Thoughts on gem mining and buffing the different industries

[jordancoles]

We were talking about the latest update and the industries on stream yesterday

https://clips.twitch.tv/RenownedTastyLegTwitchRPG

What would you all like to see happen with industries/professions (Fisher, forager, etc) to make them more relevant in the mid-late world?

[Fierce_Deity]

For foragers to become relevant or even viable then more value has to be given to what comes from the wilds. Everything in the game pretty much leads people away from foraging, as its the least efficient way to get most things. The qualities for foraged items are never all that high, there are few unique recipes involving foraged items, and people still don't really know if there is some fate system at work or not. Exploration isn't super useful for many aspects of crafting. I guess the question is, should foraging even be changed so that its relevant to other industries? More rare items won't fix foraging, nor will increased spawns of forageable goods, and ramping up the qualities is definitely a poor idea. Foraging is a early game task to get players off their feet and provide happy surprises now and then for adventurous players, I just can't consider foraging as an industry. I like foraging, but i'm not convinced much is actually wrong with it.

As for fishing, I do consider this an industry...just not at the moment. It certainly needs more to it to have any impact. Plenty of ideas out there have suggested traps and what nots, which might be okay as a mid-world source of fish. I think what fishing needs is a way to farm them. What I have in mind is a structure we could build from stone, clay, dirt, (something valuable, etc. The structure would be a large pond, but you would be unable to swim or enter it. Standing on the outside to fish from it would be the extent of interacting with it. After being built the pond would be empty, and would have to be filled with water manually, barrel by barrel. Then players can stock the pond with live fish(that are caught in traps perhaps?). The pond can work a bit like a chicken coop, and have a food meter. Maybe water levels should decrease too, peh. To get fish from the pond, you likely would just have to fish them out, which would lower the population of them.
That ideas rambled enough, the gist is there. Can farm specific fish, raise qualities, but pond fishing will never yield rare curios,rare fish(should be added), and maybe not allow for certain fish to be raised in it.

Gem mining seems okay, little early to make many calls on that.

[azrid]

For foraging you need very few stats right now. There is no high lvl foraging.
It feels like an ancient relic from legacy that was nerfed to the ground.
Needs more things to pick up simply put. At higher levels of perc*exploration there should be some real valuable things to go after.

[_Gunnar]

I feel like all three of the requirements for nomad, as well as nomad itself, needs a lot of work to stay relevant.

Fishing: some more powerful recipes is all that is needed! The ones that exist are a bit meh. I don't like the idea of adding fish farms, tbh - its not very thematic.
Also, fishing becomes very easy once you get high q equipment - it would be nice if it required a bit more skill knowing the system (i.e., just increase the importance of the equipment types )

Foraging: I feel like there need to be some tedious to collect things that are valuable, like cavebulbs, rare curios, etc. They aren't at all essential for larger villages, but it means trading with newer players is at least somewhat important. The last update partially removed this, sadly.

Hunting: If satiations are reworked, and less avoidable with drinks, I guess game sausages would also become much more important. Also it would be nice if there were more gildings/equipment that required specific hides or finebone, to create more demand for high quality wild animals. Possibly adding more curios like the teddies, that require farmers as well as hunters, would be good too.

Nomad: We have a credo but this lifestyle is not supported at all. Maze has some great threads about this.

[SacreDoom]

I think that gems are actually a rather reasonable reward for undertaking the comparatively risky work of mining, and yes, they're a very good way to incentivise mining as a profession on top of everything else that mining/smithing gets already. Mining is rather unique, however, in the sense that it really is the only profession that puts itself actively at risk, and thus the large reward is justifiable, to some extent. What's problematic is that farming and foraging is not dangerous, as nothing in the game currently really actively challenges the farmer and the forager.

Another point is that mining and smithing are moreso self-contained industries than lumbering, fishing or farming and foraging is. Obviously the smith is reliant on wood from the farmer as much as the farmer is reliant on metal from the smith, but it's through mining and smithing that most end-game stuff is produced. I think introducing an element of danger to the other professions could help justify them also producing worthwhile items that could rival what the miners and smiths produce. A few suggestions are included, in this case for foraging, since I believe this is the profession that needs it the most.

Nature Sprites/Imps

I think some (if not all) foraged items should have a chance to trigger spawning a gnomelike, impish creature which is essentially an anthropomorphised version of its corresponding forageable. These could act in a multitude of ways, for example:

More primitive/scaredy ones could become scared by the player, trying to run away, allowing the player to try to catch them and use the sprite as a sort of supercharged version of their normal, corresponding forageable... or perhaps let them go in exchange for a reward similar to the ones the intelligent ones give, or keep them as pets, if they're cute.

Aggressive ones could attack the player as they spawn, leading to a fight. Slaying these sprites could lead to the player butchering them and taking a unique item from their corpse, in the same manner as above.

More intelligent ones could greet the player in a friendly manner, offering to give/craft them an item unique the that type of sprite, in exchange for doing them a favour (i.e. give the player a quest), escorting them or simply taking a stroll with them through the forest/plains, their presence amplifying your foraging abilities leading to increased/more frequent output, doing a recreational activity with them such as smoking pipes, dancing or playing music with them for a good, temporary buff, etc. Angering or scaring the sprite by doing things wrong or trying to attack it could lead to it changing behaviour and instead acting like the ones above. These could potentially either be temporary figures, disappearing after the player does their bidding, or they could become more permanent ones, staying at a location for a while after the player finds them, the same sprite then popping up later, randomly, during foraging, allowing the player to create a more solid relationship with the sprite, leading to friendships, tying into the systems that Jorb and Loftar have mentioned that they have been working on for the current quest givers. Allowing them to be more tangible creatures that aren't exclusive to a certain player, but are instead shared, would hopefully lead to players trying to protect these sprites in order to reap their benefit and further their friendships with them.

Which types are aggressive and which types are friendly could be dictated by which type of forageable it is, or every forageable could just have the behaviour of the given sprite dictated at spawn, and perhaps scale the size of the model according to their behaviour.

An example of the visual I'm imagining:



High-end, more obscure forageables

Exploring is fun, but with all forageables acting pretty much the same, it can get a bit dull. Making the forageables that require the player to be aware of their surroundings and do other things than simply walking up to the plant and picking it could be more fun.

One possibility could be things like insects. These are already kind of in the game, like the stag beetle, or the itsy bitsy spider, however, the stag beetle, while good, is very limited in where it spawns, and the itsy bitsy spider is just not very viable. I propose buffing the spider, and adding more items like it; ticks, insect eggs, cocoons, snails, butterflies, etc. These could all have different behaviours; butterflies perhaps be sitting on trees or other forageables and start flying when you get near, unless you sneak up on them, a la Animal Crossing, while a tick may bite itself onto you, appearing on your character model, and you would have to right-click on it to pull it off to avoid getting wounds and gaining a curio in the process (perhaps a pair of tweezers could be crafted to help in this purpose), trees could have birds nests that fall out when the trees are harvested or felled, leading to the player finding unique eggs, seeds or perhaps even lost trinkets and baubles (Runescape style), and so on.

Having forageables which can only be found at specific periods of the day, like the lady's mantle, are also a good idea. If weather is added at some point, this could support it even further.

All in all, I guess you could boil the latter down to " we need more forageables", but I felt like including it as well.

[jordancoles]

Cool ideas lads