Long List of Crafting and Economic Ideas/Brainstorm

News and suggestions during the development of The Quest's sequel. (Title is work in progress.)

Long List of Crafting and Economic Ideas/Brainstorm

Postby pohdoh » Sun Jul 30, 2017 7:24 am

I remember it being mentioned that there will be hunting and fishing which opens up a can of worms for me regarding ideas and suggestions lol.

And before going on any further, I want to emphasis that i want to the focus to be on the big picture. The big picture is crafting that is believable, worthwhile, and interconnected by giving them economic significance.
All the details and specifics are not to be taken literally but are just examples of a possible ways that crafting can be implemented in such a way.
I don't expect any of these to make its way into TQ2 exactly the way i suggested it and i mostly just want to give ideas or inspiration.


And many of these ideas are not entirely original and are inspired by a mixture of multiple rpg's that i believe have their own strengths and weaknesses.
Skyrim moders had the best ideas when it comes to late game economic goals and npc interaction.
Daggerfall had the best ideas with immersive and believable ways to obtain wealth via crafting.
Runescape had the best ideas with type of craftables and supply/demand dynamics.
Anywho these are some basic ideas/goals i want for TQ2

1. A strong wealth building mechanics
2. Useful, organic, and immersive crafting system
3. Interplay between all the types of crafting
4. Believable NPC interactions when it comes to wealth building
5. Multiple different industries and business opportunities for building wealth
6. Complement combat and help complete the main quest
7. Strong incentives for building up wealth so you don't just craft things and build your fortune up for no point
8. Immersive and Believable World that feels massive and is fun to explore


However here are some weaknesses with my ideas and restrictions
1. The World MUST have multiple cities and villages to house all the npc's and large socioeconomic mechanics that i am suggesting
2. The World MUST have an ocean and these ideas become much better if there are some islands and additional ports.
3. The non-city part of the World MUST be large enough to organically place these materials without feeling crowded and to make it possible for items to be scare/rare. Also would help alot if there were biomes or multiple environments.
4. Worthwhile very end game content like armor pieces that cost a fortune, ships, lands, shops, houses, or collectables. I am making it possible to earn a fortune by business and there has to be things expensive enough that this content is even worth playing lol.

Okay these are the more specific crafting changes i have thought of and I will meticulously go through each point.

1. Reworked Shops and Businesses
2. Food and Cooking
3. Smithing and Repair
4. Artisan Skill
5. Farming
6. Reworked Alchemy
7. Medicine


I will post each part in a reply because i don't want an accident to happen and lose all my progress lol.
Also so i can have some more time to think about and type all this stuff.
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Re: Long List of Crafting and Economic Ideas/Brainstorm

Postby pohdoh » Sun Jul 30, 2017 9:17 am

1. Reworked Shops and Businesses

Since there appears to be more crafting and items with the advent of hunting and fishing, this is a great opportunity to revamp how shops and businesses work. These ideas have multiple goals in mind

1. Shops that operate realistically and believably
2. Unique shops that not only sell items differently but function differently
3. Make skills and stats play a larger role in economics and fortune building


All of this will encourage players to travel to multiple towns, explore the world, talk to many npc's, give long lasting rewards to quests, and most importantly make the world seem so much denser and more alive.

Shops now run on supply/demand and will have restrictions that normal shops have

1. Shops now have limited supplies of gold.
They are no longer a well of infinite gold. Makes sense since why would they even have a shop if they have unlimited gold? Now the amount of gold will be elaborated further later.

2. Normal shops won't buy items that are stolen.
In fact, they won't do business with you normally if they see you have stolen goods out of fear of the law. Depending on your outfit/persuade/merchantile they will have different responses. They will call the guards on you if your stats are low but they can be persuaded to buy stolen goods from you with high stats. This mechanic will be further explained.

3. Shop prices vary highly depending on the location, supply, and random factors
If the blacksmith already owns 20 axes, he won't want another axe and will offer reduced price or even refuse to buy it altogether. Also alchemy shops in the grasslands will pay more for ingredients that come from deserts or far away lands and so on. This would incentives players to think about WHERE they should sell their stuff and encourage them to move around and look for npc's that will give the most profit

4. Shops will refresh their stock in different patterns.
The player isn't the only customer and other npc's will buy and sell them items during the day at random times. There are endless possibilities to this idea. Some ideas are the following. Shops are more likely to refresh their inventory when many npc's are in the store with them. Shops can be robbed by bandits and lose their entire stock during the night. Shops can have a sudden influx of new items when a group of traders or travelers pass through the town. News of a new vein of iron ore could result in more iron weapons in the blacksmith shop or heavy rain will result in more types of certain plants in the botanist shop. Items of yesterday shop could end up in the pockets of certain merchant's or citizen's pockets which would be a huge boost to the pickpocket skill. Conversely, items in certain npc's pockets or inventory could end up in a store later which would make the store inventory less random and more predictable and again another boost to thieve builds.

