Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Mods Are there any crafting mods that work on EE?

Hi.

I am looking for some crafting mods for EE, specially the ones that let you craft armor dyes. Does anyone know if there are any mods that work on the EE?

I have checked nexus mods but most of the mods have some crafting recipes such as "barrel lid". So I assume that they are outdated(since barrel lid, wine barrel etc were removed)

There is at least one mod in progress that will include crafting changes (What crafting recipes do you use most?), but I don't know of any that have been released.

Probably it won't add new recipes, it just implements crafting commands for companions. But new crafting recipes are available on Baardvark's Nexus mod site for Scales ('Super Extended Crafting' under optional files; created by Naetell):

http://www.nexusmods.com/divinityor...2Fajax%2Fmodfiles%2F%3Fid%3D68&pUp=1

You can try that out.

Thanks; I forgot the crafting changes in Scales were available separately.

Thanks for the response guys.

For some reason, the crafting in the scales mod(I tried using it separately and with the full mod package) doesn't seem to work for me.

Maybe renaming the 'MainLSF.pak' file (-->'MainLSForiginal.pak' or anything else) in the Data folder of your game helps.

Just tried it. It doesn't seem to work.

By the way, it looks like the original author is aware of the issue because they have posted it in the bug section in nexus.

Seems these bug notes refer to Scales and its crafting file but maybe it's the same here.

Did you try it both with existing and new games?

One user wrote this month:

I didn't try it with a new game as then I will need to collect the recipes and spend points in crafting(which can take some time).

The only reason i wanted to use the crafting mod is because i wanted to craft dyes(which requires empty bottle + a type of mushroom). And that recipe isn't working.

Where do you have the recipe from? From a crafting book?
If you tell me the combinations I will try to add them.

Sorry, that's not what I meant to say.

The "scales"/"extended crafting" lets you craft dyes(normally, its not possible to craft dyes). So these are the recipes(as per the mod's "readme" file) using which you can craft dyes.

[C1] Empty Bottle* + Fly Agaric Mushroom = White Dye
[C1] Empty Bottle + Guepinia Mushroom = Yellow Dye
[C1] Empty Bottle + Penny Bun Mushroom = Red Dye
[C2] Empty Bottle + Jellyroom = Purple Dye
[C2] Empty Bottle + Earth Tongue Mushroom = Green Dye
[C3] Empty Bottle + Bluegill Mushroom = Blue Dye
[C4] Empty Bottle + Void Essence = Black Dye

Do you actually have to find the recopies in the Scales mod? You don't in the main game.
You can add a couple levels of crafting in character creation, as well as the Scientist talent, and the bonus from the Pragmatic trait after the dual dialogue from reading the diary on the body on the starting beach. A new game on Explorer would take 10 or 15 minutes to get to town; there are penny bun mushrooms in the graveyard and empty bottles in the King Crab tavern (use the scoundrel Walk in Shadows to get the latter; that will also let you bypass the first fight, though on Explorer Midnight Oil + Staff of Magus with a fire staff will end the fight). There is a fly agaric mushrooms in the tutorial dungeon, beside the tomb (so not very far in, if you want to take a quick detour).

First of all, you should not rename MainLSF.pak into anything that has the extension .pak but e.g. into MainLSF.pak.original.
(The game engine picks up root templates regardless of the name of the files they are stored in, as long as they end in .lsb, so there is a good chance it does this with PAK files as well.)

Additions to ItemCombos.txt are picked up by the game no matter if it is a new game or if a save game is loaded, the recipes are read on every game start, so new ones are picked up.
(At least if the recipes use stuff known to the game, which is the case with the mentioned recipes.)

If the ItemCombos.txt is the only file in the Mod (it's not a Mod technically, it's from the Pre-Editor days ;-), I see no problem and no reason why it should not work. (Except if a preview file is required, and I don't see one in the extension. I had this problem last year. General Raze would have to answer that.)


Little bit Offtopic:
I'll take the chance of the presence of the General himself in this thread to ask some technical questions (because I don't expect any 'Larianian' to ever show up in the modding forum, not even HIM ;-)

In Original Sin EE (as in probably every crafting mod) I always find lines like:

use object LOOT_Ink_Pot_A_Quill_A_Magic on object Scroll_Skill_Fire_Blank_A with transform code Transform2 parameters SCROLL_ImmuneToFreeze,0,0,0,0,0,1,1 requires Crafting 2 autolevel 0 autoValue 0
use object LOOT_Ink_Pot_A_Quill_A_Magic on object Scroll_Skill_Water_Blank_A with transform code Transform2 parameters SCROLL_ImmuneToBurning,0,0,0,0,0,1,1 requires Crafting 3 autolevel 0 autoValue 0

which means that writing on a fire scroll may result in an Avatar of Frost scroll and writing on an empty water scroll may result in an Avatar of Fire scroll.
In Classic, that was okay, because the old Target_ImmuneToFreeze skill was a fire skill and vice versa. Not anymore, in EE they are in the 'correct' schools but crafting was forgotten in the change.

