I’ve had several run ins where I accidentally botched up an gathering attempt, merely because I used the wrong tool for the job.
There is currently no way of knowing at a glance if you have the right equipment equipped for the node you’re about to gather.
In some cases you won’t even know at all if the tool is right for the job.
(ie: master harvesting sickle)
Which got me thinking; and I’ve got several ideas/solutions ranging from minor to major in difficulty to implement. All in the spirit of making gathering less accident prone.
So, here are a few solutions I’ve come up with which should give you an indication that you’re about to gather some ruined crafty bits. (in order of what I perceive to be the difficulty to implement.)
- Have the text of an gathering node change colour.
- Change the mine/chop/harvest icon
- Unable to harvest if you’re going to fail.
- Warning tool tip while hovering over an node.
- Rework of inventory equipped gathering tools.
I’ll go a little in depth now where I’ll elaborate my ideas more and expand in bullet list how I think it could work mechanically.
Have the text of an gathering node change colour
Gathering nodes, like players, objects and intractable items have a title which shows up when hovering over it, or pressing the ctrl key (default).
My idea is to colour this text when your tool is too low for the job(or too high), that way you can see if you need to switch out your tool.
- Check equipped tool.
- Compare against node.
- Change colour of node and only that node.
Change the mine/chop/harvest icon
Whenever you’re within range of an gathering node a yellow coloured splash icon shows up with the text to gather the node it’d be nice if this background would change colour depending on your equipped tool giving you a stronger visual warning.
- Check equipped tool.
- Compare against node.
- Change the background icon.
Unable to harvest if you’re going to fail.
If you try to mine something and you’ve got the wrong tool equipped it could stop you like it stops you when you don’t have one equipped.
- Check equipped tool.
- Compare against node.
- Act as if no tool is equipped if it’s too low.
Warning tool tip while hovering over an node.
When you hover over an gathering node with your mouse a tool-tip would show up warning you that your current tool is inadequate
This to me seems rather hard to implement, since I don’t think there are tool tips on world objects.
- Add an tooltip possibility for world objects (nodes).
- Make a check against the node with equipped gear.
- Show the tooltip on a mouse over.
Rework of inventory equipped gathering tools.
A system where either the game checks your inventory and uses the lowest usable gathering tool for the job (some filtering to avoid usage of rare tools)
or a system where you equip tools per tier in your inventory and it will then select the tool for the job possible with selection options to use higher grade tools if lower grade is unavailable.
- Check currently equipped tool.
- Compare against node.
- Check inventory for tools that would work.
- Use inventory tool if the currently equipped tool won’t work.
or
- Add additional equipment bars on the equipment panel per tier of nodes.
- Equip tools per tier.
- Add options to enable usage of higher tier tools.
- Check the nodes against equipped tools.
- Compare against the tools.
- Advance tool tiers or warn the player if the required tier has no tool equipped.
This rework would be pretty major as it would require a rework of the hero equipment panel and/or inventory.
I’d like to hear peoples thoughts on these suggestions.