The first change is to differentiate shops into 5 major categories which all function differently in a believable and lore friendly fashion.

1. Village Shops
These are your typical shops and stores like TQ1 that sell specific merchandise by people of their respective craft. Here are the general features of village shops
-very limited supply of gold and once they run out, it will slowly build back up over a few days. these guys are shopkeepers and not banks so they won't magically respawn all their money back overnight.
-offer the best buying and selling prices. village shops won't charge an arm and leg since their customers are poor villagers. also their shop is small so they will offer a good amount of money for most goods since they don't get many sellers or providers to refresh their stock.
-potentially more random inventory and can occasionally have very good items that they stumbled across. this is to encourage players to revisit villages in the hopes of finding these items and purchase them for a much cheaper price than normal.
-refusal to purchase any stolen goods unless you have a very high outfit/merchantile/persuade or completed specific quests with them. they are small businesses that cannot afford to break the law and are too scared to do illegal dealings.
I say "village" shop but what i really mean is small or private owned shops that are usually found in villages. A city cannot have one in the slums or a city inland could have a small fish shop since fish isn't normally found their.

2. Sea Merchants
These are merchants in the harbor that do long distance trading with distant lands. This means they will sell exotic items that normally are NOT found in the main continent. This point is CRUCIAL for the rest of the ideas i have that will have exotic items as expensive and high end items. This also lets you run wild with your imagination.
They will sell many animals material like tigers/monkeys pelts from a trophical continent, phoenix feathers from desert continents, crocodile scales from swamps, kraken cartilage from the deep sea, or unicorn horns from distant magical forests. Expensive gemstones such as topaz, opal, amber, jade, along with the usuals such as rubies and diamonds. They will also sell spices and rare food ingredients to make expensive cooking products like high quality wines and meats from mythical animals like roc meat or dragon meat.
They will also partake is purchasing illegal items especially drugs that can be made at high level alchemy with high enough outfit/personality/merchantile. this would be a lengthy process where you meet them at night in a specific location away from town and need a high level of sneak to be successful. Since some merchants come specifically for this reason, they will offer you incredible prices and buy illegal goods in bulk.
Their supply of gold is high and their prices won't drop very much even if you sell alot to them. However, they will only be looking for valuables such as gemstones, high end ingots, very rare plants, etc. They have no use for inexpensive junk and they certainly won't be selling junk either.
They will also not refresh their inventory in the traditional way. After a few days, they will sail away and come back at a variable time. Merchants from faraway lands would come back weeks later while merchants in nearby islands will be back in just a few days. This will make certain merchants a rare event and will make their appearance a special occasion. Also for greater immersion, there should be many merchants and you won't find the same guy every time. Trading is a profitable affair and many people become merchants for that reason.
This kind of merchant is also an AMAZING opportunity to foreshadow future expansions by having ingredients or items that come from distant continents. This would make the world seem much more cohesive and less random and give ample opportunity for world building.

3. Major City Shops
These shops are expensive but have a larger selection of items and much more gold supply.
They refresh their stock regularly but the items they will be predictable since they are a business with employees and investors and a stable retailer. They can be found only in major cities and are often filled with many people. These shops will never deal with stolen goods. No point in a large business endangering their business by breaking the law. They are already making plenty of money.

4. Nobles/Royalty
These guys are not really shops but rich collectors. They are exclusive to players with high stats and reputation and are only found in palaces or expensive mansions. They look down on the player for the most part and will refuse to even talk unless the player has a good persuade skill. Most players won't even be able to enter their house without the appropriate quest and whatnot.
Their wealth is basically infinite and money is not an issue for them. However, they will typically only be looking for a specific type of armor or jewelry for their personal collection. Also they will not buy in bulk and will only want 1-2 of the item they are requesting.
They have no issues with buying stolen goods since they are rich enough to avoid the law.
However, they are only interested in buying and will only sell their items at exorbitant prices. In exchange, they will possess some of the rarest and most expensive items in the game and often are the only possible source of such items. This will present an end game goal for the players.

5. Black Markets
They buy and sell all stolen goods while offering rare and expensive armor for relatively cheap prices. However you MUST have a high crime rate and low reputation to access such a market. Black market dealers won't do business with someone who will potential rat on them. They will also purchase drugs at low prices but in bulk. The idea of these shops is that they special advantages but you must sacrifice easy access to conventional shops in exchange.

