Forums » Crafting and Gathering

Undiscovered Recipes

    • 21 posts
    May 28, 2019 10:51 AM PDT

    Please just make a load of recipes that have no recipes posted or learnt anywhere.  Give us players some credit to find all the strange little quirks you toss in.

     

    That is all.

    • 2419 posts
    June 11, 2019 11:22 AM PDT

    So you want a system where you just blindly dump various combinations of resources into a crafting station and hope that your combination actually produces something?  Do you realize the enormous number of possible combinations you would need to go through even if you had only a few items?  If you had just 5 resources any recipe could require between a combination of 2 resources up to 1 of each of the 5 resource.  You would have anywhere from 20 to at least 3,130 possible combinations to work through.  Would you want to waste the time and resources going through all those possible combinations or would you wait to find the spoilers that will eventually be posted on some site somehwere, saving yourself the effort and cost?  I'll bet the latter.

    • 1315 posts
    June 12, 2019 6:27 AM PDT

    I would love to see a cause and effect system of crafting rather than a fill in the blank recipe system or even a button mashing gambling mini game with configurable ingredients.

    WoW has a fill in the blank system and is a failure of a crafting system.  SWG had an input influence output of standard recipes with a little randomization based on experimentation success.  EQ originally had a materially gobbling money pit of unstructured clicking and moved to the fill in the blank system.

    Rather than learning recipes it would be better if crafters learned crafting techniques/powers that then needed to be leveled up to mastery.  To make an item you need to start with an appropriate raw ingredient then begin using your techniques on the object.  At that point it becomes a “work in progress” with a list of techniques successfully used on it.

    Failures can add a failed process that must be then unworked, fail badly enough to add a failed process and cause multiple previous processes to need to be unworked or ruin the piece entirely. Each time a crafter fails a process the piece is damaged a little.  The final stats of the item are based on the average quality of all the processes, the average quality of all input materials and the % of damage the piece sustained through working.

    When the crafter decides that a “work in progress” is done or so damaged you will never be able to reach your target then the crafter will have a “complete project” option.  The system will look through a table of process sequences and ingredients to see if there is an item with a matching sequence.  This item could be a subcomponent to be used in other crafting, for example metal rivets, or could be a finished product.  If the sequence does not match an item then the object can have several outcomes.  Processes can be removed from the sequence at a cost of damage to the product which will affect the quality of the product.  If the damage is complete before a different product is reached then the result is ruined and can be salvaged for a portion of the ingredients that are not damaged in the process.

    Out in the world there can be NPC written guides and quests to teach players what sequences to use to make certain items but at no point will it become part of the UI outside of maybe a note taker and a player is on their own to follow the pattern successfully.  These hints could include using alchemically created additives rather than standard NPC bought additives or a way to reprocesses a subcomponent to be better such as Damascus folded steel bar stock rather than standard rolled and slit bar stock.

    The sequence tables could be absolutely huge and some or most of it may have no actual hints but could still be systemic enough to extrapolate possible combinations.

    • 1785 posts
    June 12, 2019 10:22 AM PDT

    So, while I appreciate the crafting in Minecraft philosophically, in practice, it annoys me.

    The reason why it annoys me isn't so much the fact that I have to put together random things in a certain order to make an item.  It annoys me because I have to put together those things in that order to make the item every time.  Even if it's something I need 20 of.

    --------------------------------------

    I did a lot of crafting in EQ.  At first, I was excited by the idea that by putting different combinations of materials in the crafting tool, I might yield different results.  I probably spent hours trying to figure out different fletching combinations.

    Eventually the novelty wore off however, and I found myself just going to EQ Crafters and looking up what I wanted to make.  Why?  Because materials were expensive, and I didn't want to burn them on a failure.  This was especially true when I started making some of the racial stuff that needed tempers or rare materials.

