Feature: Crafting

Let’s talk about a feature that many games underestimate – Crafting!

I've played enough roleplaying games to know one thing: there are a lot of people who love crafting. Not everyone wants to be a brave dungeon crawler. Sometimes it’s more fun to be a blacksmith or a baker. Sadly, in the majority of games, the only real way of becoming famous is to find a dungeon and loot some treasure. This leaves all the bakers in the shadow of the warriors, greatly unappreciated by the system.

What’s more, crafting often doesn’t give people the depth one would expect. You have hundreds of creature spawns to choose from when you decide to kill stuff, but when you want to be known for making swords, you have to make the same sword over and over again. If the system is complex enough, after making a hundred of those swords, you might learn a “better version”.

We are here to change that!

The Minecraft Frontiers way:

In our world, a crafter will have the same level of importance as a warrior, politician or explorer. You will never be in anyone’s shadow and they won't be in yours. Each play style will have a range of meaningful decisions to make on a daily basis. The crafter is no exception.

CUSTOM RECIPES:

We recognize that many games don't give crafters the range of options they deserve. That is why our server offers fully custom, multi-step recipes. What does this mean? Whenever you want to craft an item, you will have to learn how it is made. This is not done by clicking some arbitrary buttons, or bribing an NPC. Learning to craft an item requires that you as a player understand the recipe. If you are making a sword, you have to know what parts it consists of, how to make those parts, and what tools to use in the process.

Basic recipes can be learned from NPCs or books (sort of a crafting cookbook). These will only teach you how to make the basic items – simple bread, wooden or iron swords, rough leather armor.

To learn the recipes for better items, you'll have to spend your time getting to know the NPCs better, getting the master crafters to trust you in order to learn their secrets. Often times NPCs won’t even know the recipes themselves. This is where explorers come in handy. They will be able to find you information on ancient crafting techniques that will be useful during crafting. They might also be able to travel to distant places, learn how things are done in other lands and then share that knowledge with you.



MULTIPLE STEPS:

It is fairly easy to get into crafting. Simple recipes will not require you to know every little corner of the game world. However, we can promise you that no recipe will be as simple as combining two items together. Every item consists of parts that also have to be crafted. This means your crafting process will consist of multiple steps. Take a wooden sword for example – the most basic of weapons.

You will learn that a wooden sword consists of three parts – a wooden hilt, a wooden guard and a wooden blade. You will need to craft these items in order to make your sword. This will give players the opportunity to spend their crafting time doing a variety of tasks, not simply combining the same things over and over again. As you get more elaborate, the high-quality recipes will require you to combine a range of different parts together, many of which will not be made at the same crafting station.

​

COOPERATION:

Killing monsters will never drop a finished item. A politician will rarely be able to obtain something he can use straight away. Instead, most dropped items will be crafting ingredients used in recipes. This means warriors may be able to find a basic weapons, but without the help of a talented crafter, they will never have high-quality gear. At the same time, crafters will not be able to craft high quality items without the ingredients found by warriors.

This creates a deep, connected system between players. If people want to truly prosper, they will soon learn they all need each other. Basic weapons will be created using basic, harvestable ingredients. The more elaborate you get, the more players you'll need to know.

Warriors are not the only group needed in this rich process. Imagine you want to make the highest quality bread the world has ever seen – the kind emperors will drool over. You will first need to talk to a politician in order to obtain a permit to build a wheat field. This will be no easy task, as high quality fields cost the town a lot of resources. The politician has a difficult decision to make. You will then need to find someone who knows the recipe, likely an NPC enthusiast who spends most of his time learning about the lore, talking to everyone he sees. Third, the traders will have to arrange you a rare import route – no bread is any good without rare spices, the kind that can only be imported from abroad. Finally, a warrior will need to find you a rare piece of food obtained only by defeating an extremely dangerous boss.

In the end, crafters won’t be people who spend hours clicking the same button over and over again. They will be people who know the game world, who understand their recipes and know how to get the ingredients they need.



IMPACT:

NPCs and player’s alike will highly depend on the work crafters do. Not only is exporting goods one of the main ways for a town to earn money, crafting is also the source of items that are needed by towns on a daily basis. If you make the most delicious bread around, NPCs will flock to your store and you'll quickly rise in popularity. If you supply your town with sharp, quality swords, NPCs will suddenly be able to conquer much more of the land, giving everyone access to new areas. And if you learn to make dresses following the latest fashion, politicians will have a much easier job promoting their town in the political circles.

Crafting is just one example of our commitment to making every player important. The depth of the system is unlike anything you have seen before. It won't simply be a means of smelting iron into swords, but a complex system at the core of the experience.

So if you are a crafter at heart, this is your lucky day!