ti-legacy.com

So brewing is a fun general system, but even after the tweaks I think there are a few usability problems.

Perhaps first and foremost is the issue you get essentially no hard liquors below 60, which I think (correct me if I'm wrong) conflicts with a general philosophy of making crafts at least mostly useful below mastery levels. There's also the problem with large amounts of mash used as pooling recipes below 60, but the mashes are only useful if you're above 60.

My suggestion for a solution?

Shift some of the hard liquors downward and add more high-end options. Champagne, champagne ale, capuan - things like this, luxury drinks, make sense at the higher ranks. But other luxurious, unusual drinks might as well: amaretto, absinthe, icewine, etc. ( I'd be happy to make a longer list if this idea was liked.) We have a lot of these fancy liquors for sale on-grid but no ability to make them by brewing.

By adding these high-end recipes near the top and shifting drinks like whisky and rum down, we:
1) Make brewing more useful below rank 60;
2) Avoid the problem of mashes being craftable long before their component drinks and going to waste;
3) Improve the dearth of pooling options due to the generally spread-out nature of the craft, with few recipes pooling for a brewer at any given rank;
4) Expand the options available to PC brewers to match what's already sold on grid.

EDIT: Existing coded liquids you can't brew yet, afaik...
Almond liqueur: rank 60?
Firebreather: rank 60-65?
Absinthe: rank 65?
Sherry: rank 70?
Icewine: Rank 75?

I'm always enthusiastically supportive of getting as much PC influence over the game world as possible, and this is probably most easily accomplished through the crafting system. It allows the player base to explore the various cultures without requiring expansion of the physical world.

I'd love to see more exotic, established drinks become craftable and I agree with Dice that it would be wonderful to push a few of the more common hard liquors lower in the ranks. Things like rum and whiskey are cheap in taverns which supports the idea that these are more common drinks than their high craft rank suggests.