... Crafting?

Now that life has normalized to a degree, I find myself back here. I didn't realize it, but apparently IVAN had released a brand new version in 2020.

So here I am, staring at the controls again. I've played through this game so many times; but now I'm learning that there's all this new stuff involved. There's a *crafting* system now? How does this work, exactly?

Press F to open a crafting menu, then you can use F1 to get help for the individual options.

You will to dismantle some items for raw materials, and then you can use these to create other items. Finding a forge and anvil for metalcrafting, or workbench for other types of materials helps.

The one I've used most is "extract poison". In my experience, making actual items at a forge is incredibly time-intensive.

I actually didn't know the crafting system was functional. I was under the impression that it was very early into development. Might give it a try next run!

I have never used it... poison extraction sounds useful though

I do like that you can play the game without touching crafting if you want.

Based on what I can see, crafting is pretty time consuming: you need to have a lot of food to make certain things. Though, it does let one do some particularly interesting things: such as create katanas (Which based on what I know are currently only available as artifact weapons) or make weapons with stronger shafts (Though I'm not sure what the point is for that.)

I've been thinking about the crafting system. Well, hypothesizing internally about it's practical uses. As I see it, the best thing about the crafting system, is its ability to conserve material. There's little value in crafting a pig iron sword - before long you'll find one made of steel, and all the effort you put into the pig iron sword is lost. Selling it is doubtless going to be worth less money than selling the items you cannibalized to make it.

The value, I think, will be in turning otherwise-useless-for-your-character items (such as swords for a mace-wielder, shields for a polearm user, or plate armor for a player character), which are made of powerful materials into more useful forms. Find a nice mithril battle axe? Break it down, maybe you can reforge it into a war hammer. Pick up an arcanite shield? Sounds like an ingredient for an arcanite halberd. Maybe, if you disassemble it into smaller lumps, that adamantite plate armor can be dragged to the anvil and remade into literally anything else.





As a side note, having a semi-replenish-able source of poison has led to me actually using poison more. Not that I had a shortage of it before, but I usually would forget it was there or save it for when I need it (I never did) and end up using it to put out my scrolls after I stepped on a landmine.

Also, I suddenly find myself considering using crafting to create bottles out of metal.

So I finally had a game where I was actually able to craft things. I started trying after this thread. The biggest barrier is food - if you don't know Seges, it can be hard to keep yourself fed while hammering out items... and even then, you might get hungry faster than your prayer timer. The second barrier is tools. While you're guaranteed to find a forge in the UT, you are NOT guaranteed to find a hammer. I had to make due with a broken warhammer I found. Materials, I've found, are no trouble at all - in fact, disassembling unwanted items as you go is a convenient way to keep them out of monster hands. You can then leave the lumps and sticks wherever you want, and monsters can't put them to use; this keeps them from cluttering up your inventory while making sure they're not a danger to you later.

So anyways, here's what I've learned.

1) Hammering on the anvil causes tiny explosions. I recalled some time past that this would occasionally destroy the anvil - I don't know if this is still the case, though, and it didn't happen to me.
2) These explosions can - and will - damage and light on fire anything nearby. Don't leave books or scrolls on the floor by the anvil while you're working. (Unclear if they'll light things in your inventory.) They WILL break walls.
3) Using broken tools slows crafting. You are warned of this when beginning. Not sure how much that impacts your work. I'm also not sure if using a warhammer makes any difference, as opposed to a normal hammer.
4) Oh yeah, you need tools. You need a hammer to work metal on the anvil, you need a knife to extract poison... and possibly to work cloth-like materials.
5) Disassembly sometimes requires tools. Some items, like axes and polearms, can be dismantled with your bare hands. Others, like maces, require a knife, and still others like swords must be done at the forge.1
6) I'm not sure if this is because of using a broken tool, but every item I produced (two copper gauntlets, two fairy steel beast claws, an iron full helm) was finished in a "broken" state.
7) Crafting does not (currently?) include a "repair" option.
8 ) It doesn't seem very clear how many ingots of material are required to create an item. This is complicated by the fact that ingots of different sizes will stack together.

Yeah, that is quite unclear in game.

When you craft any item, you need the item's volume in crafting material. Eg. a long sword has a total volume of 175 cm3, so you will need 175 cm3 of whatever material you are using to craft it. Ingots can vary in size, and different materials have different density, so you can't really tell by the weight of ingots. But I think you can go to options and turn on showing item volume.

Believe it or not, you don't need exclusively a hammer for crafting. It seems like almost any sort of blunt instrument works: as I was able to use a mace.