A sticking point that frequently comes up with the core game loop of exploration, crafting, and masteries is that many crafts are (presumably intentially) bound to other specific crafts. For example, many of the new swamp crafts (more than 2/3 when I counted) require twine.
Instead of requiring specific items, however, crafts could require TYPES of items.
For example, instead of requiring mushroom paste, a craft could require . There would be many ways to create an adhesive: mushroom paste, strong paste, boiling fish bones to make glue, etc. Each type of adhesive would have a quality value, and any craft requiring an adhesive would require a certain total quality to make. So a Gold Ruby RIng would require 2000 total quality of , which works out to 1 strong paste or 500 mushroom paste or 2000 fish glue.
As another example, instead of a number of tower masteries all requiring small bolts, they could require , with new recipes to make different types and qualities of fasteners. Or instead of requiring rope, nets could be made with anything in the category, including bamboo rope. As a late-game craft, bamboo rope might even be MORE efficient at crafting nets than twine rope.
With a system like this, the oak table tower MM wouldn't require a huge amount of oak. It would require a huge amount of , which could come from pine OR oak, allowing players to choose their balance of spending AP exploring for oak vs spending prune juice and cookies growing pine. This lets players progress based on the play styles and content that appeal to them the most.
I realize this is a pretty fundamental change, but the idea of requiring some total quality of any number of items within a category creates a lot more freedom to use resources from across the game, instead of forcing players through very specific bottlenecks. It also adds new ways to use old crafts that late game players are done with, but also adds ways for newer players to reach towards a potentially difficult goal by building up earlier resources.
Comments
Gonna have to resubmit this because apparently improveloop eats angle brackets.
Submitted on Jun 14th 2026 by Aurigarion