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Oblivion talk:Useful Potions/Archive 1

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This is an archive of past Oblivion talk:Useful Potions discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

What Belongs Here?

In my opinion, making this page try to list potions with twenty possible ingredients really isn't useful. It's nearly impossible to read an entry such as:

Spiddle Stick + Imp Gall + one from (Mutton, Rat Meat) + one from (Alkanet Flower, Bonemeal, Crab Meat, Dreugh Wax, Green Stain Shelf Cap, Ironwood Nut, Lady's Smock Leaves, Motherwood Sprig, Water Hyacinth Nectar); or Spiddle Stick + Dreugh Wax + one from (Mutton, Rat Meat) + one from (Fire Salts, Steel Blue Entoloma Cap)

It took me five times reading this to figure out that it's not suggesting that you combine six ingredients at the same time. Furthermore, trying to provide an exhaustive list of all possible potions is impossible. Just for restore magicka+restore health potions, there are more than 6000 different possible combinations of ingredients, and that's without even including any obscure ingredients. The complexity of possible potion combinations is one reason why I put together the Alchemy Calculator. I think most users will find it far more useful to look up some of these complicated combinations there (although I am admittedly biased).

I would suggest that this list should be limited to potions with simple recipes, i.e. maybe six listed ingredients maximum. Perhaps it could then be supplemented by a list of particularly useful effect combinations, with a link set up to the alchemy calculator to automatically pull up ways to create that combination of effects. Any comments?

(Also, I should point out that some discussion along these lines was previously started at the Alchemy Talk page.) --Nephele 20:23, 24 September 2006 (EDT)


One comment, anyone have any ideas on how to use alchemy to brew blood potions? — Unsigned comment by 68.6.194.10 (talk)

What is a "blood potion" supposed to be? --Nephele 13:44, 4 April 2007 (EDT)

It's a fair point

It's probably more my desire for completeness as much as anything else, and pointing out that things like alkanet flowers and carrots are useful too. I'd been looking for a forum to share recipes I'd worked on, and I'd been frustrated as a player not having a comprehensive recipe book - I've got a cupboardfull of stuff that I never seem to use (IMHO it's a major drawback of Oblivion that once you've made and named a potion it's not remembered, so you have to remember combinations or grab an envelope to write them down).

I'm just particlarly pleased with the potions that knock down Health, Magicka and Fatigue while silencing and paralysing too, the various anti-Mage potions that damage intelligence, willpower and magicka while silencing or paralysing.

Butlins 25 September 2006 09:26 (BST)

Potion Recipes

Once I get logged in to Oblivion again, I may post some of my fave recipes, but off the top of my head I believe Harrada Root+Spiddal Sticks+Fire Salts+Clanfear Claws gives you a Damage Health/Damage Magicka/Fire Damage/Paralyse poison. I use it on the nastier daedra, like the spiders.

Custom potions comment

One thing that I feel is missing from the alchemy pages is the consideration of component weight. For example, when I'm creating a simple potion of Damage Health and Damage Fatigue, I'll use ingredients that have a weight of 0.0 for the first then switch to heavier ingredients. I prefer to use ingredients which are common over those that are rarer.

I also feel that changing the look of the page may needed. I agree that there needs to be sections based on skill levels, but we may even want to break each skill level out to its own page. Each recipe may be better presented as individual tables with the following information:

Damage Health & Fatigue (Novice)
Best Weight: 0.2251
Effects (at skill 19): Damage Health 2 pts for 10 secs
Damage Fatigue 4 pts for 14 secs
Any 2 of: Harrada (0.1)2
Nightshade (0.1)
Spiddal Stick (0.1)2
Stinkhorn Cap (0.1)
Wisp Stalk Caps (0.1)
Any 2 of: Bonemeal (0.2)
Rat Meat (0.5)
Mort Flesh (2.0)
Notes:
  1. Apprentice level alchemists can create a much lower weight version of this potion by using other ingredients.
  2. While you can use Harrada and Spiddal Stick, it's better to save those for later when you can get more use out of them.