These ideas would add a new dynamic to stores and offer endless possibilities if they are incorporated together with quests and whatnot. Having restrictions on stores makes it possible for stores to become more unique and that is what i really emphasize.
Although i have to give special emphasis again on Sea traders. I think it is a brilliant way to let your imagine go crazy and not be restricted by the mainland. It would give infinite possibility in the items possible and would be amazing for foreshadowing on future expansions. Would even allow items from older games to make their way into TQ2 and help build on a larger cohesive world.
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Re: Long List of Crafting and Economic Ideas/Brainstorm

Postby Sylon / Redshift » Sun Jul 30, 2017 11:17 am

Cool. : )
Yes, TQ2 will not be _that_ complex, but we'll surely update the current system with many new elements and polish the existing ones. (For example, I simply dropped the whole magic system of TQ1 and made a new one with 12 different magic skills/classes, each with its own array of spells, own style, own needs and own ways of working.) Thanks for all the suggestions, keep them coming, we'll consider them all. (I like the idea of Sea Merchants!)
Just a quick sidenote: TQ2 will not have the Persuade skill, instead we'll have different attributes/skills to make the game more believable for a party of heroes.

And yes, of course the game will have multiple cities and villages and of course oceans and islands. : )
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Re: Long List of Crafting and Economic Ideas/Brainstorm

Postby pohdoh » Sun Jul 30, 2017 8:11 pm

Sylon / Redshift wrote:Cool. : )
Yes, TQ2 will not be _that_ complex, but we'll surely update the current system with many new elements and polish the existing ones. (For example, I simply dropped the whole magic system of TQ1 and made a new one with 12 different magic skills/classes, each with its own array of spells, own style, own needs and own ways of working.) Thanks for all the suggestions, keep them coming, we'll consider them all. (I like the idea of Sea Merchants!)
Just a quick sidenote: TQ2 will not have the Persuade skill, instead we'll have different attributes/skills to make the game more believable for a party of heroes.

And yes, of course the game will have multiple cities and villages and of course oceans and islands. : )


Sounds good. A good way i seen other rpg's go about updating is to focus on early game-mid game content first and creating as many mechanics and skills as possible early on. Even if they end up being shallow or useless, they can expand on it with later update and add end game content later as updates. Better to set groundworks early on in the game's lifespan.
But of course, that isn't the only good way and im sure you guys already have plans in how you plan to go about updating and adding things.

Also I am a bit worried about the party of heroes idea.
I feel as if it allows for strong first playthrough experience but weaker replayability since you get to make multiple types of characters at once so you go through the different character builds much faster.
Also makes each run feel more homogenous especially if the heroes have set roles like warior+theif+mage+healer type set parties. Really fun first time through but not much variation afterwards since you are playing the same class each time. I would love for each hero to be a blank slate and be able to spec into anything and you can have a party of all warriors or all mages or whatever.
Although there is some other potential with a party system like longer gearing process (which i love lol) and a much stronger potential for healing specs which is great.

And no persuade sounds fine. Rather difficult skill to make worthwhile and really easy to neglect since it doesn't give any direct benefits most of the time. Although i do hope that not too many skills are cut from the game since more skills is more variation and more fun generally speaking :)
One thing i loved about TQ1 that most rpg's lost is the variety in skills. Even if some of them were functionally useless, having them as options expanded possibilities with spells and especially books.
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Re: Long List of Crafting and Economic Ideas/Brainstorm

Postby pohdoh » Sun Jul 30, 2017 8:44 pm

One of the major goals in these suggestions is to make the world more immersive and more organic. And one of the most feasible and entertaining way to do this is by having more functional and fun items. Its a joy to loot a dungeon and find items we never seen before or get different rewards for quests beyond just gear and money. But we can't just add a bunch of random items to achieve that effect since most of them will be repetitive or useless. Therefore the crafting system is the way to give function and value to items which is why i am proposing so many.

I will also take this a step further by making it so multiple skills overlap and work together. These skills include cooking, smithing, alchemy, artisan, farming. So for example, if you want to make a crate of expensive wine to sell to a rich buyer, you will want
-good farming to cultivate the exotic fruits necessary by buying seeds from sea merchants
-good alchemy to extract extract the ingredients from the fruits
-good cooking to put the ingredients together to assemble the liquor
-decent artisan to create a glass bottles to hold the wine
-sufficient smithing to smith the nails and planks necessary to assemble the crate
-good merchantile to sell the finished product for a reasonable price
Of course, you could also buy raw materials from sellers if you don't have the sufficient skills and that would cut into profit. But ultimately this kind of stuff allows for complexity in a game and endless replay value.

So anywho that is my justification for all these ideas and my overarcing direction with these suggestions. And now for specifics
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Re: Long List of Crafting and Economic Ideas/Brainstorm

Postby pohdoh » Sun Jul 30, 2017 10:43 pm

Food and Cooking

One thing that almost all rpg's seem to neglect is the cooking skill and varieties of food. It is usually just a side thing that is completely inferior to alchemy.
I feel as if this is missed opportunity in a large open world rpg with many different types of animals, fish, and mythical creatures to base it off of.

