Post by Editor in Chief on Apr 21, 2008 0:49:59 GMT
Have you ever shelled out $40 for high-bonus healing tea that fell short of other teas you'd tried in the same range? I decided to test these teas myself, in a controlled environment (albeit over-run by witches) and in controlled doses. To this end I first travelled to Lancre Town, where I bought a shot of whiskey. After fortifying myself, I cleaned the emptied measure glass, and stored it safely in my backpack. Next I travelled to all known playershops on the Disc which might sell healing tea. In those shops, I bought one bottle brewed by each witch that was available. This came to only 10 options, probably due to lazy playershop owners, and/or witches too fat to fly to their retailers.
I then returned to Lancre, and hiked to Bad Ass. After a brief interlude with a frisky badger, I proceeded the kitchen of Esmerelda "Granny" Weatherwax and took a seat in her favourite chair. After this garnered no more than hostile ignoring by Esmerelda "Granny" Weatherwax, I proceeded to test my stash.
First of all, I filled my measure glass from the bottle I was testing. This ensured that each dose was of identical size. Drinking directly out of a bottle, even when attempting accuracy, tends to give random amounts. I then sifted in the ashes of Esmerelda "Granny" Weatherwax's fireplace, frying my flesh repeatedly in the name of science until I had under 250 hitpoints. I then drank the complete contents of the measure glass in one, two, or three attempts. If my hitpoints showed sign of becoming too high and the tea wearing off, I sifted through the ashes again and recorded the damage done. After the tea wore off of its own accord, I added my ending hitpoints to all the extra mid-test sifting burns, and subtracted the hitpoints I had at the start of the test. For each of 10 bottles of tea, I repeated this test 10 times.
This caused some comment by the nude Unseen University rejects thronging about the kitchen. I had an explanation prepared however, which they found feasible enough: I was burning myself repeatedly to make my nipples tingle.
Of a basic nature, I determined the following order of messages, arranged from highest healing power to lowest:
A feeling of flaccidity radiates from your stomach and makes you feel deficient in turgor, lacking in vigor and force.
A feeling of numbness radiates from your stomach and makes you feel flaccid in body and soul.
A feeling of numbness radiates from your stomach.
A pleasant feeling of numbness radiates from your stomach.
The strong feeling of fuzziness which radiates from your stomach makes your head spin.
A feeling of fuzziness radiates from your stomach and makes your nipples tingle as if someone had stroked them with an ice cube.
A feeling of fuzziness radiates from your stomach and makes your nipples tingle pleasantly.
A feeling of fuzziness radiates from your stomach and makes your nipples tingle.
A feeling of fuzziness radiates from your stomach.
You feel a warming sensation in your stomach.
You feel a slight warming sensation in your stomach.
You feel a very slight warming sensation in your stomach.
You feel a tingling sensation in your stomach.
You feel a slight tingling sensation in your stomach.
You feel a very slight tingling sensation in your stomach.
Some stages are sometimes skipped or repeated, however the order of messages never changes. These messages can also serve as a rough guide for determining how good the tea you're drinking really is. But more specific information is useful as well. Hence I compiled the follow table:
BONUS RANK:ranking witches highest to lowest based on claimed brewing bonus on purchased bottles.
NAME: Name of the witch who brewed the bottle.
BONUS: The claimed brewing bonus of the tea purchased.
MIN: The lowest amount of hitpoints a sample of that witch's tea healed.
MAX: The highest amount of hitpoints a sample of that witch's tea healed.
RANGE: MAX - MIN. This shows how random the results are for that witch.
MEDIAN: The average of the two amounts of hitpoints healed in the middle of the range.
MEAN: The average of hitpoints healed in all 10 tests for that witch.
The above results show that claimed bonus is not necessarily indicative of how effective the tea was found to be in our tests. This could mean that a witch or two is exaggerating the size of her endowment, however it could also simply be a reflection of the insanely random nature of tea. Or even a bit of both. The witches ranked 1, 2, and 3 by claimed bonus are within 22 bonus points of each other, hence might be close enough for that difference to have little to no effect on the quality of their tea. Similarly, those ranked 4, 5, 6, and 7 by claimed bonus are within 33 bonus points of each other, again a relatively small amount. Those ranked 9, 10, and 11 by claimed bonus are within 38 bonus points of each other.
If we assume the fruitbat-loving nudists are honest, the alternate explanation of the difference between tested rank and bonus rank may not be much more attractive for number chasing witches: Healing tea is so very random that a difference of 30-40 brewing bonus points is almost entirely irrelevant. This means that a player would be well-advised to pay a lot less money for a tea 30 brewing bonus points lower than another tea. It also means that a witch pushing her brewing bonus up a few points higher than her closest competitors is wasting her efforts, unless she's willing to push them considerably higher.
I then returned to Lancre, and hiked to Bad Ass. After a brief interlude with a frisky badger, I proceeded the kitchen of Esmerelda "Granny" Weatherwax and took a seat in her favourite chair. After this garnered no more than hostile ignoring by Esmerelda "Granny" Weatherwax, I proceeded to test my stash.
