Hangout of the Avatar ~ Crafting Discussion

How about crafting creature calls. I'd love to sneak up and make the sound of an angry dragon.

 

And here are some food buffs off the top of my head.
FOOD BUFFS
- Shoo fly pie buffs fishing skill
- A Blackbird pie that releases a bird in the direction of treasure.
- Woodsman Pie that hues different wood trees making them easier to spot.
- Foods that will entice monsters to it.
- Jolly Jelly, when given to a vendor results in a discount.
- Elderberry pie makes you grow a grey beard.
- Hair Pie that...oh, scratch that.
- Catfish Pie that makes cats follow you.
- A bowl of noodles that arppegiates each note played on an instrument
- Bear steak buffs things made from bear, dragon steak buffs things made from dragon, etc. This would give a benefit to matching armor, such as bearclaw gloves, bear fur vest, bear leather hat.
- Mugly Rice dessert turns you into a toad.

 

You know as far as instant heals.. I'd rather see magic be more like effect over time as well.. only much.. much faster for a shorter duration. Example comparison.

Let's say you need to heal 100 HP.. normal healing rate is 1 per minute

You're well fed with good food and drink.. healing rate improves by 50%.. Healing rate is now 1.5 per minute for a full day.
You drink a healing potion you it's now 1 per second (plus the 1.5 per minute if you've got it) for 1-3 hours
Someone casts a healing spell on you it's now 10 per second for 30 seconds..

Non-healing skills is getting pretty off topic but for comparison..
A skilled healer applies medicines and bandages.. healing rate is say.. 1 per 5-6 seconds until fully healed unless you take more damage. I think we need a new thread for this if we're going to continue on the subject.

I think it's good to make a comparison to get an idea how effective we want food to be in this regard. Perhaps food bonuses for healing purposes should be a multiplier rather than an additive?

Just making the numbers up but you get the idea. Also I think it should all be cumulative and durations and effectiveness can all vary based on skill/quality to promote investing in those skills.

 

I have heard that players will only be able to have 1 avatar. So will each player be able to be a master of every crafting and gathering skill and also be able to adventure, or will there be some sort of limit? Or will it be like uo with a skill cap limit so you must pick and choose to make a more specific avatar rather than a jack of all trades?

Maybe this was answered already and I have missed it

 

Speaking of rum.. this article from npr is rather interesting

I think it's important for us to come up with inventive buffs for food to prevent it from becoming potions

One other idea - maybe a basic benefit for good food is just keeping you from becoming tired or encumbered for a longer period of time - like lembas - there will be times we are on a four-hour dungeon raid and there might not be anywhere safe to sleep. if the in-game time is something like 24-48 hours, then food like this, or a refresh spell would definitely need have a use.

 

The current theory was that your biggest limit to mastering all things is time. The intention is to continue to add new skills as time goes on and that IF there is some sort of skill cap in place that they'll raise it as new skills are added. This is from RG's comments in an early dev chat.. I believe during the kickstarter. I've not heard anything official to the contrary yet.

 

Thanks for the Reply Bowen

That sounds like a cool concept, i am hoping to create a combat ready knight that can blacksmith as well and dabbles in alchemy.

 

You shouldn't have any problem with just that.. ideally that much should be a challenge but far from impossible. My character on the other hand.. is going to be a LOT of work.. and that's assuming I avoid a lot of skills I want to play out on another character. (Post-launch might still get extra characters.. no details worked out yet)

 

I might be moving off topic on this, but I'm intrigued about how health, injury, disease, alchemy, magic, and nutrition can be handled. Maybe there needs to be a thread addressing Player Health?

I'd perhaps like to add that there would need to be some sort of counter to the effects so that players don't keep popping potions or overeating in order to 'game the system'. Potion toxicity is one means (I bet you can tell I'm a Witcher fan by now) and overeating as someone mentioned earlier could lead to a reduction in reaction time (maybe by increasing an opponent's chance to critically hit the player?). I'm not sure what kind of negative effect successive healing spells could cause but there would need to be one in order to maintain the viability of potion use and consumable use otherwise all players would need to rely upon would be healing spells. While I'm mentioning the Witcher, yeah I like the annoying drunken stumbling animation after imbibing too much alcohol.

