectives, they started actually *doing* the content within those limits, even those they initially thought they couldn't possibly do (like Carinas). To me, that's a success, because that's what it was intended to do. But of course, for every such player there's probably lots more that never tried, or will just be salty indefinitely.

Apothecary was introduced as an alternative to revive farming, after the removal of revive farming in story quests. I just wanted to know whether apothecary was successful and is actually useful to the FTP playerbase.

Also when Apo was introduced, it received a lot of hate from summoners (including me), and I wanted to know whether players still share the same sentiment about Apothecary.

Maybe I should've worded my poll in a better way, my Bad lol.

You shouldn't apologize mate @captain_rogers . I saw the title of the poll and thought it was actually an interesting question out of everything that is currently in the recent posts page. Don't worry about criticism over it (especially if it comes in textbook form disguised as one more means to criticize players who question kbm over certain practices).

I think the Apothecary should be buffed a little bit and my opinion would switch to a more positive one. Have the easy mode give a L1 rev and the other one give a L2 rev. That makes 2 revs per day. Shouldn't break the game economy.

And players who think that revives aren't needed or who need to constantly sell revive can just forget the Apothecary exists. Leave it for players who need a bit more help.

Sunstar19

Apothecary was a huge success

I do it daily only because it’s a guaranteed revive and would always need it sooner rather than later. Was looking for an option that Apothecary is not bad and can be improved but it was not provided.

These daily revives are never enough for me on the difficult quests like SoS but I still need to do this daily otherwise I will use more units that I would like to buy revives. My suggested improvements are that auto complete option be made available.

Yuvraj_267

Apothecary was a failure

It should also give 1 heal potion on the basis of whicch difficulty you clear (i.e whether you are paragon, valiant, thronebreaker or any other)

Terminatrix

Apothecary was a failure

captain_rogers said:

It's been a year since they introduced apothecary. They provided it as an alternative to revive farming.

Initially we all (or atleast most) of us are critical about Apothecary. But now most players do utilize it for revives, maybe due to the lack of other options. What do y'all think about Apothecary? I personally think it was a huge success since it eliminated the need of mindless revive farming on story content and provided a fair and accessible way to grind revives.

EPIC FAIL.

1. It was to replace the story revive farm, yet at the same time, made us have to wait for the reset just to farm fewer revives there.

2. Story revive farm was faster. You could get 10-20+ revives a day. Farming apothecary is painfully slow. Plus we got energy resources from farming.

3. Misleading information about the actual revives that can be acquired. When we revived farmed in quests, we knew exactly what we were getting. Apothecary advertises one thing, but you get something else.

4. It's still mindless farming. You just get fewer resources for it.

Prentex

Obviously i can only speak for me, and for my situation it is ok, with apothecary you get the 20% and with the 22h event the 40%.

Have done all content and challenges except the two fintech challenges which will burn quite some revives but with 2 basically free revives a day the it is not too long to get there.

I like the ideas of having one day a week (sunday) with a 60% instead of the 20% and also i'd love an increase in the inventory limit from 20 to maybe 30 (don't have sigil) to be able to farm longer without revives expiring

But at the same time i get that people who still have more challenging content to do like necro and carinas are feeling a bit screwed over because they have to prepare way longer without the old revive farming than people who did them earlier.