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September 5, 2001
Crafting Overhaul Update
The following was posted to the UO Boards today by Designer Vex:I just wanted to take a moment and post some updates to the crafting system overhaul:
1> Cooking will be included in the new menu system. The tools will be:
* Skillet - this is a renamed frypan (to preserve the rarity of any existing frypans, and any existing frypans will not be usable as cooking tools)
* Flour Sifter
* Rolling Pin
Players will be able to once again turn wheat sheaves into sacks of flour. This will be done through the cooking menu. The player must be near a flour mill.
2> New Tools:
All the new tools added with this update (above cooking tools, fletcher's tools, mapmaker's and scribe's pens) will be available on appropriate NPCs (cooks, mapmakers, scribes, bowyers). The new tools will also appear as "newbiefied" starting equipment for characters who start with these skills. All of these new tools will wear out and break. Exceptionally crafted versions of these tools made by player tinkers will last longer than normal or NPC-bought ones.
3> Material Handling:
If all the materials required to make an item are located in the same subcontainer in the player's backpack, the resulting item will be placed in that subcontainer.
For tailoring, tinkering, blacksmithy (and any future craftables where the item created can obtain properties of materials used), there will be a toggle to target materials. For blacksmithy and tinkering, this option will be an additional item on the Metal Selection menu. When the Target Material option is selected, the player receives a targeting cursor and is prompted to target material to be used. The material targeted must be in the player's backpack.
4> Jewelry
The bug that allows the creation of items with names like "a 10000 diamonds necklace" is not going to be part of the revamped crafting system. It is important to note that even though the entire description of the stack of gems (including the number) was previously included in the name of the crafted piece of jewelry, only one gem was consumed from the stack when a piece of jewelry was made from it.
Currently, the plan is to not fix those items and leave the names un-localized. Please note that while this bug is going away, tinkering is gaining the ability to make different colored pieces of jewelry.
5> Cartographers will be able to use blank scrolls as materials for mapmaking.
6> The repair feature will not at this time be added to any new craft skills. With this overhaul, craft skills are limited to repairing only item types that they can create. This means that blacksmiths will lose the ability to repair heavy crossbows.
We will carefully evaluate the repair feature for staves and wooden shields (by carpenters), leather armor (by tailors) and bows (bowyers). The largest concern (but not the sole one) is that the inability to repair items affects the design of the magic weapon loot tables. Magic bows are much more common than other magic weapon types, due to the fact that players can't repair bows.
7> New Craftables
New craftables are not at this time being added to the system, with the exception that the new tools mentioned here and elsewhere will be craftable by tinkers. Furthermore, no skill requirements are being changed, nor are any skill gain rates or material requirements.
8> Multi-Make
It's important to note that the "multi-make" feature will only work for items that can already be created in bulk. This includes:
Turning logs into boards
Turning wood into shafts
Making crossbow bolts and arrows
Cooking stackable raw meat
The section of the original "In Concept" post that indicated the inclusion of "Make 1", "Make 10", "Make 100", and "Make All" options will be altered. There will be no option to specify any quantities. Instead, for any "multi-make" item, the Information Window will indicate that the item is multi-make, and an attempt to make the item will attempt to make as many as possible using the materials available in the player's backpack.
Current skill gain behavior is being maintained with multi-make items. For example, you currently get larger skill gains in bowcraft/fletching when you make larger stacks of bolts and arrows at once. This behavior will remain unchanged.
9> Static Add-Ons
Static items are those features that are a built-in part of the world, stored in the statics.mul file used by the client and server. Currently, support for static items as crafting add-ons is sporadic; for example, blacksmithy can use static forges and anvils as well as dynamic ones, but cooking only supports the use of dynamic fire sources. With this change, static as well as dynamic add-ons will be supported for all crafts.
Posted by Hazard [EiC] at September 5, 2001 1:53 PM