So my questions are:

1. If I put my own ItemCombos.txt into Data\Stats, are all other crafting recipes still read ?
(Since crafting is very important for story as well - the Death Knight Bane skillbook as an example - and most mods only add the Shared part and forget to add the Main part of crafting, I suppose the answer is yes.)

2. Is there any way to disable an existing recipe, for example by simply changing the use code of the lines above from 'Transform2' to 'DoNothing' or would that just add another possible output ?

3. If recipes are overwritable in this manner, do I have to keep the original order of recipes in ItemCombos.txt ? (would it have to be on the same line number x ? Don't laugh, everything is possible, the story editor's search function works in such a weird way.)

4. Do recipes work without a preview in ItemComboPreviews.lsx ? Always ? (my experience last year was different, but we are some patches ahead ...)

5. Can I use both internal AND external ability names in the requirements ?
- 'requires Blacksmithing 2' uses the 'game name' (engine uses 'Repair')
- 'requires Blackrock 3' uses the 'engine name' (game uses 'Tenebrium')

Thanks. I will try it today.

@FrauBlake

Thanks. Which crafting mod are you using?

I don't use any crafting mod and I don't play currently.
I did my own little crafting changes - that I never published anywhere - before my last playthrough some time last january, only to avoid the game crashes when npc inventories got too full. (That had 'cost' me two almost finished playthroughs before, each time I was already in Hunter's Edge, AND had finished everything that had come before, including the 'cleanup of Sacred Stone and the Goblin Village', I was so happy .... grrr ;-)

I work on a mod project currently and I might include the dye recipes if they are so popular and if I do, they will work out of the box ... or I will not release any recipe, but who knows, what can happen ;-)
If I include crafting in my mod at all, the number of added recipes will probably be small (because that is not the main 'goal' of the mod), the list of added recipe in the mentioned mod is impressively huge but I don't like it personally, because it adds way too many buff recipes for everything.
(Looks like the mod's author created a recipe for EVERY buff that can possibly appear on gear that drops, but I just quickly looked into the file, I may be wrong. And ... malachit + diamond == ruby, really ??).

The recipe code for the white dye in the file is correct and uses the ingredients Baardvark mentioned in the Scales README: One Fly Agaric + one empty bottle.
Needs an empty regular bottle, not the empty potion bottle.

The reason it does not work is not in the crafting file's code, must be something else, either the missing preview XML or the file is not in the correct directory or you renamed MainLSF.pak into AnyOtherName.pak, keeping the file's .pak extension and thus 'encouraging' the game engine to still pick it up, I can't say.


By the way, I'm sure that none of the added recipes use any new code or 'DoNothing', at least white dye does not. And if used standalone, no possible story code could interfere with crafting - and I also doubt that Scales uses any Osiris code, because it was started long before the editor was released. And I can imagine no other way than story code to 'hide' a recipe from being used.
(In fact, the only way I can imagine to initially 'hide' a recipe is the way the Weresheep set is made: use DoNothing and do the actual 'crafting' in Osiris only when some prerequisites are met. But I'd be willing to learn of such a way if it existed of course. ;-)

So none of the added recipes can possibly require 'discovering'.

@FrauBlake

My MainLSF.pak file is renamed to MainLSF.pak.original
This is because I have been using the speedhack mod from some time.

Anyways, the crafting mod basically puts a stats folder(which only contains a itemcombo.txt file) in my shared folder. I have tried copying and moving it to my main folder as well, but it never works. All of the other mods I have used worked fine without any issues, except this one. I am certain I have followed the instructions correctly.

Another thing- the normal recipes in the game don't need discovering(you can just get the recipe combination information from the wikia crafting page and if you have the required level in crafting/blacksmithing, then you can craft it by manually adding the recipes in the experiment tab). So do these new recipes(from the crafting mods) really need "discovering"?

The crafting mod that you have made(the file). What is the folder/file location?