So in these suggestions, i will go nuts with the types of items and amount of items i am suggesting just to emphasize this point. And to be fair, i don't think this would take much effort to implement since they don't need to be super detailed or a programming nightmare compared to things like "larger worlds" or "smarter ai". It can be just like TQ1 alchemy system except with ovens and campfires instead of mortar/pestles.

General Changes to Food
1. Food is craftable and based on a skill level

2. More expensive and complex foods will give lasting combat boosts
This is to give food some combat potential. So while potions and spells give immediate and powerful benefits, food can give weak but consistent boosts to stats in the background. Also they can have different conditions in how their effects are applied. Some can take an hour to come into effect, some last until the first spell, some last until your hp drops below 20%, some only work on an empty stomach, some only work in certain weather, etc.

3. Only 1-2 food effects will be active at a time.
Just to prevent players from stacking 20-30 at a time. I think that strategy should be limited to only spells and potions but not food.

4. Resting health regeneration will be partially dependent on type of food or drink used
Just to expand on the resting mechanic and give further benefit to having better food. The curve should be generous tho and even basic water+apple should heal full hp until mid-levels. This is more of a late game kind of thing.

5. Food have significant weight
The weight will give another depth of characteristics to food. Some examples
-combat food: weight alot but give significant combat boosts when consumed before battle. lasts a long time
-resting food: weight a little but give almost no combat boosts when consumed. basically used just to heal hp via rest. last a very long time (basically indefinite)
-profit food: very heavy food but are sold for high prices and bought in bulk. goes bad very quickly
-skill food: weight average amount and used for slight boost to non-combat skills for a long time. goes bad moderately quickly. (magical effects will "leak" out so to say) Useful since most crafting will take time and potions will not last long enough to be profitable for use. also since potions that fortify skills will be expensive, rare, but strong and useful if you want to make just one item.

6. Food will only reach maximum effect if consumed during rest
A running gag in skyrim is since the game pauses when accessing menu, you can consume 20-30 potatoes or cabbages to restore your health. they only restore 2-5 hp but since they weigh nothing, you can stockpile them without even knowing about it. Yea i would like to address that lol. Also it makes sense that food would probably be enjoyed better outside of combat and during resting.

7. Food unaffected by supply and demand (for the most part)
I mentioned before that items won't have static prices and will be ruled by supply and demand. So shop keepers will pay much less money for items they already have and will refuse by buy items they have too many of.
Food will be an exception to this rule. People need food at all times wether its for the winter or for a huge banquet. This is how you can make significant money using profit food. People will be willing to buy dozens if not hundreds of items of food and you can make a fortune by selling high quantities of items. Nobles will want to buy expensive cakes or wine in bulk for social events, innkeepers will want to buy huge quantities of consumables to feed their customers, and villagers will want to buy salted meat and preservable food to store away for later.

8. Food will expire
Just to prevent players from being chipmunks and storing a lifetime supply of food. Raw food especially will expire quickly. Eating expired food, especially meat dishes, can cause diseases and exotic dishes like eating expired dragon meat can cause serious and hard to cure diseases. Can also make it so that storing food in certain places or in cold areas will make them last longer or something. Plenty of mechanics that can be explored with this.

Types of Food

The way i will format this section is as followed

Type of Food: (1) Low level -> (2) Mid level -> (3) High level -> (4) Near Max level
-explanation about their ingredients, their purpose, their expiration time, and which npc sells them or which monsters drop them.

Roasted Meats: (1) Docile native animals like deer, rabbit, chicken -> (2) Aggressive native animals like boar, wolves, bears -> (3) Exotic and Mythical meats such as Tigers, Elephants, Wyverns, Rhino, Dragon
-simple dish that just cooked meat by itself and won't really require any other ingredients. These are the average joe survival food and have no special characteristics but are easily found and created in the wilderness. They expire slowly (1 week) but surely and will become progressively weaker as time goes on. these can be common drops with human mobs an other types of monsters

Roasted Seafood: (1) Basic river fish like salmon, trout, and catfish -> (2) Ocean fish like mackeral, tuna and shellfish like oysters, scallops -> (3) exotic/predatory fish like sharks, swordfish, sea dragons, whales, and squids.
-simple dish that basically function just like roasted meats except you get them via fishing lol

Bread: (1) basic bread like hardtack, flatbread -> (2) flavored bread using fruits -> (3) spiced breads
-simple dish that requires milk, flour, eggs, and a final ingredients for more advanced breads. we can get fancy with different types of eggs and flour made from different types of plants but whatever lol. They are another type of survival food but because they are harder to make, they last much longer than meats and are also much lighter. Many different inns will sell them and ingredients to make them while farmers will sell the ingredients for a much cheaper price. (1 month)

Pies: (2) fruit/vegetable pies -> (3) basic meat pies -> (4) spiced exotic/mythical meat pies
-complex dish that quite a few different ingredients. the top end pies will require expensive spices and meats. these dishes, especially the higher end ones, will have desirable combat stats and sell for good prices but will be very heavy. These will expire somewhat slowly (5 days).