    --------------------------------------

    While I appreciate the desire to have crafting be a puzzle in terms of what makes what, and I appreciate the thrill of discovery when you make something new, I don't think it's the right path for Pantheon.  The complexity and depth of crafting should be in the act of making an item, not figuring out what you need to make it.  Discovering new recipes shouldn't just be a matter of throwing random stuff in a box and seeing what pops out.  That works in a survival style crafting system.  But Terminus is a world with people and civilizations.  Crafters need to engage with that world - and learning recipes is a really good way to insure that crafters do just that.

    This doesn't mean that a little randomness is a bad thing.  Vanguard's "dust" system for optional components that modify stat values or add additional effects could translate directly to Pantheon.  SWG's concept of experimenting on the finished stats of an item could potentially translate as well.  Even the ESO concept of finding different styles for crafted items by using differnet optional components could be brought over and plugged in.  Or heck, all three.  Let's go nuts.  But understanding the base template for that item?  I need some of this, and some of that, and some of these over there?  That shouldn't be something you have to figure out on your own.  And it shouldn't be something you have to go look up outside of the game every time you want to make that item again.

     

    I also think it's true that we think about what the point of crafting actually is.  If VR were making a game that was *only* or *mostly* about crafting, it might make sense to go with something like what Trasak is proposing.  It would be a very deep and rich crafting experience.  But Pantheon is not a game that is *only* or *mostly* about crafting.  Pantheon is a game about exploring a world filled with rich interactions, history, and lore, and having adventures along the way.  This is true whether you are in the crafting sphere or the adventuring sphere.  Because of that, the crafting system needs to be one that can fit within that larger purpose, and it needs to be one that can be created and maintained and easily evolve as the rest of the game evolves alongside it.  The more complex you make the system, the more variables it has, the harder that is to accomplish.

    This isn't to say I want WoW's crafting system or even EQ2's crafting system.  They are too simplistic, too shallow, and ultimately, too easily gamed for the best possible results in the case of EQ2.  But neither do I want a crafting system like what I see in No Man's Sky or Medieval where I just end up looking up everything outside of the game.  That's swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction.

     

    • 1315 posts
    June 12, 2019 11:48 AM PDT

    *claps excited* Ohh Neph and I finally get to have a contrary discussion again, it’s been months and months since we were talking about crafting writs.

    So three things I should clarify on my sequence idea.

    1)      Crafters gain crafting experience from each processes, including unworking a failed process, that isn’t mastered and the difficulty goes up with higher grade materials.  So the goal is not just the finished product but the crafting journey itself.

    2)       There easily could be stages that the item transforms and the processes from one stage to the next could be done in any order but the stages need to be progressed through in order.  Arguably this could just be several crafted sub components and one final assembly crafting but I was trying to reduce inventory bloat by having the work piece be a single item that you feed materials into.

    3)      Hopefully the “unknown recipes” would still follow a relatively intuitive sequence just bringing in some newly discovered alteration.  If 3d object creation was not an issue I would love to see the raw materials change into interim steps that would hint to what the possible next steps could be but that ends up being a lot of art objects that would need to be created for each final crafted item, arguably they could overlap a fair amount

     

    Now the why I was suggesting it:

    1)      I want to spend more time crafting than harvesting, a lot more.  . . like an order of magnitude more.  It really grinds my gears when I need to spend 10 hours harvesting in order to collect enough materials to only craft for an hour or so.

    2)      I want crafting to be a value added process, not a value subtractive process.  If crafted items on the player market are less valuable than the raw materials because the demand for raw materials is higher than finished products then it’s a failed/bankrupted crafting economy.  As the only true currency in gaming is player time then crafting a player useable item must take a measurable amount of time.

    3)      Spamming final products floods the market so making only 2-5 final products in a 2 hour time period should be reasonable as it would match NPC drop rates of completed items if you were adventuring.  Things like rivets, bolts of cloth, thread, leather squares and planned boards could be done faster and in bulk but those are subcombines and not final assemblies.

