The answer is sort of. Some of the parts of the mod are generated as part of the terrain so if you don’t start a new game these will not show up. However the encounters and loot drop alterations should still work from a loaded game, though finding recipe scrolls and resources will be more difficult. So yes to fully experience the mod I would definitely recommend starting a new game with the mod enabled, but it is not necessary.
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Good to know. Wish I knew it before starting my current game 
I read the OP like 3 times looking for that sentence and missed it every time. Sigh. 
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Am I just blind? Where is the altar or how do I build one? I keep seeing that I need consecrated water, but I have no idea where to get it. I’m only assuming that the comments above about some sort of altar are relevant, as there’s no real information about how this is supposed to work.
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They are randomly placed in the world - looks like a stone basin with water in it - can’t be moved & can be harvested then will refill after a while
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Yes pretty much what @Auryanna said they are quite rare and sometimes you may just get unlucky but that is sort of how I want it to be, I don’t want people to be aiming to collect every weapon and piece of armour every game in fact sometimes I don’t even want that to even be possible especially as I add more to the mod.
As a former game designer, that’s…uh…
I don’t even know where to start.
Cool concept, I guess. Definitely don’t see myself using it any longer, though.
Oh really I’m kinda curious to hear your thoughts then. My reasoning behind it was that I wanted the items to feel more meaningful and provide each new game with a more unique feel rather than just, oh look I have the legendary weapon again that I got the last 5 games. Instead by making them more rare I feel like it adds to that story for that town, having your town saved because you maybe got a legendary weapon you have never got before or was near a rare resource that the player can use to craft weapons or sell for gold to help buy other things.
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What about making the way to get the weapon harder instead? Then the player could get the same feeling of achievement, but not the feeling of being denied content?
So a legendary weapon that drops in the end of a long and hard campaign? only for a new and even harder campaign to start, where the weapon will be needed?
Making a mod with content, that is not accessable, seems like alot of wasted work? 
I have played with this mod for a while and my feedback on the spawns, would be that i found them negative in some degree, but when they were found (and defeated or looted) they where fine, even though the distance to for example the wateraltar in one of the games, made it hard to loot. The hearthlings simply never got any freetime to go all the way out there and pick up the water. (hopefully that will be better in A23 as the devs has stated 
Thank you for working on this concept, it really provides new ways to do things!
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Thanks for the input there is definitely going to be a lot of work that needs to be done to get things right and I do have plans for some more difficult campaigns with good rewards. In part I tried to remove the feeling to the player of being denied content by hiding what was even available so that way it added even more excitement to get something totally new. However of course the idea of making content that doesn’t get used is also something I would like to avoid so finding a balance is key. Perhaps maybe I could even have a easy and hard version of the mod where items rarer and much more difficult to obtain.
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One problem with that is the sharing of information that goes on here and other places. Everyone would come to know that such things are possible and then conclude that they are being denied that content. For myself that would be a deal breaker, sorry. 
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Personally I don’t mind that it’s random, it’s a surprise what you’re gonna get and makes me really go out hunting for treasures if I’m so inclined. I appreciate that it’s not always gonna be the same, but I can see how some folks could get a bit disheartened by that. I’d be perfectly happy if the gear just had the same stats as armor/weapons already in the game anyway, but kept their effects. I just like the unique appearances lol.
Having an easy version so that everything is available to the player and a hard version where it’s random or harder to acquire sounds like a great compromise!!
OK, so I want to preface this was a few things…
- Sorry it’s long-winded
- This is all 100% my opinion
- Totally not mad, please don’t take any of it personally
- I understand completely that modding is a labor of love that you’re doing for free because you enjoy the game and have a cool idea, so please don’t let anything I say sway you from continuing to do that. I just want to give you feedback and suggestions from both a player and a designer perspective. I’m in awe of people who can mod in the first place, but have massive amounts of respect for those who actually DO it and maintain their mods simply for the pure enjoyment of being able to contribute.
