Crafting Food -- (Dev) Replied

Difference Between Food and Potions:
Potions have an immediate impact, improving statistics in predictable ways
Food consumption may not have an immediate impact but would improve statistics over time and the effect may last longer
Food discovery should be based more on trial and error (player marketing?) in the spirit of the older Ultima games

The Importance of Food:
Food affects players in different ways (perhaps based on class/profession), with some element of randomization
Higher quality foods return a better statistical reward
Foods provide improvements to agility, stamina and strength

Crafting Food, a Winemaker Example
Grapes grown in different regions have different statistical value
Winemaker cultivates his own strain of yeast, better winemakers have better yeast
Winemaker's experience directly correlates to crop yield and quality of final product

When a wine is produced, it will affect players differently based on their character's statistics/class. A scout may benefit more from a wine with better endurance attributes, while a fighter would benefit more from a wine that is more intoxicating, etc.

I think the possibilities here are endless. When a player crafts food, they would need to choose whether they want to craft something basic that the masses can consume, or something far more niche that could catch much higher prices. This could be applied to almost any kind of food crafting in the game.

Interested in what others think.

 

They're saying that people can write books. So why shouldn't a player just go to a book store and buy the recipe book maybe YOU wrote. You gain money, he gains knowledge. I like the idea of "recipeless". I mean the game itself SHOULD have some kinda simple recipe books, for I am a noob and not a harcore but a casual gamer, so that people like me wouldn't wonder around like silly billies and eat weird things they make and call them food!

I think when crafting time shouldn't be a value. Finding resources is hard enough, there are games that you have to wait 27 hours for a leather armor. I hate that I don't want to wait for a thing that is being done while I'm doing some other stuff. Ofc. if I hired some apprentice cooks they should do the salad and soup I can do the real deal, that's fine. Wine should be fermentedi, you have to wait I agree. But other than that I really, really hope that we won't have to wait hours for something that is too simple. I think finding resources should be hard as hell, so adventurers can have a little more profit too, and crafting should take consederably less time. Did a poor job describing my thoughts but that should do it.

 

I agree that artificially extending the time to craft anything is not ideal. Although with food, that's kind of expected especially if you need to farm something.

 

My feeling on food crafting is there should be recipes for a few basic consumables, sort of iron ration type things. I would like to see recipes needing to be discovered by trial and error. Oh sure web sites will list recipes as they are found, but many people, myself included don't visit those web sites unless I'm looking for a specific thing. Being able to write cook books would be really cool.

 

I think that these ideas sound great. I would be more interested in trying to make food if the system was deep like this. I'm only marginally interested in the farming aspect, but I could see buying ingredients from people in my town, and going to other towns to find other varieties, and certainly exploring the countryside looking for wild ingredients. And buying recipe books is appealing. Great ideas!

 

@Bob and PABS,

I don't think waiting 24 real hours makes sense, but I wouldn't mind a single crafting exercise taking a little bit of time, the process of which can be interrupted and returned to. Think of how something like completing a painting works in the Sims.

I also wouldn't mind for some crafting exercises to take multiple steps. Like for a sword, you make the blade and the hilt. This would allow different types of material to make the hilt. Or for a chain tunic, make the chain links before you put them together. Then, you could go through some extra stages like engraving, embossing, embroidery, if you wanted.

That would make the process of crafting a more relaxing, slow-paced experience, instead of just click-click-click, and would also prevent item glut. It would also make it more creative. Maybe it could also require some type of concentration that can be affected, just like mages need concentration to cast.

Raw time spent crafting, rather than completion of items, could improve skill. So even though you spent more time on a single sword, you'd progress your skill exactly the same as if you made 20 swords in the same time period.

 

I was contemplating starting a food crafting thread myself but I haven't fully fleshed out what I'm thinking.. not completely sure how viable it is but it's along the same lines as what I've suggested in the Craft Brainstorm thread in regards to having a variety of multiple components to use in a basic recipe.. that you could then save as a custom recipe.

Example: The basic recipe for a pie would be a pie crust (which you have to make before hand from another recipie) and filling. But then the filling could be just about anything.. any type of fruit, chucks of meat, etc.. So you could get dozens of different pies just from knowing the base recipe. Whenever you do something different you could save that custom recipe and name it however you like. 'Bob's Famous Meat Pie' for example.

That much is easy enough. That's just an extention of the existing proposal for crafting. The new idea I've been toying with is with the idea of 'active' and 'inactive' ingredients (for lack of a better term).

In the pie example there are basically two active components.. the crust and the filling. Each of which you're prep before hand. But now break those down.. for the crust you need flour, eggs, water etc.. those are 'active' ingredients you need to make the base pie crust recipe work. Then you can add X number of 'inactive' ingredients.. like say.. ginger or cinemon.

The idea being that 'inactive' ingredients aren't required for a successful recipe but can be added for mixed results. Maybe ginger has healing properties so using it in a recipe produces a healthier result.. like a 1% boost to your healing rate or another minor benefit.

Not every combonation should produce good results. There needs to be some chance to make something hideous if you go overboard.

This would open up a lot of room for experimentation.

I'd do basic 'component' recipies for both active and inactive ingredients like the pie crust, pie fillings, sauces, bread doughs etc

And of course I LOVE the idea of brewing and wine making as they've played significant roles in the Ultimas it'd be a shame not to have them. (At least wine making has) So I'd do base recipies for these too with a lot of room to experiement.

The troublesome catch to this idea is the need for textures. You wouldn't necessarily need new meshes for every variation but you would want textures at least for some things like different types of wines and ales.

 

Not to 'double post' here but Lord Bruce brought up an interesting idea in another thread that I thought would be appropriate here. The notion that decayed food might produce alchemical ingredients (ie molds).

 

We certainly want to make crafting food unique and different from other crafting skills. It will naturally have more of a crossover with alchemy making it even more important to differentiate these two skills.

I believe our crafting focus on having similar recipes but different material ingredients fits well into cooking. The pie example with crust and filling is spot on.