     

    Compromises/Redesigns:

    1)      After adding in some flexibility in the order of processes between stages there could also be sub skills of each major skill that let you force a specific outcome from a generic input with an otherwise general skill.  For example  the smithing “Fuller” skill could have Short Blade, Long Blade, Axe head, hammer.  There would also be small bar stock, medium bar stock, and large bar stock.  Using the short blade fullering technique on a heated small bar stock will start the process for a dagger sized blade, medium a spear head and large a kukri. The long blade skill would create an estoc, long sword or great sword.  The axe would make a hatchet, battle axe or war axe.  You get the picture.

    2)      Maybe there could be a step by step ui that guides you once you learn a recipe or complete a recipe making it easier to redo it.

    3)      On a slow crafting process all the steps taken to complete the 3 crafted items in a 2 hour time window would yield an equivalent amount of crafting experience to the amount of adventuring experience one would get in the same time.

    • 193 posts
    June 12, 2019 12:52 PM PDT

    Trasak said:

    I would love to see a cause and effect system of crafting rather than a fill in the blank recipe system or even a button mashing gambling mini game with configurable ingredients.

    I think both (cause/effect & fill in the blank) might be a good compromise.  There could be standard recipes that are trained along the way, with cause/effect experimentation available, as well. At level 1, for example, a blacksmith would get 'Basic Dagger.' Through a process of (fixed and limited) experimentation, you might be able to add an elemental property using a fire mote, or an interesting combat property using say, an enchanted orc tooth. The fire mote might add fire resist or +fire damage, while the orc tooth might change the look slightly and add an effect called 'savage,' which bypasses a small percent of armor. Basically, have fixed recipes with (limited) optional ingredients slots. Maybe every 10 levels or so, your optional ingredients increases by 1, so at level 10 you'd have 1, level 20 you'd have 2, etc.

    I very much like the idea of reworking failures and keeping most of the material, even if it reverts to raw material. So, let's say we tried for a savage short sword and it failed. The basic recipe takes 10 medium bars, an enchanted orc tooth and a hilt. When it fails, we get 9 medium bars and the hilt back.

    Lots of good ideas in this thread so far. Kudos to you all!

    • 520 posts
    June 12, 2019 1:44 PM PDT

    I have mixed feeling about it. In my opinion all crafters should gain small ammount of very basic recipes after advancing for the next tier, be able to buy more uncommon recipes from merchants/ crafting masters, find rare recipes in the world and as a drop from monsters, find legendary/epic recipes as a rare loot from monsters and bosses and as reward for certain quests (maybe some epic quest available when we gain so called "mastery" - different for each type of craftsmanship!). "Discovery" recipes are cool idea, but only makes sense in certain types of craftsmanship - esp  Alchemy - where there is huge field for show off and not so much in weaponsmithing or even (!) cooking. Once discovered recipes should be "registered" in characters crafting tab though. Although it may be fun to try and experiment in the beginning - soon these will be widely known and put in the wikia or whatever, which will defeat the purpose and unless you'll be determined to stay away of such sites and you'd rather waste sometimes obtained with great difficulty ingredients, than just check for the correct blend - they'll become just another "common" recipe - so i dont think it's worth a hassle.

    • 2419 posts
    June 12, 2019 3:11 PM PDT

    This idea is that the raw ingredients each, on their own, have some benefit to them and that the recipe isn't what determines what you make but the benefits of the raw materials determine the final outcome. Here's what I mean. 

    There exists a Recipe called 'Steak Sandwich'.  The recipe just says 'Cooked Meat and Bread (required), Cheese, Tomato, Lettuce, Bacon, Pickle, etc etc etc (optional).  It says nothing about what meat you need nore even how many.  When you look at Cooked Wolf Meat you see in the descriptions "0.5 weight, 0.5 Health, 0.5 Stamina, -0.25 drink".  A Cooked Bear Meat shows "0.7 weight, 0.7 health, 0.8 stamina, -0.4 drink".  Each of the other ingredients also show such stats (of different numbers of course).  So if you made a Steak Sandwich with 1 Cooked Wolf Meat and 1 Bread (the bread shows 0.1 weight, 0.1health/stamina) you get a Steak Sandwich that shows 0.6 weight, 0.6 health/stamina, -0.4 drink.  If you instead used the bear meat you get different stats.  If you instead decided to make a Steak Sandwich using 10 Cooked Bear Meat and 10 Bread, you would get 1 really freaking heavy sandwich that would return a lot of health and stamina but drain you quite a bit on your fluid levels. 