Now, this results in a much longer page then the current version, but conveys a lot more information to the budding alchemist. The "notes" section should probably be trimmed down with "common" notes listed at the bottom of the section so that recipes can reference them by number instead of repeating information in each recipe.

Damage Health & Fatigue (Apprentice)
Best Weight: 0.0251
Effects (at skill 32): Damage Health 3 pts for 13 secs
Damage Fatigue 5 pts for 19 secs
Any 2 of: Peony Seeds (0.0)
Sacred Lotus Seeds (0.0)
St Jahn's Wort Nectar (0.0)
Dragon's Tongue (0.1)
Harrada (0.1)2
Nightshade (0.1)
Spiddal Stick (0.1)2
Stinkhorn Cap (0.1)
Wisp Stalk Caps (0.1)
Any 2 of: Water Hyacinth Nectar (0.0)
Motherwort Sprig (0.1)
Bonemeal (0.2)
Rat Meat (0.5)
Mort Flesh (2.0)
Notes:
  1. At Journeyman level you can substitute Lady's Smock Leaves (0.0) for Motherwort Sprig (0.1) to bring the weight down to 0.00 per potion.
  2. While you can use Harrada and Spiddal Stick, it's better to save those for later when you can get more use out of them.

Notice that within each section, I'm ordering the ingredients by weight, then name. That should make it easier to create lightweight potions. Instead of listing every possible ingredient, I'm only listing the ones that are easily obtainable in quantity.

Silence, Damage Fatigue, Health & Magicka (Journeyman)
Best Weight: 0.0751
Effects (at skill 68): Silence for 14 secs
Damage Fatigue 6 pts for 26 secs
Damage Health 4 pts for 17 secs
Damage Magicka 8 pts for 32 secs
Lowest weight recipe: Harrada (0.1) Silence, Damage Health & Magicka
Motherwort (0.1) Silence, Damage Fatigue
Spiddal Stick (0.1) Damage Health & Magicka

Either of the following (Damage Fatigue):

  • Lady's Smock Leaves (0.0)
  • Water Hyacinth Nectar (0.0)
Notes:
  • There are probably alternate recipes for this combination of effects.
  • The Harrada ingredient is typically the limiting factor for this poison.

A hard part may be the "Effects (at skill NN)" line. Because the effects vary based on your Alchemy skill, I think giving a concrete example along with the Alchemy skill level used to create the potion is a reasonable compromise.

Snabbik 20:16, 8 May 2007 (EDT)

Deadly Poison Poison

The last entry on the main page describes a way to make a poison apple poison. Can anyone verify this and if so provide a clearer description as to the method. I have tried a few variations around the instructions and can not yield any results.

Neloth Hlaalu 10:45, 28 May 2007 (EDT)

From my experience, it is completely and utterly and surely impossible to create a Deadly Poison poison. Deadly Poison, for some reason, is always the defining effect and takes precedence over every non-script effect in the game, causing all poisons with this effect in it to become potions. There is, however, one technique I haven't tried, involving a Heart of Order, a Refined Greenmote, a Poisoned Apple and Felldew. If fiddled with correctly, it may result in a Greenmote Euphoria + Deadly Poison poison, and will be infinitely more deadly than any triple-effect poison ever. Tentacle 10:51, 1 June 2007 (EDT)
Ya I don't understand the instructions. How can I place the poisoned apple in the third slot when it doesn't share any effects with the ordinary ingredients? Maybe someone can figure this one out and put in a more detailed walkthrough or the person who made these instructions can make them more detailed? — Unsigned comment by Burlin (talkcontribs)
If you want to add an ingredient that doesn't share any effects with the others, you need to click on the "Show All Ingredients" button when you're selecting ingredients. --NepheleTalk 22:43, 8 June 2007 (EDT)
Thanks Nephele I forgot about that :P but I still can't figure out how to get this to work. I've put Black Tar+Harrada+Poisoned Apple+Heart of Order and this still isn't working. I get the effects as Damage Health 1 point for 1 sec on self (the 1 sec on self is cut out by the Deadly Poison) and Deadly Poision (bypasses poison resistances) for 1 sec on self. Can anyone test this and get back to me?

