Why is crafting so tedious?

[Konidias]

In order to make something you have to go to the crafting table, choose a recipe to craft, look at what ingredients you need, go make the ingredients, add the ingredients to the crafting table, switch to your multi tool and then finally craft.

Why not just go up to the crafting table, choose the recipe, and then hit "craft" to make it or something? Why do you have to add items if you're already holding them? Why do you need to switch to the multi-tool if you're carrying one already? Why have a multi-tool at all? It takes up an equipment space and kind of defeats the purpose of building a crafting table if it doesn't just come with the tools needed to craft things. I shouldn't need a multi-tool to stir a pot of soup... the pot should come with the stirrer. I shouldn't need a multi-tool to craft at a crafting table. The table should have the tools I use for crafting already.

Seems like a pointless "middle-man" item that doesn't need to exist.

Same for blueprints/building... why can't I just craft the object and then place it down where I want it? Why go through the process of placing down a blueprint, adding items to it, and then crafting it?

[Jack Harb]

Because the goal is to automate it with the monkeys in the long run. Even in the demo you can let the monkey do all the stuff. You do not have to fill in the stuff, or craft it yourself. Just place a few craft tables, with receips and the monkey will run around and craft everything and harvest everything and bring everything if you trained them well enough. You can even let monkey deliver new tools to other monkey if they run out, so its an endless farming for the monkeys basically.

So I assume that the real fun will start after the demo. I just used the monkeys to farm completely automated build walls. Just for testing. And it worked. Could just place it via blueprint and after a couple of minutes the walls were build without me doing anything but drinking coffee.

[Swimming_ice]

thats why they give you monkeys, adding additional actions and forcing you to use the feature

[Earthy]

Originally posted by Jack Harb:

Because the goal is to automate it with the monkeys in the long run. Even in the demo you can let the monkey do all the stuff. You do not have to fill in the stuff, or craft it yourself. Just place a few craft tables, with receips and the monkey will run around and craft everything and harvest everything and bring everything if you trained them well enough. You can even let monkey deliver new tools to other monkey if they run out, so its an endless farming for the monkeys basically.

So I assume that the real fun will start after the demo. I just used the monkeys to farm completely automated build walls. Just for testing. And it worked. Could just place it via blueprint and after a couple of minutes the walls were build without me doing anything but drinking coffee.

Does placing the items into the blueprints needs to be done manually, because right now I can't seem to get my monkeys to place in the items in order to build it, also, how are you able to assign monkeys to replace tools?

[76561198995444303]

Hey, I'm moving this across to the Feedback section, a lot of this boils down to needing to lay foundations for the monkeys to then craft but we're always looking for ways to make the game the best it can be! :)

[GreyAlex]

As i see, monkey can do almost anything, but can't change tools.
They can move items to blueprint, than another monkey can build it.
I make 3 camfires, with different dishes, 1 monkey move meat, bat wings etc to campfire, another monkey cooking it.
You can create automated monkey chain))

1st monkey mine wood stone grass, 2nd monkey collect all this in chest, 3rd monkey move items to workbench, 4 monkey create rope knife handle and than, an axe.

[Earthy]

Originally posted by GreyAlex:

As i see, monkey can do almost anything, but can't change tools.
They can move items to blueprint, than another monkey can build it.
I make 3 camfires, with different dishes, 1 monkey move meat, bat wings etc to campfire, another monkey cooking it.
You can create automated monkey chain))

1st monkey mine wood stone grass, 2nd monkey collect all this in chest, 3rd monkey move items to workbench, 4 monkey create rope knife handle and than, an axe.

How do I get monkeys to add things to workbenches and campfires then? Because the mimic action doesn't do anything if you try to do that.

[GreyAlex]

Originally posted by Earthy Boi:

How do I get monkeys to add things to workbenches and campfires then? Because the mimic action doesn't do anything if you try to do that.

I don't know, maybe video will be deleted)
And i'm from Ru, so Russian UI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6CWPcvrWeo

Choose at workbench or campfire what you want craft.
Press Q Teach, go to chest or take item from the floor, go to bench/fire and place item by pressing Space.