    You then look at the optional ingredients to see what stats they have and instead of making just 1 huge Steak Sandiwch with 10 bear/bread, you instead just just 2 Bear Meat, 1 Bread but add 1 Cheese (0.1W,0.1H, 0.1S, -0.1D), 2 Lettuce (0.1W, +0.2D), 1 Tomato (0.1W, +0.2D) and 1 Pickle (0.1W, 0.1S, +0.1D) and get a Steak Sandwich that has 0.54Weight, +0.24Health, +0.9Stamina, +0.4Drink.

    The point is that you could, to some degree, tailor your final food product based upon the specific benefit you want.  If we assume that Food focuses more on Health/Stamina and Drinks more on Mana you could make custom meals for melee or for casters.

    What this means for the market then is people making custom food of various stat/benefit combinations.  You aren't then competing against every person sellign Beer Braised Dorf Steaks because there is only 1 'recipe' giving the same thing.  You are competing based upon the benefits you choose to put into your recipes.

    For Blackmithing, you need to think about metalurgy. In the real world, is that balance of elements in a compound.  Do you want a more flexible steel or a stronger/stiffer one?  Do you want it lighter?  Your raw materials like Iron, Aluminum, Tin, Copper, Mithril, Tungsten, etc, each would have 'stats' such that by combining them in different ratios you get different results.  The 'recipe' would still produce 'A Long Sword' but because you used 1 Iron Bar, 2 Aluminum Bar you get a sword that is lighter, does slightly less damage but swings faster.  Someone else decides to use 1 Iron Bar, 2 Mithril Bar and 1 Tungsten Bar to make a sword that is heavier, higher damager, slower swing speed.  Its still A Long Sword..just made through different components.

    • 1785 posts
    June 13, 2019 12:02 AM PDT

    Vandraad said:

    This idea is that the raw ingredients each, on their own, have some benefit to them and that the recipe isn't what determines what you make but the benefits of the raw materials determine the final outcome. Here's what I mean. 

    This, I like, and I think something along these lines could work in Pantheon.  Recipe acquisition can still matter, but recipes themselves are merely templates - by using different materials within those templates you can achieve different results.  This also naturally ties in with adventuring for acquiring the best/rarest materials.  If you want to make a dragon tail steak sandwich (everyone knows the tail's the best part), well, odds are, you're not going to get that on your own.

    When I think about the experience I would want Pantheon to drive for crafters, it's not an experience of them sitting at their crafting station tinkering with various combinations of things - rather, I would want the experience to be that as a crafter you're always on the lookout for that better thing that you can use.  If you're an outfitter, getting your hands on that rare leather or silk you've heard about.  If you're a blacksmith, hoping to get a hold of some of that special ore that you've heard rumors of.  At the same time,  I also think that crafters need to be traveling the world to learn rare/special recipes.  Perhaps you find an ancient scroll in a ruin that contains the recipe for creating a superior item.  Or perhaps it's learned from an old master of the craft, retired and living simply, but willing to impart his knowledge to those that prove themselves worthy.  Point is - it gets the crafter more engaged with the world around them, as opposed to simply engaged with the crafting process.

    • 193 posts
    June 13, 2019 8:05 AM PDT

    Nephele said:

    Vandraad said:

    This idea is that the raw ingredients each, on their own, have some benefit to them and that the recipe isn't what determines what you make but the benefits of the raw materials determine the final outcome. Here's what I mean. 

    This, I like, and I think something along these lines could work in Pantheon.  Recipe acquisition can still matter, but recipes themselves are merely templates - by using different materials within those templates you can achieve different results.  This also naturally ties in with adventuring for acquiring the best/rarest materials.  If you want to make a dragon tail steak sandwich (everyone knows the tail's the best part), well, odds are, you're not going to get that on your own.

