Difference between revisions of "Crafting Guide"

Latest revision as of 21:20, 7 May 2022

Please read: 'help crafting introduction,' 'help crafting guide,' 'help craft,' and 'help recipes' on the game/main website as well as the Coloring Guide here on the unofficial wiki.

• The full list of Arx materials, recipes, and recipe descriptions available for the creation of All The Things.

Also, important files viewable on the game:

'help crafters' - This is the lore file explaining what Crafters and the Crafters Guild are IC.

'help crafters ooc' - This is the rules file explaining the OOC aspects of what Crafters are and what they are not.

Quality & Factors

• Quality Levels (per Apostate on Info chan 07/05/18): 1 - mediocre, 2 - average, 3 - above average, 4 - good, 5 - very good, 6 - excellent, 7 - exceptional, 8 - superb, 9 - perfect, 10 - divine. 0 and below have no quality level that displays. Transcendent is not achievable by normal crafting rolls.

(Previously (2016-ish) had been noted as: Roll below 1/4th of the difficulty is poor -- up to 3/4ths of the difficulty is mediocre -- average is from .75 to 1.2 -- above average up to 1.6 -- good up to 2 times difficulty -- very good 2.5 -- excellent: 3.5 -- exceptional: 5 -- superb: 7 -- perfect: 10, divine, higher than that.)

• craft/finish - Every 10% of the total cost (value, which would be the materials cost + silver cost as via recipes) to create an item spent in extra, lowers the difficulty by 1. Up to a maximum of -10 difficulty.

• 12/27/16 - [Info] Tehom: Did something before I'm going to bed - I decided to put in stuff to make refining a lot less painful. It now remembers how many times a crafter has tried to refine a given item, and it gets easier for each successive attempt, -1 difficulty per try. Caps at 60 tries. Also, crafters can now crit refining rolls, a 5% chance to double the roll.

Skills & Abilities

Findable by typing 'xp':

• Alchemy skill --> apothecary ability
• Artwork skill --> no specific abilities
• Sewing skill --> tailor ability
• Smithing skill --> armorsmith, jeweler, weaponsmith abilities
• Tanning skill --> leatherworker ability
• Woodworking skill --> carpenter ability

In a nutshell and using smithing as an example, the skill is how well you bend the metal while the ability is what quality level of metal you can learn to work and bend.

Muse & Creationist, art2evennia (Coloring Programs)

Talen's awesome coloring program! From the author: I've made a few minor bug fixes and alterations to Muse to tide us over until my replacement program is out. You'll now notice there's the greyscale again, we use the | prefix instead of {, it doesn't have the annoying newline code at the end each time something is converted, the useless header bar is gone for some more screen space, the font is slightly larger, so on and so forth.

• Web-based: http://muse.arxmush.org
  • also available here: http://muse.arxgame.org and http://52.30.104.49/
• The Creationist Program: https://github.com/wyrdathru/TheCreationist

Sorrel's art2evennia program! From the author: The software works best on brightly colored art with a black background. You can set the width of the image and the character with which to create the ascii art. You don't even require an image, though. You can type and color by hand if you like. You can also import previously written art (if the colors are done with pipes(|) and not brackets). For additional accessibility, you can highlight areas of the art which should be hidden by <ascii> tags or toggle off areas that shouldn't have <ascii> tags by just highlighting them and hitting the ascii button again.

• Program releases: https://github.com/OddishDoggish/asciiArt/releases/
  • If you are not running Windows, you can download the 'artallthethings' file here: https://github.com/OddishDoggish/asciiArt/blob/v0.1.5/artallthethings.py and run it using Python.

ASCII Picture Websites

• http://www.ascii-art.de/ascii/
• https://www.asciiart.eu/
• http://ascii.co.uk/art
• http://www.oocities.org/spunk1111/index.htm#home
• http://www.chris.com/ascii/

Picture to Text Websites/Programs

• http://www.glassgiant.com/ascii/ (website)
• http://my.asciiart.club/ (website)
• https://www.text-image.com/convert/ascii.html (website)
• https://ascgendotnet.jmsoftware.co.uk/ (program - Thank you, Magpie!) -- Version 2.0.0 can be found here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/ascgen2/files/Executable/Ascgen2-2.0.0/
• http://www.jave.de/ (program) -- Version 6.0 can be found here: http://www.dropbox.com/s/xj9iyausi0oqgf5/jave_6.0_RC2.zip?dl=0
• https://arx.mythicus.net/piscii (convert images to color ascii and export to arx xTerm256 color code)

Description Help

Words

• Useful link for descriptions: https://www.words-to-use.com/ and from that
• https://www.words-to-use.com/words/clothing/ (thank you Lucita!)
• https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/

Colors/Gemstones

• Gem Stones: https://www.gemselect.com/gem-info/gems-by-color.php and https://www.firemountaingems.com/resources/encyclobeadia/charts/gemstonecolors -- check names/origins to theme.
• https://www.words-to-use.com/words/colors-names/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Crayola_crayon_colors
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colors_by_shade
• https://www.garters.com/page52.htm -- I know these are for garters, but there are some nifty color names in a nice spreadsheet like visual.