First of all, I filled my measure glass from the bottle I was testing. This ensured that each dose was of identical size. Drinking directly out of a bottle, even when attempting accuracy, tends to give random amounts. I then sifted in the ashes of Esmerelda "Granny" Weatherwax's fireplace, frying my flesh repeatedly in the name of science until I had under 250 hitpoints. I then drank the complete contents of the measure glass in one, two, or three attempts. If my hitpoints showed sign of becoming too high and the tea wearing off, I sifted through the ashes again and recorded the damage done. After the tea wore off of its own accord, I added my ending hitpoints to all the extra mid-test sifting burns, and subtracted the hitpoints I had at the start of the test. For each of 10 bottles of tea, I repeated this test 10 times.
This caused some comment by the nude Unseen University rejects thronging about the kitchen. I had an explanation prepared however, which they found feasible enough: I was burning myself repeatedly to make my nipples tingle.
Of a basic nature, I determined the following order of messages, arranged from highest healing power to lowest:
A feeling of flaccidity radiates from your stomach and makes you feel deficient in turgor, lacking in vigor and force.
A feeling of numbness radiates from your stomach and makes you feel flaccid in body and soul.
A feeling of numbness radiates from your stomach.
A pleasant feeling of numbness radiates from your stomach.
The strong feeling of fuzziness which radiates from your stomach makes your head spin.
A feeling of fuzziness radiates from your stomach and makes your nipples tingle as if someone had stroked them with an ice cube.
A feeling of fuzziness radiates from your stomach and makes your nipples tingle pleasantly.
A feeling of fuzziness radiates from your stomach and makes your nipples tingle.
A feeling of fuzziness radiates from your stomach.
You feel a warming sensation in your stomach.
You feel a slight warming sensation in your stomach.
You feel a very slight warming sensation in your stomach.
You feel a tingling sensation in your stomach.
You feel a slight tingling sensation in your stomach.
You feel a very slight tingling sensation in your stomach.
Some stages are sometimes skipped or repeated, however the order of messages never changes. These messages can also serve as a rough guide for determining how good the tea you're drinking really is. But more specific information is useful as well. Hence I compiled the follow table:
BONUS TESTED
RANK NAME BONUS MIN MAX RANGE MEDIAN MEAN RANK COST
1 Gypsie 475 1156 4098 2942 2617 2710.9 1 $44
2 Lyna 468 1096 3707 2611 1779 2053.3 3 $45.10
3 Fole 453 1340 3324 1984 2054 2214.6 2 $44
4 Aisling 393 715 1846 1131 1180 1218.6 6 $25.92
5 Nemaine 381 789 2193 1404 1137 1233.7 6 $33.26
6 Magali 370 765 2169 1404 1496 1470.2 4 $25.20
7 MotherGoose 360 953 2200 1247 1245 1380.4 5 $24.00
8 GEMs 325 756 1575 819 1096 1144.3 7 $21.60
9 Khadija 292 446 1259 813 864 853.4 9 $ 5.22
10 Talisker 273 480 1189 709 923 886.0 8 $22.47
11 WoDaNi 254 461 1118 657 642 732.1 10 $18.70
11 GrannyMi 254 367 889 522 659 655.2 10 $19.80
BONUS RANK:ranking witches highest to lowest based on claimed brewing bonus on purchased bottles.
NAME: Name of the witch who brewed the bottle.
BONUS: The claimed brewing bonus of the tea purchased.
MIN: The lowest amount of hitpoints a sample of that witch's tea healed.
MAX: The highest amount of hitpoints a sample of that witch's tea healed.
RANGE: MAX - MIN. This shows how random the results are for that witch.
MEDIAN: The average of the two amounts of hitpoints healed in the middle of the range.
MEAN: The average of hitpoints healed in all 10 tests for that witch.
The above results show that claimed bonus is not necessarily indicative of how effective the tea was found to be in our tests. This could mean that a witch or two is exaggerating the size of her endowment, however it could also simply be a reflection of the insanely random nature of tea. Or even a bit of both. The witches ranked 1, 2, and 3 by claimed bonus are within 22 bonus points of each other, hence might be close enough for that difference to have little to no effect on the quality of their tea. Similarly, those ranked 4, 5, 6, and 7 by claimed bonus are within 33 bonus points of each other, again a relatively small amount. Those ranked 9, 10, and 11 by claimed bonus are within 38 bonus points of each other.
If we assume the fruitbat-loving nudists are honest, the alternate explanation of the difference between tested rank and bonus rank may not be much more attractive for number chasing witches: Healing tea is so very random that a difference of 30-40 brewing bonus points is almost entirely irrelevant. This means that a player would be well-advised to pay a lot less money for a tea 30 brewing bonus points lower than another tea. It also means that a witch pushing her brewing bonus up a few points higher than her closest competitors is wasting her efforts, unless she's willing to push them considerably higher.