Forums » Crafting and Gathering

Crafting Recipes (and Lore)

    • 763 posts
    September 24, 2016 1:22 AM PDT

    In most modern MMOs crafting recipes seem generally accessible, often bought, and require no work. I would like to suggest :

    1. Bought : Low level and 'common' recipes only

    From main towns/cities. Different ones in different regions - dependent on locals

    Eg mining region / Dwarven city may have more metal/ore related ones (considered 'common' here).

    2. Taught : Mid-level and 'un-common' lower level ones

    Require a trainer to teach you.

    Getting him ready to talk to you about this may involve enough faction, skill, proving yourself (accept making your 'journeyman' piece quest, make it, give it to trainer as proof of skill). Once he is on-board with you, you need to work under him to 'learn' (get learning points, say) with which to 'spend' from his available list of 'teachable recipes'. This may differ significantly from trainer to trainer as each has their own speciality. Most 'common' recipes would be held by many, but not all. Each would have some 'un-common' ones, which would be held again dependent on the race/specialism of the trainer.

    3. Found : Higher-level and 'un-common' Mid-Level ones

    (a) Loot Drops

    (i) Lower level or more commonplace recipes can be dropped as a single entity.

    (ii) Lower level recipes as 'scroll' and medium/higher level as a 'book/tome'.

    (iii) Some may be locked, needing a key to be found in the area/dungeon

    (iv) Some may be in specific languages. You may need a translator, PC or NPC!

    (v) Higher-level or 'un-common' recipes should be found in 'pages' which need combining. Combining requires all pages and some reagents (thread, binders etc). These books may also need translating one make whole.

    (b) 'Perception' finds

    Using PTF 'perception' mechanic, but requiring a certain crafting level to trigger.

    (c) Isolated/hermit trainers

    You may come across researchers or skilled crafters in far off places. They may teach recipes to crafters. It may take faction, 'name dropping' (high faction with a skilled city crafteman/guild he knows) or merely 'doing him a favour' (quest or cash, who knows with these half-mad people).

    4. Lore : Specialist, Racial and all 'rare' ones

    Any unique, rare or otherwise singular recipes whould be framed as part of 'Lore'. These need active solving to establish the recipe. The level of the recipe is not important, just that the scope or contect is significant and involves Terminus' lore in the way it is created or operates.

    Eg :

    ====================================================

    Potion of Enduring Water Breath (Alchemy 250+)

    Grind ye the bones of a dozen Dark-Myr Sentinels..

    ... mixing in an ounce of raw sea salt from Syronai's rest,

    Boil ye then a soup from the lungs of a pair of Dark-Mry DreadLords...

    ... add ground dark-night coral for seasoning, just a pinch is best,

    Mix now together this concoction in warm Myr blood...

    ... a pint, no more, bolied down with a lemon's zest,

    A silvered flask, stoppered with glass must be used...

    ... a single glyph of preservation upon the bottle's chest.

     

    - Extract from the 'Apothecaries of the Elders', translated by Borgia the Gnome.

    ====================================================

     

    TLDR : Idea is to have tiered recipes, both by 'level' and 'scarcity' ensuring that crafters will likely have a different selection of recipes from each other. For any given trade-skill, they will probably all have the basics (the more common utility and low level ones), most have a fair number of less commonplace ones, and few have a couple of the rarer, specialist type recipes. I.e. Don't try to be 'Master of All' unless you have all the time and effort in the world to use! It should mean crafters going out to find sages, hermits, trainers in far ciities ... not to mention dungeons to 'percieve' some long forgotten tome lain dusty and ignored for hundreds of years!

    • 902 posts
    September 24, 2016 4:43 AM PDT

    I agree. It would be nice that all crafters did not have the same recipes and blueprints. I think it would be great to have to find the majority of quality recipes and include different ways in how they are attained. It would be great if each game mechanic could produce individual crafting recipes and blue prints. Everything from (sentient) mob drops, to quests, library searches, faction building and training. I would also like to see players “earn” the right to be a trainer too. For instance, a grand master could then become a trainer and pass on anyone a non-rare recipes they know about. Maybe even allow a grand master to deconstruct items and (over time and effort) work out how it was made.