As far as I can tell there is no way for the game to 'lock' a recipe.
So they don't need 'discovering', you can use them right away with enough crafting/blacksmithing or whatever they require. (If they technically work of course, which is obviously not the case for you.)
I have only looked into the file a little bit not completely, maybe there is one or more error(s) in the file that makes the game ignore it completely. (In some cases, because it seems to work for others if I understood correctly.)


As far as I remember I unpacked the complete Main.pak, put the unpacked files into the correct folders and removed both MainLSF.pak AND Main.pak. (Would not recommend to do that now, the times when some 'drastic measures' are needed are over since the release of the editor.)

My ItemCombos.txt file back then was
F:\Steam\...<DOS-EE-Directory>\Data\Public\Shared\Stats\ItemCombos.txt

Just tried it with a NG+
Its not working.

Then let's take the original file and add some dye recipes and see if that really doesn't work for you. I just tried it with my game and it works.

Go to your game folder: Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition\Data\Editor\Templates\Stats\Shared\ and copy the file ItemCombos.txt to the folder FrauBlake posted above: Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition\Data\Public\Shared\Stats\

Then open the file with a text editor (wordpad) and add these lines at the end of the file (or anywhere else):



I used the combinations you posted above.

If you want to change the value of the required crafting ability (currently 1) just replace the number in: 'requires Crafting 1'

I was just wondering, if the file does not get picked up at all by the engine if another mod is used as well or if one in a .pak file from the documents folder is enabled.

Maybe the game ignores everything in the Main and Shared folders if another mod - a 'new style' mod - is used together with one of the 'old style' ones like Scales and the crafting extension.


Try disabling all mods in the game's mod menu and test if the recipes work without any other mods enabled.

I have to mention that the Extended Crafting file doesn't work for me either. And there are no item icons when dragging items in inventory. Seems a bit broken to me.

That made me try out different things, none of which worked:

Copied the original file to my current mod project, added one line for white dye: fail
Added a preview XML: fail
Converted preview XML to LSB: fail
Converted preview XML to LSF: fail
Renamed MainLSF.pak: fail
Copied the modified file to a completely empty mod project I keep for testing purposes: fail

(what I did not try was putting the file into Data\Public\Shared\Stats and start without any mod, run through the tutorial dungeon for the fly agaric and all further steps, that costs too much time and I assume it would only end up with the same failure result.)

It seems that crafting cannot really be modified in normal mods.

I assume the reason why crafting changes worked at all for me in my last playthrough was that I unpacked Main.pak, put ALL its content - Main AND Shared - into Mods and Public and renamed both MainLSF.pak and Main.pak, so the engine could not pick up anything but my modified crafting files.
(Was in the 'before-editor-days'.)

I don't think anything is broken in the recipe file (I more than double checked the white dye recipe, it is correct) but the new crafting system itself is broken, when changeability is concerned. (Same as the Requirements.txt thing, which does not work either.)

Maybe it works under certain circumstances, since it looks like people have reported it to work, for me, it doesn't.
Maybe that 'circumstance' is the steps I did last year, which is doable for a personal mod but no really reasonable way for a distributed mod - hundreds of megabytes just to have some crafting changes plus requiring the user to do the file renaming manually ...
Maybe it is just completely random order in which files get picked up, and once picked up, the rest is ignored, that would at least explain why crafting works for some users but not for others. (The windows file API might return Main.pak before the Public folder for one user and the other way round for another user when a directory scan is requested. This could maybe be tested by emptying the directory, defragment the disk and putting the directory content back in a specific order, but who wants to do that? If that was the case, the game code is broken in my opinion.)


I don't think we can do anything until we have an answer from Larian.

But there is no template folder inside the editor folder.

And there is no "ItemCombos.txt" inside the entire game folder anywhere(searched it from the main path to see if it exists anywhere else inside the game folder, but it wasn't there).

Okay, it does work.

After posting I started the editor and this time it warned me about an 'oudated' item combo.
So I copied the original item combo from the editor directory, copied one line from there to the end of the file and modified the parameters for the white dye.

-> WORKS !

Most of the recipes in the extended crafting file are probably only copy & pastes from one of the many crafting extensions for classic DOS and the new system introduced a change in the recipe line syntax:

an 'autoValue 0' added to the end of the line made the recipe to work.
(that might have something to do with the 'economy adjustments' Larian said they did for EE.)

Now for the recipes to work, this parameter would have to be added to every line where it is missing.
But this is a task for the author of the extension (or the users of it).

