Dye kits ?

[StandardFiend]

What about something like this:

A single item that acts as a set of dye-colours and has a set number of uses. Each use can provide one of a select few colours in a related scheme.

[jayd]

Originally Posted by StandardFiend

Getting multiple charges out of one dye or getting a stack of dyes achieves the same end, ultimately, and I don't think it really matters which one.

However, part of the magic of having a dye-crafting system, at least to me, would be the prospect of creating very special dyes that can give a character's clothes a unique look. Not just a flat, one-dimensional colour, but maybe something sparkly, or polka dots, or tiger stripes, or other things like that. The ingredients for such exotic dyes should naturally be more rare (so it actually serves as an accomplishment to have such a dye available).

What about combining what has been said in this thread, with some existing implementations:

There would be two components to dying.
1) A Dye Tub
2) Pigment

There would be four grades:
1) Normal
2) Semi-Rare
3) Rare
4) Legendary

The rough mechanics:
Pigments have limited charges based upon grade level. Placing a pigment in a tub consumes a pigment charge. Tubs have charges based upon grade level too, but have a higher number of charges. Tubs consume a charge on dye application. Tubs can take pigments of any grade equal to or lower than their own grade.

Normal tubs and pigments are purchaseable from vendors. Higher grades are drops (chests?) and have appropriate drop rates.

Should the features for "special" dyes become feasible, they can be added to the highest grade, or another grade can be created. (scalability) This would include the potential mechanic of replace existing hue vs enhance existing hue.

[StandardFiend]

I do sincerely apologise, but that sounds a little too complicated. It took me a few seconds just to understand it. But, I do like what you've said about the rarity level of dyes. A four-tier system like you've listed, or perhaps five.

I've just had another thought. Did any of you play Dragon Age 2? In that, rather than finding individual ingredients, you discovered the "source" of an ingredient. A recipe for a craftable item would have a certain number of required sources to be able to construct (for example, a potion might require 1 elfroot, while a Fell Grenade would need 4 deathroot, 4 glitterdust, and 1 felandaris--so, you would have had to discover four sources of deathroot in your travels, etc.). In addition, each item required a recipe, some of which could be purchased, others needed to be found.

This sort of crafting system could and would extend well beyond just dies into basically a full-blown alchemy system, of course, whereby exquisite, rare, and legendary recipes would drop as loot.

All you would need in order to craft a new bottle of dye for which you had discovered the resources and found the recipe is enough money to purchase it from an alchemist-type vendor.

It seems to me that this solves a lot of the issues. Dyes only need to be single-use because you can just purchase them straight-up; at the same time, you get the adventuring and loot-grinding aspects in the "source" discovery and recipe-hunting. I'm sure there's a way to modify the system so it's not an identical rip-off of DA2, but the basic idea could work.

Thoughts?

[jayd]

I think from a pure math perspective, the standard craft-with-variable-ingredients is a more complicated system. I also think it requires more art assets. More robust though.

Im not married to either approach.