Transcribing Recipes from Books

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

So, as it is now, as far as I know, you can no longer learn recipes from reading. In order to learn them you must actually craft them while in the presence of the book before memorizing them.

What if we had the option to transcribe the recipes from the book to a notebook of sorts, in addition to that?
Say, take the important steps required to make a certain thing and remove all of the excess fluff, background information, etc, and leave only the important main parts of the recipe.
You’d only be able to do this to recipes that are within your skill levels (or maybe even requiring a level higher than the recipe, for balance reasons) - this would represent requiring knowledge in order to properly condense the information, and having the background knowledge to properly follow the instructions already memorized.

Gameplay-wise, this would mean that you no longer have to drag around a bunch of recipe books to craft things you don’t know yet - you can get the books, transcribe the recipes, and toss them out, meaning you’d save on a lot of inventory space and be able to take the recipes with you.

It would be pretty handy, given that the option to memorize them by reading was removed. If it seems too good, maybe require a notebook per recipe book?

2

I think this is a pretty good idea. Maybe let players transcribe to an e-ink tablet too.

3

The gameplay point of you requiring books to craft a lot of things is so you make a dedicated crafting area. Just put a trunk or a pile of books next to where you make all of your things.

4

Adding the recepies to your e-ink would be amazing.

5

Agreed.

6

Honestly I’d rather just allow booklearning back…
Preferably even easier than before, maybe even automatic after one full book chapter (that is, the moment you finish reading a book, you get all the recipes you meet the requirements for).

I didn’t see a single person comment on book recipe learning with “yes, this is a good change”, but there was a lot of “just fucking why?”.

7

I think the new system is better; but that is mainly because it removes (some of) the RNG from learning recipes.

It was annoying having to repeatedly re-read a book in order to glean the one specific recipe you wanted from it before, now I can rest assured that my character can craft what’s in the book if they have the skill level.

That being said, this:

seems like a pretty good answer.

8

I would like a game option so Players can choose what effect Books have:

  • learn Skills and learn Recipes
  • learn skills and provide Recipes
  • provide Recipes only
9

What are these tablets actually for? I never worked it out.

Ditto the cameras.

Other than taking apart to get the electronics and lenses that is.

10

What are these tablets actually for? I never worked it out.

Ditto the cameras.

Other than taking apart to get the electronics and lenses that is.[/quote]

You can do this with them:

Basically a single recipe book, with an add music player, they are not very useful.

11

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:6, topic:12550”]Honestly I’d rather just allow booklearning back…
Preferably even easier than before, maybe even automatic after one full book chapter (that is, the moment you finish reading a book, you get all the recipes you meet the requirements for).

I didn’t see a single person comment on book recipe learning with “yes, this is a good change”, but there was a lot of “just fucking why?”.[/quote]

I’ll be that one person then. Today I accidentally lost my books after I set off a pipe bomb and a bunch of my recipes.

Annoying as it might have been, I really liked the fact that there were consequences to accidents.

12

Yeah, I like the book recipe change too. I played a wandering game, and deciding which book to keep and which one to discard was sometime difficult.

13

If we get the ability to add recipes to E-ink, I’d suggest we also have the ability to delete them as well. Just in case.

14

If we give half a shit about realism:
E-ink would have enough storage space to transcribe all recipes from all books the player could get. Meaning all it would take to remember things would be finding an E-ink, which is a common drop.

If we don’t care about realism:
Transcribing individual recipes would be tedious as fuck, so it would still be a better idea to allow instant transfer of all of them.
And since E-ink is a common drop, it would be better to just make it automatic instead of nagging the player with “you could transcribe the recipes but you need to haul that E-ink from your car to do that”.
Making E-inks uncommon wouldn’t really change things since by the time you haul books around, you have most uncommon-but-not-rare goods around.

15

E-inks aren’t that common. I’ve only found one on my 1-year-long survivor.

16

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:14, topic:12550”]If we give half a shit about realism:
E-ink would have enough storage space to transcribe all recipes from all books the player could get. Meaning all it would take to remember things would be finding an E-ink, which is a common drop.

If we don’t care about realism:
Transcribing individual recipes would be tedious as fuck, so it would still be a better idea to allow instant transfer of all of them.
And since E-ink is a common drop, it would be better to just make it automatic instead of nagging the player with “you could transcribe the recipes but you need to haul that E-ink from your car to do that”.
Making E-inks uncommon wouldn’t really change things since by the time you haul books around, you have most uncommon-but-not-rare goods around.[/quote]
Fair enough, but I for one don’t like the recipe clutter. Which is why I’d want a way to control the amount of recipes that I have to browse through. I’m an opportunist. I rarely seek out individual recipes but rather try to make the most out of the ingredients that I have, so I end up browsing the recipe list and think “Let’s see what I could make”. And then I extend that exploration and start looking at the recipes that I can’t craft, trying to spot something nice that would only require one additional ingredient. And that’s when I’m faced with all the recipes I’m never going to touch.

Food and cooking present the same challenge, but the difference is cooking is a recurring event, and that’s when I’m faced with the spam more so than before.

All that being said, present multiple choices, such as

  1. Copy all recipes from a book
  2. Copy all recipes from all carried books
  3. Copy all recipes from all nearby books
  4. Copy recipe
  5. Delete recipe
  6. Delete all recipes (Are you really, REALLY sure?)

I mean, I quietly wanted a way to “forget” recipes. But this E-Ink could be the perfect solution for recipe control. It won’t stop recipe spam from acquired skills but it’s still MUCH better than nothing.

Also, if we go down this recipe copying line, then there are few other devices that could capture written word, such as cameras (and pen&paper). If smartphones ever make an appearance, they should have a camera too. Or is the assumption that the tablet includes a camera? Do they often? I wouldn’t know.

How about a trait called Photographic Memory or Eidetic Memory - memorize recipes instantly at will. Could be a CBM too.

Then you’re not looking in the right places, assuming you were actively looking for one, instead of just waiting to run across one. I mean, there’s a difference between waiting to find one and looking for one. You could go grab one in a day with a little bit of reckless driving, or nighttime sneaking. Chosen gameplay settings are a factor too (zombie count, evolution rate, item drop rate).