How does "Rat Poison" from the Sheogorath Shrine quest fit into this? Does it have any similar effects? --Twentyfists 23:07, 8 February 2008 (EST)

Rat Poison has no effect at all. The effect is a script effect, but no script is given as parameter. This is unlike, for example, Poisoned Apple which has a script effect to add a Damage Health attribute to the victim.
I have tested this ingame, and Rat Poison appears to affect nothing. --Timenn < talk > 08:49, 28 February 2008 (EST)

Cleaning up - Another Attempt

I've posted a section over at the Community Portal on one possible idea for cleanup up this page. Please take a look and let me have your feedback or ideas. Apologies for spamming this around but I felt it should appear on the talk pages of all the articles I mentioned in the post. --RpehTalk 06:30, 19 July 2007 (EDT)

Useful potions/poisons with SI Ingredients

Shivering Isles includes a ton of new ingredients that make getting some of these useful potions/poisons a whole lot easier to make, including four that can be used in Triple Damage poisons (Scalon Fin, Black Tar, Bone Marrow, Congealed Putrescence). Should the modified recipes for these potions go here or on an as-yet nonexistent Shivering:Alchemy page?Xeagle51 16:08, 9 September 2007 (EDT)

Looks like this is becoming an issue with our first SI-specific potion now having been added. I'm not happy with SI ingredients being listed here and would go for a Shivering:Useful Potions page with a link from this one. A page for one potion is clearly ludicrous, however, so we'll need to find some more SI-based ones before going ahead. --RpehTalk 03:43, 1 October 2007 (EDT)

How much damage can really be done with the help of a triple poison?

I am unsure of how what weaknesses affect what damages, so If anyone who knows will do a bit of math... Spell before hit: weakness to: poison, fire, cold, shock, magic, normal weapons, 100% for 15 seconds Bow with 20 shock damage, arrow with 3 fire for 10 seconds Poisoned with triple damage poison, effects: damage, cold, and fire, assume each does 10 damage for 30 seconds (for simplicity) The bow has a damage of 10, the arrow is 3. If someone could explain what effects what and how much damage is really done by the end, I would appreciate it