So, again, my two cents:
Putting in forced or even artificial scarcity just because you want to mandate that the player has a different experience every time is kind of shooting yourself in the foot. The only sure way to reasonably and successfully implement that would be to have so much content that your random loot generator couldn’t possibly have a repeat of the last set of items that were rolled up for the last game. You’re setting yourself up for a large amount of work to do that (even just from an art standpoint) in a game that is, at least so far (no knock to the hard-working devs), pretty much the same game each time. I know this is early in the mod process, so it will get easier and easier with each new item you add, but I would strongly suggest that you start the scarcity factor low and then increase it with each item you add. Get the users enjoying the content and understanding how it works, but don’t put all this work in and then hide it on purpose.
As for the current state, I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to have fought my way through 5 cemeteries scattered across the map only to have two recipes for items and then find out that I currently have no way to make because the key ingredient (consecrated water) is nowhere to be found on my map so far. My hearthlings are already ignoring half the loot I’ve asked them to pick up because it’s so far away from the town center or they think they have better things to do than go pick it up. I know that’s something that’s being worked on for future releases, so it might get better down the road, but that doesn’t eliminate the primary concern that you’re trying to ensure that players play with your mod the way you want them to play with it. In my experience, killing yourself trying to hit that sweet spot of making everyone happy is designer suicide, but so is putting in a lot of great content and ideas (like are in this mod) and then saying, “This is how I want you to use this mod” and putting in restrictions and conditions that forced that to happen.
Now having said that, there’s nothing wrong with scarcity, but you have to limit the amount of things that are so ultra rare that you’re not leaving your players at the whim of the RNG and requiring them to get just the right roll, not just once, but twice. And that’s just assuming you have two rare components. If you start adding more complexity to your recipes and relying on loot drops to disperse them, the difficulty and stress-factors go up exponentially.
I totally understand that this is a work-in-progress, but here’s my thought process while playing with the mod to give you some idea of my personal user experience. I’m totally not blaming you for all these, just wanted to show you what was going on in my head while I was playing and I’ll go into more details after my bullet list
- I was frustrated a small bit about getting the same recipes twice in a row
- I was frustrated that the recipes allowed me to put them up on a wall like a decoration, but the hearthlings didn’t seem to care about them on the wall
- I was frustrated after the 4th and 5th cemetery battle at still not finding the missing ingredient (water)
- I was frustrated that I kept finding armor drops that I knew my hearthlings would probably never wander over to pick up
- I was frustrated that once my hearthlings DID learn them, the recipes showed up in the middle of the pile of other recipes so that I had to scan through them all to find the new one(s)
Now, as far as #1 goes, I know that’s something that will get remedied down the road when you add more content, so we can probably ignore that for now.
#2 was a problem because this took a LONG time to figure out and the only way I did manage to do it was that I got so fed up with the hearthlings walking past the recipes on the wall that I was going to try to sell them to the next merchant, but I had to remove them from the walls first. Luckily, before the merchant showed up, someone learned one of them so that alleviated the frustration a bit.
#3 is definitely an issue, but I’ll talk about that in a second.
The way #4 worked is probably not your problem, but my expectation would be that the new recipes would either show up in a special category of their own (since they were special loot drops) OR that they’d have a special background or something to set them apart from the normal recipes if they were just going to be added to that list OR that they’d show up at the end of the list (i.e., in the order I learned them). No idea how much control you have over that.
So, as far as #3 and the scarcity for your ingredients goes, I personally think that hiding the altar on the map is not the best implementation of the concept. I understand the desire, but like someone (you?) said, you might get lucky and it’s right next to you, or you might not and it ends up stuck off in a corner and you have to just go look for it. Making that the sole source of the key ingredient needed to craft these items and then hiding it with no indication of where it can be found is going to lead to a lot of frustration, in my experience. Example: I’m not sure if you play with the mod that includes the honey bees, but if you haven’t, it basically pops up a quest that says, “Hey, there’s a special tree!” and then makes a BIG GIANT tree that you cannot confuse for anything normal tree and puts a big bouncing arrow on top of it to show you where you need to go to find the bees. Can you imagine if it just said, “Hey, there’s a special tree!” and then…left you to find it? That’s called a “snipe hunt” and that’s the equivalent of what is happening with your concept as it stands right now.
