Crafting System v1.10 Major Update

Greetings everyone.

A little over a week ago, I released a small update to this plugin to add better support for independent items, and as a footnote on that release, hinted that there'd be something with a bit more meat to it coming down the pipe shortly. Well this is that update, folks. I've been hard at work getting it to a basic level of functionality that was worth releasing, and it's finally there. And best of all, it's free. 

First of all, I have a couple of bugfixes from the last version to post, so we'll get those out of the way:

• Corrected an issue where non-independent items were no longer selectable from the item list window if there was already a non-independent item in the ingredient list.
• Corrected an issue where increasing the quantity of a non-independent item above an arbitrary value was impossible following the 1.09 update.
  • This would limit the quantity to 2 most of the time, but sometimes 3
• Corrected an issue where a partial recipe match would always always report that an independent item had been wasted, as if it were given as an extra item in the recipe.
• (revision a 10/29/2019) 
  • Modified the checks for independent items to actually look at the starting Id value from the YEP_ItemCore plugin parameters, rather than assume the default value of 3000.
• (revision b 10/29/2019 1900UTC) 
  • Armors and weapons set as additive ingredients now actually gain additive traits as intended
  • The project will no longer crash if a result item is not also an additive ingredient item.

Alright, with those out of the way, let's get into the meat of it.

In version 1.10 I have added a new layer to the crafting system. Additive Ingredients. A new plugin parameter allows you to designate certain items, weapons, and armors, as additive ingredients. This allows you to make use of a large number of new note tags for these ingredients specifically.

But what is an additive ingredient? An additive ingredient has special traits or effects on it that are passed on automatically to the result item when it is used as a crafting ingredient. These traits range from being parameter buffs, adding states, teaching skills, resisting elements, changing the result item's name or animation, and many other things that I'll list below. The main important thing about these traits is that they are not active on the ingredient item itself, they are unlocked on the result item.

So, let's use an example from the demo project (which hasn't been updated yet, though), that you're all likely familiar with. The Sword item. As a blacksmithing recipe, it takes two iron ingots and one leather to make, pretty simple stuff, really. Well, let's change that recipe slightly, and make the sword take 2 <metal ingots> and one leather to make, and then make the iron ingot part of the <metal ingot> ingredient category via a note tag. in the same way the cooked meat cooking recipe requires a <meat>, this sword now requires a <metal>.

There is no immediate difference, after all, we're still making a sword with iron ingots. The difference here now is that we can make multiple kinds of ingots that can also be used to make a sword. Gold, silver, steel, mythril, the list can be infinite, that is the point of using an ingredient category, after all. But in the old system, crafting a sword from different materials didn't do anything different, a sword made from mythril was still a sword.

The additive item traits are where this system really reaches it's stride. If we add the iron ingot to the list of additive ingredients, and give it a couple of additive traits like the following, we have a sword that is on the one hand, a sword like any other, but on the other a completely unique item:

<additive item traits>
ParamChange: ATK 2
name: prefix Iron
</additive item traits>

With this tag on our iron ingot, a sword made using iron will be named 'Iron Sword', and have 2 more attack than a regular sword. Make several different ingots with different traits on them, and you've got several different kinds of swords, all from one base item, and one recipe.

So, what kind of traits do these ingredients impart to the result item? Here is a list of all of the effects. The note tag information is contained in the help information of the plugin, I won't repost that here as it's just adding clutter to this already massive post.

• Change a parameter on the item by a flat amount (positive or negative)
• Add a trait to equipment that improves (or penalizes) a parameter by a %
• Add a trait to equipment that improves or penalizes an xparam by a %
• Add a trait to equipment that improves or penalizes an sparam by a %
• Add a trait to equipment that grants an attack element to the actor
• Clear all traits on an equipment that add an attack element to the actor wearing it
• Add a trait to an equipment that causes normal attacks to cause a state effect
• Remove all traits from an equipment that cause normal attacks to add a state effect 
• Add a trait to the equipment that grants a skill
• Remove all traits from an equipment that grant a specific skill
• Add a trait to the equipment that seals a specific skill
• Remove traits from an equipment that seals a specific skill
• Add a trait to the equipment that unlocks a specific skilltype for the actor wearing it
• Remove traits from an equipment that unlock a specific skilltype for the actor wearing it
• Add a trait to the equipment that seals a specific skilltype for the actor wearing it
• Remove traits from the equipment that sealed a specific skilltype
• Add a trait that makes the wearer immune to a state
• Remove existing traits on the item that made the wearer immune to a specific state
• Add a trait to equipment that modifies the wearer's resistance to a specific state
• Add a trait to equipment that modifies the wearer's resistance to a specific element
• Change the element of an item's on-use effect
• Reset the element of an item's on-use effect back to default
• Modify the Hp recovery of an item 
• Modify the Mp recover of an item
• Add Tp to the target of an item
• Add a state to the target of an item
• Remove an effect that adds a specific state to the target of an item
• Cure a state on the target of an item
• Remove an effect that curse a specific state from the target of an item
• Add an effect to an item that causes the target to learn a skill
• Remove an effect from an item that causes the target to learn a skill
• Add a buff to the target of an item
• Remove a buff on the target of an item
• Clear an effect that adds a buff to a specific parameter to the target of an item
• Add a debuff to the target of an item
• Remove a debuff on the target of an item
• Clear an effect that adds a debuff to a specific parameter to the target of an item
• Add an effect to the item that causes the target to permanently gain a bonus to a specific parameter
• Clear an effect on an item that raises a specific parameter permanently on the target
• Add a prefix to the name of an item/weapon/armor
• Add a suffix to the name of an item/weapon/armor
• Change the animation of a weapon, or the on-use animation of an item
• Reset the animation back to the default value of the base item.

As you can see, there are a lot of individual tags, for a wide variety of traits on weapons, armors, and items, but it doesn't cover all of the traits and effects items and equipment can have, I simply did not have enough time to include some of the more underused traits, so feel free to let me know if you'd like more.

One other thing worth mentioning about these traits is that they can be chained. I explain it a bit in the help documentation, but I'll go over it quickly here as well. Trait Chaining is what happens when a result item is also an additive ingredient item. Let's say you make a salad out of lettuce and tomatoes, and the lettuce is an additive item that grants some bonus hp% to the result item. The salad you craft will end up with better hp% on it than one you buy from an NPC, because of the additive traits of the lettuce. In the same vein, there could be another recipe that requires a salad to make it, and the salad itself could also have a hp% additive trait on it. This trait is boosted by the traits of the lettuce as well, meaning that a salad that was crafted will have a better hp% additive trait to pass on to that new item than one that was purchased.

To phrase it differently, let's say that the salad item always has an additive trait for hp + 20%. This means that any item that is crafted using a salad as an ingredient will have it's base hp% amount + 20% more. If our full meal item, which requires the salad has a base hp % of 35%, then crafting one will yield a full meal with hp + 55% (35% + 20% from the salad). However, we can also craft the salad, and in doing so, we add the hp + 5% from the lettuce ingredient to the salad, making the salad grant hp + 25%, and the full meal grant hp + 60% total instead.

All traits stack in this way, as long as the item is on the list of additive ingredients. Trait chaining gives an advantage to a player who crafts the individual ingredients needed to make an item, rather than buying or finding them. This also allows the player to use crafted items in new recipes, to continue to add more powerful traits to the next item in the chain.

That's all for this update. This was originally intended to be a simple feature add, but the scope of it quickly got out of hand. Ordinarily, something this complex would be better suited to a plugin extension, but by the time I'd realized the true scope of the work, it was too late to turn back.

Thanks for your support, and happy RPGMaking.

-Ramza