I have to apologize for any 'is broken' rants I might have let out ;-)

The templates folder is probably only filled if you download the game editor from Steam (or GoG, don't know about that.)

As said in my post above, you can manually edit the lines for dye creation in the existing extended crafting file by simply adding 'autoValue 0' to the end of each line.
Maybe that makes those recipes work but ignores all other lines where the parameter is missing.

(If you have Notepad++ or any other powerful editor, you could RegexReplace() every line where it's missing ;-)


The line for white dye should then read

use object CON_Herb_Mushroom_C on object ITEM_EmptyBottle with transform code Destroy1Transform2 parameters TOOL_Dye_White,0,0,0,0,0,1,1 requires Crafting 1 autolevel 0 autoValue 0

instead of

use object CON_Herb_Mushroom_C on object ITEM_EmptyBottle with transform code Destroy1Transform2 parameters TOOL_Dye_White,0,0,0,0,0,1,1 requires Crafting 1 autolevel 0

like in the extended crafting original

Thank you FrauBlake and Abraxas* for your time.

@FrauBlake
It worked. It also shows previews as well. Thanks a lot man.

Now that this issue is resolved, can I edit the file to add my own recipes? I want to be able to craft the armors that you normally can't craft- the scale armor(the one that looks like orc armor), the mail armor(found in early game) and the leather armor variation 1(the one you find early game).

The game only allows you to craft the plate armor, the leather ring armor, cloth armor and robes

I found that the armors are named as-

ClothArmor
ArmorLeather
RobeArmor
ArmorScale

But can't find what are the other armors(eg- scale armor(the one that looks like orc armor), the mail armor(found in early game) and the leather armor variation 1) have been named as.

If works now, of course you can add new recipes, just do not forget the autoValue ;-)
(newly added recipes might even work with loaded savegame, but I cannot guarantee that)


A problem might be to find out the required keywords.

You can look into the existing extended crafting file, it already contains tons of new recipes. When I quickly read over it, I already found recipes for the creation of bracers, so a lot should be in already. You only need to find out, what is actually created and what is required to craft something. Most recipes will miss the 'autoValue' parameter and will thus not work out-of-the-box, but you know now how to make them work.

In my tests I found that having only the ItemCombos.txt file and no preview file seems to prevent a recipe from being added to the Recipes page of the crafting panel, but I think you could live with that, crafting the recipes in the experimenting window will still work.

Yes I have found what are they called, but some of the names seem to be missing.(see my above edited post)

All the stuff you wrote are no items but item categories. They cannot be crafted but only used as ingredients.

e.g. something like
use category Anvil on category ArmorScale with code Boost2 Armor__Plate_BuffMovement_Mod, ....

means that if you 'craft' any anvil with any item of category 'ArmorScale', a movement buff is applied to the specific item. You cannot craft an 'ArmorScale' though, because that is not an item but a category and the crafting would not be able to find out which of the many items of that category was meant.

As output, you can only have real 'stats'. Those you could find somewhere in the editor's templates folder, best to look them up in the Excel files there. The Excel files are used to create the .txt files the game actually uses. (Well, most modders edit the .txt files directly)

A stat entry looks like the ones for the starting armors of Madora, Bairdotr and Wolgraff:

new entry "ARM_Leather_Torso_Henchman_Madoc"
type "Armor"
using "_LeatherArmor"
data "Act part" "3"
data "Requirements" "Strength 6"
data "ComboCategory" "ArmorLeather"
data "ItemColor" "Red Ore"

new entry "ARM_Leather_Torso_Henchman_Bairdotr"
type "Armor"
using "_LeatherArmor"
data "Act part" "3"
data "Requirements" "Strength 5"
data "ComboCategory" "ArmorLeather"
data "ItemColor" "Cobalt"

new entry "ARM_Leather_Torso_Henchman_Wolgraff"
type "Armor"
using "_LeatherArmor"
data "Act part" "3"
data "Requirements" "Strength 4"
data "ComboCategory" "ArmorLeather"
data "ItemColor" "Red Ore"


As you can see, all of them are in the same ComboCategory 'ArmorLeather', this line in the whole stat entry is only for crafting.
If you wanted to craft Madora's armor yourself, you'd have to use the stat name 'ARM_Leather_Torso_Henchman_Madoc' as an output, not the crafting category name 'ArmorLeather'.

If you have the Excel files, you can also find one Excel file especially for crafting: ItemCombos.xlsm
A long time ago in classic DOS, I even managed to use the included macros in this file for the creation of a new ItemCombos.txt in LibreOffice (because I do not have Excel), and it worked. I do not know, if that would still be the case.

