Right now it is hard to add new exciting recipes to the game. I really liked new additions - meaty leaf and lobster recipes. But their stats are very bland, there are already similar recipes. I'd love that finding a lobster would lead to a thought "Wow, now I can cook [awesome thing] and use my [other resources] more efficiently!", not just "Meh, some hunger and hp restored. I have tons of other resources for that and they stack together, no extra slot in inventory needed".
Right now Crock Pot recipes check only food classes (meats/veggies/fish/etc.) and ignore hunger/sanity/health values. I love current system and memorized most recipes (except the rarest ones). But there are limits to this mechanic. New recipe could grant hunger, it can heal, it can recover sanity. Side effects are awesome, but rarely used.
So my idea: recipes can have dynamic Hung/San/HP stats that are reliant on food used. For example, meatballs could have next effects: removes negative sanity/health effects from food items used, adds plain bonus (+5/+5/+3).
Then one could cook:
- (cooked monster meat + 3 ice) = ((18.75/-10/-3) + (2.3/0/0.5) *3 ) = (25.65 / -10 / -1.5) as base food value. After meatballs effects => (30.65 / +5 / +3) meatballs
- (3 raw morsels + 1 raw carrot) = (12.5 / -10 / 0) * 3 + (12.5 / 0 / 1) = (60/ -30 / 1) After meatballs effects => (65/+5/+4) meatballs
- (3 cooked morsels + 1 cooked carrot) = (12.5 / 0 / 1) * 3 + (12.5 / 0 / 3) = (60/0/6) After meatballs effects => (65/+5/+9) meatballs
Basic recipes can be user-friendly and mainly help to fix negative effects of easy to get foods. More complex ones could have bonuses to specific food types and negative modifiers to others. So there can be some recipe that gives *1.5 to veggies values and *0.5 for meats. There could be recipes that multiply sanity or health values, allowing to cook super-healers (low or negative hunger/sanity bonuses but +80 or +100 hp).
Also on top of that extra high values for food classes or their combinations could provide additional side effects not dependent on recipe. For example, there could be a table like:
- 2 fruit value in a dish => (some bonus for N minutes), with x1 power
- 3 fruit value in a dish => (some bonus for N minutes), with x2 power
- 4 fruit value in a dish => (some bonus for N minutes), with x3 power
Or it could be x1/x3/x6 scale. Or it could affect bonus duration. Just as an example - any dish with 4 fruit value could give x2 modifier for all hp restoration items for next N minutes. And if monster food is present it could go both ways (so it would be useful to boost other hp restoration items used in camp, but dangerous in battle).
The goal is - to add more criteria to choose what food to cook. Right now it is quit simple, do I need some specific power up? Then make that specific recipe. Do I need to restore health/sanity? I need to sort recipes by single parameter and select the first one I can cook. What I would like to have - is a choice like "Do I want slight dmg boost from meaty food or a little bit of speed boost from veggy dish?". (To solve op buff combos only last food bonus could be applied, like with Abigail elixirs).
I understand that it makes Warly not so cool. I have crazy idea for this - Warly could have one extra slot (or two) in his crock pot, allowing him to break all the rules and cook high value dishes from basic ingredients. That would distinguish him from amateur cooks that would need high quality food to cook even basics. And some food value thresholds could be achieved only in his crock pot (e.g. 5.0 meat value).
P.S. I tried to search this forum, I hope this is not duplicate.