New Trades

I figured that since there's a post for what trade skills people want that already exist, we could talk about what trade skills people would want to get into in the future.

I have a few ideas, but one I'd really like to see is dying. The kind that lets you stain your clothes with a scarlet red and helps you match better with your tragic lover.

Dyes would be relatively simple, probably just a bunch of pre-set dye colors like there are inks. It might be cool to let players invent new dyes, but I feel like that shouldn't be the main point here, so if it is possible, I'd rather people pay tremendously for the act of invention rather than introduce a licensing gate fee to its possibility.

Each dye would probably have a few synonymous color words, maybe four at the most, to allow tailors to not have to worry about their color words sounding repetitive.

Each piece of clothing (and maybe jewelry as well) could then reference a different dye. There could be up to like three or four dyes per clothing so that you can have your white robe come with a black sash and a red hem. Ideally, current clothes could be redesigned to use these color references and become dyable, but nothing will stop tailors from specifically making a white shirt - indeed, they could even make a white shirt have dyable sleeves, if they wanted.

This would help tremendously in letting players color coordinate better. Have you ever found a shirt you really like, but it's in a color you would never wear? If the designer let you, now you could dye it. I imagine most designers would make most of their clothes dyable, with things like uniforms or custom work being exceptions.

Color references would probably more or less work like player references in emotes do, like $1 could be color #1, $3b could be the second synonym of the third color, probably something for capitalization, etc.

Comments

  • I get where you're going with this, I just can't think of a feasible way to implement it that isn't janky as hell.

  • Sounds like an inkmilling ability rather than a whole new skill. Or just an add-on to tailoring.


    But moving along, I know people would like to see things like packs and vials and pipes as custom designs or something, as mentioned in the past. But that would be a craft skill requiring a license. 

    Mining is a big one. Gathering comms for forging, basically. But the metals are also the gold sink for forging, which is why making them available for free would be more or less devastating. It would have to be very restrictive if ever implemented.
    I like my steak like I like my Magic cards: mythic rare.
  • The act of collecting commodities from village markets and selling them to city markets is, in itself, a way to make money.  That system is fine, we don't need a skillset to replace something that already works.
    ~Kresslack's obsession~
  • KayeilKayeil Washington State
    Oh yeah I think they have the dye thing in Aetolia.

    Furniture design!
    What doesn't kill you gives you exp.

  • KresslackKresslack Florida, United States
    I've always found it a bit odd how Achaea doesn't have a way for players to actually go out and collect commodities themselves. Such has having forests where trees have to be planted, given enough time to grow, then felled, logged, and saplings replanted in order to provide wood. Or digging out quarries for stone, being able to excavate mines for ores and gems, etc. All the commodies come from comm shops or those trader satchels which were discontinued a long time ago, and that just seems a bit bland to me.

    So i would say being able to have things like actual farming, mining, woodworking, etc that work off base commodities and formulas to turn those base items into useful things would be awesome. However, I'm not sure how practical it would be for Achaea, especially at this stage.


  • Yeah, it would be nice but those comms are the basis for gold buffers in a bunch of skills.
    There would have to be an effective way of keeping general forgers from getting access to free metals. My idea is exclusive dwarf and mhun mining zones. But also with fairly low ore payouts with a normal pickaxe. Probably artie pickaxes to get any sort of worthwhile haul. And access to said tunnels would have to be mutually exclusive with a gem of reincarnation.
    Even with that many ifs it might still be too unbalancing.
    I like my steak like I like my Magic cards: mythic rare.
  • KresslackKresslack Florida, United States
    If Mining were a tradeskill, it wouldn't be free, it would be an investment. If forgers want to take up Mining and go out and literally mine the ores themselves, why not? Otherwise they'd be able to buy them from shops or other people as per usual.


  • Right but a lifetime of purchasing comms is a different gold flow than a lifetime of yanking them out of the ground. I imagine it will happen at some point, seems one of the next most logical things to do, but it's a long way out and would need appropriate balance.

    They were working on putting in more gold sinks to level out the credit market, and since the tradeskills are effectively a credit sink it's already going to tip things in the other direction again.
    I like my steak like I like my Magic cards: mythic rare.
  • Codemastery would be neat if spies made a bigger deal in Achaea. In the long-term I'd like to see infiltration and such given more possibility.
    I like my steak like I like my Magic cards: mythic rare.
  • The marketeering idea makes me wonder if there could be some kind of trade related to preserving things. Not corpses, but wares in general.

    I know there are stasis scabbards/bags already, but this would be more for selling things. Ideally, it should be somehow inconvenient to preserve something, like for example maybe you can only do it to an item exactly once, or it should cost money and be inaccessible, or something.

    Ideally, any form of preservation like this should not detract from the item's own lifeline, since that would devalue the item, and make the skill sort of pointless from a merchanting perspective. At the same time, it shouldn't be an alternative to stasis enchantments.