Okay, what's the difference between

ARM_CraftedClothTorso_01,0,0,0,0,0,1,1 requires Crafting 1
ARM_CraftedClothTorso_02,0,0,0,0,0,1,1 requires Crafting 2
ARM_CraftedClothTorso_03,0,0,0,0,0,1,1 requires Crafting 3
ARM_CraftedClothTorso_04,0,0,0,0,0,1,1 requires Crafting 4

??

Does that mean that there are 4 variants of cloth armor, or its simply named as different numbers so that at different crafting level, their attribute will change?

Edit- I think I also figured out why the mod worked for some people and didn't work for some. I noticed that some recipes had autoValue at the end of the line(so the people who tried to craft these recipes, it worked for them), and some recipes didn't have the autoValue at the end of the line(so the people who tried to craft these recipes, it didn't work for them)eg- the dyes

Yes that's probably the reason.

The 4 armors crafted are 4 different ones, they might even look differently and might have better stats, but usually that is not the case especially for armor. At crafting level 5, the best version is usually crafted AND at the same time, some buff is applied to it. That's why there are 4 recipes that look almost the same. ... and a fifth one I assume for the fifth cloth armor, using a different transform code and having an additional buff name in the output parameters, but using the same ingredients and requiring Crafting 5.

In this special case, the stats entries are:

new entry "ARM_CraftedClothTorso_01"
type "Armor"
using "_ClothArmor"
data "Act part" "1"
data "Armor Defense Value" "2"
data "Value" "2.7"
data "ComboCategory" "ClothArmor"

new entry "ARM_CraftedClothTorso_02"
type "Armor"
using "_ClothArmor"
data "Act part" "1"
data "Armor Defense Value" "2"
data "Value" "3.8"
data "ComboCategory" "ClothArmor"

new entry "ARM_CraftedClothTorso_03"
type "Armor"
using "_ClothArmor"
data "Act part" "1"
data "Armor Defense Value" "2"
data "Value" "3.9"
data "ComboCategory" "ClothArmor"

new entry "ARM_CraftedClothTorso_04"
type "Armor"
using "_ClothArmor"
data "Act part" "1"
data "Armor Defense Value" "3"
data "Value" "3.9"
data "ComboCategory" "ClothArmor"

new entry "ARM_CraftedClothTorso_05"
type "Armor"
using "_ClothArmor"
data "Act part" "1"
data "Armor Defense Value" "3"
data "Value" "4"
data "ComboCategory" "ClothArmor"

The armor values of the first three armors is 2, that of the other two is 3, so you actually craft a version with more armor the higher crafting you have. (Those are internal values the game uses to calculate the actual armor value at a certain item level.)
The armors also have a different "Value", which means you get more gold for them if you sell them.

Most people use crafting mainly as an income source and don't care about actually using the items, except for weapons because the crafted swords and axes do much higher damage than the ones found, although they can never have as many additional buffs as dropped ones (+Strength or +Constitution et cetera).
If you learn more about the crafting system, you will find that the author created tons of recipes though to add the buffs that can normally appear on dropped gear only via crafting. (or blacksmithing of course)
Without any adjusments, crafted gear sells for more money than drops of the same level as far as I remember. And ARM_CraftedClothTorso_02 from the above example sells for more than ARM_CraftedClothTorso_01, but except for the sell value, the are identical, stat-wise. They might also look different.
All 5 craftable cloth armor pieces are in the "ClothArmor" combo category and can be used with buff recipes for that category. (and can probably be cut into cloth scraps with a knife or dagger, because this recipe most likely exists in the crafting extension as well)

Crafted items have the advantage, that you can have them at your level, because with 'autoLevel 1' they get the same item level as the level of the character that crafted them. With dropped items, you have to be lucky enough to find the 'right' items for your level before you completely outlevel your current gear.

Ok, I made a crafting recipe to boost armor

Dagger + leather armor = improved leather armor

I have set autolevel 1, but after combining, i got a lv 13 leather armor(my level is 17)

I'll check if the same principle applies to mail/plate armors. Maybe I'll be able to craft mail armor in late game. It seems they all go by ArmorScale name, all those strength based armors. but I haven't found any names for mail/ actual scale armors

Yes, all metal armor, both plate and scale, are in the 'ArmorScale' category.
(this could be changed, and in Classic, some mods have done that, but that requires changing the stats ... and adjusting recipes because recipes that worked before should still work of course.)

