Don't get me wrong, it's far better than most games, but I see the potential for it to be better. If you take a look at all the crafting methods the game has, the one that really stands out is bag/Hammer and Nail crafting and there is a reason for that. It has a lot of different aspects to it that determine how well you do as well as a lot of customization options. There's a way and good reason to practice it and get better because of the consequence of breaking material. The next crafting type that stands out after Hammer and Nail is Blacksmithing. This is because it has a lot of the same qualities that Hammer and Nail does. It has a few aspects to it that determine how well you do, lots of customization, and ways to get better with both the mechanics of it, and with the Blacksmithing skills you can get. The difference, and the reason why it doesn't stand out as much, is because there isn't as much of a reason to get better at it. There is no consequence for doing bad and no reward for doing good. The only thing that you really need to "improve" with Blacksmithing is getting the ember composer skill so Valyan's high heat up time and quick cooling time is easier to deal with. Third in line would be Carpentry. It's has less customization then either Blacksmithing or Hammer and Nail. It's carried heavily by what you put on it on the Blacksmithing side which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but being able to do more would be nice. It does have a consequence for messing up, but compared to Hammer and Nail it is far easier to avoid and is less effective because of how you can pull off the wood and get most of it back. Now the thing that really drags down Carpentry is that there isn't much of an incentive to. The most you'll get out of it is a bit more durability for your tool/weapon if you use a stronger wood. A lot of the time it's just not worth the hassle. Not only do you need to procure the wood, you will want a good hammer and as most people use golden hammers for Hammer and Nail crafting, they'll need a new hammer dedicated to Carpentry. Not only is there not enough incentive to get good at it, a lot of the time there isn't even an inventive to do it at all and just stick with oak. Finally I want to cover Cooking and Soups. Soup Cooking is probably the most complex crafting type in the game with all the different types of food items, whether they're cooked or not, the buffs they give, and the garlic n salt as seasonings. The basis of Soup is solid, the problem comes in when after you make the soup. First there's no easy way to see how strong of an effect a soup gives you. for most of the effects you either have to look in console or with the use of practical tests. Example would be attacking a friend to see the difference in damage buff, or time time yourself going from one place to another. Second there is no way to travel with a lot of soup that isn't hugely inconvenient. You can have a couple gourds but that won't be enough for most trips, especially if you're traveling in a party, and barrel bags are highly ineffective at best, being able to both get more in the form of gourds in a hoarders, and more general storage for the same liquid storage. ie barrel bag holds around 10 bottles worth, while a hoarders can hold 32 bottles worth with 16 gourds without even needing to use any of the side pouches. Final note, while more of a minor issue, there's little risk of messing up soup and nothing much you can improve on Now, all I've done so far is just point out the issues that I see with crafting, and this is labeled as a suggestion so let's get into that part of this. I will break things up into and Idea, a more abstract concept, and a suggestion which will be something more concrete. If also have any ideas feel free to add them and discuss in the comments BLACKSMITHING SUGGESTION My idea is to add an additional prosses that is optional that will reward the player with more durability and damage if they complete it successfully. So the normal forging prosses with still be available without any additional risk, and if someone want to try to get something better out of it then they can do that additional step. To balance this you can lower the base damage of weapons, and make it so you can get more damage than you could before if you want to risk damaging your blade. My suggestion for this idea is a quench prosses. The player needs to hammer out the blade but not quite enough to fully flatten out the blade, and as long as a section of the blade isn't too thick, too thin, and there isn't too much of a difference in thickness in the blade, they can take it to the water crate and quench it to finish the prosses. The thinner you get the blade at the end the better the buff it gets. if done wrong then the blade could either break entirely, or it could be taken down a stage in durability and not gain those benefits. CARPENTRY SUGGESTION My idea to incentivize improving in Carpentry would be to add something optional similar to my Blacksmithing idea. My suggestion to this idea would be that you get either a minor boost in durability, in the case of handles, or additional amount of items, in the case of items like bowls, if you craft without the recipe. Gives the player a reason to learn Carpentry more and is already something you can do in the game My idea to incentivize using more types of wood is to create more things to do with them My first suggestion for this idea is the ability to create sort of composite materials. Similar to how the alloys work, you would put two different types of wood on the lathe. Say a walnut handle with redwood core, or even the ability to use metal as a core Bonus Idea, what if certain wood types had different abilities that they either have intrinsically or could be "processed" with other materials to gain those abilities for the cost of some durability. example, redwood getting the quickdraw ability that the hebios handles have. COOKING SUGGESTION My idea for telling how strong the buff is to have some way in game that gives you an idea My suggestion for this is to have a shimmer in the soup to tell you the kind of buffs it has and the brighter the shimmer has the stronger the buff is. For example, you have a soup that has health and speed with the speed being stronger, you'll see simmers or particles of red and blue in the soup, but the blue is brighter than the red. it should also have something like a foil effect, like a pokemon foil card so you don't run into issues where the color of the soup is too similar of a color to the shimmer To tackle the storage problem, my idea is to add something in-between gourds and a barrel bag that holds liquid, and to also let the barrel bag hold more. My suggestion for this is a new side pouch, like a water skin that you can put on a side pouch slot for your bag than you can then grab and use like a normal bottle/gourd. Since it's a side pouch attachment then it should only be grabbable by the player holding the back and teleport back to the slot when dropped.
