Modding Questions From a Newbie Modder

I have a basic idea of how json works and have done some tweaks and such in the past, but I’m trying to add a somewhat complicated set of items to the game and I’d be grateful to anyone who can help me get it sorted out. (I have looked through CleverRaven’s wonderful guide to modding for beginners, but it doesn’t quite cover what I need now.)

I’m trying to add a way to brew alcohol without access to yeast, for “inna woods” playthroughs to use. I have been looking through the jsons for the sourdough starters, sauerkraut, and alcohol brewing items, trying to figure out how to make it work. Sourdough and sauerkraut are items which require a jar to create (something you can’t easily get in the woods) and you can only make a set amount at a time (one jar = 500 ml of sauerkraut, for example). I am hoping there’s a way to make the various young alcohol starters liquids which can be stored in any available container, so the player can make as much as they want and store it in whatever container is handy, but I’m not sure how to combine this with the delayed_transform mechanic.

If I just have the recipe output a liquid, will the delayed transform work? Obviously the “stacks” of liquid made at the same time wouldn’t be able to stack with batches made later, since the timers would be different, but I don’t know if the game is equipped to handle delayed_transform on a liquid. I’m poking at it now, gearing up to do a trial run, but if anyone has any experience with this or better knowledge than me about how it works, I’d appreciate it. Thanks so much!

EDIT: Update - I got the first batch of items and recipes in there and unfortunately it does appear that the delayed transform does not work on liquids. So I guess I have to specify a container, which is a pain. If anyone knows a way to make it work with any available container, I’ll be greatly in your debt if you share your knowledge with me.

Not experienced (at all) and don’t know if it would work but couldn’t you create a recipe that uses “copy-from”: “jar_glass”,. Essentially making another jar but in whatever ‘woody’ form you want. Don’t know if the code would accept this new “inna woods” version or not

Or just create another recipe for a ‘glass jar’ “inna woods” style. Also you can override the volume of an item. Not sure if the code is set to only accept 500ml and ignore any size increase. Change the colour to something darker and pretend it’s a gourd!

From a quick look at it, you could possible fashion containers from several different materials, glass being the obvious one, but also (food safe) plastic, stone, proper ceramic, metal etc. Glass jars just happen to be the most popular, though you’re not meant to seal it.

When thinking about this you should consider that sourdough starters would be typically made by people with access to glass or ceramic jars in less advanced times, and it’s probably the hallmark of a full blown survivalist to be able to make-do without a fair level of fabrication capabilities. Leastwise, that’s my line of thought.

Basically you’d probably have to make a recipe and two? items for each kind of container you want, and then make a standard that can draw from sourdough starters regardless of the container they’re in for recipes using a requirement. Leastwise that’s what I can see.

I’ve got a new question. I’ve modded in some alternate recipes for some of the seeds, to allow a wilderness player with no farms in the world ways to obtain a variety of seeds. However, the new recipes seem to overwrite the basic ones (just cutting up the food item to get the seeds). I’ve tried putting the mod files in a mod folder and I’ve tried putting them in the base game files, but no matter what I do, they remove the base seed crafting recipes. How can I add a secondary recipe for an item without losing the original one? I know I’ve seen multiple recipes for the same item in game.

EDIT: AHA! I think I solved it. If I put an “id suffix” on my custom recipes, they no longer overwrite the vanilla ones. Phew!