UI Should Allow Selecting Specific Alchemy Components

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Alchemy recipes involve combining two components to produce an alchemical item. Some of those recipes specify specific components that must be used, but others allow one of the components to be any of a particular class of components. For example, the recipe for Antidote calls for one Salts of Mugwort plus one of any Suspension. That Suspension requirement can be filled with any one of the various suspensions available in the game, including for example Suspension of Bullywug Trumpet, Suspension of Laculite, or Suspension of Mergrass.

Different recipes call for different components, and different degrees of freedom of components. In other words, one recipe might allow any suspension to be used as one of its ingredients but another recipe might call specifically for Suspension of Mergrass. The result is that careful management of component use is necessary in order to avoid a situation where a resource in short supply is consumed to fill a requirement that could have instead been filled by a more plentiful or less precious resource, leaving the player unable to craft another item that specifically calls for the resource that was unnecessarily used up.

For example, imagine a simple case where a player possesses one Salts of Mugwort, one Salts of Rogue's Morsel, one Ashes of Hyena's Ear, and one Suspension of Mergrass. That player crafts a Potion of Speed, which requires one Ashes of Hyena's Ear plus one of any Salt. If the player were to use their Salts of Mugwort in that crafting then they would find themselves unable to subsequently craft an Antidote. If they had instead used the Salts of Rogue's Morsel in crafting the Potion of Speed they would still have had the Salts of Mugwort available and would have also been able to craft an Antidote.

Unfortunately, the game's UI does not allow the player to make the choice of which component to use to fulfill a component requirement when more than one option is available. Instead, the player's only option for managing component selection is to drop any components they wish to conserve, perform the crafting operation, and then pick the dropped components back up. This is a functional work-around for the problem but it should not be necessary.

And so finally the suggestion: Please change the UI to allow the player to select which component to use in recipes where a choice is possible. This will greatly streamline the process and help players avoid unintentional resource shortages. Thank you for your consideration.

[Drachenfurz]

Thank you for the write-up, very well put.

The "Extract All Ingredients"-button is atm also kind of a trap because of this, if you don't want (or think of, like I did until now) to manage salts, ashes and other components like you described.

I was wondering, where my ashes of balsam for my greater healing potions went. Well, the brewing of potions of glorious vaulting ate them. That sucks, because most ingredients are not dime a dozen, even if you are very thorough in your exploration of the world.

So I too second a change to a more free selection of individual components needed for alchemical brewing, if possible.

Have a good one!