    Of course, there might be better ways of doing this that already exist, and I'm just unaware of them!
  • Nim said:
    The marketeering idea makes me wonder if there could be some kind of trade related to preserving things. Not corpses, but wares in general.

    I know there are stasis scabbards/bags already, but this would be more for selling things. Ideally, it should be somehow inconvenient to preserve something, like for example maybe you can only do it to an item exactly once, or it should cost money and be inaccessible, or something.

    Ideally, any form of preservation like this should not detract from the item's own lifeline, since that would devalue the item, and make the skill sort of pointless from a merchanting perspective. At the same time, it shouldn't be an alternative to stasis enchantments.

    Of course, there might be better ways of doing this that already exist, and I'm just unaware of them!
    Getting a vial lacquered to add 30 months, doable once but with different quality finishes.
    I like my steak like I like my Magic cards: mythic rare.
  • NimNim
    edited December 2014
    Xith said:
    Getting a vial lacquered to add 30 months, doable once but with different quality finishes.
    Oh, it'd be nice if there were more ways of extending items' lifeline, too, but I meant that in a strict "keeping goods from decaying before sale" sense, that people without shops could use. Could be extended to explain shops as well, though I'm sure plenty of shopkeepers would be angry at an extra cost to running the shop.
  • KresslackKresslack Florida, United States
    It's already been suggested and added to the list to allow Serpents to encipher letters with a venom and the person trying to read it has to guess the correct venom. Failed attempts result in deterioration of the message, akin to charring the letter. Looking forward to that being implemented.


  • I like the idea of a Trade skill that replaces or supplements shops.  Having a couple of carts, even just for a week, was fun and encouraged me to produce (e.g. forge) with the intent of selling instead of merely trying to get better stuff for myself.
    ~Kresslack's obsession~
  • KayeilKayeil Washington State
    Bluef mentioned a bartending skill in the other thread. That sounded like fun. Would be really awesome to finally make our own drinks.
    What doesn't kill you gives you exp.

  • From the "Quick Questions" thread (that I briefly derailed?)
    Tibitha said:
    There should be an artificer skill... for designing and making random objects with zero purpose other than being a thing... maybe with some push/pull/shake reactions :grin: 
  • OceanaOceana North Sea
    Perfume making.
  • MasarykMasaryk Sangre Plains
    Call me old fashioned, and this gets a bit back at the "getting your own comms" stuff, for skills like tailoring, cooking, etc. There could be farm areas, in which a player could lease the ground (somewhat like renting a shop). This would allow the player to perhaps raise some livestock, harvest crops, specialize in certain plants and/or comms. The lease would be for perhaps a certain amount of years, and when the lease is up, it would go to auction again. This would introduce a somewhat dynamic system that may produce a surplus or shortage of certain player-produced comms based on what the player is interested in.

    You of course would have to deal with the subject of access to the grounds. So, you could either have high powered NPC guards that protect the grounds for the player (for a hire fee), or you could just only allow access to the grounds (via gates) with a key that the leasing player gets.

    There could be so many possibilities here, based on climate, environment, soil types, etc of what combinations a farming player could produce. A druid can dream, can't he?



  • Masaryk said:
    Call me old fashioned


    ~Kresslack's obsession~
  • I like @blujixapug 's Brewmastery - I'd like to throw Distilling in the mix there before Mixology.
  • I like everything about Bluj's ideas, especially Brewmastery. 
  • He didn't choose the 'jixapug life. The 'jixapug life chose him.
    I like my steak like I like my Magic cards: mythic rare.
  • Ok this is easier than properly formatting all my stupid ideas into something fit for a real Ideas post.

    Marketeering

    A major problem with item-creation tradeskills is getting goods to market. People don't want half-decayed goods you've been carrying around. You can make to order and deliver via post, but that limits your sales to people you're online to advertise to, talk with, take orders from. Shops are limited and expensive. Carts are great - this is basically Carts: The Tradeskill. Critically, taking Marketeering comes at the cost of taking a different tradeskill, so you won't have every merchant taking this to sell their own stuff, and some Marketeers may partner with others to sell their stuff.

    This skill is probably incompatible with being able to cheaply buy multiple tradeskill slots. Whatevs.

    Vendors: Recruit an NPC vendor to sell your wares.
    - NPCs with the vendor flag hang out in many areas, eg. Ulangian grook merchants, Moghedu mhuns, generic Delos merchants, Ilyrean sakuwats.
    - Position your vendor in a chosen marketplace. Marketplaces are rooms assigned a marketplace flag in certain major areas, including every city, Delos, and some other NPC cities/villages (eg. Tasur'ke).
    - NPC vendors can carry and sell up to maybe 30 items at a time. Give your vendor your item, price it, they sell it. People can ASK VENDOR WARES, BUY TRINKET FROM VENDOR, etc. Just like shops, their wares don't decay, etc. Vendors can't be killed or robbed.
    Maybe a couple of abilities for things like discounts, giving vendors a chance to speak an advertisement when people enter, tithing profits to business partners/orgs, etc.