As far as I can figure out from a lot of reading on the wiki and playing around in the game... Weakness to poison, and the elemental damages will apply to the poison. Weakness to normal weapons may apply to your weapon attack. Weakness to magic and elemental damages will apply to the enchantment damage from both the bow and the arrow. For simplicity we will make the unlikely assumptions that your target has no innate weaknesses or resistances, and arbitrarily high health.
What I would expect to see happen here is: the bow and arrow combined deal 13 damage, and this is multiplied by the 100% weakness to deal 26 damage (or 78 with Sneak Attack.) The open question is whether weakness to normal weapons truly applies to enchanted weapons - I have not tested that myself and I believe the wiki page for it is only an baseless assumption. The shock damage enchantment on the bow will be multiplied by the weakness to magic and the weakness to shock to deal 20*2*2 or 80 shock damage. Similarly, the fire damage from the arrow will be multiplied by the weakness to magic and fire to deal 3*2*2 or 12 damage per second over 10 seconds for a total of 120 damage. The damage health part of the poison will be multiplied by the weakness to poison, to deal 10*2 damage over 30 seconds or 600 damage by the end (though no damage health effect of a poison can really be made that is that strong, as the maximum is 8 points for 30 seconds, but we'll roll with it for your example.) Each of the cold and fire damage effects of the poison will be multiplied by the weakness to poison, and multiplied again by the weakness to their respective elemental damage, so each will do 10*30*2*2 or 1,200 damage by the end. The poison will therefore do a total of 3,000 points of damage. In total, your target will take 26 damage immediately from the weapon attack, another 80 shock damage immediately and 120 fire damage over 12 seconds for a total of 200 from enchantment damage, and another 3,000 points of damage (of which 1,200 were fire and 1,200 were cold) from the poison over 30 seconds. In total he would have taken 3,226 damage if he could survive that long. Practically speaking, triple-damage poisons tend to kill their targets long before reaching full effects, so their actual use is just to kill your enemies faster. I use poisons extensively when I have allies to protect: I can give each enemy one slash and run to the next.
You don't really need triple-damage poisons if you're doing all that though and have such potent poisons and enchantments. What you are describing is strictly overkill. Here's a story. Inside the Oblivion gate that opens to the immediate east of Leyawiin after the Dagon Shrine quest, there's a tunnel where you enter on a higher level from your enemies: there are holes in the floor and you can see (or sense with a Detect Life spell) enemies underneath them. I was able to spot and kill a Xivalai standing underneath one of these "murder holes" with a sneak attack from my self-enchanted Assassin's Bow. The bow is deadric, repaired to 125%, and has the enchantment:
Fire Damage, Shock Damage, Frost Damage, each 5 damage for 4 seconds.
I use glass arrows (they're lightweight) and applied a Damage Health poison of slightly less than maximum power (let's say it was 7 damage for 28 seconds.)
I cast a "sureshot" spell before firing an arrow that fortifies my Marksman and Agility above 100. With the over-repaired bow, that allows me to do the maximum damage with this gear of [(21+13)*1.19] = 40.5, multiplied by the sneak attack to give 121 from the bow and arrow alone. The bow's enchantments would deal 5*4*3 damage of different types for a total of 80, but in fact the Xivalai's resistances and vulnerabilities make it deal less than that: 13.4 fire damage, 24 shock damage, and the base 20 cold damage for 57 total damage from the enchantment. He is also capable of absorbing the enchantment's power (as it counts as a spell) but that didn't happen here. The poison we assumed dealt 7 damage for 28 seconds for a total of 196. If it had been the maximum potency it would have done a fair bit more. In total, this one arrow delivered 375 damage, which is sufficient to one-shot kill a Xivalai up to level 33. Even if it didn't kill him, another strike or a "Collect Souls" spell draining health for 100 points would have been sufficient to finish him off and claim the soul. So in conclusion, poisons are powerful in general if you have a lab that allows you to maximize their potency. My character lives in Skingrad and can make these Damage Health poisons out of flax and grapes, or green stain cup, or strawberries - I have collected sufficient ingredients to make at least a thousand of them.
The maximum possible damage with this bow and poison (ignoring resistance and using a daedric arrow) comes up to 43*3 + 5*4*3 + 8*30 = 449. If we are assassinating Xivalai (and haven't enchanted a bow specifically for them) we can deal 426 damage to kill a Xivalai up to level 35. One other thing to note is that important classes of enemies - undead and atronachs - are entirely immune to poison unless you grant them a vulnerability to it. --85.64.35.231 14:05, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

"shoot Destruction spells out like nobody's business"

One of the Expert potion effect descritions includes the comment "...shoot Destruction spells out like nobody's business." But in context, it appears as though whoever wrote this thinks it's the case because of the potion's boost to willpower. (For other potions just above and below this one identical except no boost to willpower recieved no such comment.) Boosting willpower does not have any effect on destruction spells except to make higher level ones available when you hit 25, 50, 75 and 100 skill points. (And I don't know that fortified willpower has this latter effect.) I think this comment should be deleted for clarity.

Actually it also does a fortify / restore Magicka but you make a good point anyway - that sort of hyperbole should never appear on the site. –RpehTCE 10:15, 8 January 2008 (EST)

The index

is it possible that you could move the Show/hide button down, so into veiw?

Got a wicked potion

This is a wicked general purpose potion I figured out that I didn't see listed, but I wasn't sure how to add it since there are variants, and I am a bit of a moron when it comes to wikis.

