[crossfire] Tweaking alchemy

[Anton Oussik]

On 04/12/05, Andrew Fuchs <fuchs.andy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/4/05, Nicolas Weeger <nicolas.weeger at laposte.net> wrote:
> > Hello.
> >
> > I'd like to extend alchemy-like skills, probably with a 'cooking' skill.
>
> Aaronf0 said he would work on a more dynamic alchemy system, however,
> I have no idea if he has even started it.
>
> > What i'd like to do is:
> > * add a way for formulaes to never blow up, and just yield a specific
> > item when failed ('burnt cake'). This will make it safer and more fun,
> > of course this would be for low exp recipes (or for a skill having a low
> > skill => overall percentage)
>
> I think this has been needed for a long time.  Though IMO the
> distinction between recipes that can be fatal should be made on the
> premises that the recipe has some magical quality to it.

Seems like a sensible idea, and one that is easy to implement.
However, you need lots of new foods archetypes (and corresponding
graphics), as these formulae should have normal food ingredients as
ingredients, so you now need flour, tomatoes, ham, milk, cheese (made
from milk), and so on.

This could also be a good time to include a farming skill.

Milk can be mined from a cow, and flour can be obtainable by using
some wheat in a mill, and wheat can be collectable growing in fields
(gaining the person some farming exp) and plantable using the farming
skill. The higher the farming skill, the more wheat should grow when
planted.

Milk can also use farming skill, and I guess one would get better at
it with practice, and be able to milk more milk from a cow if you are
good at farming.

However this needs cows, pigs, goats, rabbits, wheat, apple trees,
maybe some magical farm animals from which magical foods can be made
(like flying pigs for levitation food). We already have sheep and
chickens and geese, so that can be a start. Farm animals should be
able to asexually reproduce over time to account for cullings, so they
can be kept in captivity and reproduce. However they should not
reproduce too quickly (much much slower than mice) and maybe die of
old age after a while.

Charm monster can probably be adapted to have farm_mode, which will
make farm animals in the area to become your farm_pets and follow you,
until you get them into a closure of some sort and release the cows,
so they will roam within the bounds of the closure and be milked or
killed for food.

If this is to be a viable economic device cows should be scarce, and
be almost a currency of their own (Ukranian currency is theoretically
based on the value of a horse, so this is not far-fetched). Since they
reproduce on their own and can be sold, this should be the primary
means of generating farm animals, and they should not occur often in
the wild. Maybe make a farm market that sells very expensive farm
animals, far above the in-game market value.

Also things like summoned food and golden unicorn horn should be
changed, since they effectively make cooking skill useless by giving
infinite supply of infinite supply of food.

> > * add a 'min_level' for a recipe, which you couldn't do if you're not
> > high-level enough (or with a *really* low probability). Just to feel the
> > meaning of 'experience' :) And to prevent just trying a high exp recipe
> > over and over again.
>
> If a level 1 player tries a level 110 recipe repeatedly, maybe give
> him a few warnings, if he ignores those kill him if the recipe is
> magical.

Maybe add an IsMagical flag to recipes, and treat magical recipes in
the old dangerous ways, but things like cooking, carpenting, and so on
in safe ways?

> > * then i'd like to add food-related recipes, like pizzas (yummy!),
> > bread, cakes, things like that. Of course i'll add matching archetypes.
> > And thinking of making use of 'keycode' field and using quests to learn
> > recipes.
>
> And add some "fancy" high level recipes.  Preferably that don't blow
> up, but a loss of cash from expensive ingredients used in the recipe
> would be desirable.

Using quests to learn recipes? Does this make recipes spell-like (so
you enter 'cookbook list to view the recipes you know, and 'cookbook
make pizza to make a pizza?) or you just encounter cookbooks from time
to time?

> > Unrelated to alchemy, but I'm thinking on using the 'on_apply_yield'
> > field to eat (apply) food by parts (cake => 3/4 of cake => half cake =>
> > 1/4 of cake => nothing).
>
> Probably a good idea to allow the use of item transformers on these.
> (slicing knife)

Yes, a good idea. Needs yet more archetypes though.

> On an other note, more items that can only be obtained through
> alchemy, would be interesting.

Which need even more graphics. If someone made lots and lots of
different graphics it would be excellent (for sword-like things,
shields, cloaks, rings, armours, bows, amulets, potions, and so on).
Many of them could then be made into alchemyable items.