Issue with "A Masterful Concoction"?

Kinsana · December 2023

I've made 64 potions trying to get this to complete. I've tried across multiple days. No addons.
Does anyone have a suggestion to get this to complete? I hate to abandon it.

ElderSmitter · December 2023

You're just making the Wrong Escapist Potion. The 3rd Line. Drains Magicka is not in the Masterful Concoction.

virtus753 · December 2023

ElderSmitter wrote: »

You're just making the Wrong Escapist Potion. The 3rd Line. Drains Magicka is not in the Masterful Concoction.

Those are exactly the ingredients the game itself says are the correct ones - look at the quest arrows on the right. Those are native game markers instructing this player to use them. (UESP also lists them as correct.)

There is a bug either in the arrows for the ingredients or in the game refusing to accept the product of the ingredients it instructs us to use.

The only thing I can think of is it must be crafted on that character.

tomofhyrule · December 2023

virtus753 wrote: »

The only thing I can think of is it must be crafted on that character.

Yes, whichever character has the quest is the character who needs to have crafted the items. It checks the name under "Crafted by:" for that.

That also means that if you activate a master writ and make the item, and then do a name change before turning it in, that won't count iirc.

Kinsana · December 2023

virtus753 wrote: »

ElderSmitter wrote: »

You're just making the Wrong Escapist Potion. The 3rd Line. Drains Magicka is not in the Masterful Concoction.

Those are exactly the ingredients the game itself says are the correct ones - look at the quest arrows on the right. Those are native game markers instructing this player to use them. (UESP also lists them as correct.)

There is a bug either in the arrows for the ingredients or in the game refusing to accept the product of the ingredients it instructs us to use.

The only thing I can think of is it must be crafted on that character.

I didn't notice that they didn't match.
I guess I could try to make the other and see if it works.
I opened the writ on this char and am crafting on this char.

virtus753 · December 2023

Kinsana wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

ElderSmitter wrote: »

You're just making the Wrong Escapist Potion. The 3rd Line. Drains Magicka is not in the Masterful Concoction.

Those are exactly the ingredients the game itself says are the correct ones - look at the quest arrows on the right. Those are native game markers instructing this player to use them. (UESP also lists them as correct.)

There is a bug either in the arrows for the ingredients or in the game refusing to accept the product of the ingredients it instructs us to use.

The only thing I can think of is it must be crafted on that character.

I didn't notice that they didn't match.
I guess I could try to make the other and see if it works.
I opened the writ on this char and am crafting on this char.

The ingredients that are marked by the game as the ones you should use seem to be the ones you've used. If that isn't the right poison for the writ, something is wrong with the game's instructions.

SeaGtGruff · December 2023

In my experience, the quest arrows don't necessarily point to the ingredients you need to use; rather, they point to ingredients which you've "discovered" to have one or more of the desired effects. There could still be other ingredients which also have one or more of the desired effects but you just haven't "discovered" those effects yet on those ingredients, and it is still up to you to choose which ingredients to combine in order to get all of the desired effects.

That said, you do appear to be selecting ingredients which give all three of the desired effects, but I think you're selecting them in the wrong order. Try this order instead:

Colombine
Namira's Rot
Lady's Smock

You've got Namira's Rot last, but it gives the Unstoppable effect which is the primary desired effect. I believe the primary desired effect needs to be on both of the first two ingredients. It used to be that selecting the ingredients in the "wrong" order caused the name of the potion or poison to be different than the requested one, but I think maybe that was changed so that the name agrees with the requested concoction even if the "primary" effect is the wrong one, although I might be mistaken about that.

virtus753 · December 2023

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

In my experience, the quest arrows don't necessarily point to the ingredients you need to use; rather, they point to ingredients which you've "discovered" to have one or more of the desired effects. There could still be other ingredients which also have one or more of the desired effects but you just haven't "discovered" those effects yet on those ingredients, and it is still up to you to choose which ingredients to combine in order to get all of the desired effects.

That said, you do appear to be selecting ingredients which give all three of the desired effects, but I think you're selecting them in the wrong order. Try this order instead:

Colombine
Namira's Rot
Lady's Smock

You've got Namira's Rot last, but it gives the Unstoppable effect which is the primary desired effect. I believe the primary desired effect needs to be on both of the first two ingredients. It used to be that selecting the ingredients in the "wrong" order caused the name of the potion or poison to be different than the requested one, but I think maybe that was changed so that the name agrees with the requested concoction even if the "primary" effect is the wrong one, although I might be mistaken about that.

The name matches because it goes by the first effect listed. Unstoppable is the first effect listed with those three ingredients, so it’s an Escapist Poison. The game has a fixed order in which it places the effects, regardless of order of ingredients. (That’s also why Heroism potions that include Restore Stamina or Restore Magicka as well are always called Essence of Stamina or Essence of Magicka, and good luck not letting the game steal one for daily writs.)

These three ingredients always make something called Escapist’s Poison IX. Unstoppable is always listed first, regardless of the order of the ingredients. Every permutation results in the same thing: Unstoppable, Spell Crit, and Restore Magicka.

And they all stack with each other, so the game recognizes them as the same thing. (Unlike certain potions where a longer duration on one effect makes it a different item from other potions with the same types of effects.)

At the end of the day, though, the writ asks for a concoction named Escapist’s Poison IX with three specific effects. All three specific effects are produced, and the concoction’s name matches. If something is going on behind the scenes that makes that poison shown in the OP fail to satisfy the writ (provided it was crafted on that character, and OP said it was), then it needs to be fixed.

