Any use for antidote ever?

[xzar_monty]

Due to corona, I'm replaying the game on a higher difficulty, and I remain puzzled by the antidote potion. It seems to be the most common, but tell me: is there ever any use for it? I have never been seriously troubled by poisons in combat, and since nasty effects never remain in place after combat, I can't see how the antidote potion could ever really be useful.

Mind you, I find most potions useless (which is one of things that went somewhat wrong in the game design), but the antidote is the most obviously useless one to me.

Do you people have different opinions?

[Boeroer]

Never used it (although the crystal spiders' poison can be annoying in the early game and I was tempted to use it once...). But I don't use any other potions either so I'm not the right person to give a lecture about the usefulness of antidote potions I guess.   

[xzar_monty]

Yeah, there are maybe two potions that are good (Miraculous healing and... some other healing). Well, maybe a few more, if you really stretch it. But you can clearly just ignore all potions, and it won't hurt you much. That's weird, because there's an awful lot of potions around.

[Boeroer]

They scale with alchemy (+1 PL with every point of Alchemy) so they can become quite good if you invest in them. For example if you play a Nalpasca and raise Alchemy anyway you might as well use some potions (that don't affect the same stats as the drugs you are using). 

[xzar_monty]

Ha -- I never use drugs, either. Also scrolls very rarely. It's funny how much stuff there is in the game, stuff that you can just forget about. It's also slightly odd...

[Tenray]

Antidote is king in the Belranga fight.

Edited April 3, 2021 by Tenray

[xzar_monty]

9 minutes ago, Tenray said:

Antidote is king in the Belranga fight.

Fair enough. I have no interest in the megabosses, though. They are a wall of hit points, and you gain nothing from winning them. I understand the challenge, as a battle, but that's not enough for me.

[tmoji]

I must not be winning fights fast enough. My party always nearly gets wiped whenever I run into Insect Swarm enemies unless I bring along some antidote.

[Helz]

On 4/3/2021 at 4:08 PM, tmoji said:

I must not be winning fights fast enough. My party always nearly gets wiped whenever I run into Insect Swarm enemies unless I bring along some antidote.

Yeah, I use a lot of antidotes too. I bet it has to do with party composition or spells available. At some point I realized that poisons kept wrecking my team so everyone has a stack of antidotes in their quickslots. They come in handy from time to time.

[xzar_monty]

Who is in your party, then? I doubt it has to do with spells available, because it is quite rare that I (have to) use healing spells.

What are the enemy types that cause you problems with poison? This seems to be more interesting than I thought. I am not a particularly good player, but I honestly never struggle with poison.

[Helz]

I don't have a druid, ranger, paladin, cipher, monk, or chanter. I assume druid or paladin are probably useful against poison.

Off the top of my head, the amphibian people use poison. Various rogues and archers. There is a spore attack that eventually dominates anyone infected that the antidote cures. Lots of fortitude ailments, including sickened. Your party will call out when they've been poisoned, which is nice. The antidote suppresses all negative effects for a long time compared to most consumables.

[thelee]

like some others here i mostly use antidotes early on (xaurip skirmishers and spiders are an absolute pain if they land a paralyze, dank spores with dominate) and then my use of them goes down significantly until around SSS (a few bad fights) and belranga.

 

3 hours ago, Helz said:

There is a spore attack that eventually dominates anyone infected that the antidote cures.

just to clear up some confusion - the sporelings have something called "dominating spores" or some such that can be cured/prevented by antidote. this doesn't actually dominate. it reduces your will, per stack. Dank Spores and other some such can just dominate/charm straight-up, but this can also be prevented with antidote. I used to think the former had something to do with the latter, but really the former just softens you up so that characters with lots of the former are more likely to get hit hard by the latter.

 

3 hours ago, Helz said:

The antidote suppresses all negative effects for a long time compared to most consumables.

there's also an incentive to use antidote pre-emptively (e.g. before you get poisoned). The game appears to treat the poison immunity of being buffed with antidote and the poison-cancellation of consuming antidote very differently. So in fights where you expect poison to get tossed around (fungus, xaurips, spiders, some SSS challenges, belranga) periodic antidote usage can give you complete immunity to certain effects, whereas taking antidote after the fact will only clear the specific effect that can be countered by antidote. (My go to example is Plague of Insects; if you use antidote before a naga or delemgan casts it, you are completely immune. If you use it after its already hit you, it only clears the sickened affliction, but does not get rid of the DoT)

Edited April 6, 2021 by thelee