Although I haven't tested something like that I suppose that boosting items ignores the autoLevel, it is only ever regarded if items are actually created. If it was that easy it would take away the motivation for a lot of players to play games like DOS at all: the hunt for loot and new loot, over and over and over again.

If you created an item from another item, the original item is destroyed with all its applied boosts, so that would not work either.

You could use

use category Anvil on object ARM_Leather_Torso_Henchman_Madoc with transform code Transform2 parameters ARM_Leather_Torso_Henchman_Madoc,... autoLevel 1

to create a Madora's Armor from Madora's Armor at the crafter level, but that would not upgrade Madora's Armor but create a new instance of it, the original one with all possibly applied boosts would disappear, a fresh Madora's Armor would be created with the original stats, but a a potentially higher level than the original (depending on the maker's level).

You create a spear with

use category Dagger on object WPN_Branch_A with transform code Destroy1Transform2 parameters WPN_CraftedSpear_01,...

uses the transform code 'Destroy1Transform2' which can be found at the top of ItemCombos.txt and is

start transform code Destroy1Transform2
with using object do
object disappears
with used object do
set transforms param1
end transform code

means that the first object the recipe uses is destroyed and the second one is transformed into the output, the spear (so it is basically destroyed too). For this code, it does not matter in which slot you put the dagger and branch, the left or right one, if those two items are put into the slots, the 'crafting engine' simply looks until it has found a recipe which has both objects as input parameters, checks if the requirements to execute it are met and randomly executes one of the found recipes. With the spear, there is no randomness, because although there are different recipes with the same inputs, they can easily be differentiated by their requirement level, and the one with the highest level is executed. Requirement must still be met of course, the crafting engine will never choose the recipe that requires Crafting 4 if the recipe's executor has Crafting 3.
The recipe for spears with Crafting 5 introduces some randomness though, there are two recipes for a dagger and a branch with the same output, when used with Crafting 5, they both create the '05-spear' and additionally each puts a different buff on it, one a general damage buff, the other a critical damage buff (I think that's what it is, could be crit chance as well though). One of those recipes is randomly chosen when a dagger and a branch are combined by a Crafting 5 (or higher) crafter.

(This randomness is mostly used in the creation of spell scrolls, creating a scroll with an empty scroll and a magic inkpot & quill. Look up those recipes, there are many of them for each level of Crafting.)


Now if you really want to get deeper into crafting, I suggest you first read Rhidian's sticky thread
[Tutorial] Main Campaign Modding
in the modding forum, it's an excellent start into understanding how the game works, the thread was made for DOS Classic but (almost) all info still applies to DOS EE. A lot of other threads in this sub forum are also very informative, especially the stickies. There is one which leads to a couple of Youtube videos where Larian has some tutorials for using the editor, dialog scripting, game scripting, world building etc.

And if you want to get deeper into crafting, you also should really get the editor, because if you install it, all templates in the editor folder should also automatically get installed, and simply looking at the Excels there (and maybe even the real stats, the .txt files) should explain a lot.

You can find the editor in the Steam Library, section 'Tools', there choose 'The Divinity Engine Enhanced Edition'.


It is pretty time consuming to start explaining all basics here in this thread that was originally only intended to make the dye recipes work.
(The fact, that English is not my native language does not help either. I also have a strong tendency to try to explain things into the smallest details, but if I explain something, I want it to be understood. My current project will come to a complete halt if I continue posting here ... ;-)

Most if not all the required information has already been posted in the modding forum.

I recommend the above mentioned thread of Rhidian, it's excellent and was also my start into modding some time ago.


Well, and as a tip: try to create 'believable recipes', an output of Leather Scraps for Dagger + Leather Armor is more believable than a boosted Armor ;-)
(For testing, it's okay though, because that should be as easy as possible.)

Thank you for the tips.



In case of armor, if I add armor to anvil, it will create a new instance of the armor with my crafting level. Right?

But my question is, since all STR based armors are categorized as "ArmorScale", will it upgrade to something of a different variation?(for example- scale->plate or vice versa?)

I have another concern- the game actually has a pre-built recipe of armor, which is ...

Anvil + STR based armor = new instance of the armor(whose level is NOT same as yours)

So basically we are creating a new recipe from a combination of two recipes, but this already exists in the game database as a different recipe . So.. will it cause any conflict?

--

On another note, you might have noticed that my english is terrible too. That's because I am not native either.

