LucaRocks wrote:Hey, you know what? The more I look at the tiles in person, the more I'm thinking they were made with AI art. Anyone else getting that vibe?
If you're up for showing us some enlargements that would be a nice conversation to have! I'm doubting they would have a need to use A.I. art for JoD (didn't some people already express their belief that maybe the retail cover was done with A.I.?) but after the First Light debacle I suppose people are on edge looking for (and possibly seeing it) everywhere. That doesn't mean it couldn't have been sneaked in...
Re: Alchemy cards / Shop ...
I'm realizing that Potion of Elder Wisdom is identical in cost and function to the Potion of Recall from Rise of the Dread Moon (which itself is just the version from Mage of the Mirror but allowed for any Hero not just the Elf), with the one clarification that it restores used Skills as well (I would have thought so before this clarification for Recall but I suppose now people will quibble that it doesn't say it restores Styles for the Monk, although the possibility of such a potion was discussed in the past by Doug Hopkins too if I recall correctly on Discord).
The Potion of Serpent's Blood is the only one that really doesn't have a use outside of this expansion (or custom quests based upon it) unless Zargon widely interprets it to refer to other types of poison in HQ and not merely "venom" of JoD's monsters.
Then again nothing officially says that one Alchemist Shop is meant to be usable outside of the expansion it was intended for... the exception being the 1992 "hero themed" expansions that purposely made 3 of the 4 for the title hero... and invited you to use OTHER alchemist shops from other expansions you owned as well. The original Alchemist Shop from 1991 was mapped onto several expansion boxes (starting with KK/ROTWL and then repeated in SQT and CoPD). ROTDM created the Alchemist Deck that encompassed basically all of the previously released Alchemist Shop potions (and those from the Treasure Deck but not including Holy Water or Venom Antidote) and Doug's blog suggestion that Zargon could substitute the price list for any expansion's potions (though only one price changed, reflected in PoT as well).
I could see people just combining them all together or unlocking them as they went. The Alchemist cardback on these four JoD potions is just begging for that, although in actual practice that would increase the odds slightly of getting a Potion of Recall (by another name) or Potion of Healing (1d6) for a random draw, and again you'd either want to drop the Potion of Serpent's Blood or interpret it more broadly to be useful (or else it becomes a "joke" option like the Ogre Grog... though I'm still of the opinion that the latter could be useful in hiring an Ogre mercenary in ATOH!). The re-agent Treasure cards would still need to be added to the Treasure deck to make it really work even if you don't sell Re-agent kits and have the Wizard shoulder the burden of crafting. The alchemist's bench is a bit rare in JoD (only noted it in 3 quests) but of course Zargon could always tweak that if he wished to encourage more crafting.
Again without outright saying so, the AH designers have left little tidbits in there to spark your creative juices for homebrew...
