I saw this idea by @SirCabbage over on the Mason Recipe Idea Thread, and was immediately struck by it. I’d leave my reply on that thread, too, but I feel what I am saying could apply to all crafters, not just the mason.[quote=“SirCabbage, post:65, topic:8982”]
Also, I would love it if the mason could take other stone objects found only in ruins- take them back to his workshop and try to replicate it. Depending on the difficulty and his level if could have say, 10-80% chance of success- if he succeeds you can build as many as you want in future- if he fails it breaks. That way we could slowly unlock other options in building beyond simple leveling and collect rare and cool furnishings from underground or in enemy camps or whatever.
[/quote]The carpenter [and maybe weaver too? I don’t remember.] is already able to make “fine” variants of items, by being leveled up slightly and then some random luck. Why not add this additional way to craft different items? (Of course, this leaves us with the question: do we want to allow the recipes to be unlocked from items the crafter “accidentally” crafts, or only from items that have been found? And if we allow both, will there be success percentage differences between the two, and if so, how would we keep track of this? Feel free to leave further details on this below - that’s the point of the discourse, isn’t it? 
)
Well to expand further- the thing is a lot of things we find in ruins will be particularly different and more rustic then otherwise. Also with the “three kingdoms”, the dwarves, bunny people etc- they will likely one day all have their own doors/furnishings etc. So for example you could go into a ruined church and find
“Ruin Church Table”
or go to the bunny people, buy one of their furnishing items- say a door- or anything.
“Bunnypeople Wooden Door” “Dwarven Keg”, “Ruin Serpent Statue”
etc. It just gives more variety and more flexibility to the late-game and some other ways to get new things beyond simple tree. The motivation is- every culture has their own distinct style- chances are our artisans would only ever know how to build like they were taught- this would allow people to learn new skills from other cultures that they otherwise wouldn’t learn. Like people trying to do Asian Paper Lanterns in the west or someone trying to work out native art.
My idea would be to simplify this idea just to make it complicated again:
The basic key points:
- Items can have tiers. In the vanilla this would be at least “Common” and “Fine”.
- Common items can be crafted by workers just like they do now. What items can be crafted may depend upon the race/kingdom of the worker.
- Fine items can accidentally get crafted once a worker is skilled (like now). Additionally, Common items may be upgraded if the recipe is known (i.e. the accidentally-upgraded part happened a few times).
- Additionally, I would like to introduce Weathered. Weathered items have seen some really hard times, lots of wear-and-tear, and just don’t look (or maybe function) the same. They can mainly be found in ruins and dungeons, but I would welcome if all items can “degrade” over time too.
- Recipes can be “learned”. While all crafters can do their race/kingdom’s common items, all other items are not known to them at the beginning.
- Personally, I would limit this. A worker is able to learn all recipes of his own kingdom, but only X per other kingdom (i.e. 5 dwarf, 5 sheepfolk things, 5 rabbitfolk stuff). Maybe this is tied to the level, so each level a worker gains additional two recipe “slots”. Recipes could be unlearned every once in a while.
- Items can switch their tiers. In the picture above, there are three processes at work:
- Upgrade is a process that requires the worker to know both the normal and the upgraded recipe (e.g. the common and the fine one). Upgrades lift the item out of its current tier and into the next one. I would say that an upgraded item requires the base item and some additional resources, similar to the Comfortable Bed we have right now.
- Restoration is done by taking a weathered item, some resources and luck. This process has a chance to fail and is quite expensive (both resources and time), up to the point where simply crafting it again would make more sense. After X (varies per item) successful restorations, a crafter may learn the recipe permanently. As such, it does not require any recipe, although it may require a certain level (i.e. fine lamps cannot be restored by a level 0 carpenter). Each item would have a “skill” that would depend on the amount of restorations already done (successful weighting more than failed ones), the level of the worker and whether the final product is known (a huge boost). This skill determines the chance of success.
- Weathering is a process that slowly degrades an item, but that’s an extension not necessarily required. By using some very simple and stupid algorithms, and item turns into a lower tier. Factors would be placement (outdoors rapidly accelerates this, while being stored in a stockpile as icon slows it down), use (chairs could get a little more used every time someone used them) and quality (weathered items degrade much faster than common degrade faster than fine items). A weathered item drops not a whole tear, however, it first degrades to a weathered version of itself (i.e. Weathered Fine Lantern). If not restored, the item may drop a complete tier (or more).
I think this would be a great change, including but not limited to:
- Ability to craft fine (or even finer) items
- “Assimilating” other kingdom/races’ abilities, without being able to completely replace them easily
- With weathering: The requirement to maintain your village, not just build-and-forget. Of course, it would need to be properly done, as in the ability to simply say “Take this, upgrade/restore it, then place it back” instead of picking it up and then re-positioning it.
- Upgrading items to increase functionality (for example, comfort for beds or chairs)
- A simple “research” system that uses chance but is not completely dependant on it
- A resource sink: Restorations would be pretty expensive (costs may scale with skill?) and upgrades would offer additional experience/nicer items for resources.
@SirCabbage Race- and Civilization-specific items will definitely add depth, and/but I think this sort of thing will add some balance. I’ll change the title accordingly. @RepeatPan Oooh, RPGesque leveling-up of furniture instead of just workers… I’d love to hear more about the gameplay aspects of that.
I’ve edited the post completely. Sorry about this, I have no idea why Discourse suddenly posted it - I was still writing it 
However, my system should be doable as a standalone mod too. Might be worth a shot.
I’m afraid I don’t have anything to add to the above, except. Love the idea @coasterspaul its basically essential for the game 