Crafting and Stations

Status: Planned

This page defines how ChonkyCraft should handle crafting progression, recipe visibility, and station upgrades.

The target is to preserve the feeling you get in Necesse when better stations open better gear and the game clearly shows what you can make next.

Design Goals

• Better crafting should come from a readable Station Ladder
• Players should quickly understand what each station unlocks
• Recipes should be easy to browse without external wikis
• Missing materials should be obvious
• If the player has the materials, crafting should be easy and direct
• Nearby storage should reduce inventory shuffling
• Station upgrades should feel exciting, not like hidden bureaucracy

Core Feel

The desired loop is:

1. Find new material or boss reward
2. Unlock or upgrade a station
3. Open the station and immediately see new recipes
4. Notice what is craftable now and what is one ingredient away
5. Craft directly if materials are available

This should feel like progress, not filing paperwork.

Core Rules

• Every major progression band should either unlock a new station or meaningfully upgrade an existing one
• A station upgrade should unlock a clear recipe family, not only one isolated item
• Recipes should be browsable from the station itself
• The UI should clearly separate craftable, missing materials, and locked by station
• If the player can craft something, doing so should take as few steps as practical
• Recipe discovery should support both direct browsing and quest or loot breadcrumbing
• Stations should be able to read ingredients from nearby containers within a local Craft Radius

Station Ladder

The project should prefer a small number of meaningful station lines instead of a pile of tiny specialist benches.

Current direction:

• Workbench: general equipment, tools, utility items, early weapon lines
• Forge: bars, armor, heavier weapons, reinforcement lines
• Field Anvil: upgrades, reforging-style progression, boss-material conversions, tack hardware
• Relic Table: relic fusion, summon components, essence-driven utility, later special recipes

Current implementation note:

• the station screen now keeps recipe details visible without hover-only mouse dependence
• status, type, and unlock reason surfacing are now part of the current browsing baseline
• the Field Anvil now has a first dedicated target slot for same-item upgrades instead of relying only on generic recipe browsing
• the current live target upgrades are Rootcleaver, Sap Scepter, Brood Whistle, Springstep Anklet, Archive Grapnel, Longline Grapnel, Voidquill Tome, Shadeweave Wrap, Duskveil Mantle, and Prismplate Aegis
• the first live targeted Etch Scroll application flow is also in that same Field Anvil target slot for Edge, Ward, Stride, and Call
• the first live target-based gear conversion now exists too, with Archive Grapnel upgrading into Longline Grapnel without dropping carried etches or upgrade tiers

These names are working direction, not locked final asset names.

Upgrade Philosophy

• The player should improve stations over time, not replace the whole base every phase
• Some stations can tier upward through upgrade kits or boss-gated attachments
• New materials should often matter because they enable a station upgrade first, then the recipes behind it
• Old stations should stay useful as readable anchors even when upgraded

Upgrade and Etching Rules

Stations should support more than first-time crafting.

• The Field Anvil should handle structured gear upgrades and Etch Scroll application
• Gear upgrades should extend item relevance in controlled ways instead of replacing every item instantly
• Etchings should be surfaced as part of the same improvement ecosystem, not hidden in a disconnected vanilla enchanting ritual
• The station ladder should help the player understand both craft new and improve existing

Recipe Visibility Rules

The player should always be able to answer:

• What can we craft right now?
• What are we one step away from crafting?
• Which station do we need?
• Which ingredient are we missing?

UI rules:

• Show recipe lists by category
• Show ingredient counts directly
• Mark missing ingredients clearly
• Mark station-locked recipes clearly
• Surface newly unlocked recipes after boss kills or station upgrades

Nearby Storage Rules

Crafting should support Necesse-style nearby storage access.

Rules:

• A station should be able to count ingredients from nearby chests and valid containers inside its Craft Radius
• Crafting should pull ingredients from nearby storage when the player confirms the recipe
• The system should stay local and readable, not become an infinite base-wide magic network by default
• The player should be able to understand which storage is contributing without opening every chest manually

Current first-pass implementation lock:

• Workbench and Forge use a 16 block nearby-storage radius in all directions in the current prototype
• Keep this local and generous rather than tightening it down into a fiddly base-layout tax
• If performance becomes a problem, optimize lookup behavior before cutting the radius back down

Current direction:

• Start with a simple local-radius rule around the station
• Prefer a clear and performant model over a huge invisible network
• Expand later only if the local-radius version feels too restrictive

Quick-Craft Rules

• If all ingredients are present, the player should be able to craft directly from the recipe list
• Repeated crafting should not require rebuilding the recipe from scratch every time
• The system should reduce pointless click-count, not add it
• Controller play should still feel smooth when browsing and crafting in sequence
• Nearby storage access should remove most chest-to-inventory shuffle during base crafting

Material and Progression Rules

• Important new materials should point toward a station or station upgrade quickly
• Boss rewards should often unlock recipes through station progression, not only as direct equipment drops
• Recipe trees should stay shallow enough to be readable
• A station upgrade is a legitimate reward in its own right

Co-op Rules

• One player using a station should not make crafting awkward for the other player
• Station unlocks should be easy for both players to understand
• Shared progression should not hide recipes from the second player after a team unlock
• Recipe visibility should support late joiners instead of punishing them
• Shared nearby storage should make co-op base crafting smoother, not more confusing

Controller Rules

• Recipe categories must be easy to tab through with a controller
• Focus order should be stable and predictable
• Ingredient panels should be readable without cursor hunting
• Quick craft should have clear button prompts
• Locked, craftable, and missing-material states should be distinguishable at a glance
• The UI should make it obvious when missing ingredients are actually available in nearby storage

Anti-Patterns

Avoid:

• A giant pile of one-use benches
• Recipe chains that only feel clear after alt-tabbing to a wiki
• Hidden station requirements
• Unlocking a new material but giving no clue where it gets used
• Crafting screens that become controller-hostile once the recipe count grows
• Constant chest-to-inventory shuffling for ordinary base crafting

Pack and Mod Split

Use the pack layer for:

• Recipe browsing support
• Category and visibility help where pack tooling is enough
• Minor recipe balance changes

Use the custom mod for:

• Station blocks and upgrades
• Station-aware crafting UI
• Custom recipe categories
• Nearby-storage ingredient resolution inside the station Craft Radius
• Gear-upgrade and Etching workflows tied to stations
• Recipe unlock surfacing after progression milestones

Current Direction by Phase Band

• Frontier Band: establish Workbench and Forge immediately, expand their recipe families early, unlock Field Anvil in the archive milestone, and keep broadening the starter station line through the rest of the band
• Deep Frontier Band: build on all active stations after the Relic Table unlock so deep alloys, essences, tack, and stronger movement upgrades all convert cleanly into progression
• Breach Band: expand breach attunement, high-tier conversion recipes, and endgame synthesis without drowning the player in redundant stations