Updates to the Ingredient Economy

Dear Cutieneers,

Since we have been working on refurbishing the in-game economy, the team has been working towards a more rewarding and balanced experience for everyone, from small new players to bigger fish in the pond — seasoned veterans that have been with us for the last few years.

Some of the previous systems that we introduced have been either shortsighted or have been done without expectation of some of the systems or updates that have taken place over the last year.

When the Forge kicked off a new type of item has been introduced to the game — Ingredients.

These items have since been utilized to improve goal setting for players, help with market definitions and how players see items in terms of pricing.

To further improve on that this season it has been decided to rework some aspects of the weights and values of the non-season ingredients.

What does this mean for everyone as it stands right now? Well, first and foremost, the positioning of the items and how they are perceived would be somewhat similar to what it was.

Previously, the recipes themselves have been made out of somewhat abstract logic and actual data from the current game state about quantities of these ingredients.

Now, the recipes will come from a more systematic approach, where each ingredient will have a predefined and direct impact on the stats of the resulting item.

This, in turn, required to analyze the current state of the game and how to balance this properly, with the vision of the future for the crafting system in tandem.

As we have communicated before the crafting system has been undergoing a restructuring in terms of how its base fundamentals work. Instead of being completely random, now, there is going to be a progression tree for each base ingredient, which will make it possible to be crafted into a higher tier with a more logical approach.

One of the broader changes in this is the tier breakdown. Previously, the ingredient tier system consisted of 3 tiers of items, with the new changes there will be 6 tiers of ingredients

This was done due to the categorization of the ingredients themselves.

As the table above shows, there are quite a few more defined categories of ingredients now. Some ingredients have all 6 tier slots filled out, some do not. This is to be changed as more content and systems are developed for the BCU ecosystem.

Let’s take a look at an example.

As you can see, there is a definite progression from tier 1 to tier 6 in metals. Which will require different additional ingredients from the separate categories to be crafted. It is not a uniform 2:1 conversion or anything of that nature. The ratios can differ for each tier and for each category. Exploration will be key here.

Here are the rest of the flowcharts (again, please be aware that there are no specified ratios per item it is not 1:1, 2:1, or any uniform metric):