Shopkeeping additions

Ssaliss

I was originally going to post this when the Overhaul finishes, but I figured I might as well post it now. Odds are it's a big enough project that it will have to be postponed until after Overhaul though. Anyway, on to the details!

In essence, I'd like to create several keg-like objects created by artisans (or enchanters, or both, or something else) to be stocked in stockrooms. Much like kegs have liquids in them, these items would be able to hold other items. The difference is that while kegs are able to be poured between eachother at will, these new items wouldn't have that ability; they'd be filled directly by craftsmen. An example:

Art the Artisan creates a display shelf (or something) for Bob the Bookbinders shop. Bob can then BOOKBIND <book> INTO <shelf>. This would use the comms and gold that normally goes into creating a book, but instead of actually creating a book, it places it into the shelf (codewise, it'd just increment a counter, not create a physical copy of the book). When placed in a store, it'd be priced like a keg, and each individual book would be sold at that cost.

Much like a keg, however, you wouldn't be able to mix-and-match books. There'd also be a limit to the amount of books in that shelf (probably 10-20 or something, although different trades could have different limits; for instance, cooking items could perhaps hold 50 loaves of bread and whatnot). That way, you'd still have to use a fair amount of stockroom space in order to keep a well-stocked bookstore full with a myriad of different designs.

Of course, this wouldn't be limited to bookbinding. There'd be similar things for cooks (a cupboard?), enchanters (a plinth? which would be able to hold different kinds of enchantments, ready to be enchanted onto items from the shop), smiths (a rack?), jewellers (display cases?) and tailors (a cabinet?).

There are two main reasons for this: One, it makes it easier to keep a shop well-stocked, which helps both shopkeepers and shoppers. There's also the fact that there are a lot of awesome designs out there which are generally never seen due to the fact that keeping a well-stocked shop of, say, jewelry would be a giant pain. If you want to have five of each ring, that'd limit you to 50 different designs, and we haven't even touched the studs, crowns, necklaces and what else is in there. This change would make it much easier to showcase far more designs than you already can (at least practically).

Saran

Aetolia has something like this, it seems to be that you can place a pattern on sale, it looks exactly the same as any other item except it appears to take comes from somewhere and craft it at purchase(I got a message once that there weren't enough comms)

If that's desirable you could have crafters craft a pattern that takes comms from the shop rift and is encoded with skill levels and bonuses to produce the item.

The main issue here is the special items that so many patterns use

Ssaliss

Yeah, there are far too many of those designs to be able to craft directly from the shop.

Eritheyl

Ssaliss said:

Yeah, there are far too many of those designs to be able to craft directly from the shop.

Maybe that's a good thing - incentive for people to make less intensive designs, unless they're going for them to be strictly personal/group shared/not really fit for mass production in the first place. I know I design a -lot of crazy stuff- (mostly with a basis in dreamweaving motes), but I don't intend for anyone other than myself and @Xaldrin having to go through the trouble of getting them made. For my public designs, and my non-specific-just-because-I-can cartel designs, the comms are all as basic as I can make them.

If it's an option, and not a replacement for the current system, I think it could work well.

As for the OP, I'd say I'm for that as well. I wouldn't personally get much use out of it if it were a thing, because the only stock I really tend is potions, but if it would help other people out then +1

Saran

Thinking about it some form of "crafting rift" might work, like... it would accept anything that's listed on "listcomms" and... consume it effectively. If it can just accept things based off their alias(like how crafting currently works with such things), then increment a counter, and then decrement that when the pattern is purchased that might work.

Moonhartleaf for example is one that is used for some Seren recipes, being able to store that in a normal rift would be potentially problematic because of the possibility of taking them back out again, because the game would need to grab an existing leaf and put it in your inventory (riftables normally work differently as they are created on demand tmk).

Without the possibility of taking them back out again it might not be as much of an issue.

Further thoughts...

I guess the side benefit of a system like this is that... the items don't actually exist within the game until they are purchased. So it might be a way to reduce that which has been a concern in the past.

This wouldn't work for weapons, armour, or enchantments.

Enchantments would, in theory, be easy to fix up (see spell tag idea). 

However with the slightly random nature of their stats, armour and weapons would work with this unless they were standardised. Cause making it so you could just pull them out finished would probably be bad unless normal enchantment and forging worked that way.

Eritheyl

I'll come back to this eventually, too tired to form coherent word strings.

Ssaliss

Actually, enchantments would work with this system. It'd just be a different syntax of sorts. Instead of buying a ring with an enchantment, you'd "enchant <stuff> with <enchantment> from <plinth>".