Cakes: (2) basic cake -> (3) spiced cakes (sugar/chocolate) -> (4) professional cakes
-complex dishes with similar ingredients to pies but require larger quantities. These are highly desirable foods and will be profit foods that can be sold for good money. They will expire very quickly (2 days) and they generally won't be sold but you will find them as drops in houses or palaces.

Liquor: (2) native drinks like wine, beer, cider, mead -> (3) exotic drinks like rum, vodka (HOL???), moonshine -> (4) spiced/magical/illegal liquors
-complex drinks that require few cooking ingredients like fruits/water/spices but other specialized materials like glass bottles, fermenting stands, etc. They can either have combat effects or be prized as commodities for drinking and can be sold for high profit. They don't ever expire and will be common drops and even monsters will drop them here and there.

Stews: (2) basic meat stews -> (3) meat stews from higher level meats -> (4) complex meat stews using spices, top tier meats, liquor, and different rare plants
-complex dish that requires a variety of different ingredients including meats, vegetables, and meat or liquors. They have very strong combat effects (the strongest) but will expire within a day. This means that the only way to really use this, is to craft it in the wilderness and carry around the raw ingredients. They will sell for an okay amount of gold but this is primarily just for combat purposes and right before decisive battles.

There are also many other types of food that can function as raw ingredients. Eggs and milk could be mixed with high cooking to create cream for professional cakes. Cheese can be made from milk and expensive cheeses using rare milks and spices. Many types of flowers and plants can function as native spices while sea merchants and monsters will drop exotic spices and cooking ingredients as loot.

Special emphasis to the idea of adding spices as a common cooking ingredient for late game items. They have incredibly historical importance in medieval times, sound fancy, easy to add (most are just piles of colored dust lol), and make sense as expensive food commodities for sea traders. In addition we can eventually grow our own spices by buying exotic seeds from merchants, planting them with high farming, and extracting them with high alchemy.

At this point, it sounds like i want TQ2 to be a cooking stimulator lol. Think this shows how much possible content is available here and how it can be organically added to the game to have different purposes. And it has so many creative uses. You could place certain types of food in certain regions of the map to show the food preference of the people living there. Certain monsters could drop certain types of food to represent what they eat which could be useful for questing ideas. Expensive wines, spices, and ingredients could be new loot and they won't seem like random items but potentially useful drops that can either be sold, stored, or used for crafting. Overall i think it would be a worthwhile addition to the game at some point and should be heavily expanded on.
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Re: Long List of Crafting and Economic Ideas/Brainstorm

Postby Sylon / Redshift » Mon Jul 31, 2017 7:17 am

Party-based system: we'll be careful - replayability is always one of the most important things for us during the development, so don't worry about that.

Even if we'll delete some skills, Q2 will have much more skills than Q1 had, so don't worry about the variety! : )

Yeah, Q2 will not be a cooking simulator. : ) (Always remember that we are just two guys, not dozens of developers who has time and money for anything they want to do.) I already planned to expand the current "food system" (which means in Q2 all variety of foods will have different effects, while in Q1 all food means just the same), but cooking... Well, I'll think about that. : ) What you wrote here is a little too complex, but overall it's not a bad idea.
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Re: Long List of Crafting and Economic Ideas/Brainstorm

Postby pohdoh » Wed Aug 02, 2017 9:20 am

3. Smithing and Repair

Now time for blacksmith stimulator lol. I won't go as in depth into this since many other rpg's have this mechanisms so I am sure you are familiar with the gist of this. I will list some key differences at the end though.

The main purpose of all these overalls in smithing is to make the item feel more UNIQUE and make it so all items have more properties that differentiate them.

Now the goals of Smithing is to do 4 things
1. Repair Items
2. Creating Metal Items
3. Mining
4. Creating Metal Ingots
5. Replicate Metal Items

Notice how i say metal items which will encompass many other items beyond just armor and weapons. I feel as if limiting smithing to just that is a wasted opportunity and it doesn't make sense that a blacksmith can make complicated metal armor but be unable to make things like nails and cups. Anywho, I will elaborate further on this point in the Artisan Part.

1. Repair Items

What i suggest is an expansion to how item stat durability (and items in general) work for weapons and armor. These are the following changes

Cannot repair item beyond "average" in the wilderness
-i would imagine it be hard to repair an item with a hammer without a workbench or any equipment at all. also this would give players a reason to return to anvils and keep their weapon up to check. just gives world more important locations for the players to interact with.

Anvils can be used to properly repair an item
-with anvils, located in parts around the world, act as crafting benches where you can properly get an item back to good durability. If the damage is slight, then it won't require any additional metal ingots to repair. If the damage is bad or if the item has not been repaired in a long time, it will require metal ingots. The worse the damage, the more ingots it will require while broken items will require almost as many ingots to repair it as the original item was made out of.

