What are all of the tools?

[Shadrok]

Velium Smithy Hammer

Heh ... just found this thread.
Very early, Kyroskane asked what recipes this hammer is for.

It is used to convert velium weapons into small bricks and pieces of velium.

[Gaell Stormracer]

In a lot of recipes, the tool is what differentiates a particular recipe from another. This is a consequence of the original EQ way of doing combinations, where you put random items into a combine container, and hit combine... and in the old days, if it it didn't match a valid "recipe", it destroyed everything.

It's probably time to move away from this to the "learned recipe" model or newer games, and the "new" tradeskill interface is a big step toward that. That would allow a lot of "tools" added purely for differentiating recipes to be scrapped, and probably reduce the workload on the EQ servers by quite a lot

As has been stated before, it really shouldn't be necessary to do the "remove all the ingredients from your inventory then return the results on your cursor" thing - yes, I know this is how EQ combines work, by destroying the old items and returning new versions - but it's again more pointless inventory fiddling. Return the result item(s) yes, but leave "tools" in inventory.

It's probably a bigger piece of work to fix all this than the "New Interface" took, though, and therefore will probably have to wait until spring 2008 at the earliest before the Coder team has any time to do anything like that.

One downside of this approach - no more "guess the recipe" things like the final ingredients of the BBC sandwich and the Solstice Earring recipes.

[Ngreth Thergn]

In a lot of recipes, the tool is what differentiates a particular recipe from another. This is a consequence of the original EQ way of doing combinations, where you put random items into a combine container, and hit combine... and in the old days, if it it didn't match a valid "recipe", it destroyed everything.

It's probably time to move away from this to the "learned recipe" model or newer games, and the "new" tradeskill interface is a big step toward that. That would allow a lot of "tools" added purely for differentiating recipes to be scrapped, and probably reduce the workload on the EQ servers by quite a lot

As has been stated before, it really shouldn't be necessary to do the "remove all the ingredients from your inventory then return the results on your cursor" thing - yes, I know this is how EQ combines work, by destroying the old items and returning new versions - but it's again more pointless inventory fiddling. Return the result item(s) yes, but leave "tools" in inventory.

It's probably a bigger piece of work to fix all this than the "New Interface" took, though, and therefore will probably have to wait until spring 2008 at the earliest before the Coder team has any time to do anything like that.

One downside of this approach - no more "guess the recipe" things like the final ingredients of the BBC sandwich and the Solstice Earring recipes.

It may be possible if we totally removed the experiment system to do that. BUT... it may not be possible because of quest combines.

What I am hoping for instead is a concept of tools as a secondary part of the combine, that way it can be removed from the recipe itself AND not need to be put "in" the container. So it never leaves your inventory, you just have to have it on you somewhere.

[Gaell Stormracer]

That would be well worth having

IMO, though, it would still be possible to move all the "real" tradeskill recipes from the "experiment" database into a "tradeskill" database driven by the TS containers, and still gain a big advantage in not having to try and match all of the thousands of possible recipes.

(On the other hand, I guess using a hash value, using a concatenation of the container ID and the components, sorted in item ID order, would probably only need a simple hash check and not take up much overhead at all).

[Caprich]

Experiment Mode Rules though. I always use it for expensive and 400+ skill combines

[Kemie Dreamshadow]

Left off the list -

Not on KyrosKrane's list was

Simple Sewing Needle

... used in tailoring armor templates.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

That's because thread necromancy is seriously bad form.

Simple Sewing Needles didnt EXIST when that thread was created... and now you bumped it.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

Oh crap now I just bumped it... AGAIN!

[Turlo Lomon]

Just finished reading all 6 pages of this (been out of the loop a bit and trying to get caught up).

Here are the major issues as I see them:

1) Bag space at a premium
2) Cycling tools are annoying.
3) Summoned bag of tools would be annoying.
4) The list of tools is incredibly long.

Personally, I would rather wait to have something done right then a rushed fix that will only cause more frustration when the process to re-fix it is needed in the future. After reviewing all of the posts, I think the tool-belt idea is optimal. To ease any exploits, I think the following process should be followed to allow ease of implementation.

