De-Wikification Suggestion

[Zourin]

The crafting system is great, and has a lot of potential. However, it suffers a little bit in that there is very, very little guidance on the wide variety of options available to the player. Most people are certainly not going to simply stumble on the 'make tent' button. It's a little frustrating watching a half-dozen youtubers (likely the very best advertisement you can get) running around eating raw ramen and vegetables when you put in recipes and microwaves to make them (appropriately) better.

 

I would suggest expanding many of the existing 'skill books' to also include 'soft unlocking' recipes for the player to experiment with. Players can still make cheese sandwiches and barricades, but the basic skill books would have a reference for players to see what materials are required (or even that you need a particular tool in-hand) so they can make better survival decisions.

 

Obviously, this also makes those skill books valuable (for their effect as well as reference), and collectable. Another, non-skill series (eg, a zombie survivalist) could cover some of the more esoteric combinations like wilderness survival and weapon recipes.

 

The general idea is that the wikia pages shouldn't be a must-read (helpful and supplimental, but I shouldn't have to go there to find out how to cook soup), and to bring the depth of what the game offers to the surface of the player experience. It encourages exploration, volume collection (and volumes could be valuable to NPC's as well), and an engaging way for newer players to realize that, hey, maybe they could make a cup of tea.

[harakka]

I'd suggest something that goes even further than this: for anything fairly obvious (such as cooking ramen, or a cup of coffee, or even a tent or a campfire), you should see the full recipes, with all the items listed that you currently don't have, whenever you right click on any item that is part of such recipe.

 

From a realism standpoint it doesn't make much sense that your character doesn't know how to cook ramen, or make a fire, unless you as a player go on the Internet to find out, or discover it for yourself. It doesn't make much sense that you'd need to find a book to show you how, either. Books make sense for anything more advanced though.

[nuget102]

What about something similar to what the recipe mod does? The one that lets you see all the recipes? Instead as you discover recipes or read books that contain new recipes you unlock them, and they appear in the book. That keeps the right click menu from being crowded with "Make __" when you don't have the items for it. I tend to use the right click menu a lot so it's something I don't want to be all that crowded

[GSC]

Good idea, I approve. Make skill books unlock crafting recipes (corresponding to their type and difficulty) to show people what they need to make X, without "cheating" by looking up recipes outside the game.

 

And yes, make very basic recipes (e.g. cheese sandwich) known to the player from the start.

 

We should also keep the current "show it when you have all the ingredients" system, so that recipes can be figured out by experimentation. It seems realistic to me that you manage to make a decent soup or figure out how to craft a makeshift tent if you have the ingredients and try.

[SchmannD]

First i was switching windows regulary to the wiki page http://www.pzwiki.net/wiki/Crafting.

 

But after browsing this awesome forum i found the great "Crafting helper" mod.

http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/1151-craft-helper-11/

 

Just rightclick an item and see if it's "craftable" with any other item.  Thanks to peanuts for his mod!