    When I think about the experience I would want Pantheon to drive for crafters, it's not an experience of them sitting at their crafting station tinkering with various combinations of things - rather, I would want the experience to be that as a crafter you're always on the lookout for that better thing that you can use.  If you're an outfitter, getting your hands on that rare leather or silk you've heard about.  If you're a blacksmith, hoping to get a hold of some of that special ore that you've heard rumors of.  At the same time,  I also think that crafters need to be traveling the world to learn rare/special recipes.  Perhaps you find an ancient scroll in a ruin that contains the recipe for creating a superior item.  Or perhaps it's learned from an old master of the craft, retired and living simply, but willing to impart his knowledge to those that prove themselves worthy.  Point is - it gets the crafter more engaged with the world around them, as opposed to simply engaged with the crafting process.

    Yes, what I was trying to get at, you two just said it better. Recipes are generic templates that are 'experimentable' and customizable. 

    • 2419 posts
    June 13, 2019 9:49 AM PDT

    I would go so far to say that, at least for food/drink, they could be further packaged into a single 'meal'.  So rather than carrying around a stack of Steak Sandwiches and a stack of Fizzie Bubblers you combine them into one meal package.  You consume it and both your food/drink and whatever stat bonuses/regeneration effects are applied according to the two sub components.

    • 1315 posts
    June 13, 2019 11:35 AM PDT

    100% on board with the idea of generic templates that you slot different materials into with optional materials to calculate the final values of the items.  I guess I am trying to introduce even another layer of customization.  The idea is tied into how you play the crafting mini game can change the output of the standard mini game. 

    Here is an example of maybe how the two ideas combine.

    1)      The Armorsmith selects the medium scaled maile hauberk template.

    2)      The template requires a minimum ingredients of:

    1. 4 large bar of metal (16 medium, 64 small or 256 tiny pieces of metal or metal substitute)
    2. medium armor backing (these could either be magical cloth from a tailor or leather from an outfitter)
    3. enough joining material for 256 scales (rivets can be made 16 to a small bar, 2 inches of wire or cord will join one scale so a 50ft length will cover it)

    3)      Tools needed:

    1. Hammer
    2. Hole punch
    3. Tongs
    4. Scale cutter Die
    5. Scale shaper Die

    4)      The crafter adds the ingredients to the template inventory in a one way manor, anything not consumed at the end of the crafting process is lost but all items are accessable to the crafter within the minigame without inventory hunting.  The tools only need to be in the crafters inventory or on a special crafters tool inventory which is separate from the adventurer’s inventory.

    5)      1st step: Creating 256 scales

    1. Each scale must be made individually from a tiny piece of material.
    2. The most basic method requires the following process

                                                        i.     Place tiny pieces in the forge to heat to a target temp (all the pieces can be thrown in at once and just keep the forge at the target temp)

                                                       ii.     Pull the heated piece out and strike it between the Scale Die until the scale is 100% formed. (if you take too long the temperature cools and the partially finished scale needs to be put back into the fire to get back to temp)

                                                      iii.     Once fully formed then the scale cutter needs to be used to cut the scale out from the scrap. (must be done at target temp)

                                                      iv.     Punch the hole in scale (must be done at target temp)

                                                       v.     Cool the scale starting from target temp, can be air cooled or quenched in oil, water or alchemical agent.

    1. Variations:

                                                        i.     Iron wood scales might need to be cut with a saw and drilled or obsidian split with a chisel but those poor manufacturing methods will affect the outcome which may be offset by the final product stats.

                                                       ii.     Each time you hammer takes crafting energy, failing to heat the metal before trying to shape the scales takes more hits to 100% form the scale.  Some materials just may naturally either harder and take more hits or you will not want to heat it like dwarf ice steel.  Again the different choices could change the outcome.

                                                      iii.     This would be an example where group crafting could make a lot of sense if 6 armorsmiths could work together to craft all the scales quickly.

                                                      iv.     In theory scales could also be crafted as a stand alone item and added to the initial template (there may be specific forges out in the world the metal needs to be worked at but that doesn’t mean you need to do everything then.