So, if I were to offer my suggestions, I’d say…
- Make the altar craftable, but have it require a special ingredient.
- Have that special ingredient be the tough thing to get, but show/explain where/how to get it. Have it be loot from a boss fight and/or something you have to save up gold to afford, or something along those lines
- Focus on your tiers of items like you are now, but my suggestion would be to have the lowest set just be new, plain weapons that are different enough from the normal items so they stand out while still being purely cosmetic. Have your second tier items add some sort of special ability stats (more damage, walk faster, carry more, etc) and then have your third tier be your legendary/epic/ultimate combination of cool look, extra buffs, and flares (flames, ice, etc). This way you’re doling out the coolness while still giving the player something to look forward to and work toward and not tossing out epic loot too early in the process. Another way to ensure that is to have individual recipes that unlock the knowledge of how to make one item and then individual recipes that unlock special version of that item once they know it. For example, I kill a big critter and he drops a rapier recipe, so now I can make those. Later still, I find a recipe for a rapier of speed (but I wouldn’t find that until/unless I find the plain rapier recipe…knowing how to make the rapier unlocks the second tier recipes so they start to drop as loot). Later, I find a recipe for a Rapier of Nourishment and one for a Rapier of Quickness. Down the road, I eventually find a recipe for a Flaming Rapier of Deep Pockets, a truly epic bit of treasure! This way, once you set up a base set of Tier Two effects, you’re able to add huge amounts of new content much more easily.
Lemme 'splain…
I don’t know what core functionality you have access to when modding, so I’m just throwing out ideas here with no idea if they’re even possible, but say you start with a Kris Sword as your first Tier One weapon model, but for the Tier Two effects, you have Sharpness (more damage), Speed Boost (walk faster), Lightweight (attack faster), Extra Carry Weight (carry more items), and Full Belly (eats less food). That starts you off with 6 totally new recipes that a user has access to find and forge, all using one weapon model. Now, if you add just one more additional weapon model, say, a War Hammer, you’ve just doubled a player’s potential recipes to 12 because all your Tier Two bonuses are intrinsic buffs as opposed to visual. If you wanted, you could designate special colors for each buff and that would be a minor amount of work for a simple cosmetic boost, but the key is filling out that second tier because each new item in Tier One multiplies your final recipe list. Then later on, start working on your Tier Three particle effects and add the fun stuff like flaming weapons. Heck, you could even have Tier Three be “one bonus from Tier Two and one Particle Effect” but also just have the option to be “two bonuses from Tier Two”, so that right there would start to fill out your third tier without ANY extra tech/art requirements for particles.
Anyway, sorry for the book and feel free to take or leave anything I suggested. I might write more later, but I’ve already probably been on my soapbox way too long as it is and I’m sure you’re tired of listening to me ramble/rave/rant.
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Thanks this was really good feedback don’t worry about it seeming too long winded it’s very useful to have. There are definitely some points I will take on board from what you have said as I go on to develop the mod further though some of them may be too complex to implement but I can’t say for certain without having a good look at how certain systems currently work. I think one mistake I made when coming up with the current system is I liked the idea of having hearthlings go out and find these new things so as not be handed them, but of course right now exploration is not the games strong point and so it just becomes too difficult to manage.
Moving on to the 5 points you raised.
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Yes I can understand getting the same recipes in a row is frustrating and part of this is due to the fact that currently there aren’t that many. It may be possible to alter loot chances based on other outside factors other than them simply being defined in the json, but I can’t say for sure.
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Having the recipes be possible to put on the wall was kind of an after thought as I wasn’t really sure what could be done with them after using them to unlock the recipe other than selling them. I’m not sure I like the idea though of hearthlings interacting with them as I think this would add more to the problem of hearthlings going and doing things that aren’t productive.
