Crafting and you...

I have found that after many RPG crafting games, I find this one a little frustrating. Most games only require the raw material from one profession to make the entire item from start to finish. SotA requires components from multiple resources to make one item. In the real world this is true. In a gaming world, it will be frustrating to keep inventories of pieces of parts around just so you can make something.

Here is what I did when I got into the Release 2 alpha:

Grabbed all the tools, raw materials and "extra things" required for making things
Went to a milling machine, dropped the log icon onto the table, put a saw on the table, nothing
Tried all the tools, tried to equip them in my hand slot, still no craft button.
Gave up and came here to check.

One of the biggest mistakes (and I hope to God they change it) is having to meticulously split items into single serving sizes for the crafting machines. If I put 10 logs on the machine with a cubit tool, the game should allow me to press the craft button 10 times, removing the crafted wood from the machine after each press.

Having to "shift - mouse - split" 1 log off a stack for every piece of wood you process got really tedious.

So I go to make a bed...

The bed frame was easy! just 4 boards and 4 wood timbers, BAM, bedframe
Now you need a mattress... you need tree bark (1 more log to cut to get 10 tree bark)
30 Flax fiber (10 splits of 3 each)
10 tree bark (to make 30 spools of thread)
now that you have 30 spools of thread, you need to split 10 times making 3 stacks each to make 1 bolt of cloth
(and you need 10 of these for a mattress) So repeat this process 9 more times.

And Voila! one mattress, which then gets brought back to the carpentry table to be assembled with the frame.

I really hope the crafting gets a little more streamlined than this.

 

I actually prefer this type of system. I always hated the dump, ding ding ding, done = 100 swords systems. This actually feels like you are making something, and making bulk will take longer than making just one. It does need some work to take some tedium out of it (especially the stacking), but I like the different work stations and hope it is not simplified too much.

 

I agree, but as you mentioned, the tedium of meticulously splitting stack of one item to make another processed stackof items which needs to be split in order to make a 3rd final processed raw material for 1 mattress.

And yes... I know... the ding ding ding 100 swords then deconstruct them for the mats, or toss them to a vendor is ridiculous. I like the multi-raw material idea for crafting, I just hope it doesn't take mass amounts of this to level the skill, otherwise I will be wanting my 100 sword ding ding back.

 

They need to show quantities on stacks via toggle or hotkey and have an option to show it by default. Tooltips aren't enough.

 

Maybe the ability to split items within your bag/inventory list before you get to crafting table. So your inventory is set up with 10 individual tree barks already then you can just slide each one to the table when needed.

 

http://sotawiki.net/sota/Cloth_Mattress Is there something else needed? I have the 10 bolts of cloth and scissors, but the CRAFT button isn't lighting up.

 

Some of the recipes may have changed between releases. I am mostly holding off right now myself until it's developed a little more. I have played a bit with crafting but the level of discovery for simple items right now I find just too tedious.

Now I do like what they have in principle but I agree it needs a little streamlining. Some of the current recipes to me feel very limiting to the process as a whole.

Taking cloth items for example. The reason we need precise numbers on the table is because some recipes call for different quantities of the same ingredients which makes very little sense to me. Apart from the number of bolts of cloth, most cloth items use the same items. It's just 4 bolts gets you a top piece, 3 a pair of pants, 2 boots and 1 gloves.

If you introduced a new item for tailoring.. like a pattern (similar to molds for smithing).. you could put a glove pattern with 4 bolts of cloth.. click craft 4 times and get 4 gloves.

The problem here though is ensuring you could do this with every recipe so I fear the design for recipes themselves would have to be overhauled which in itself may be limiting so perhaps it's not a great idea. I would still like to see patterns for tailoring though to make that particular craft more intuitive.