Instead however, to post a smol thing I managed to find the mood to work on instead, a WIP couple of ideas for Arcana.
Self-PRing to tinker with this intermittently, since I'd like to do a bit more testing with this and work on mod_tileset sprites too:
https://github.com/chaosvolt/cdda-arcana-mod/pull/225* Added alchemical recipe for black gunpowder. Uses the same basic toolset as transmuting base metal into silver or gold, including use of red potion as a component. Other components include salt, wood ash, sand, and a flame talisman. Basically makes it a sidegrade to the standard vanilla way to make blackpowder. You have super easy toolset but materials that are mostly purely luck to get ahold of, vs. more investment in a basic forge and alchemy setup to be able to produce gunpowder via an alternative material setup.
* Added elemental blast canisters. Basically grenade-like weapons using one of the elemental talisman items. Each one has fairly constrained blast radius but focuses on elemental damage (for the BN version, DDA version is stuck using regular vanilla janky explosive power). Damage is based not only on the implied energy content of the talisman used, but on an additional essence added to the recipe. Other components include things you'd expect to be relevant to making what would be a primitive incendiary weapon if not for the arcane addition.
Todo:
* Test that estimated conversation rate between BN elemental shrapnel and DDA explosion power generates close enough to comparable results.
* Make sure blast radius is same for DDA version.
* Add mod_tileset sprites.