User Friendly Spreadsheets

Pricing/Mark Ups

Arx Merchant Cost Sheet - A detailed spreadsheet that allows one to calculate the cost of making any Arxian item(s) as well as let shop owners futz with a mark-up % for pricing insight. This is also linked in Ida's +finger - please @mail any questions/issues to Ida on game.

Colors and Text Coloring

Coloring Spreadsheet - This tool 'maths' out colors for you, based on codes. There is also a tab (Word Hack) that colors the text for you - just put in your text description, the number of colors you want to use, and the color codes. This is also linked in Ida's +finger - please @mail any questions/issues to Ida on game.

List of Wearable Item Slots

Wearable Item Slots - This sheet is a list of the wearable slots. Edit only if you find errors (like missing pantaloons). This is also linked in Vitalis's +finger - please @mail any questions/issues to Vitalis on game.

Recipes

Check out 'help recipes' on the game or recipes on the webpage. You need to learn the recipes available for your ability in order to actually make the items. If you type 'recipes' it will show you all the ones you can learn at your level. The ones with an X next to them, you know. Example below:

Recipes you know or can learn:
+-------+-------------------------------+--------------------------------+------------+------+
| Known | Name                          | Ability                        | Difficulty | Cost |
+-------+-------------------------------+--------------------------------+------------+------+
| X     | tchotchke                     | all                            | 10         | 10   |
| X     | low quality metal arms        | armorsmith                     | 10         | 0    |
| X     | standard steel arms           | armorsmith                     | 20         | 20   |
| X     | metal furniture               | armorsmith,weaponsmith,jeweler | 30         | 200  |
| X     | low quality anklet            | jeweler                        | 10         | 0    |
| X     | low quality bow               | weaponsmith                    | 10         | 0    |
| X     | standard hairpins             | weaponsmith                    | 20         | 0    |
| X     | high quality medium wpn       | weaponsmith                    | 30         | 300  |
| X     | rubicund huge wpn             | weaponsmith                    | 40         | 700  |
| X     | rubicund small wpn            | weaponsmith                    | 40         | 300  |
|       | diamondplate medium wpn       | weaponsmith                    | 50         | 1000 |
|       | diamondplate small wpn        | weaponsmith                    | 50         | 500  |
+-------+-------------------------------+--------------------------------+------------+------+

Craft/Shop Commands Walkthrough

So You Want To Make A Thing? There are two ways! Either be a crafter skilled in such things or go to a shop that has the item(s) you wish made available via their +shop code. The steps are very similar and are viewable via help craft and help +shop. This is a very basic little walk-through of the process start to finish.

Today I will make a rubicund bow! Checking recipes I eventually will see that a rubicund bow requires Silver: 2000, Primary Materials: wood: 4, and Secondary Materials: rubicund: 3. I will have to buy the wood and rubicund at the market and be sure to have at least 2000 silver in inventory - it will not pull from a bank account. The bow will need a name and description, which won't be terribly detailed for the sake of space. If I am a weaponsmith, I can make this as I please. If not, I will have to find a shop with a weaponsmith at a skill level to allow the making of rubicund items. I am a weaponsmith, so yay! In most cases, one can replace 'craft' with 'shop' as denoted below.

• craft (or shop/craft) rubicund bow
• craft/name (or shop/name) {500spiffy rubicund bow of greatness{n
• craft/desc (or shop/desc) %r{500This is a very nice bow made from {300 dark rubicund{500. The wood has been polished and gleams warmly in light. There are etches made upon the wood that surely denote some personal meaning to its owner. Overall, the weapon should be a good piece for both hunting as well as war.{n

Of note: for perfume, the desc is the description that appears on the character, ie the actual scent, not a description of the bottle. When a character wears the perfume, it appears as an addition to their description like using +tempdesc, beneath the usual description and before worn items as its own paragraph. More detail below.

Using 'craft' alone will allow you to review the item. You can add jewels or other adornments (also purchasable at the market) at this point, or after you 'finish' the item:

• craft/adorn (or shop/adorn) semiprecious stone=1 -- before finishing
• craft/addadorn (or shop/addadorn) spiffy rubicund bow of greatness=semiprecious stone,1 -- after finishing

• craft/finish (or shop/finish) -- to just finish
• craft/finish (or shop/finish) 1000,0 - to finish with an additional investment of 1000 silver, zero AP
• craft/finish (or shop/finish) 0,25 -- to finish with an additional investment of zero silver, 25 AP

Conventional wisdom suggests it is cheaper to invest in the craft/finish process as opposed to the craft/refine, though nothing is guaranteed.

The above commands work pretty much the same in shops, as denoted.

Masks & Altdesc

• When crafting masks, the name (craft/name) is used to identify its wearer: "A Fox Mask" will bestow "Someone wearing A Fox Mask" upon its wearer.
• craft/desc is what the mask actually looks like when you hold it and look at the object.
• The altdesc (craft/altdesc) is used for the character's temporary description. Altdesc replaces the entire description and also clears out the "Physical Characteristics" table above someone's desc when you look at them.

