Crafting mechanics, what games do them well?

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Manxome
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Post by Manxome »

DSMatticus wrote:"Shows you what you can make with what's in your inventory" is not super useful. First, it does a very bad job of telling you what's actually in the game. If I want to find out what kinds of potions I can make, do I just... grab every plant plus some water bottles and head over to check? Jokes on you, the spelunker potion uses gold ore. Second, you're probably going to have a couple dozen chests worth of crafting ingredients stored at your base - many times more than you can fit in your measly inventory. Even trying all the combinations that way would be brutal.
Point of information: You seem to be only aware of the crafting menu, which shows what you can make this instant using only ingredients and crafting stations within your reach.

In addition to that, there is also another feature where you can also talk to the Guide and ask him to examine any item from your inventory, and he will give you a browsable list of every recipe in the entire game that includes that item as an ingredient--whether you have any of the other required items/crafting stations or not.

For example, you can hand him a bottle of water, and he will show you essentially a list of every potion in the entire game and how to make them, including the Spelunker potion. (Not quite every potion, because a few of them do not start with a bottle of water. And there's a couple non-potions in the list. But you get the idea.)

Now, yes, the fact that this list uses a phrase like "Alchemist Station" as code for "an empty bottle placed on a table" when describing where you need to be to craft those potions is confusing and could use some work. There is also nothing that directly helps with multi-tiered crafting; e.g. it will tell you that copper ore can be crafted into copper bars, but will not tell you what you can craft with copper bars until you actually have one. Similarly, if you find a recipe that uses (something you have) plus copper bars, it will not tell you how to craft the copper bars (it only works off things you have, not things you need).

But you do not need to try out every combination of ingredients. You just take any new item you've never seen before that has the "material" tag over to the Guide and he will give you the complete list of everything that involves that material, including end-game recipes involving items you aren't even going to see for another 80 hours.
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