Crafting, most games have it now. Kind of a requirement for players. Anyways, we need it too! Since players will run the economy, nearly everything is going to be craftable. Crafters are going to be very important in keeping the world running. Since it’s going to be a common action, it better be fun. I’m personally inspired by the minigames from Puzzle Pirates and the crafting games from the MMO I used to play, Mabinogi. There’s some others to get ideas from but those so far are the largest. The games won’t be very long but they should be long enough to keep crafting engaging. Each crafted item will have a recommended skill level but anyone can try them if they know the recipe. With the different difficulties, some minigames will be easy for simple items and the really rare items will require higher crafting levels to even have a chance at.
I’m facing a dilemma on how to make the recipes. How much is it going to be customizable? My initial plans were to only use one type of metal to make weapons and tools. This was going to be iron or steel. For more customizability you can inlay other metals to make each item unique. This way all metals can be used but items will be made of sturdy metals and still be customizable. Downside is, it locks crafting recipes to only using one item instead say having bronze, iron, and steel swords. There’s only one type, Steel. Only way around this is to have recipes for each metal type that’s expected but that is a lot more work for every single item to do that. After reading a bit about Ultima Online’s Resource system (https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/03/uos-resource-system/), it got me thinking about not requiring specific items but something with the metal property for crafting. This allows for bronze, iron, mythril, etc, weapons as long as it is a metal resource. Done right, each can be given durability properties, so gold weapons will look cool but be brittle and steel stuff will be the balance between durability and cost. This can also lead to different types of wood being used. Pine, Oak, Mahogany, etc. It may lead to a few more settings in the crafting UI but that is a decent trade off for customizable items.