    It seems to me that the current games bolt on crafting as a side line for people to do while not adventuring. I would like to see something with substance for a change. Something that was an integral part of the game. I would also like to see items crafted created from parts involving other crafted items and even other crafts. For instance, a “game broth” could be made by any crafter from various meat, stock and seasoning. The meat being retrieved by a butcher skill, the stock made by a cook and the seasoning also made by a cook skill. Now I know people are going to say, “this will just slow the creation of the broth down and there will be too many steps”. But it will create a market for the sub parts. It could also affect the outcome of the recipe depending on what made up the sub parts. So a common vegetable stock would give basic stats, but combining it with a stock made from mountain dew, fire stalks and deep sea kelp could give a nice boost to the stats of the finished product. The higher the boost, the more rare the ingredients.


    This kind of system could be built into any craft too. A naturally seasoned Elm axe handle could have different added stats than an Oaken heartwood seasoned in Iron Ice Brine for a month (maybe even in real time, lol). They both create an axe, but the components make the grade of axe produced (and its intrinsic value).


    Now I know balance would prove difficult in such a system, but I think it would be worth it. Lots of variety, no one a master of everything. Combining different crafts to make final, high quality items too. So leather wraps for a handle, combined with the metal. Seasoned wood combined with a shield frame (wood or metal).


    I would also like to see items that could be personalised (to a degree) by including a specific blessing and/or rune (where appropriate) and visual effect based adornments would be lush too. These would be applied by the player post creation. Anything to make crafted items more unique (in looks and stats) and get away from a single item being best in slot idea. Make it more best for the player’s gaming style.


    I know, I rambled a bit at the end. But I would love to see something substantial with crafting that was meaningful, deep and made a difference to the players using and wielding the crafted items. I would much prefer a case of quality crafted items being as important as drops. Just make them as hard to make as a the mob is hard to kill and the drop is hard to get.

    • 432 posts
    September 24, 2016 10:10 AM PDT

    @Evoras

     

    What you describe is almost exactly what is used in LotRO with the exception of 4 which is not really developped .

    In addition LotRO used extensively trading skill quests which validated your ability to pass in a higher Tier .

    I also liked the EQ (or Skyrim) system where some recipes were result of experiments - you just combine X, Y and  Z and it mostly just poofs and you loose X,Y and Z . But sometimes you have a divine surprise to hear a DING and you have made a new item thus learning a new recipe at the same time . In EQ there has been a whole blog dedicated uniquely to Gnomes where they exchanged Tinkering recipes and informed each other about experiments that they had done .

     

    I vaguely remember one year ago or a bit more a very substantiated post analysing and comparing different crafting designs and philosophies . It probably went lost in archives or in limbo :)

    • 14 posts
    November 21, 2016 7:48 AM PST

    I'd rather see the following:

    1. Apprentice recipes are trained

      Everyone starts somewhere and you need to learn the basics from a trainer. After a certain point you no longer get xp by crafting basic items. They're just there to help learn the process.

    2. Reverse Engineering - Mid level, limited use, blueprints are learned through reverse engineering of dropped items. 

      Reverse engineering should be to either extract materials from an item for re-use or to create a blueprint from that item. The results of the reverse engineering attempt should be a factor of the item level, the player's crafting level, and a little RNG so the process isn't entirely predictable. Even with the best tools and crafting buffs there should be a small but non-zero chance of getting a less than ideal result.

      At best you can learn to create a limited number of perfect copies of the reverse engineered item.

      Reverse engineering of damaged items reduces the chances of a 

    3. Crafted items cannot be reverse engineered but blueprints can be traded.

    4. Experimentation on unused blueprints can result in an improved blueprint or, in the event of failed experimentation, a degraded or destroyed blueprint.

      Experimentation takes the same materials needed to craft one of the items in question plus additional components with properties you want to imbue the new blueprint with. This results (ideally) in a limit use blueprint for the creation of a higher level or improved item.

    5. Item experimentation on individial crafted items is similar to blueprint experimentation and can result in an improved item but that item cannot be reverse engineered. 

    6. All items are damaged and decay with use. They can be repaired by a skilled crafter using materials similar to what would be needed to craft the item but eventually entropy wins in the end. 