Repairing items to perfect conditions is very difficult
-I mentioned this before but in short, it will be relatively straight-forward to repair an item to functional or good quality but very difficult to repair it to "perfect" quality. Only experienced blacksmiths in shops or players with high smithing will be able to do this.


2. Smithing Metal Items

With metal ingots (and other ingredients) players will be able to craft their own items at an anvil. The steps for crafting will be as followed

-obtain the designs for the item you want to create. these can be bought, or created by studying the item beforehand (aka if you want to learn how to make a steel sword, you must get a steel sword first and study it first to get the designs)
-obtain metal ingots, hammer, and other ingredients necessary and head to an anvil
-craft the item with the necessary items (similar to how alchemy worked in TQ1

I think this is an essential part to make it so armor and weapons feel dynamic. This is a feature in most rpg games and for good reasons. I would like the emphasize that you must LEARN the item you are making first and we shouldn't be able to craft all the items immediately if we have the ingredients. Also that most items will require more than just metal and will require things like leather, wood, or multiple types of metal. A fancy sword would likely have steel for the blade but wood for the handle, leather for the grip, and a gem for the pommel. Things like this could be greatly elaborated upon so each item feels unique.


3. Mining

I am not a fan of the formula of the mine veins of conveniently placed iron ore in a mine that conveniently has a ton of magical boulders that just happen to have pure iron in them. Not only is that rather immersion breaking but its also makes the idea of mining very difficult to organically implement. You end up having only 1-2 useful mines in the entire game that you return to every month since ores respawn so slowly.

This is what i have in mind for mining.

You can mine ore from a mountain, cave, dungeon, or any place with rock
-this will remove the restrictive old mining system where you can only mine from very specific places in the world where ore respawn. In this system, you can gather as much ore as you want as long as its from someplace in the earth. The ore you get will be named after the location you got it from and NOT its contents. So mining in Silver Peak would give you "Silver Peak Ore" or mining in the Undead city would give you "Ore from Undead City". You won't know the contents of the ore until you actually refine it which would encourage players to explore and mine in different places. Certain dungeons could not have very much loot but be rich in valuable ores. This would also make it so you would never run out of ore to mine in the world for the most part.

Dungeons and other small areas will have a very limited amount of usable ore which will respawn over a long period of time. Kinda just view the dungeon ore as loot that is there to be gathered and not return for a long time like normal items. However, ore from these areas will likely be valuable since its likely untouched and pristine.
However, mountains and mineshifts will have almost unlimited ore. The catch is that the ore there already been mostly mined out and you will get low yield from the ore there compared to dungeons or other places.

I also have ideas where you can eventually hire miners to mine ore for you. You would need to do things like buy a licence from the kingdom to set up a business there and then buy proper equipment, food, water, etc for your miners along with their actual salary. But once you get that set up, they will mine huge amounts of ore every week. Having 7-8 employees will mine enough ore that you can begin making significant profits

4. Creating Metal Ingots

Your smithing level will determine how well you refine the ore and extract the precious metal from it. This means that ore can give multiple types of metals or none at all. Low smithing players will be lucky to get 1 metal ingot from 10-20 pieces of ore. This is also how it works in real life with most of the "ore" gathered being junk and only a very small fraction of it actually containing metal.

You can refine ore at a furnace which will usually be located near the blacksmith or scattered in multiple places around the world. Doing this would have a similar impact as the anvil in that players would be encouraged to return to the city to do crafting and set up a secure base.

You can also obtain ore by melting down armor to recover a small fraction of the original metal used to make it. You would need a sufficient smithing level to do this and the amount recovered (if any) will depend on that. I think this is CRUCIAL to make armor actually feel like they are made out of craftables and they suddenly make worthless starter gear useful again as a source of metal ingots.

There is good business to selling metal ingots as raw material. Just like food in my previous suggestions, metal ingots will not be affected by supply and demand very much since blacksmiths are in constant need for them and they will want to stock up on them. However, selling armor will not be as profitable because it will take up more time, will be more costly, and will be greatly affected by supply and demand.

The types of metal ingots created are up for imagination. Bronze, Iron, Steel, Mithril is a given in any medieval rpg but why stop there? We can add exotic metals that can only be bought as ingots from sea merchants or as ore that is dropped by specific monsters. Just like how food ingredients can be scattered as loot, so can ores and metal ingots.

5. Replicate Metal Items

This is also a crucial step to making smithing feel comprehensive. This will fundamentally change how all items work and i think this idea has enormous potential in making armor and items of the same type feel significantly different or more unique.