As far as bandages, I think they should only be used to staunch hemorrhaging in which a player loses health over time during and outside of combat and should not work towards actual healing. Poultices and the like could be used to counter injury from disease carrying animals or instruments but not aid in the healing rate either but rather fever reduction (with fever affecting stamina, movement, maybe even intelligence and the ability to cast magic).

But yeah, I like where you and Lonestranger are taking it because those factors matter to player health and further support the utilization and interconnectedness of differing trades.

 

Text makes this harder ... I think I need a whiteboard or a mind map ... I like Mugly's food buffs - where name matches buff - some of which is just funny
Just going through this in my head, so naturally writing it down, not saying this is the way it should be ... trying to find holes in production lines of materials

Raw Materials
Gather Food (GF) - collects fruit, berries, grains, honey -domestic? (may require ??)
Gather Herbs (GH) - collects (herb)seeds, leaves and barks - wild? (may require gathering pouch?)
Lumberjack (LJ) - collects lumber (may require an axe)
Hunter (H) - collects meat and skins -wild animals? (may require skinning knife)
Miner (M) - collects ore and gems (may require pickaxe)
Sheppard (SH) - Collects wool, meat and skins -domestic animals? (may require shears, skinning)

Refining (middle step(s) for some ingredients)
Distiller (D) - From GF, GH ... prepares (wet) solutions, dyes, oils, (pure) alcohol ... requires still / other?
Miller (ML) - From GF, GH ... prepares (dry) components, flour, ground herbs ... requires mill
Butcher (B) - From H, SH, GH ... prepares meat (preserves meat) ... requires butcher table
Lumber Miller (LM) - from LJ ... prepares wood products ... requires sawmill
Ore Refiner (R) - From M ... prepares minerals ... requires smelter
Tanner (T) - From GH, H, D ... prepares leather ... requires tanning vat
Spinner (SN) - from SH, GF, D ... prepares wool, thread ... requires spinning wheel
Cloth Maker (CM) - from SN, D ... prepares cloth ... requires loom
Gem Cutter (GC) ... from M ... prepares cut gems ... requires gem cutter (station)

Makers
Cook (CK)- from GF, GH, ML, H, B, D ... makes Food ... requires oven / cooker / open fire / kettle
Carpenter (CP) - from LM ... makes wooden objects ... requires carpenter table
Brewer (BW) - From GF, GH, D ... makes spirits, mead, wine ... requires brewing vat
Alchemist (AL)- from GH, ML, M, D, R ... makes potions, converts minerals ... requires (alchemy station)
Smithy (S) -From GC, R, AL, D ... makes metal weapons and objects ... requires anvil / ?
Armorer (AR) - From GC, R, AL, D ... makes metal armor ... requires anvil / ?
Leather Worker (LW) - From T, D, S, AL ... makes leather armor and objects ... requires ?
Tailor (T) - From SN, CM, GC ... makes clothes ... requires tailor table (manikin?)
Jeweler (J) - From GC, R (D?)... makes jewelry ... requires jeweler (station)

 

Some cool things: (WITH SACRIFICE)

Potions of Transformation
- Grow wings and fly! Random Expiration - Beware, that's a long drop!
- Become an animal or monster. Careful you don't get hunted by something.
- Become a tree or a rock, great for hiding! Horrible for running away. Random Expiration.

Potion of Fortune (Playing with the fates is not smart, but it's sometimes profitable!)
- Double your new loot, or have holes in your pockets and lose it all.

Potion of Traded Fortune
- Requires 4 consenting players. All players will randomly switch characters temporarily. Random Expiration and chance of prolonged effects.

 

As a fan of the stick, I think that "food" should actually be used to avoid time-based debuffs. I am also a fan of dying of hunger/thirst, but I doubt any of that will happen in SOTA. If a buff route is taken then they should be minor buff that last a long time: sort of like a reverse debuff system. I would also thing the buff types from food should also focus on constitution and concentration.