SeaGtGruff · December 2023

virtus753 wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

In my experience, the quest arrows don't necessarily point to the ingredients you need to use; rather, they point to ingredients which you've "discovered" to have one or more of the desired effects. There could still be other ingredients which also have one or more of the desired effects but you just haven't "discovered" those effects yet on those ingredients, and it is still up to you to choose which ingredients to combine in order to get all of the desired effects.

That said, you do appear to be selecting ingredients which give all three of the desired effects, but I think you're selecting them in the wrong order. Try this order instead:

Colombine
Namira's Rot
Lady's Smock

You've got Namira's Rot last, but it gives the Unstoppable effect which is the primary desired effect. I believe the primary desired effect needs to be on both of the first two ingredients. It used to be that selecting the ingredients in the "wrong" order caused the name of the potion or poison to be different than the requested one, but I think maybe that was changed so that the name agrees with the requested concoction even if the "primary" effect is the wrong one, although I might be mistaken about that.

The name matches because it goes by the first effect listed. Unstoppable is the first effect listed with those three ingredients, so it’s an Escapist Poison. The game has a fixed order in which it places the effects, regardless of order of ingredients. (That’s also why Heroism potions that include Restore Stamina or Restore Magicka as well are always called Essence of Stamina or Essence of Magicka, and good luck not letting the game steal one for daily writs.)

These three ingredients always make something called Escapist’s Poison IX. Unstoppable is always listed first, regardless of the order of the ingredients. Every permutation results in the same thing: Unstoppable, Spell Crit, and Restore Magicka.

And they all stack with each other, so the game recognizes them as the same thing. (Unlike certain potions where a longer duration on one effect makes it a different item from other potions with the same types of effects.)

At the end of the day, though, the writ asks for a concoction named Escapist’s Poison IX with three specific effects. All three specific effects are produced, and the concoction’s name matches. If something is going on behind the scenes that makes that poison shown in the OP fail to satisfy the writ (provided it was crafted on that character, and OP said it was), then it needs to be fixed.

If you say so. But I have a memory that it wasn't always as you describe, that at one time the order of the ingredients did mattered. If my memory about that is correct, then it might be that the master writ expects the primary effect to be on the first two ingreduents, regardless of what order the effects are listed in on the poison's description.

In any case, it certainly wouldn't hurt for @Kinsana to select the ingredients in the order I suggested to see if that resolves the issue, and report back to us.

Kinsana · December 2023

okay, So I put them in the order suggested above and now I have 83 poisons that still won't "fit the bill" LOL

But There does seem to be a bug here as it doesn't seem these ingredients should create uncertainty or prophesy or drain magicka.... which is what it says it produced.

freespirit · December 2023

Ok I did a test, your writ is most definitely bugged/broken!!

I dug out an identical writ

Added the same ingredients and hit craft!

It completed straight away!

Edit:- Also the descriptions of the effects match yours too, these often have "extra" bits in them, although it says "Drain Magicka" it also says "Restores 238 Magicka" .

SeaGtGruff · December 2023

The descriptions are correct. Remember, when you craft a poison instead of a potion, the effects are "reversed," so Restore Magicka becomes Drain Magicka, and Spell Criitical becomes Minor Uncertainty, etc.

The UESPwiki page on Unstoppable lists the ingredients in the order I had suggested-- with Namira's Rot second and Lady's Smock third-- and the wording of the information on that page and on the Alchemy page implies that the first two ingredients need to give the primary effect which determines the name of the concoction. This may have been changed by ZOS a year or three back-- I forget when, and don't feel like slogging through all of the old Patch Notes to see-- but it definitely used to be as I'd said, where the order did make a difference.

My only other suggestion is to bank the stack of poisons already made before trying one more time with the ingredients in the correct order, in case the "good" ones stacked with the "bad" ones and got changed by the stacking somehow. But I would have thought that you'd be able to see messages about the writ's progress as you craft the poison.

freespirit · December 2023

@SeaGtGruff but when I checked as shown above I used the ingredients in the same order as op and it worked immediately....

Which is why I think that it's highly likely the op's writ is somehow bugged.

SeaGtGruff · December 2023

freespirit wrote: »

@SeaGtGruff but when I checked as shown above I used the ingredients in the same order as op and it worked immediately....

Which is why I think that it's highly likely the op's writ is somehow bugged.

Yeah, the only thought I had about that was maybe it's an older writ, but that would only be possible if the OP had purchased it from a guild trader or guild store, or pulled it out of a guild bank, player bank, or player storage chest, since any master writs acquired as current rewards should be the newer versions.

By older/newer I'm talking about master writs that change due to changes in the game. For instance, I had a lot of old Jewelry master writs from before their writ voucher rewards were adjusted a while back (when blue Jewelry master writs became the norm) and I noticed that the set stations for those older Jewelry writs weren't getting the quest pointers displayed over them, hence something about them was different from the newer ones (aside from the different numbers of master writ vouchers they awarded) which kept the quest markers from working with them:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/581344/jewelry-master-writs-no-longer-showing-quest-marker

So maybe when they changed Alchemy writs to give the same results regardless of what order the three ingredients are in, the Alchemy master writs got newer versions as a result? Such that an Alchemy master writ from back before that change won't accept the newer versions of the potions or poisons due to them having different IDs than the older versions did?

Kinsana · December 2023

So, I went into my inventory to mark the ones that I had planned to move to the bank to try and craft again.
I noticed that they were marked with the white Locked symbol.

I unlocked them and the writ completed instantly.

*sigh*

Thanks so much to all who helped troubleshoot this!!!

ZOS_Bill · February 15

Thank you for keeping us updated regarding this crafting issue. With this issue now resolved, we are going to close this discussion.