All Armor/Weapons will now have a "Quality" stat along with a "Durability" stat

-Not all steel swords are equal. Some are made by master craftsman and will perform better than average while some are made by amateurs and will perform worse. This suddenly makes even items that have identical names to become unique in their quality. The quality of the item will have slight changes in the stats and will range from
Knock-off -> Poor Copy -> Imitation -> Identical Replica -> Original -> Superior

Items that are closer or better than the original will be increasingly more expensive HOWEVER the original will ALWAYS be the most expensive out of them all. People want to original copy even over a better version because of historical or collector purposes. Nobody wants a replica over the original deal lol. "Original" items will only be reserved for quest items or special named items in dungeons. You will never be able to craft an "original" item yourself. This also leads to my next point.

All armor and weapons will be able to be replicated
-as i mentioned earlier with the crafting part, you will be able to study any piece of equipment and get the designs for it and then craft it yourself. You will be able to craft the weapon at varying Quality BUT NEVER at the "Original" quality. This will make sure Quest items remain special and will make "Original" quality items very valuable.
-Keep in mind though that you won't be able to copy the enchantments on an item and only the weapon by itself. Smithing does have anything to do with enchanting and you can enchant the weapon further at your own leisure.



So final thoughts about Smithing and how my suggestions fix the problems that smithing in other rpg's tend to have.

1. Mining is much more engaging and sustainable!
-i loved mining in rpg's but i often found that i would run out of ore to collect or that the metal i am looking for as run out! meaning i just couldn't do any mining at all until they all respawn which was jarring and no fun. Not to mention, I always thought it was ridiculous how mines would consist of a bunch of conspicious boulders made out of pure ore. My changes to making ore location dependent and the type of metal obtained dependent on the location and smithing skill makes sense in context of how real ore mining and refining is done and also encourages the player to explore the world. It also gives an extra dimension to dungeons, caves, and mineshafts and also leads to some great potential as loot. Finally, it also can be used to allude to future expansions by naming ore after locations that do not exist in the main game and reference a faraway mountain.

2. Repairing is more realistic and fleshed out
-as convienient as it was, repairing in the middle of the wilderness by banging your hammer into your armor to "perfect" condition was immersion breaking and cheapens the repair mechanic. By incorporating Anvils into the world and allow them to repair your items, it gives importance to locations in the world and encourages players to repair items beforehand in a city. Also since you cannot repair an item in the wildnerness very well, this makes the max durability of an item MUCH more important since you can't just repair back to full health after each fight. You might want to get items that may have lower stats but have high max durability and will last longer if the wildnerness. Overall it adds another dynamic to gearing and opens up more possibility for item uniqueness.

3. Metal Ingots are better for profit than Metal Armor/Weapons
-Blacksmiths and will be singificantly more interested in the raw meterial since they need to do smithing themselves. They don't care about buying the finish product since that is what they are making themselves anyways. This completly changes the dynamic of how you make money with smithing and makes sense in the context of how supply and demand works.

4. Items can be replicated
-this is huge since it makes each weapon/armor something more than just an item to be worn or sold. It makes them crafting recipes and encourages players to collect all the items and not just focus on getting the best possible gear. This also makes it so quest items can be reused and reforged to fit the players need. I would have loved to keep the name/aesthetic of some of the quest items but with different enchantments and this allows the player to do so. Also this allows players to throw away quest items knowing they can reforge the items at a later time (although never back to original quality)


So what is the end result of all of these changes? What is the big picture?

Ultimately this gives SO much more depth to weapons/armor. In most rpg's (including TQ1) they are just things that are to be sold if it is useless or equipped if it is worthwhile. Most armor just felt like sacks of gold that had no function beyond that. With my changes armor/weapons now have 2 additional important functions that synergizes well with a crafting system.
1. Melt down armor for ingots
2. Learn designs from armor to replicate

In addition, this new smithing crafting mechanic allows for weapons/armors to be given a new "Quality" stat alongside the "Durability" stat. Now armor/weapon will have the following stats
1. Combat Stats
2. Durability
3. Enchantments
4. Quality
This gives another dimension to items and loot and now items that have the same name and enchantments can be differentiated and players will be encouraged to not only find the best gear but also find the best possible quality of the best gear.

As said in an earlier post, this allows for more types of items to be organically placed into the world (ore, metal ingots), dungeons/zones to have more unique properties beyond just monsters and loot (mining), and more distinct types of items already in the game.

This combined gives the player more things to do, more reasons to explore the world, and makes the world feel more immersive and alive.
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Re: Long List of Crafting and Economic Ideas/Brainstorm

Postby pohdoh » Wed Aug 02, 2017 9:40 am

Sylon / Redshift wrote:Party-based system: we'll be careful - replayability is always one of the most important things for us during the development, so don't worry about that.

Even if we'll delete some skills, Q2 will have much more skills than Q1 had, so don't worry about the variety! : )

Yeah, Q2 will not be a cooking simulator. : ) (Always remember that we are just two guys, not dozens of developers who has time and money for anything they want to do.) I already planned to expand the current "food system" (which means in Q2 all variety of foods will have different effects, while in Q1 all food means just the same), but cooking... Well, I'll think about that. : ) What you wrote here is a little too complex, but overall it's not a bad idea.


