Modify recipe-from-book mechanic

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

So learning recipes now can be a total PITA. Especially the higher level ones; there are tons of them (I’m looking at you, lab journals with EVERY MUTAGEN AND SERUM), each individual attempt takes a notable amount of time, and might have a low percentage chance of actually yielding a recipe. So I propose that books no longer directly teach you recipes; instead, characters track which books they’ve spent over an hour understanding* and recipes auto-learn when you’ve got appropriately high skills and have spent an hour reading a book for each prerequisite.

This system both cuts down on the time needed to learn recipes, allowing characters who are only reading for the recipe to read a book for just an hour then discard it, and it also allows for multi-book prerequisites.

In addition, it allows for special hidden information in books by removing the clear listing of each and every recipe, which was a counterargument against listing the recipes in the first place. Leave the coloration system in place as it is; books with skill boosts are blue, books with recipe info are yellow, books with no info are gray. However, instead of listing the recipes in the description, include something along the lines of “Has information needed to craft <basic, intermediate, advanced> <mechanical, electronic, chemical> items.”

Take for example mutagens:

[spoiler]Mutagen(basic)
Prereq1 {Chemistry Textbook, Advanced Physical Chemistry} (Basic chemistry techniques; would be needed for all advanced chemistry recipes. Reading EITHER of these fulfills the prerequisite.)
Prereq2 {Chemical Reference - CLASSIFIED} (Cutting-edge chemical information; necessary for all mutagens)

Plant Mutagen
Prereq1 {Chemistry Textbook, Advanced Physical Chemistry}
Prereq2 {Chemical Reference - CLASSIFIED}
Prereq3 {Lab Journal l-xp} (Includes information specific to this mutagen)

Raptor Serum
Prereq1 {Chemistry Textbook, Advanced Physical Chemistry}
Prereq2 {Chemical Reference - CLASSIFIED}
Prereq3 {PE070 - “Raptor”}
Prereq4 {Best Practices for Compound Delivery} (How to distill mutagen into serum)

Note that these lists aren’t intended to be exhaustive. I know there are other places to learn the mutagen recipe than the Chemical Reference.[/spoiler]

*Reading with a skill level greater than the minimum skill needed to learn from the book.

2
instead, characters track which books they've spent over an hour understanding* and recipes auto-learn when you've got appropriately high skills and have spent an hour reading a book for each prerequisite.

I like this one A LOT but I want the recipes listing to stay.

3

[quote=“Zireael, post:2, topic:4783”]

instead, characters track which books they’ve spent over an hour understanding* and recipes auto-learn when you’ve got appropriately high skills and have spent an hour reading a book for each prerequisite.

I like this one A LOT but I want the recipes listing to stay.[/quote]

I don’t see a reason it can’t be mixed, actually. Have some recipes listed but secret ones remain unlisted.

4

That would be perfect, actually.

5

Maybe it’s just me but in my experienced I’ve been able to get the vast majority of the recipes on my first try with the appropriate books.

6

I haven’t read the code, but my experience is that your intelligence and/or the relevant skill in the category influence the chance of getting the skill. If you try to get mutagens at cooking level 7 or so, you’re gonna have a really low chance of getting the recipe. Grind some cooking xp and try again at level 20, then you’ll have much better odds. Of course, there’s not much benefit to getting your cooking much past 9 except for, well, getting the recipes.

7

We’ve got plans for you to eventually be able to “research” things, with the ability to unlock new recipes through a combination of already learned knowledge and new research, but we just haven’t gotten around to it.

8

It might be nice to include some recipes known in professions.