PC Tool Crafting - level selection

I'd say the default recipe should be "max quality" and whatever "failure mode" is involved when you don't have sufficient parts for the max. Nudging the quality down in the rare case I'd be crafting lower tiers is a whole lot less annoying than accidentally crafting a tier 4 once.. one takes a couple seconds of "why isn't this working", while the other you'll be farming for hours to compensate.

 
I wish crafting recipes could specify the quality level as output.   So you can create a recipe that specifically builds a QL4 pick, for example.   Then you could specify what QL you wanted by picking the correct crafting recipe.   It would add a LOT of recipes, to be sure, but would nicely solve the problem, IMO.   It would also open up some neat modding options.


You can do this!  All you have to do is make copies of the recipe in recipes.xml and make some sort of tweak to each copy because every recipe has to be distinct.  That's easy enough, as you can just hard-code in the increased costs per quality level, and that'll make each level a distinct recipe.  As an example, in the screenshot below I made three versions of the Stone Spear recipe, all at different tiers.  One requires the normal ingredients and goes up to Q2, one requires no fibers but more wood and goes to Q3, and one requires the normal ingredients but can only be made in the workbench and goes to Q4.  As a nice little time-saver you can actually move the passive_effect determining crafting tier from progression.xml directly into recipes.xml so each recipe has different rules for what tier they'll craft at.

But here's the thing... do you really want to see 5-6 recipes for every item?  That recipe list will be crowded as hell, and just awful to navigate.

I've proposed this solution before: You can have one basic version of an item and one leveled version of an item.  Have the basic one either stop at quality 1 or maybe go up to like Q3 but always cost the base amount, and then have the leveled version unlock at skill level 3 and it will let you craft quality levels 4-5 (or 4-6 if you're into that) and will require an amount that scales by level- or an amount of your choosing.

Whichever way you choose to do it, it's not actually that hard to create the mod for it.  But my preferred method is to just mod out the increasing cost per level because I think it's silly that I'd need more materials at higher level.  Realistically you should require FEWER materials at higher level.  Plus, in the existing system I basically never craft because I'll always find something better before I have enough materials to craft a high tier.  That, to me, validates the notion that the parts multiplier at higher levels is a bad idea.

Stone spear.png

 
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As an example, in the screenshot below I made three versions of the Stone Spear recipe, all at different tiers


Huh, how did you force it to a specific quality?   I could never figure out how to do that?

But here's the thing... do you really want to see 5-6 recipes for every item?


Yeah, thats the part I'm not sure of.... I'd be interested to try it and see how it plays.  Definitely a valid concern.

 
But here's the thing... do you really want to see 5-6 recipes for every item?  That recipe list will be crowded as hell, and just awful to navigate.


They could put all the recipes in for normal, selectable use but then add a filter option for "highest quality I can make" (checked by default).  That way you could still make lower qualities but by default you'd be making the best one you can make based on skill and component availability.

 
Huh, how did you force it to a specific quality?   I could never figure out how to do that?


You can comment out the line in progression.xml under the relevant perk (e.g. perkJavelinMaster) that controls quality and then paste it into your recipe in recipes.xml. By default it uses a level range but you can set it to be a specific level.

Except, it turns out I'm a numbskull and the quality level wasn't changing as my perk level changed with my implementation. So I could make recipes that craft different levels but they'd all be unlocked at the same time and you'd get early access to crafting higher quality. I was trying to find a one or two-line solution that locks higher levels behind progression but had to leave to deal with an emergency.

I know it can still be done if I make duplicate item entries in items.xml and make each item unlockable by the perk at different levels (tested leveled unlocks successfully) but that would be a super-tedious solution so I'm trying to figure out just how a recipe can reference a skill level when setting crafting level.

Still! Possible! But more annoying than I'd initially thought.

 
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