So... I don't know about the rest of you, maybe my luck is just atrocious. But. I recently decided to do a few runs focusing on some of the crafting skills. My first PD run I went all gishy and it felt kinda cheap, so I decided to explore the alchemy tree after reading up on all the recipes using dredmorpedia. I've found that most of the craft weapons become pretty useless compared to evil chest rewards once you get down to the later levels, especially 10+. To me, this strength disparity indicates that crafted weapons are supposed to be kind of an early game thing to help you have some hedging against the random loot at the cost of bringing a crafting skill. However, I've found that grabbing recipes off of the bookcases is so random that... well, it seems pointless to me. I bring alchemy, invest 5 levels into it, and yet all the recipes I find are smithing recipes, or wandcraft recipes, or tinker recipes... get the idea? If you only bring 1 skill, the chances of finding recipes that are useful to -you- is pretty damn small, as you've got the other 4 skills throwing recipes that are worthless to you. I humbly put forward that it might be nicer to have the type of recipes scale with the levels you've put into your crafting skill. For example, At no investment, it can all be random. Then with each level, perhaps increase the chance of finding those skill-specific recipes relative to the others, so that maxing your crafting skill allows you to find more recipes, which allows you to use the skill more. Or maybe that's not brutal enough, and the soul crushing despair of finding pork swords and fancy bolt throwers when I just want an orby staff is all part of the RNG fun. Thoughts?
My feeling has always been that crafting skills are already potent enough without ANY bookcase recipes. Smithing gives you early survival with armor and plentiful ammunition for Throwing things. Tinkering is probably the best trap skill in the game and gives a wide selection of useful consumables (most notably bolts and explosives) as well as allowing you to build and improve your crossbow. Alchemy has healing potions... need I say more? Wandcrafting is horribly unintuitive in it's requirements but provides a slew of very useful effects on sticks. All of this without even mentioning encrusting or the raw stat boosts. Secret recipes are just the icing on the cake for me. So, if not finding recipes is making you sad you might try using Paranormal Investigator to get more of them or perhaps crafting just isn't for you? I know many people can't stand it. Personally, I don't feel that crafting needs any further buffing.
I always end up having bad luck trying to make a build that DOESN'T involve crafting. It's like Burglary for Utility or Master of Arms for meleeing. It just seems essential, especially because there aren't enough of every skill archetype(warrior/wizard/rogue) that gives mostly procs, buffs, and copy some of the gold of the "Key" skills. I play with Android Rogue Mod because I don't feel like ALWAYS picking Burglary, Tinkering and Perception every single rogue run.