Alow Vera Sweetcake Bog Beacon Flax

Gives you a Restore Health, Restore Magika, Restore Fatigue, Shield, and Feather

That potion is already on the page - it's the 10th one in the Expert Level section. –RpehTCE 04:03, 25 January 2008 (EST)

Rating Potion Effects

Here follows a rough rating of each potion effect:
  • Very powerful: Chameleon, Reflect Spell, Reflect Damage
  • Powerful: Restore Magicka, Shield, Feather, Silence, Shock Damage, Fire Damage, Frost Damage, Damage Health, Damage Fatigue, Damage Strength
  • Useful: Restore Health, Restore Fatigue, Fortify Attribute, Fortify Health, Fortify Magicka, Fortify Fatigue, Resist Fire, Resist Frost, Resist Shock, Resist Paralysis, Fire Shield, Frost Shield, Shock Shield, Damage Magicka, Damage Agility, Damage Speed, Damage Luck, Paralyze
  • Situational: Invisibility, Water Walking, Water Breathing, Resist Disease, Cure Disease, Cure Paralysis, Detect Life, Dispel, Restore Attribute, Night-Eye, Light
  • Less useful: Resist Poison, Cure Poison, Burden, Damage Endurance, Damage Personality, Damage Intelligence, Damage Willpower

I've moved this entire section here from the main article for two reasons. First, the information is highly subjective. Take Restore Magicka, for example: spellcasting characters using the Atronach birthsign will find this effect indispensible, whereas fighter characters might never use a Restore Magicka potion the entire game. Second, these effects are not specific to potions. They are all general Magical Effects, available as spells, potions, scrolls, enchantments, etc. So why should this information be provided on an article about useful potions? --NepheleTalk 00:26, 2 February 2008 (EST)

Thanks Nephele. Although you needn't state the obvious =P --Matthewest TCE 00:35, 10 May 2008 (EDT)

Restore Fatigue

Isn't bread more common than apple or corn? --Matthewest TCE 02:05, 4 May 2008 (EDT)

Since you had to ask... no. And guessing that the short answer won't really be enough, here's the long answer:
  • Apples appear in 746 respawning locations (all food)
  • Corn appears in 671 respawning locations (418 food in houses; 317 plants, each with a 80% chance, equivalent to 253)
  • Bread loaves appear in 641 respawning locations (all food)
(These numbers are all with SI, so they may differ slightly from the articles). Just to state the obvious: 641 is smaller than 671 or 746. The overall frequency calculation actually takes into account containers, merchants, non-respawning locations and all other possible places where any ingredient will appear. The resulting final scores are: Corn 1134, Apple 1037, Bread 934. Bread still loses.
But perhaps even more importantly, Bread Loaves weigh 0.5; the other two ingredients both weigh 0.2. Given that all of them are easy to find, many people are likely to use weight to determine which is most useful. --NepheleTalk 02:19, 4 May 2008 (EDT)

What's This?

I was looking at this article when I came across this: <class=plainlinks>. Should this be here? --Matthewest TCE 23:52, 9 May 2008 (EDT)

Helping Out

I would be happy to help out on revamping this page. Is there anything in specific that needs doing? --Matthewest TCE 00:38, 10 May 2008 (EDT)

yeah where does this belong and i have no clue how to get it in charts

however, with my expert mortar, calcinator, retort and jorneyman alembice i get a potion that - restore fatigue 22 pts for 72 secs on self - restore health 11 pts for 36 secs on self - feather 222 pts for 737 secs on self - restore magicka 30 pts for 65 secs on self - shield 42% for 139 secs on self My alchemy is 100

and how many of you think this is a good potion? its ingredients are -aloe vera leaves -bog beacon asco cap -flax seeds -sweetcake also each potion weighs .1

Restore Health/Magicka/Fatigue + Shield potions are already covered under Healing Potions, and the "All" link next to the potion will take you to the alchemy calculator where you can find every possible additional effect, and calculations of exactly how strong the potion will be for any conditions. Personally, I don't think that including Feather in the potion is a good idea (see Multiple-Effect Potions), because it means that the entire potion will last for 737 seconds, so you can only use two or three of the potions per dungeon, unless you wait forever after each individual fight just to wait for your potions to wear off. So no, I don't think it's a good enough potion to deserve to be highlighted any more than what's already provided in the article. --NepheleTalk 17:13, 4 June 2008 (EDT)


