Many people complain that books are unbalanced and force grindyness to level up skills. I have had an ideal percolating in the old brain pot for a while and I just wanna pour it out and see what people think.
As of now books give you skill levels for reading them and pop out random recipes based on the skill you have while reading to level up, then give you a few recipes with each level up.
What if instead of the focus being on the skill level it is instead focused on the recipe.
So you pick up a book and see a recipe you want in the book, though a UI screen you select that recipe that is within your skill level and then read up on it until it is memorized, this then gives you a portion of the level needed to increase your skill in whatever skills that recipe uses. Then you continue picking several recipes until you have memorized enough recipes to achieve a higher level. You would then still get a couple base recipes for the skill level.
What I believe it achieves is granting the player more discretion on what he learns and turns reading’s focus away from the level up to selecting recipes that help the player in the specific setting they are in. It also seems more realistic to pick up a book to learn specific things than learning how to make random things. So instead of learning how to make flipflops and panties I can focus on cargo pants and leather jackets and only learn those other recipes if I don’t have any other recipes that I specifically want and I need a few more to cap off the level.
I may not seem like much of a change but consider that some recipes use multiple skill levels to make the item, so if i learn them I could skill up those skills together. It adds a realism factor, as most survivors are worried about specifics and not random auxiliary items, who opens a book about mechanics and reads the whole thing through? No one, they find the portion that fits the problem that they need to fix and focus on that, going into related tangents as needed. It doesn’t necessarily solve the grindyness of books but it does allow people to focus more on necessities and only learn about what they need in the moment.
This shouldn’t affect leveling based on crafting and in fact brings it more in balance with leveling by crafting.
Constructive criticism welcome, hell tell me you think I am a dumbass if you want.