    Brewmastery

    Viniculture: Ferment wine. Select from varieties of grapes + additional ingredients.
    - Wines are stored in barrels in city cellars, personal housing cellars, or maybe ship holds (import tax in ports? smuggling?) and develop flavour. They have a chance to become vinegar if improperly stored. I don't know anything about winemaking.
    - Once you're happy with a wine's development, it can be bottled and then drank or traded.
    - Each wine is tagged with a vintage both on its barrel and the labels of any bottles, eg. Mhaldor Cellars 713 AF. Some vintages might become sought-after.
    Fermenting: Brew beers, ciders, meads etc. Similar to wine.
    Mixology: Invent cocktail recipes. Select ingredients, specify how they are assembled, give it a name, and submit the recipe.
    - eg. 'Basilisk Bite': 1 part vodka, 1 part cocoa liqueur, 1 part basilisk blood, shaken with ice and strained into a cocktail glass. 'Blue Macaw': 1 part white rum, 1 part blue Obelito nectar, 1 part bulyandi juice, layered in a shot glass.
    - This wouldn't be a full design process where you write all the descs and reactions and it requires full scrutiny before approval, but rather selecting from lots of different options for ingredients, assembly, type of glass, name, etc. I guess the name would still require approval.
    - Creating a cocktail from a recipe requires bottles of the necessary alcohols and liqueurs be in your inventory, plus any exotic ingredients. Perhaps eliminate the alcohol requirement and instead say cocktails can only be created in certain rooms flagged as 'bars', themselves stocked with alcohol, which might be in each major city, certain NPC villages, and available as a housing upgrade for houses/ships.

    Spicemerchantry

    Gather exotic riftable commodities to be used in other tradeskills like Cooking, Brewmastery etc. Pepper, butterfly paste, tiger bile, Stymphalian wing powder etc. In theory this tradeskill involves extensive travel and work, and every spice is in short supply, but the spices it yields are illustrious prestige goods that can be sold to people with other tradeskills for a high price. Maybe there are a couple dozen different spices, but not all of them are available to be gathered at any given time.

    Different spices are gathered in different ways:
    - harvesting exotic locations (eg. Tundra rooms during winter months, jungle islands during summer months, X area at X time)
    - killing rare animals and harvesting body parts
    - trade with NPC ships at sea
    - trade at harbours
    - certain quests

    Codemastery/Encryption

    All this stuff should be part of Subterfuge, but whatevs. Haha stupid serpents.

    Ciphers: Create ciphers to encrypt letters. Sell cipher wheels to other players for them to use.
    Encode: Encode letters with invisible ink that is revealed under certain conditions specified at the time of encoding, eg. time delay, when a certain venom is applied to the letter (other venoms instead degrade the letter), in cold weather, in direct sunlight, when the letter is charred, etc.
    Hobo signs Symbols: Leave hidden messages on walls that only other Codemasters will notice.
    Jargon: Design dialects to speak in. Others educated in the dialect can understand and reply. Others who know the dialect's code key can translate. Anyone else won't understand it. Dialects are forgotten if not spoken for say, 1 month.
    Proxy: Train vermin to eavesdrop or something. Rats, mice, pigeons. Ok this isn't a code but it's cool.

    Trophycrafting

    Preserve trophies from PVE hunting and PVP combat. Maybe requires tannin commodities from Harvesting, arsenical soap from Synthesis, or lant from Spicemerchantry. Trophies would rapidly decay in inventories, but could be kept long-term in houses/estates in trophy cabinets, trophy rooms, etc.

    Mounting: Mount heads on backing boards.
    - eg. the mounted head of a bull elephant
    Stuffing: Skin, stuff, and present a whole animal.
    - eg. a stuffed cheetah atop a plinth
    Umbrella stands: dapper af
    Plaques: add a plaque to your trophy
    Skulls: skulls
    Shrunken heads: shrunken player heads
    Bottled spirits: the other kind of spirits, makes a nifty night-light

    Warcraft

    Manufacture siege weapons for assaults on cities. This is a great idea.

    Ballistas: line of sight siege-breakers
    Pits: stop charges
    Walls: walls
    Catapults: gotta have catapults
    Harbour bombardment: siege from ships at sea
    Lighthouses: counter harbour bombardment with death rays from your lighthouse
    Scout: fuzzy critter scouts the location for enemy siege weapons
    Sabotage: after assessing an enemy siege weapon in line of sight, instruct your allies on how to quickly sabotage/destroy it
    bumping dis @Tecton @Makarios @Sarapis @Riotpls this game is crying out for umbrella stands
    image
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