[Mandatory prefix - overall game is great and enjoying a lot. Crafting has a strong appeal for me, so I'm spending a large part of my time in the game on it, thus the numerous suggestions.] Some of this has been said, I just want to give my suggestions in case anyone's interested. 1) The crafting UIs are cumbersome to use in general. Current steps: 1) open inventory, 2) click on crafting tool, 3) click on "recipes", 4) choose recipe, 5) click to add items, 6) click to craft, 7) click to remove items Ideas/Suggestions: * Have _large_ icons along the (right?) side of the screen for each of the crafting tools you have, so they're quick to open. * Maybe only be able to open one crafting UI at the same time? * If only one possible at a time, it'll remember its place and so they won't overlap so much. 2) Items forgotten in crafting tools can't be use for crafting elsewhere. * Items should be removed from the crafting tool after its' window is closed. (Could be game reasons against this, but I find the annoyance to be larger than the benefit, personally.) 3) Multi-step crafting should be easier - recipe UI should be improved. Ideas/Suggestions: * Be able to (right?) click on an item to see "How to make this?" - either as a temporary pop-up or by jumping to that place in the Recipes screen * Remember the place that you've scrolled to in each screen (so you can quickly look up another recipe and get back to your previous one) * Add a "back" button to get back to previous recipe 4) (Already Posted) - After you select a recipe, the items should pre-fill for the recipe. I think it should also pre-fill even if a needed item is equipped or inside another crafting tool. 5) (Already Posted) - Should be able to view the stats of the item you're about to create in the recipe screen. And finally a quick game suggestion related to crafting. Let players remember found crafting recipes after death for future games. I know there are design reasons against this (once you find a cool recipe, you'll use it every game, less variety). But it takes a while to find any recipes and they're rare. Having more of them available would be just more fun. Maybe it'll get forgotten after 5 games or something? Just an idea. EDIT: Due to the existence of the wiki, people will still be able to make recipes that they haven't found. So the power-gamers will get around the restriction. Remembering the recipes in the game makes it a little more fun w/o encouraging people to power-game and over-optimize everything. You get your own kinda-randomized collection of items that you remember from previous games. Maybe with a character's name on it too Again, thanks for a great game. Best of luck with it.
Final addition - looked through other places, didn't see it mentioned. Larger UI elements is good, but I think larger (maybe 2x) size icons for items in inventory would be very helpful. As is they're too small - kinda annoying to use. Could go along with simply adding scrolling (I know, maybe not fun, but most people have a scroll wheel and are used to it). Or just make it a taller window but same width.
Are you supposed to be able to make things through crafting without selecting the recipe first? Because I recall trying to make ingots without selecting the recipe, just putting a piece of ore in the ingot press... and it wouldn't do anything.
@Lord Blade - definitely works at least sometimes. Just tried - put an Aluminum Ingot in the Ingot Grinder - get 2x Powdered Aluminum. So that's my thought - power-gamers will power-game (or how does that saying go?) and look up all the recipes on the wiki. But for the rest of us just having a bit of causal fun it'd be cool to keep some of YOUR old recipes be available for future games. (Kinda like finding your old corpses in other roguelikes.)
From what I gleaned from the tutorial, it seems that really simple things will work without choosing the recipe first. They have you make Copper Wire by not using a recipe, then choose one and make something useful. It seems like most of the Ingot grinders default to the normal items, I wonder if there just aren't entries for what to default most combinations to (which would be strange for the ores, seeing as there's only one possible use).
Did you mention that the windows are modal i.e. you cannot craft as long as the recipe window is open? Also: - there is no auto-fill for grinding items - the products don't always stack (they don't in the ingot press), so you have to take every single omelet out, then place the eggs again, rinse and repeat - item stacks should be halveable and there has to be a way to take only 1 item away, just like in Minecraft and Terraria - if I have only 1 resource but need 2 to build, the recipe still shows 2 check marks