At video i tried to show, how it works.

[Konidias]

I definitely think the game could at the very least do away with the multi-tool. The various things you build to craft stuff in are already the tools... The cooking pot, the crafting table, etc. You shouldn't need another tool to use those.

At some point farther down the line maybe I could see a use for the monkeys but as of now they are only really beneficial to assign to go destroy stuff because I don't see a real need to have them mass producing anything. I also don't really understand the point of building walls since nothing really seems to be that dangerous or aggressively attacking your camp. I get that it's just an early demo so hopefully that changes later on.

[Melon]

I personally dont care about the monkeys in this game. If i could plant trees at my entrance and have them staioned there in case of a Raid, sure i would use them, but otherwise quick crafting myself is way easier.

[Konidias]

Originally posted by Watermelon ❤:

I personally dont care about the monkeys in this game. If i could plant trees at my entrance and have them staioned there in case of a Raid, sure i would use them, but otherwise quick crafting myself is way easier.

Yeah to me the monkeys feel like a weird gimmick that is unnecessary. Kind of like they thought up this idea to have helpers but then the reality is they aren't really necessary at all. If it was the *only* way to craft some stuff, maybe they would have a use... but it feels like more work having to train monkeys how to do things than to just walk over and do it myself.

The only upside I've had with them is ordering them to go cut stuff down, but then I have to always worry about providing them new tools when they inevitably break the ones they have.

Mainly I think it's a balance issue right now... it's too easy to just do everything yourself since your energy just replenishes itself. If energy actually had a cost, using monkey helpers would make a ton of sense. You'd want to conserve your own energy for other tasks while letting the monkeys do the manual labor.

[bl4ckrider]

It's a great demo, but I dare to say that nobody enjoys inventory management.
So here are some suggestions to make it smoother:

Drop the multitool altogether. Right now it seems crucial to carry it around and becomes an annoyance. You might as well remove one inventory slot. It just makes crafting more tedious to have to deal with it. Does it really add any fun or benefit to the game? It's like tying your shoe laces. You have to do it, but wouldn't put it in a game.

Link the workbench to the storage chests. Having to pick things from a chest and then add it to the workbench and then pick the multitool to craft something seems excessive. Does crafting really have to consist of so many steps? And it would be nice if that worked across levels of crafting. For example if I need 2 pebbles to make a rock and 2 rocks to make a brick. Then let me make a brick if I have enough pebbles in my inventory instead of having me make rocks first. It would make things easier.

So apparently the monkeys are a big feature in the game. Please consider that some people might not want to deal with them actively. I would like to have them run with me and fight for me. I don't want to micro manage them to craft things. I would image that there are more people who enjoy the crafting and the exploring and the fighting but not the monkey management. They also run in your way so that you accidentally give them stuff you don't want to.
Graveyard Keeper did a good job with their zombies that automate tasks without interfering in the game all that much, maybe that's an option.

Anyway, great game, will buy it!

[SeVeN]

i used all the monkeys for carrying chests since they went all over the map collecting far away and stopped thing in every place not really crafting what i wanted but just kinda doing half of what told and then half og something else. and the raid thing in a demo with clubs that dosent really hit the enemy for any health. why is there stuff spawning in the raft every second day.? and i startted thinking the craft bench is okay but how do you craft like 10?. items it says 10x but takes stuff for 1 item and make 1 item. and are there no doors?

[Eudae]

@Seven

From what I gathered, the "multicraft" option is only there to limit the amount of items your monkeys will craft.

I.E. you "hold LMB" to set 10x on a rock, set one monkey to deliver items, and one monkey to craft items, and you'll get 10 rocks, etc.

I honestly can't think of a good use for it? Even late game, I think it's unlikely I'll ever go out and measure like "oh, I need 132 walls to make my base...", it's more likely I'll just make a ton of walls and see what's what later on. I guess the best use is probably just to set it to 1x so the monkey doesn't craft a ton of something I don't want.

[SeVeN]

yea