More recipe hint drops

[Egon the Monkey]

I've seen a large number of the recipe drops, and the vast majority seem to be for Herbalism not Alchemy. There's also a great deal of hit-and-miss with the system, as aside from the recipes you basically have to go with trial and error. A lot of the reagents only say "useful for crafting" without any hint of what they can be used for. Drops that just list a few uses of an item, so recipes and patterns can be pieced together from several notes, would be cool. Or hints that list *failed* recipes that are deliberately wrong by a quantity of an item or a wrong proportion, and require PC guesswork to fill in.

Oh, and more ciphered, riddled and generally hidden recipes. Perhaps even some that require a Lore check to translate and work like a "scribed note"? In fact, if we could get "portable lore check" items, that would be great for setting info. Instead of needing to find a lore PC when they're on and escort them to an area (difficult when they are for example too high to take a quest) you can take the mystery text to them.

[FleetingHeart]

I love the idea of portable lore check items. Should be easy enough to incorporate into the dialogue of a scribed note.

[Cruzel]

More hints would be cool, but unnecessary imo.

Why?

1) Pallete bloat - Unless I'm mistaken with the way the loot system works, in order for it to drop on quests it needs to exist in the pallete, and can't be just an item based off a template resref.  A bigger pallete can contribute to more lag and longer module loading times and is generally a headache to deal with when both using the dm client and toolset.

2) Time.  The sheer number of varied recipes in each of the crafting systems make it completely understandable that no dm would want to take the time to sit there and think up clever/subtle hints for each recipe. That said, I'm sure if a player who knows a fair amount of recipes wanted to take the time to do this and send them to snoteye or strife, they may at least use some of them.

3) Personally I see the hints as stepping stones to learn the systems. Once you have found your first five or six recipes you should have no trouble figuring out a fair portion of the other recipes implemented. I don't really see these systems as something that should be spelled out with detailed instructions.  It's a lot of fun to try to figure them out, and a big ego boost when you can say "My PC knows more than anyone else's about these systems".   Having more hints IMO would detract from the coolness and sense of accomplishment that comes from 'mastering' the crafting systems.


4) Scripted things do sound great, but again see point 2.  Scripting takes even more time than making simple notes and  tossing them as rare quest loot, and making a system that supports multiple recipes would be incredibly tedious and contribute little to the server, considering the generally low amount of interest in the crafting systems.




TBH a scripted/toolset solution is not really the answer to crafting difficulties, and for some of the cooler recipes I would encourage a PC to try to work something out with a DM who is in the know about these systems. It is much more rewarding (And dangerous!) when you can get feedback about your experiments, even if sometimes they will explode in your face!

[Porkolt]

While we're on the subject of recipe hints, don't stall these out on the floor when you're trying to sell them. It kinda defeats the purpose.

[Snoteye]

We can actually drop non-palette loot, we just don't have any direct control over it. That said, making these is very tedious and not at all fun. I'm surprised no players have released recipe compilations, though.

[FleetingHeart]

I think most players are too afraid of being slapped for writing such information down for the public.

Sad, because it seems like every great recipe discovery just gets lost again with the characters death.

[Egon the Monkey]

Egon did exactly that in the UD. Also, there is a file in a certain PC faction's notes on alchemy. I'll leave it to you all to work out what one collects knowledge :P.

I think the bigger worry for most PCs is "If I publish this, everyone will bandwagon and wipe out all my plants"

[Pinefish]

Dunno if this is the right place to put it but concerning recepies, would be nice to see some concecrated recipies. I know some of them may be specific to certain gods and things but some more general ones like the holy water would be nice to see, especialy as recipies.

[TheImpossibleDream]

Just a thought. A lot of people speak about wishing their were more more recipe drops. Why not just have a quest, perhaps in a certain library that involves making a moderate dc search (finding what you need) and high dc lore (deciphering it) to determine success. There would be no xp reward but the dialog hints at a certain recipe

[Cruzel]

I think there are no releases containing detailed recipes in journals and such because ;
1) Fear of Johannes! Back in the day he really discouraged any sort of publicly written detailed recipes, IIRC when I asked him about it when making this post I was instructed to try to keep things as  vague as possible. I don't remember for sure but I think he might have specificy told me not to outright state any recipes!  If I remember right there was even some steps taken by one DM or another giving subtle warnings ICly that spreading alchemy secrets would have negative consequences to a PC.