That is great to hear that replayability is a major focus. Its been a trend with some games to focus only on the first experience and forget about replayability since the customer already bought the game :(
I would imagine this is due to pressure from investors and executives. Luckily you guys are your own investors and executives :lol:

And wow. that is phenomenal. I thought TQ1 already had a great repetoire of skills and to hear the TQ2 will have even more is amazing. Hopefully each of them are viable and fun to level up. Speaking of which, will leveling be similar to how leveling is in TQ1?

I had an idea about splitting combat skills such as accuracy/magic with crafting or other skills like pickpocket, alchemy, etc. I do love the TQ1 leveling system for raising combat stats since it made sense and felt rewarding leveling up and spending points. It also made it so you can't be a jack of all trade and you HAD to specialize or else you would fall behind. But it never made sense that i had to fight monsters to level up alchemy or sneak lol.
What this would look like is that for all combat related stats, it would just like TQ1. Kill monsters, get combat experience, level up, spend attribute points and skill points.
However, for your crafting skills (sneak, pickpocket, disarm, repair, cooking maybe :) , smithing, etc) you would gain crafting experience, level up your craftsmanship level which is separate from your combat level, and then spend points in the appropriate crafting skills you want.
What i really want to avoid is where you would do alchemy, then your alchemy skill goes up. I feel as if this leads to no incentive for characters to specialize and instead having characters that just do everything and killing replayability. What do you think of this idea?

Also I admit i have no idea about the feasibility of any of my suggestions. I assume that its definently less work to add mechanics in TQ2 engine than a modern 3D engine and just kinda use that as an excuse to run wild with my imagination lol.
My hope is to give as many ambitious suggestions as i can think of in the hopes that maybe 1-2 are realistic or good enough to be implemented into the real game lol.
I suppose the colloquial way of saying this is "throw enough s*** against a wall, some of it has gotta stick." :lol:
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Re: Long List of Crafting and Economic Ideas/Brainstorm

Postby Sylon / Redshift » Sun Aug 06, 2017 6:25 am

Okay, okay, okay - it's a lot of text. : ) Don't worry if we don't reply quickly or very detailed - just continue writing here your ideas and we'll consider them during our brainstorm, as usual. As you wrote, some of it has gotta stick. : )
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Re: Long List of Crafting and Economic Ideas/Brainstorm

Postby Nightmage » Tue Feb 20, 2018 4:45 pm

Hi,

I am new to the Redshift Community but I wanted to add something, as I came up with some ideas while playing 2 or 3 games.

first, let me thank you for the great games. Back when I was younger, I used to play Might and Magic 6 and Wizardry 8. I haven't found any other games that entertained me as much. This changed when I stumbled upon the Quest. Please keep them coming! I really enjoy these kind of old-school games. I feel like being 7 years old all over again (in a very good way). I already finished the main game, Thor's Hammer, Islands of Ice and Fire ( in a matter of a week or so) and am now working on Celtic Rift. I intend on playing Hero of Lukomorye I and II, too. If you don't hurry up with creating a new game, I might end up not knowing what to do in my spare time. What spare time? I have to study for exams, anyway. But I feel like I'm magically drawn to the games.

So, I continued to use my old hero throughout all of the games I played so far. I have managed to accumulate 522877 Gold. Usually, I keep weapons and stuff that I still need in my permanent storage in my house and the rest I sell, that is how - over time - over 500.000 Gold built up. It was a very nice idea to give us our own home but I would have loved to be able to maybe buy another house, too, and/or buy more additional "furniture" (e.g., some extra storages - so we can organize the stuff that we want to keep - , wells, orbs, statues, a kitchen) for the house (similar to the houses in Skyrim), as I have so much money left. Right now, I'm at a point where I can no longer train with anybody (my level is usually too high) nor do I need to buy additional books (it seems I already read them all). The money keeps accumulating and I do no longer have any possibility to spend it. I also bought any kind of equipment that I liked on the way. So, I was really generous with spending money. That's why I thought, you might be adding an additional element for using the money. Something I can use throughtout all the upcoming games. I mean, you might add a garden, too, if you like, where I can plant mushrooms and berry bushes that I need for alchemy. ^^ Or our own library for that matter. :D

And maybe - just maybe - could you add more slots for marking locations?

Again, thanks for your hard work! I really appreciate it. And don't let people tell you the graphics are bad. I don't want better graphics. It's perfect the way it is. This is how games were about 15-20 years ago and it doesn't make sense to compare them to other genre of games. 2,99 Euros doesn't seem like a lot of money per game considering how much a games like this would have cost back in the 90's. Thanks again for giving me back a part of what I enjoyed in my childhood. Newer games usually don't interest me that much, so I am really happy that I found something worth playing for once. :)
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