NOTICE TO ALL CRAFTERS REGARDING (IN)ABILITY TO LEARN RECIPES...

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Daxxe Diggler, Jun 2, 2017.

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  1. Daxxe Diggler

    Daxxe Diggler Avatar

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    As a member of the Bug Brigade, I've replied to many many "bug reports" about the inability to learn a recipe when the poster believed their level was high enough. People are confusing the terminology of the requirements and this is causing a great deal of misunderstanding.

    In an attempt to try to help alleviate some confusion about this subject, I'll try to explain the terminology and what's happening. Forgive me if I state some obvious things, but I want new players to be able to follow along here too. Also, I'm using caps to accentuate some words, not for shouting :):

    1. All crafting recipes (except for some of the discoverable / beginner recipes) have a PROFICIENCY requirement that you have to meet before you are able to double-click and add it to your recipe book.

    2. If you do not meet the Proficiency requirement, there will be red text on the recipe stating the requirement needed.

    3. This PROFICIENCY requirement that is needed IS NOT THE SAME THING as the number of your SKILL level for that particular Production tree skill! That is the important part to understand.

    4. The reason the Skill level does NOT equal the Proficiency is because the Proficiency is an accumulation of many things, including what your crafting skill level gives you + any tool bonus + crafting table bonus + artifacts/devotional buffs, etc.

    5. Your production skill level will raise your Proficiency, but it is not a 1:1 ratio. It's actually on a diminishing returns curve. This means that at lower skill levels, you will see larger increases in Proficiency, but higher levels you will see barely any increase at all. In fact, you need a skill level of 200 in order to raise your proficiency by 100 total points!

    6. So, the bottom line here is that even if your skill is at 80 or 90, that doesn't mean your Proficiency is at 80 or 90. It will actually be somewhere in the 60-70ish range due to the diminishing returns of the use-base skill system we have here in SOTA.


    Now that you (hopefully) understand this concept, I'll explain how you can find out more info on your actual Proficiency:

    1. First thing to do is open your Production Skills window (K by default, then click the crafting tab).

    2. At the bottom left, you will see "Production" with 5 icons surrounding it. These are your five major crafting skill trees.

    3. Click on any of them and then move your cursor over the first skill in the tree. (This will be "Blacksmithing", Carpentry, Tailoring, Alchemy, or Cooking.) As you mouseover the skill, a tooltip will pop up. Look at the bottom of the tooltip description and you will see +### xxxxxxx Proficiency... where ### will be the number (0-100) and xxxxxxx will be the name of the skill (Blacksmithing, Carpentry, etc.)

    4. This is only part of the total Proficiency you actually have though, and only shows what is provided via leveling up that particular skill.

    5. Additional points can be added to your total Proficiency by other things like expert crafting stations, Devotional buffs, and various crafting related Artifacts. You will have to mouseover each of these however to see what each of them adds to your Proficiency. Any of these will give temporary increases that may allow you to learn the recipe without having only a high enough skill... but keep in mind you may need to have those temporary buffs active when you craft the recipe too.

    6. But how do I find out what my actual total Proficiency is that the recipe is checking? The answer is in your /stats log. Enter /stats into your chat box and your current stats are recorded in your chat log. If you want to verify this, do a /stats before using an expert crafting table and then again when you have an expert table open and compare the two entries in your chat log. The one with the expert station open will be 5 points higher.

    6A. Now, this is where things might get a bit confusing again because the /stat dump into your chat log is a string of stats and values and can be hard to read. What you can do is search for the stat name, which is (again, compounding the confusion) named xxxxxLevel (no space in between), where xxxxx is Blacksmithing, Carpentry, Alchemy, etc. So, if you wanted to know your current Blacksmithing Proficiency, search the chat log for BlacksmithingLevel. o_O Yes, it's contradicting to label it as if it is a skill level. Perhaps the Devs should rename this stat to BlacksmithingProficiency in the code? Hint, hint @Chris


    Anyway, sorry if I got a little long winded there, but I wanted to provide as much details as necessary to fully explain the difference between Production Skill level and Proficiency.
     
  2. Arya Stoneheart

    Arya Stoneheart Avatar

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    Yeah tabletop catapult is GM carpentry from what I know.
     
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  3. Alley Oop

    Alley Oop Bug Hunter Bug Moderator

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    "have fun storming the castle! ...think it'll work?"
    "it would take a miracle."
     
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  4. Arya Stoneheart

    Arya Stoneheart Avatar

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    Actually learned Bark Bread, had the items on the table and it said below 40, so I cannot make this yet. Looks like a bug to me, but would be nice if it was lower for new players to make cooking easier.
     
  5. Browncoat Jayson

    Browncoat Jayson Legend of the Hearth

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    Two things would make crafting much more approachable:

    1) Show proficiency as a value on the UI, rather than in a popup. I'd suggest placing it like the Attunement for Magic trees.

    2) Add a ton of low-level recipes, no skill requirements that make starter level items. Put these in as quest rewards, drops, and merchant items within the Outskirts scenes.

    Those would remove the confusion and make crafting something new players could try.
     
  6. Autumn Willow

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    I remembered being really confused by this when I first started as well. Not a bug but this sure could use improvement seeing that you needed a mini essay to explain it.

    Skill level =/= proficiency level. One wonders why don't they just make the recipes based on skill level and keep the proficiency level invisible for their crafting calculations.
     
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  7. Browncoat Jayson

    Browncoat Jayson Legend of the Hearth

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    I mocked this up quick, using a gold version of the Train Intelligence icon to stand for "Proficiency".
    [​IMG]
    @DarkStarr @Attenwood Would something like this be possible, to "unhide" the Proficiency value? It would obviously only be relevant to the primary skill in the tree, but that is 90% of the time what you need to know.
     
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  8. Elwyn

    Elwyn Avatar

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    One thing that IS confusing is that when you've already learned a spell that you can't normally learn without being at a bonus crafting table, is that the you can not learn this recipe message overrides the you have already learned this recipe message. The whole point of the latter message is so that you know when you don't need to buy a recipe off of a vendor. Should I make a bug for this?
     
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  9. Browncoat Jayson

    Browncoat Jayson Legend of the Hearth

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    I would, yes. Seems like it would be far more useful the other way.
     
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