2) General spoilers!   Despite the maturity of most players, once they know a recipe OOCly, It's hard to expect them to 'learn it' ICly fairly. That is the sole reason why I have only played two PCs who worked with these systems, after figuring out the majority of the recipes. Even the most experienced players will have difficulty not metagaming the recipes, either intentionally or unintentionally. Once recipes get put on the forums for everybody to see, these systems will lose their fun as a challenge, and become more of a cheap way to get cool supplies.




That said, I think that a PC using the IG writing tablets to chronicle their progress somewhat with these systems would be cool.  IMO there should never be any public forum posts that contain any sort of recipe list whatsoever though!

[Drakill Tannan]

How about a lore check when examinating plants? Modify the dialogue so that it has the options:

"Take the seeds", "Make a cutting" and "Examine the plant".

When you click on the latter it rolls a lore check that, depending on the result will give you information such as:

"This plant is poisonous, and while it's poison will draing the strenght of anyone who consumes it, it alone will do no harm unless directly consumed. However if it were to be made a gas breathing alone would aflict the subject"

and

"While this plant does not poses any propiety that can directly effect on a person, it's sap reacts with acid substances to become gaseous with violent swiftness."

and

"This plant has unetable berries due the the stong acid they carry within, some mages speculate it could be an alternative ingredient to create acid flasks"

So we know plant A + plant B + Plant C makes an item that releases poison in the from of a gas when they are all combined. We also know plant C might be usable to make alchemist flasks but it's not sure nor necesary.

I think this would be far better than the recipie drops.

[Thomas_Not_very_wise]

I think there are no releases containing detailed recipes in journals and such because ;
1) Fear of Johannes! Back in the day he really discouraged any sort of publicly written detailed recipes, IIRC when I asked him about it when making this post I was instructed to try to keep things as  vague as possible. I don't remember for sure but I think he might have specificy told me not to outright state any recipes!  If I remember right there was even some steps taken by one DM or another giving subtle warnings ICly that spreading alchemy secrets would have negative consequences to a PC.

2) General spoilers!   Despite the maturity of most players, once they know a recipe OOCly, It's hard to expect them to 'learn it' ICly fairly. That is the sole reason why I have only played two PCs who worked with these systems, after figuring out the majority of the recipes. Even the most experienced players will have difficulty not metagaming the recipes, either intentionally or unintentionally. Once recipes get put on the forums for everybody to see, these systems will lose their fun as a challenge, and become more of a cheap way to get cool supplies.




That said, I think that a PC using the IG writing tablets to chronicle their progress somewhat with these systems would be cool.  IMO there should never be any public forum posts that contain any sort of recipe list whatsoever though!

Holy Fuck. Cruzel is right.

[Cruzel]

How about a lore check when examinating plants? Modify the dialogue so that it has the options:

"Take the seeds", "Make a cutting" and "Examine the plant".

When you click on the latter it rolls a lore check that, depending on the result will give you information such as:

"This plant has unetable berries due the the stong acid they carry within, some mages speculate it could be an alternative ingredient to create acid flasks"

So we know plant A + plant B + Plant C makes an item that releases poison in the from of a gas when they are all combined. We also know plant C might be usable to make alchemist flasks but it's not sure nor necesary.

(snip)

This is a good idea, but different plants can be used for so many different things, choosing what to put in those descriptions is kind of difficult, and it brings us again to point 2 of my first post in this thread, time.  And as Snoteye has confirmed from  my earlier posts "making these is very tedious and not at all fun."

That said, this is already done to some extent in the plant's description, or the description of the seeds/produce in most plants. However if you have any good suggestions about additions to the descriptions like these, you could take the time to write some out and send them to Snoteye. They  are very easy to add, just none of the DMs want to take the time to do it.