                                                       v.     Specialty scales could be created by hot forging welding 2 completed scales of either the same material or different materials together.  This would create an advanced 2 layer scaled maile which has more mitigation, takes more material, weights more and gives you a penalty to avoidance.

                                                      vi.     Different types of scales could be used on the same hauberk to create blend of statistics both mundane and magical.  The different joining methods and backing types will have their own pluses, minuses and restrictions

    6)      Attach the scales to the backing

    1. The cord or the wire must be cut into 2 inch lengths or rivets crafted.
    2. A hole needs punched into the backing for the attachment.
    3. Pick the scale and attachment material you want to use and attach it to the backing
    4. Repeat 255 more times
    5. This could also be a group crafting.

    Each and every step has a quality rating that measures your success level and modifies the overall average quality level of the piece.  Each step can be retried after undoing it with some material loss over time.  The chance for different levels of results is a function of your crafting level, technique skill level, material knowledge level and tool/equipment modifiers.

    The final item maximum stats will be calculated on the sub template completed and the materials used weighted by % composition.  The quality level will then place a multiplier on both the positive and negative statistics (high quality raises bonuses and decreases penalties).

    Crafts that focus on consumables, provisioning and alchemy, do not need to have anywhere near as time consuming of a crafting process and can easily be designed to make their product in larger batches where reasonable.  Their products are not permanent additions to the game economy and have a relatively low effect on character power.

    *edit*

    P.S. I REALLY hate this measage board for any formating.  It doesnt even follow its own code very often

    *end edit*


    This post was edited by Trasak at June 13, 2019 11:38 AM PDT
    • 520 posts
    June 14, 2019 5:01 AM PDT

    The problem here is how would they solve "stacking" for food and potions - i would rather have one 99 stack of "fresh sandwich" than 5 diffrent stacks (20 each) of "*** fresh sandwich" with a different stats - iventory space is already limited enough. Not to mention the chaos it would bring for both bank/inventory menagement as well as trading.

    • 1315 posts
    June 14, 2019 6:22 AM PDT

    Consumables really are a problem for inventory space, especially in a unit volume (one size fits all slot grid) inventory system.  In a generic sense the stats of the sandwiches that have been combined into one sack could be averaged for simplicity sake.  The other option could be a “best fit” calculation at the end of the production.  For example there could be 5 different grades of health potions and the ingredients you used and the skill checks would end up giving you a potion score then the system would round down to the next lowest potion.  It really does get brutal though if you can have potions with multiple different attributes that vary independently.

    This is one of the many reasons I think we should have a volume inventory system rather than a slot based inventory system.  You could have 30-50 potions in the same space as a chain maile hauberk and literally 1000s of rings.  Your player’s strength would be the other limiting factor on how much you could carry.  I would also like to see weight reduction bags be more like a buoyancy where they negate the first X kilograms rather than reduce the weight of everything in the bag by x%.

    • 2138 posts
    July 1, 2019 11:51 AM PDT

    I think I get the OP idea, so long as its not complicated, but intuitive, with the complexity being intuitively taught.

    For instance: the funny debate if a hot dog is a sandwich. For the sake of argument lets say in pantheon crafting any animal meat/flesh bewteen two pieces of bread, constitutes a sandwich. the "ah-ha!" comes from the combination result with stats!.

    The intuition comes from adding what you bring from RL into the game like orc toe jam, and faerthale mushrooms to create something else with different stats. Being so fueled with curiosity you get led on and learn to cure meats- provided in game- and cure some rat ears, learn to make a dressing, provided in game, from gator eggs and spectre oil (mayo), and you think of adding bulbous lava berry(tomato) and some leafy swamp fronds(lettuce) with 3 slices of bread (rat ear BLT) and you get something else even better!.

    Likewise with other crafting recipes, keep the core recipe the same and learnable, but make the variations intuitive and many. 

    This will make failures not so bad- found some new dust? hmm didn't work in smithing so it must be a spice! kind of thing. Or found some new leaves, that didn't work in baking so it must be a herb or tea for brewing!