Partially right, because as far as I remember, there is already a recipe to add armor (ArmorScale) to an anvil, which puts a movement boost on the armor.

Now, if you add a recipe for ArmorScale + Anvil with the SAME requirements (requires Crafting/Blacksmithing ?), the engine will randomly execute one of thoss recipes, one time, the armor might get the movement buff, another time, a new armor will be created.
If you add a recipe with the same ingredients but different requirements, it will be executed if you meet those requirements.
So if the existing recipe requires Crafting 2, you can create one with the same ingredients and requirement Crafting 3 and that will always be executed if the crafter has Crafting 3 or higher.
In the future though, this crafter will never again be able to put the movement buff on metal armor again, because the 'highest possible level recipe' is always executed by the crafting engine, and unless you manage to 'downgrade' the crafter's crafting level again (which might be possible for example by unequipping a belt or bracers that brought the crafting level above the 2 in the first place), you will 'loose' that recipe. It would still exist but could never be executed again due to the 'always highest possible' rule of the crafting engine.
So be careful when you create such recipes, recipes should never do completely different stuff on different requirement level, unless you find any good reason for that, higher level recipes can create different outputs though than the lower level ones if the higher level output is nothing more than an upgrade to the lower level one. (As is the case with the existing recipes for creating armor or weapons.)

The metal armors are only categorized as 'ArmorScale' for the crafting engine, for absolutely nothing else. Any 'cloth armor' could be categorized as 'ArmorScale' in its stats, which would allow every recipe for ArmorScale to be executed for that specific piece, no single recipe for 'ClothArmor' would work anymore for those re-categorized cloth armors though.

You can never upgrade an item with crafting, e.g. from scale to plate or from level 7 to level 8, so you can not upgrade scale to plate, but you can create a new plate armor from a scale armor if you add such a recipe. And of course you can upgrade it, if you call putting some boost on it an 'upgrade'.

Technically, there is no armor of any type in the whole game, neither cloth nor robe nor leather nor plate or scale, there is not even a single specific armor root template. By connecting a Stat entry to a root template - which has the looks and behaviour of an armor piece - and modifying the stat entry to your desires you can 'simulate' any new armor, e.g. a 'cloth' armor that looks like a plate armor, all only depends on the stats. The game does not forbid a 'cloth' armor to have the highest possible armor value in the whole game, because there is no such thing as a 'cloth armor' internally. It can be done, only Larian did not do that for DOS when they created the game.
They also added a ComboCategory to almost all armor stat entries to make crafting easier: because they don't have to create some 30 (don't know how many exactly) recipes, one for every single armor piece meant to be a 'cloth armor', creating one recipe for the ComboCategory is enough for the recipe to be executed for every single armor in that category.
(Theoretically, with crafting, buffs could also be applied to non equippable stuff like potions, but that would not make much sense, and would be restricted by - you might have guessed - yet another stat file. By connecting a stat entry to a root template, you could turn a two-handed sword into a helmet that could even be equipped, would definitely cause major graphics problems but is theoretically possible. You could create a root template for a wall piece and connect that to an armor stat entry for boots, all possible but most of all possible combinations would be pretty useless and have a great potential to break graphical representation, not to mention that maybe required animations might be missing from root templates. You can create any non-sensical combination of stats and root templates and the game will probably still load. If it crashes, when e.g. required animations cannot be found, I do not know.)


Stats are all that matters, ComboCategories are meaningless, they are nothing more than categorizations to make the creation of crafting recipes easier (having to create only one recipe for a whole category of items instead of many recipes for every single item you want a combination to work for), and root templates are all that matters when looks are concerned (well, and some 'functionality' like animation or sound).
Bring a stat entry together with a root template, make a recipe to build that new item and you have what you want. The ComboCategory does not matter at all, it is merely a shortcut for creating crafting recipes and not really needed. Stats and root templates on the other hand are absolutely necessary.


So my advice again: start reading the modding forum, especially the thread mentioned above. If you want to do more than very basic stuff in crafting without having to ask on the forum for every single little how-to, you have to learn about stats and about root templates.
I cannot answer all questions and I don't believe I could teach you the internals of the game, which I do not understand completely myself of course, only Larian and maybe some Pro Modders do, I don't.
Without some deeper knowledge, you would not even know, that you need to use 'TOOL_Dye_White' if you want to create a white dye, because the names the game shows to the outside are not the ones the internal systems need to work.

Is there any way to check which armor my party member is equipped with at the moment(so that I can figure out the particular armor variant name)?

Unfortunately not.

