I find myself using it via Genesis, for more fun in the adventure mode, though I considered fiddling with it on it's own first. I've enjoyed working with it quite a bit! ^_^ Starting out with an elfy who has nothing but a knife or spear and grass-made outfitting, and working up to having leather and bone armoring, a bow personally made, dozens of arrows, a bone-spike covered leather and wood shield... It's a pretty nifty mental image, as well as fun to play.
In Genesis, I find however that no matter if it's dwarf or elf that I run, the gloves and gauntlets made -never- are allowed for wearing, even if stripped naked to preclude layer-size issues. Odd that. I also noticed a lack of leggings in both versions. (Something I'll be trying out my addition of shortly.)
An idea I've been kicking around for metal involvement is giving me trouble. I know there's 'ANY_<X>_MATERIAL' tokens for a lot of things, but I didn't see one specifically for metals. Making me wonder if METAL_ORE would cover it, but I'd wager not..
Anyways, the idea is this. The ability to take 1-3 pieces of wood + 1-2 metal items, and melt them down to a component 'metal bar'. Then use 3-5 of them to make other things, such as metal arrowheads and spearheads, daggers... and even more to try and make bigger weapons and armor. Ridiculous amounts even, to make it have the faintest hint of balance. This would let one recycle things you consider 'trash gear' into useful stuff, especially if you've been using dfusion to arm your companions with things you make.
My problem so far is that I cannot figure out a way to limit things to finished metal items, and I'm loathe to think about how quirky-bad it'd get if truly any item could be used.. I reallly don't think a leather greatsword is a good plan. ^_^ The other hiccup to the semblance of balance would be, even if setup proper, that you could get full bars from coins.
Anyhow, I'm not sure you'd have interest in this idea either, as your crafting fits better with a tribal feel overall.. but I for one could really go for some metal work.
A thought for edged weapons. Consider making ones that require teeth (and more than one stack) and wood. Various cultures have done wooden weapons with teeth embedded along an edge to make something that rips and tears nastily. We're still in the area of things that really are lacking against armor, but it's just another idea to play with.
As you've already got the plant-gathering doing it, maybe the woodcutting should work with multiple wood types and chances? Yes, it'll seem a little 'hokey' on the surface to find pine and Glumprong both in one go, but still, the variety of materials could be good.
Another thought is whether or not more bow types could be put in. Again, the matter of being able to better define the required pieces and make them take actual effort and hunting around seems to be an issue there. Perhaps requiring particular 'grade' of creature parts to help make, if that can be checked for? While I don't -personally- see a way to easily do that, the end result would be something like requiring the collect wood to turn up some -specific- log types (low chance ones), then some specific plant->thread, as well as something like <monster> (high grade) intestines (for stringing) and leather (for wrapping the staves of the bow in places). Without the allowance to require higher grade though.. There'd be no way to slow down getting it at all.
Anywho, those were just some thoughts on my mind. I noticed the nudge at Alchemy planning. Makes me wonder if you can play with the liquids to make things of syndrome type that would do temporary stat/skill alterations, like a brew to increase pain tolerance. Never looked at that before.
- Shirra
- Yay, broke my 2.5 years-without-posting finally!