Wont the shortest effect wear out first, thus allowing you to use more. I regularly do this with when i have upwards of 2000+ loot and then making master level feather potions with burden 1 point for 1 second.218.215.66.132 05:10, 4 July 2008 (EDT)

Formatting Question

On this page the poisons tables are pink and the potions are green. In the game the potions are pink and the poisons are green. Would it not make sense to have the table colors match the game? — Unsigned comment by 24.78.39.197 (talk)

You've got an interesting point. I discussed it with another Patroller, and we think the thinking may have been that green represents things that are good, while red (pink) represents things that are bad...but it's also possible someone just got them backwards. As far as I know, neither regular editors nor Patrollers can change the stylesheets, so hopefully this discussion will catch the attention of one of the Admins and we can come to an agreement on what the colors should be. If no Admins have commented in the next 24 hours or so, I'll bring it to their attention more directly. --Robin Hood (TalkE-mailContribs) 10:03, 14 August 2008 (EDT)
Good spot, now changed. –RpehTCE 10:16, 14 August 2008 (EDT)
The colors were chosen as red for bad and green for good, based on a previous discussion about which colors would be most appropriate. Given how widespread these colors are, and the fact that the vast majority of the pages are not using the centralized colors from the .css file (e.g., all the ingredient pages), I think it is far better to be consistent, and therefore to stick with the original color scheme at least for now. If we need to make a change, it should be based upon a general site-wide discussion about the best colors to use, and it should then be applied globally. --NepheleTalk 13:06, 14 August 2008 (EDT)
That discussion was about alchemy effects rather than potion types. I didn't change the colours on the Ingredient template precisely because of the good/bad norms and the fact that the template is also used in MW pages, where the green/pink distinction doesn't occur anyway. Given that this is a page about Oblivion potions I'd say it makes sense to use the conventions laid down by the game - ie, green = poison and pink = potion. Given that the only place those colours are used is Oblivion, it also made sense to change the style sheet. –RpehTCE 13:17, 14 August 2008 (EDT)
Yeah, Oblivion really screwed us over on this one by making the colors the opposite of what you'd expect. I think it makes sense to keep some consistancy between alchemy effects and potion types, and between MW and OB pages. And the "Green=Good"/"Red=Bad" mnemonic is the most intuitive, even if it does contradict the colors seen in Oblivion. Maybe if we put some sort of note at the top indicating the meaning of the colors (and perhaps explaining the decision not to use the colors seen in Oblivion), it might avoid the possibility of confusion? --TheRealLurlock Talk 13:28, 14 August 2008 (EDT)
Indeed. One can't help but wonder whether that was a mistake by the devs. I think, though, that we should use the in-game colours here. The classes in the CSS should probably have more generic names like "good" and "bad" though. Having said that, I'm not massively bothered either way. –RpehTCE 13:31, 14 August 2008 (EDT)
The alchemy effects talk page is where the green/pink colors were first introduced, and since then that same color scheme has propagated to every other page that discusses potions/poisons or good-effects/bad-effects -- including the Useful Potions page. When I set up the Potion/Poison definitions in the .css, the colors were intentionally chosen to match potion=good-effect, poison=bad-effect. So it was not just that I got the colors "backwards". Also, the idea had been to eventually change every page that uses the green/pink colours to use the style sheet, so that the colors are just defined once instead of being defined on a hundred different pages (similar to all of the other colors currently defined in .css, most of which have also not yet been widely implemented).
If we want to define one set of colors for potion/poison and another set of colors for good-effect/bad-effect, then that seems like a fairly significant change in the current color scheme, which again should be discussed. And I also think that in that case we should not use the same shades of green and pink, in order to make it clear that the definitions are different. I think it's unnecessarily confusing for Redwort Flower, for example, to use green to indicate that the ingredient can be used to make an Invisibility potion -- and then have that potion listed on the Useful Potions page in a pink section, instead of a green section. --NepheleTalk 13:42, 14 August 2008 (EDT)