There is only a way to query the root template of an armor and not even that can be done directly but would have to be done indirectly (with story scripting - Osiris -, pre-built databases and some event catching).

So since having the template does not mean that you have the STAT of an armor - because multiple stats can use one and the same root template - this cannot be used anywhere, where the item template is not enough but a stat is needed, like in crafting.

Thanks for the info. I guess its better to manually test by crafting each of those variants using anvil + random component and then seeing how it looks.

Previews are available in the editor but it takes a while and some effort to learn how everything works.

The 'trial way' works of course and with a little tip gets a bit easier. There is only a limited amount of root templates in the game, much less than there are actual stats.

You can look up the link between a root template and a stat in the 'link' file. The link files are also in the templates folder in Stats\Generated\Links, the one for armor is Armor.txt.

The file contains a whole bunch of one-liners, each represents a link between a stat and a root template.
The first few lines in this file look like



where first comes the stat, followed by the 'UUID' of the root template it uses.

As you can see there are only very few different root templates for cloth armor (a lot of stats use one and the same root template), so you do not have to test all the stats as output but only one of each different template.
The same goes for leather, scale and plate armor, there are far less templates than stats which limits the amount of combinations you need to test to get the look you want.

(For weapons there are more different templates but also not as many as there are stats.)

I found a few names while creating root templates (in editor). Not sure what you actually mean there, as I don't have that much knowledge. But thanks. I will look at it a few times and hopefully I will understand something

Hm. how to make that understandable ...

Every object that the game engine uses has some kind of functionality (like how it looks) and some properties.
Looks (and some basic functionality) are defined in the root template, while the properties are defined in the stats. Those two need to be brought together to make use of the object itself work in the game.
(And let's leave out the fact for now, that some 'functionality' is defined in the stats, because it is there only, that an item is made into a weapon or an armor or a potion ...)

Now, the game has 'item-creating systems' that do not use the name or UUID of a root template to tell the engine to create an item, but the name of a stat entry.
Since every complete usable object needs both a stat AND a root template, there is some way to tell the engine what root template is assigned to a stat when a creation request is made with a stat name.

This is what the link files are for, they combine a stat entry with a root tempate, so that the name of a stat can be used in item creation.
These link files exist for all kinds of items: Armor.txt, Weapons.txt, Shields.txt. Object.txt and Potion.txt.
The link files can be found in the editor's template directory in the subdirectory 'Stats\Generated\Links' which exists parallel to the 'Stats\Generated\Data' directory where the actual stats are.


So you have two types of systems that create objects in the world, you could call the one type the 'high level' systems, because they create objects via their stat names. Examples are the crafting engine and the game's 'drop engine' (the 'treasure tables').

The other type of system could be called the 'low level' systems, the ones which use the templates for creation. Examples are all the objects pre-placed in the world with the editor or the different scripting languages.

What both systems have in common is, they always need a complete object (root template AND stats) to make the new object work. This is why root templates themselves have a stat as one of their root template properties. Without a stat assigned to an object, the 'low level' systems could not create any objects, no characters, no items. (The high level systems could not create any objects without the links.)

There is no 'high level' system that creates characters which is the reason why there are is no link file for characters. They are all either pre-created and placed in the world or are only created by low level systems.
(The summon spells have the UUID of a character root template directly as one of their skill parameters. But the summoned creature specified there needs to be a 'complete object', means that the root template of the character used as the summon needs to have a valid stat in the 'Stats' field.)

Thanks man. I was finally able to do it. I managed to create recipes for all in-game armors.

The game's mechanics is set such as, if your crafting level is 5, then you permanently lose your ability to craft certain design of armors.

eg- if your crafting is 1, then you can only craft "ARM_CraftedClothTorso_01" variant. If your crafting level is 2, then you can only craft ARM_CraftedClothTorso_02 variant.

What I did was, changed all of their crafting requirement level to 5, and then made sure that any variant of ARM_CraftedClothTorso_XX can be crafted(it will be random). Similarly, found the recipe names of different metal, scale/chain, plate armors and made recipes for them. So now it looks something like this :

Good if what you want works now !

But be aware that now, if those recipes use the same igredients as well, a random one out of those is created. (Remember what we discussed before: same ingredients and same requirements means a random one gets picked.)

With some save scumming though, you will eventually get what you want ;-)

Yep. I remember our previous conversation.

First, getting it to work was my main priority. Now that's done, I can focus on recipes(was thinking about putting the foods, feather, rope, needle, thread, sinew etc to good use)