The bookshelves are incredibly rare and are the only way to get some of the best recipes in the game yet they only give one random recipe or just tell you there's nothing interesting if you're already got the recipe. Given how most players are only going to use one or two crafting skills I think it would be better if we could just choose which skill a new recipe would relate to when reading. Personally I've been dragging around 30 electrum ingots because I assume something which requires gold and silver must be good yet I haven't found a single recipe for them but have found several recipes for potions despite not having the alchemy skill.
I realize the wiki located at www.dredmorwiki.com isn't complete, but the guys over there have been pretty thorough in putting the site together. If the wiki is to believed, so far the only discovered recipe that uses electrum is for a ring. If this is the case, it seems like Gaslamp Games needs to possibly reconsider having so many crafting ingredients be a one time use item. Personally, I think any metal ingots should be able to be crafted into bolts at the very least, just to give archers more versatility.
Smithing points lead you to get more bars from ore. I don't, however, know if there's a jump between 4 points and 5.
I agree that recipes should always apply to skills you currently have, or be random if you have no crafting skills. Currently, crafting is awesome but disappointing; it spams up your inventory, you only rarely find recipes specific to your skill (bookshelves are rare, sometimes they're empty, sometimes they have a recipe for a different crafting school) and the stat boosts from leveling it are only okay. It might also be useful to have a separate crafting inventory, like in the Witcher. That way, your equipment won't have to fight for space amongst your crafting items.
you know you can drop stuff on the ground and it will never despawn? if you have a problem with lugging loads of stuff around, just leave them somewhere (and remember where).
@Tacroy - I like the idea of at least tayloring recipes to your current crafting school. My other idea is perhaps the game should remember recipes you find between games. (They can be found on the wiki eventually anyway, this could still be fun. If needed, they could disappear after a few games.)
Well the randomness seems to be part of roguelikes. But, I wouldn't mind replacing the 'nothing of value' results with just another reroll or better yet just take what recipes you already collected out of the result table. That way, even if you are getting junk recipes, each bookshelf you find will get you closer to getting recipes you actually can use.
For what it's worth, there are currently about 20 hidden crafts in the whole game anyway, most of them potions and tinkerer items. Electrum is only used in tinkering.
Why not just set it as a modifier to recipe chance based on skill level? So, you have whatever table of random recipes (or none) that can be found when you click on a bookshelf. Add in a +1 modifier (or 5%-10% whatever) for each rank of a crafting skill you have. So you'd start off with say a 30% chance of finding a recipe for each of the three crafting skills. With a 10% (maybe make it less) chance of finding nothing. If you have a point of Smithing, you now have a 40% chance of finding a smithing recipe, and a 25% chance of finding one of the other two. At 5 points, you've got an 80% of finding a smithing recipe, and only 5% of the others. With two skills (at a point each), say Smithing and Alchemy, you'd have a 35% chance of finding a recipe for each, and a 20% chance for a Tinkering recipe. Basically work something out like that. So you can still find random recipes, but you're more likely to find one you need. And when you do find a recipe, use another calculation, that checks to see if you get a "new" one, or if it is an existing one. With a lot more weight on finding something new. If you do find one that you have, then mention that, instead of just saying "you find nothing".