#2 was a problem because this took a LONG time to figure out and the only way I did manage to do it was that I got so fed up with the hearthlings walking past the recipes on the wall that I was going to try to sell them to the next merchant, but I had to remove them from the walls first. Luckily, before the merchant showed up, someone learned one of them so that alleviated the frustration a bit.
This part confused me a little are you saying that it took a long time for you to figure out that they could be placed on the wall? Are you saying one of your crafters learnt the recipe after removing it from the wall, because that shouldn’t happen.
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I like the suggestions that you put forward for this I think I will probably make some changes like that. I think the issue was that this ingredient is really too rare for crafting what should be really some quite common items. Perhaps the solution is to have a quest that makes it much easier to get a hold of and perhaps that quest is triggered by finding a recipe that requires it.
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Yes unfortunately hearthlings going out fetching items is still not great and isn’t something I can solve.
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I did have a solution to the issue of recipes standing out more in the crafter menu and that was really to just use the same concept as other loot systems in games where items are colour coded by rarity green → common, blue → rare, yellow legendary. This would help them stand out more and make it clear to the player when they have got a really good item. It’s really just a case of editing the item icon. Other than that I think recipes are ordered by crafter level requirement and then alphabetically.
Your last point about having different tiers that work up from some base model and then effects that can be added to it later is a interesting one. The current problem with that is that would really crowd the crafter menu as you would need one for each. The only way around that is to select a base model then let the player choose the buff or effect but then that may require a lot of work and a UI change to support it. The other alternative it to make the buff that gets added random when the player crafts it, but that just may lead to more frustration as you craft an item over and over until you get the buff you want.
Overall very helpful feedback. Thanks.
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looks cool, i’ll try it out!
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This is just the mod i needed thanks
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Hi, i’m coming back to this mod, but i’m not sure what to do. I’ve found some chests, and lost treasures, but i’m not sure how to open them. There isn’t an option to ‘loot’ it or ‘destroy’ it, it doesn’t work. Will this be updated? bc it’s one of my personal favorites.
I’m currently in the v.1 version
I tried out this mod today, and I like the way it works, by exploring to find tiny old treasure boxes hidden in the forests. I just used the normal Harvest select on them, and a treasure loot icon appeared above the harvestable object. The little sacred water fountains are also harvestable the same way, but they stay there and fill up with water again over time.
I was playing as Rayaa’s children, also with ACE mod on, and in Omniterrain biome, and got some of the new armors and weapons. However, the Blessed Shield for the Knight didn’t want to be equipped, even after I demoted my only Knight to sell all regular Shields in inventory except the Blessed Shield. I promoted him again (lv.6) and he still didn’t equip it. He did equip the Sharpened Steel Sword and Magma Armour.
I haven’t encountered the new enemies though yet, I’d like to see that too.
edit: I noticed in the code for vanilla Stonehearth on entity/armor/steel_shield.json there is a line for “slot”: “leftArm”, and in this mod the blessed_shield.json has “slot”: “offhand”, so that may be causing an issue with equipping it? Its the only difference that I can see, but a modder would better know the answer.
you’re right. I only used the ‘loot’ option which doesn’t work. With harvest it works
I’m currently in the early-game so i don’t think any enemies will show up soon, but anyways this mod needs to be updated a bit.
Anyways thanks for the help lol
Well, I edited the blessed_shield.json to “slot”: “leftArm” and now my Knight is equipped with 2 shields, the Knight shield talisman(+4) and Blessed Shield(+7), so he is a good Tank. I had to still try a few things to get him to equip the shield, because I started the save after the mod edit, and he was previously in 2 Hander mode, using a Trident. When I switched him to 1 hander and shield, he put on a Wooden Buckler(+1) which is weird, cause its lower Def than default Knight shield (+4), and for Footmen… So I changed him to a Worker, then back to a Knight, and he started putting on the expected equips(sorta 
)
edit: the 2 shields happened on a new Footman also, cause I also edited the iron_wood_shield.json.
Thanks Bruno for explaining the bug 
I kinda like it though.
The mod shield will work fine in vanilla. Ace breaks shields.
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