I am not a fan of getting health from food. Not against food with magical ingredients (reagents?) that have these properties, but I think they should be rare and most healing should be from magic and potions.

I always like the idea of getting sick from drinking too many potions or eating too much. I used to have a male drow in NWN that was addicted to Stoneskin potions. He drank so much while adventuring he was very sick on his return trip.

 

Very few seem to get their own house so i have to ask.

Will you have to stand in line for using crafting tables if you dont have your own house with your own crafting tables?

Or can many use the same crafting table same time?

 

There will be public crafting stations, but I doubt more than one person would be able to use them at a time. However, with instances there will be a limit on how many people you see in a single area and be several types of crafting stations, so it seems unlikely these will turn into Disneyland rides. If you only see 20-40 people in a town its unlikely that many of those will all be crafting at once or all using the same type of table.

 

Maybe some different types of barrels from grnarrow can be used for wines / beer / spirits. So you've got your oak or birch which change the drink "cosmetically" (flavor), and then special woods from rare or magic resources that impart other quality to the brew. This brewing/aging process could take a longer time (like actually days or weeks out of game) for stronger effects. These could in turn be distilled or concentrated by an alchemist into a reagent. Maybe you could even make some kind of miracle-grow fertilizer for farming this way.

I wonder about the effects of fear in this game. Alcohol has long been used for battlefield purpose, dulling pain, disinfecting wounds, and removing fear (also used this way in ritual magic). Basic alcohol could remove fear while reducing physical prowess, but more "advanced" brews could have better effects.

Distillation can be a bridge between food products and alchemy. Herbs can be made into tinctures or spirits, thereby magnifying their effects (possibly for the worse). Also, if food is made to be perishable, this might be a way to store it, transferring its properties to a long-lasting product. Of course, these products wouldn't necessarily fill a hungry belly.

It only follows that any good tavern would have various potent "cocktails" available to recovering adventurers and ambitious crafters alike. The history of the modern bar includes a major convergence with the drug store.

 

One other thing - cool animations for exotic bar drinks would be awesome! Smoke, fire, sparkly, neon strobe, oil-on-water effect, makes your eyes change color, makes you grow a mustche!. I saw RPers on MUSHs and MOOs spend all kinds of time making emotes for their outlandish drinks - apparently people just think that sort of thing is cool. Plop plop, fizz fizz.

 

I like the idea aging your drinks. You could simply make it and drink it and it'd be fine.. but aging would improve it's quality, market value and potency (when appropriate). So you're actually encouraged to age your alcohols but you can also make the 'cheap stuff' for while you're waiting.

On the cool animations that's be kinda cool to go to a bar and have a bartender putting on a show while mixing drinks.. I mean some of the avatars are going to be RL bartenders right? Those skills could cross over!

 

Ugh. Definitely not a fan of that personally. If every warrior can make his own armor and every archer make her own bow, then crafting becomes this secondary thing and makes it where there's no point for someone to play a dedicated crafter.

To me, the best thing about UO was the freedom of choice. Sure, you could only do X amount of things - but you had the freedom to dedicate yourself to whatever you wanted. You could still make a name for yourself and have an enjoyable gaming experience without ever having killed a monster or another player.

If there's no real gameplay path for someone wanting to be a dedicated blacksmith, or a fisherman, or whatever, then that's a major letdown in my opinion.

 

In every persistent multiplayer online game I've ever seen that has crafting tables, any number of players can use them, concurrently. As you point out, with selective visibility in SotA, concurrency would, again, seem to be a requirement.

 

That's an understandable concern but I think there's too many "unknowns" right now to be certain how things are going to work . In a nutshell I think there are ways to balance this out.

Improving these skills should take time; if someone wanted to dedicate their full time as a blacksmith per your example I would expect their dedication should net them better results faster than someone who decided to split their time pursuing that and other skills. Sure, someone is going to be a really good mage and smith eventually - but if you've put the same time in as they have and are just a smith I think you should be further ahead than them in that regard. Once you "max" that skill - as long as the cap didn't stagnate for long - you should be first in line for the new skills/perks that get added on in time and maintain your edge.

This is of course just more conjecture.