<=/
Let me add that the colors Bethesda picked are not wrong. Green may be associated with life and nature, but is also associated with decay and toxity. Those last elements seem to relate to poison much more directly than green does to the positive. Pink is rarely used for bad, think of how often hearts are colored pink (or red, which are both a primary color in their own world).
Now you can read up on alot of conflicting sources on what a color means, but my point was that Bethesda didn't screw up, they simply expanded upon one explanation. We have no reason to deviate from our default procedure here; we pick what the game has decided for us. Morrowind uses a blue positive/red negative system, which is hardly related. Oblivion does not conflict with that.

Phew, a good thing politics has entered in here yet... ;) --Timenn < talk > 18:46, 14 August 2008 (EDT)

I'm with Timenn on this one. While I understand the reasoning of green good, red bad, I also know that most games that assign a colour to poisons assign green for "toxic". Either that or we should randomly pick non-associated colours and just put a legend at the top. But like rpeh, I don't really care all that much either way, just as long as it's clear what's what. --Robin Hood (TalkE-mailContribs) 01:05, 15 August 2008 (EDT)
This discussion seems to have died but I agree with Timenn and RobinHood70. It's still not a biggie, but if we're going to use the class names "potion" and "poison" they ought to reflect in-game standards. Unless there's an objection within a week, I'm going to change it back again. –RpehTCE 15:11, 10 September 2008 (EDT)
Done. –RpehTCE 05:48, 18 September 2008 (EDT)
First, one bit of explanation. The reason why I undid the earlier change to common.css was because the discussion here and the edit summary both said that the change was being done based on the false premise that my original, intentional decision was a careless mistake. Given that the reasons provided for making the change were incorrect, i undid the edit. Now that it's been discussed, with a more complete consideration of the situation, it makes sense to update the colours based upon the community's preferences.
That said, however, the details of the change still don't make sense to me. As I previously said, "I also think that in that case we should not use the same shades of green and pink, in order to make it clear that the definitions are different". To repeat myself.... If everyone wants to create a different set of colour definitions for this page, then why shouldn't we truly make the colour definitions different? There are some million colours to choose from, so why should the identical green #DDFFDD be used on Alchemy Effects for "good" effects and be used here on Useful Potions be used to mean the exact opposite? Having the same colour mean two opposite things on the same web site seems unnecessarily confusing. We've gone to a lot of effort in other situations to create consistency amongst the wiki's pages, but this change seems to undermine all of those efforts: we're now telling readers to ignore the colour schemes, because readers can no longer assume that one colour means the same thing as they jump from one page to another. In short, I still strongly believe that two different sets of colours should be used in the two different cases, and given that nobody has provided any counterargument (or even responded in any way to the comment), I don't understand why that concern has been completely ignored in the implemented changes. --NepheleTalk 12:28, 18 September 2008 (EDT)
I would agree with Nephele on this one. The pale colours used aren't particularly good matches. The green could go a fair bit deeper, and the pink a bit deeper to simultaneously differentiate them from the positive/negative-effect colours and to make them closer to the in-game colours. --Robin Hood (TalkE-mailContribs) 13:06, 18 September 2008 (EDT)
I didn't ignore the comment but I didn't think it important enough to respond. Given that the discussion has been linked from the Active Discussions section of the Community Portal for over a week I could only guess others thought the same. Using colours for different things in different places shouldn't be a problem. Making the colours deeper will make the text harder to read but if there's a better match then it can change again. The main thing is that the colours are the right way around now. –RpehTCE 13:10, 18 September 2008 (EDT)
I just reread that and it comes over as rather dismissive. I apologise - it wasn't meant to be. To make up for it, how about these colours for the poison and potion CSS? They're pretty close to the colours used in-game, although several colours are used in each case so they aren't perfect:
Potions like this (cc80aa) and Poisons like this (448044)? –RpehTCE 11:47, 20 September 2008 (EDT)
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