Example pic of someone wearing a mask: https://imgur.com/jVyJPRr

Currently, only masks use the altdesc option.

Perfume

• craft/name (or shop/name) -- For perfumes, this is the name of the scent/bottle. As the craft/desc is the actual description of the scent that appends a character's description, there is no actual description for the bottle/container itself. For example: craft/name Realm's Essence, a worldly scent

• craft/desc (or shop/desc) -- As noted above, the description is that which will be added to the description of the wearer when worn. For example: craft/desc Her scent is one that speaks of the far flung corners of the world. Once finished, looking at the object itself will result in something like:

Realm's Essence, a worldly scent
A bottle that contains the following scent: Her scent is one that speaks of the far flung corners of the world.

• To wear a perfume, you need to have it in your inventory and utilize the use command: use <object> on <target>. In this example, use Realm on Ida - The character description will look like:

While not a beauty of the ages, Ida has a way about her that commands attention... 

Perfume: Her scent is one that speaks of the far flung corners of the world.

Ida is in perfect health.
Worn items of note: delicate pale blue moonstone silver ring with hammer etchings...

• You can 'refill' a perfume by going to a shop and refining it. I believe this needs to be done before using the final available use.

+Manageshop

Most crafters have a shop in which to sell their wares, which is another set of commands. You can access them anytime via the webpage for +manageshop or via 'help +manageshop' while actually in a coded shop room on the game.

• +manageshop -- shows the below commands when run in a room with shop code.
• +manageshop/sellitem <object>=<price> -- sets up an item for sale at the specified price.
• +manageshop/rmitem <object id> -- removes an item from the purchasable list and puts it back in your inventory.
• +manageshop/all <markup percentage> -- I don't recommend this one, but it will set the markup % for any and all recipes you haven't sent a % on yet.
• +manageshop/refinecost <percentage> -- this is the markup % charged when people refine in your shop.
• +manageshop/addrecipe <recipe name>=<markup percentage> -- adds a recipe to your shop for sale at a specified markup %
• +manageshop/rmrecipe <recipe name> -- this command should remove a recipe listed in the shop.
• +manageshop/addblacklist <player or org name> -- adds a PC to a blacklist, barring them from purchasing from your shop.
• +manageshop/rmblacklist <player or org name> -- reverses the above.
• +manageshop/orgdiscount <org name>=<percentage> -- sets a discount % for an org - for example, manageshop/orgdiscount valardin=10 would add a 10% discount to anything anyone in the Valardin org purchases.
• +manageshop/chardiscount <character>=<percentage> -- same as the above, but for specific PCs.
• +manageshop/adddesign <key>=code (see detailed section below) -- adds a template to the shop that other players can use to make a crafted item.
• +manageshop/rmdesign <key> -- reverses the above.

Tutorials

• ASCII by Hand, Apollo Oakwood. part 1 and ASCII without Photoshop
• Crafting Tutorial by Aleksei/Berenice
• Ascii-art on Arx using Muse and PerfectPixel by Evaristo/Jyri
• How Ida Crafts - Notepad crafting/designing including one form of <ascii> tagging.

Misc Notes

Screenreader Friendly No_Ascii Guide

• New/updated no_ascii tagging Guide -- How to make the art you use on your crafts friendly for those who use screen readers! Or people who don't particularly care for all the fancy art in their face. A few methods are shown that walk you through using the <ascii> tags on the game to 'cut out' the pictures for those utilizing the no_ascii setting option (findable in the 'help @settings' file).

+Shop Design (Template)

Command: +manageshop/adddesign <key>=<code>

Example: +manageshop/adddesign Oathlands Style Dagger=<Your description ansi/ascii code goes here>

+Shop will then show something like this:

Item Prices
+------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
| ID                     | Name                    | Price                   |
+------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
Names of designs: Oathlands Style Dagger

When someone uses +shop/viewdesigns [<key>], in this case +shop/viewdesigns Oathlands Style Dagger, the game will offer forth the code as you added it to the design. Just the non-evaluated code that the player can then copy/paste into Creationist to color, or notepad or what have you, to their heart's desire.

From the Info channel discussion:

[Info] Torian hmms, "is there any documentation yet on how the adddesign thing works in shops?
[Info] Tehom: It just puts down a template that people can use for descs, if that's your thing
[Info] Killian hmms, "Like..a border thing?"
[Info] Hellfrog: No, Killian, it would be full name and desc
[Info] Hellfrog: So that crafters can design things they WANT to design, and sell those designs, without having to pay for the materials to craft an item to put in the shop.
[Info] Hellfrog: That way, you can go in to craft something and you can also use a design template if the crafter has one set for that kind of item.
[Info] Torian: Oh neat, so I could put together a 'rucksack' design and leave it for people to infinitely purchase backpacks with their gear..?
[Info] Ida: Oh whoa - yeah. So I could make sword with borders and colors and stuff?
[Info] Torian: Yeah Ida, it's like, the 'Ida Special Broadsword' design ;)
[Info] Julea: I think it means I can come up with a short sword design with a set short desc, and look desc, and adornments.. And people can make them infinitely.
[Info] Julea: Using their own materials.