All my crap smells like licorice

[Buzz K[ir]ill]

So this system whereby special embellishment descriptions travel with specific ingredients sounds good in theory, but in practice it is turning out to be a real headache. Not every herb or ingredient has its own embellishment desc, and among items that create their own, other ingredients used can overwrite them.

For example, anise used in making musk oil overwrites the musk scent, even though it's just ONE ingredient. Anything then made with that musk oil also smells like anise... when it should arguably smell like musk.

The fact that these extra descs aren't consistent across all herbs/ingredients, and can overwrite one another, is a real pain point for me, and I'm not even a regular crafter. But every time I order something from a Merchant or have something made with these ingredients, it seems like there's invariably something wrong with the scent or the taste because this system is confusing and difficult to track. I hate to say it, but it's just not user friendly, especially for people trying to fulfill multiple orders with multiple ingredients in the room/inventory at the same time.

Is there anything we can do to make this system more user friendly -- and to make it easier for crafters to be able to anticipate when one of these special descriptions is going to be applied?

[Buzz K[ir]ill]

Possible suggestion:

Instead of having ingredients automatically apply their special descriptions when used (which is, I think, the root cause of all these problems), can we just move to a system where they are used consciously as embellishments? That way, people could still have the benefit of their fancy gourmet dishes tasting like cinnamon if they wanted, but it wouldn't wreck a cook's crafting spree if they accidentally got their piles of spices mixed up.

[-+[-__-]+-]

I'm on board for some sort of option that lets crafters maintain control over the final product's scent/taste.

If not BK's suggestion, maybe Staff can think of something easy to implement?

A link to my earlier rejected request for reference:
https://ti-legacy.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1911

[Buzz K[ir]ill]

I actually think these special descs would be MORE special if they were manually and consciously applied rather than automatically ingested by the system.

[Taunya]

I kind of like the idea of cooks inadvertently using the wrong spice and making their food taste weird, and think it can be handled ICly. Get weird food, send it back.

Besides being sure to put anise-laden fine spices safely away (and they are toolable by default now, so they can be marked as such), one of my accepted ideas could help prevent using spices they don't intend to in an order: http://ti-legacy.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1716

I'm not sure about the musk oil one as I don't have the recipe. Perhaps it could be fixed by a change to the recipe though.

[Buzz K[ir]ill]

I've gotten on people's cases ICly, and honestly, it left me feeling like a real dick afterward because there were real IC consequences for what was probably just a minor goof by a player who was trying to hurry and finish up an order. This isn't something that just happens once in a blue moon among newbies. It's incredibly easy to screw up even among seasoned players, and I think we have a hard enough time keeping steady Merchants and crafters without throwing them under the proverbial cart due to OOC confusion.

[Kuzco]

OMG anise = licorice grinds my gears.
But there's also the problem of people wanting the auto-added flavors for, for example, sniffing drinks.
Like if you smell a sugarcubed bottle it tells you there's a smell of nutmeg. And now you know to watch out. The crafter, if they could skip around auto flavor, would probably not choose to make their stuff easier to detect.

The Fine Spices recipe requires 2 spices. So I have to keep a bulk of non anise spices to combine, and another of anise Fine Spices, and tool them as "a pinch of spices and anise". Kinda bothersome.

[Buzz K[ir]ill]

I had to junk some stuff, but the issue with anise and musk oil has been resolved. I think the @appraise has been removed for the anise herb, so all future items made with newly-picked anise will no longer make things smell/taste like licorice. Huzzah!

[Kuzco]

Oy, badass.