Step 1: Remove tools from recipes, but still require them

All recipes are changed to remove the tool needed from the recipe. However, when attempting to create something (Armor X), you would get the message "This recipe requires A Smithing Hammer." unless you had the tool in your inventory. Once this has been done, and has been confirmed to work, the next portion of the fix can be worked on.

This part is a required pre-requisite for the Tool Belt. Without this functionality, it will be difficult to implement the next part.

Step 2: Review the recipes

Because of the massive changes to the recipe database, several things will be discovered during testing. There are certain recipes in the game (augments for Poison Making and Alchemy, certain Jewelry combines), that have re-usable ingredients that do not make sense.

It is at this point, through feedback from the tradeskill community, that recipes be reviewed, prices of ingredients adjusted (if it is decided that the item no longer re-usable), and some ingredients converted to tools and vice versa. This testing phase will require some time, but will allow for some additional realism, and making sure the system is working as intended.

Adjustments to the tradeskill changes made in Step 1 will be made after this analysis period, at the same time of the price changes. This will ensure that the recipes follow the first step logically, and that all tools are properly identified.

Step 3: Add Tool Belt functionality.

Similiar to "/keys", a player would use "/tools". The list of all tools they have will show up on the list. Additional flags should be added for the different skills. "/tools baking" will show only Baking Implements, etc.

How does a tool get added to the Tool Belt? Combine it by itself in the appropriate container. This will then add the tool to the Tool Belt, destroying the tool in the process.

When a combine is attempted, the Tool Belt is checked, then inventory, to see if the recipe valid. This way, shared tools (between characters) can still be done, or it can become dedicated to a specific character.

If the recipe is one that requires the tool to be combined (planing tool required for bait maker), it should still come up on the recipe as it is an ingredient for that recipe, not a tool.

Additional Benefits

What about tools that are used in more then one tradeskill?

I think that every tradeskiller would be more then happy about having to sacrifice a little bit of plat for additional functionality without a single complaint. Remember, in MMORGs, money sinks are good. This one would be more then acceptable to a majority, if not all, of the tradeskill population. Remember, you don't have to add the tool to your Tool Belt. It is an option, and one I would love.

How should NOTRADE, QUEST, LORE, etc. be handled?

Under this system, it shouldn't matter if the tools are expensive, quested, NOTRADE, quest specific, lore, or what have you. They could be flagged for the Tool Belt. Once they are flagged, they are out of the game.

What potentional money exploits are there?

Quite the opposite. There is a ton of opportunities to drain money from the ecnonomy, but this system would prevent players from receiving anything back. (Remember, this is a good thing in a MMORG!) Completionist players will try to get every tool in the game, even if they don't do tradeskills, and under this system, a few will be needed multiple times.

Final Analysis

This is a presentation of my dream system on how I would love to see this handled. I have tried to look at all angles on how this could be exploited, and I believe all bases have been covered, including the steps to implement.

[Aldier]

Fairly well written, and as you commented this is not something that should be quick fixed which if you go back and look at the dates on most of these posts, they are 2 years old or more and still nothing has been done. I wanted to address though one angle that you have I am sure looked at but perhaps underestimated.

Time.

Time is in my opinion the overwhelming hurdle that has prevented any real implementation of these ideas. To change EVERY recipe in the game that involves a tool. To adjust for certain recipes designed to consume the tools. To write the code necessary to implement the /tool functions and time for Ngreth, even if he wants to continue from these ideas to convince the higher ups that this is a large enough and necessary change to warrant persuing.

[Eggborn]

How about a Cookie Cutter ring? hehe Like a key ring. /cookiecutter

once you use the cookie cutter it goes on the ring and it shows up when you open your container to make that particular cookie.

or new cookie cutters for some of the nifty things we see running around lately.

I begged for shissar to be live for players! Riftseekers! Worgs! Naggy! We really need dragon shaped cookies!!!!!

/claim cookiecutter
with all sort of new shapes in the next expansion

Cookies are very popular during our raids. We have bakers who give them out to the nice and naughty children who attend.

PlAAAEEEZZEEEE?