      Repairing an item resets its state from "dropped" and able to be reverse engineered to "crafted" thus making it not subject to reverse engineering i.e. you can't infinitely clone your Sword of Awesomeness, you either get it reverse engineered in its first iteration so you can create a limited number of copies or repair it and put it on the path to eventual dissolution.

    This provides a basic architecture for a loop between item drops and crafting both in terms of materials and recipes as well as the ability to experiment to create variations and improvements on existing items. The down side is that it would require a lot of unique items to be tracked in the database.

     

    • 2886 posts
    November 21, 2016 3:59 PM PST

    Evoras said:

    4. Lore : Specialist, Racial and all 'rare' ones

    Any unique, rare or otherwise singular recipes whould be framed as part of 'Lore'. These need active solving to establish the recipe. The level of the recipe is not important, just that the scope or contect is significant and involves Terminus' lore in the way it is created or operates.

    Eg :

    ====================================================

    Potion of Enduring Water Breath (Alchemy 250+)

    Grind ye the bones of a dozen Dark-Myr Sentinels..

    ... mixing in an ounce of raw sea salt from Syronai's rest,

    Boil ye then a soup from the lungs of a pair of Dark-Mry DreadLords...

    ... add ground dark-night coral for seasoning, just a pinch is best,

    Mix now together this concoction in warm Myr blood...

    ... a pint, no more, bolied down with a lemon's zest,

    A silvered flask, stoppered with glass must be used...

    ... a single glyph of preservation upon the bottle's chest.

     

    - Extract from the 'Apothecaries of the Elders', translated by Borgia the Gnome.

    ====================================================

    I like pretty much all of the ideas that have been suggested in the thread. I think it's a really great idea of having different ways of learning recipes. It encourages exploration, makes your character more well-rounded overall (by encouraging crafters to get out of the city and killing mobs), and just makes more sense! What doesn't make sense is how in some games you can sit in town with big stacks of ingredients and just keep making the same recipe over and over and over again until you level up that skill and then you automatically learn the new recipes for that new skill level. That's not at all realistic - that's not how learning works.

    In regards to lore-based recipes, I'd like to see recipes that are actually a little more cryptic than the example you gave. Don't get me wrong - the recipe you wrote is cool, but it really only adds a little bit of flavor. I wouldn't say there's any "solving" necessary. I'd like to see them even more like riddles. If it's less obvious what the ingredients are, it will require a little bit of trial-and-error with combinations by the crafter. Then once he/she finds the correct combination, they can add the exact recipe to their own personal recipe list for ease of future reference. Of course these more cryptic recipes would be rewarded with very powerful potions. I can imagine an apothecary that discovered an incredibly potent formula would want to protect it. He would want to write it down, but only in a way that only he could understand. Or at least very few people, because if a less-skilled crafter got their hands on it, the results could be disastrous.

    Solving riddles is fun :)

    • 902 posts
    December 3, 2016 2:30 AM PST

    Bazgrim: Solving riddles is fun :)

    The problem with riddles is that once it is cracked, that person wants everyone to know that they cracked the riddle and the very clever answer they worked out. So that player broadcasts it to everyone. The riddle is then no longer a riddle to be worked out.

    I do agree though, riddles do give satisfaction when they are worked out. So how do you solve this conundrum?

    Well, one way is to make the "prize" of the riddle be named after the first person solving it and can only be made by those solving the riddle. So, if Bazgrim solved a riddle that gave an enhanced water breathing potion, then Bazgrim could sell the potions made with the recipe. This recipe would forever be called Bazgrim's Potion of Enhanced Water Breathing. Bazgrim would have a vested intrerest in not divuldging the secret of the riddle, as he is the only person who knows how to make it and thus the only person in the world, selling such potions.

    Eventually, other equally talented players would crack the secret and learn the recipe, however, it would retain the name of the Bazgrim as he cracked it first. Even at this stage, there is still a vested interest in keeping the answer to the riddle a secret, as there is hard won gold to be made from the sale of these potions. But eventually, someone will publish solution and everyone will be able to solve the riddle and thus, make the potion.

    This is obviously, not a complete solution; however, it could provide longevity to the riddle's life and give the first person solving the riddle official bragging rights and a nice income while he is the only person with the secret knowledge.