Brewing

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Brewing
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Skill in creating alcoholic beverages of all sorts.
Skill Type:
Trade Skill
Max Level:
70
Requirements:
Gardening at 35
Skill Trainers:

Leave a quote about the skill here. This can be the in-game description, but that info must be placed below as well. Adds a bit of flavor to the article as well.

Brewing Overview

Brewing is a crafting skill that involves the production of Alcoholic Beverages. The consumption of these beverages will raise your Alcohol Tolerance skill.

In-Game Description

Skill in creating alcoholic beverages of all sorts.

Training Brewing

  • Brianna Willer teaches Brewing after you have been introduced to her by Therese and your Gardening is at least 35.
  • Malvol is willing to teach Whisky recipes to Like Family.
  • Gretchen Salas can be persuaded to teach a recipe for Potato Vodka.
  • Hiral can teach Pale Rum recipes to his Close Friends.
  • Dhakmar can raise the Brewing level cap to both Level 60 and Level 70.

Connected Skills

Sub-Skills:
  • None
Secondary Skills:
  • Alcohol Tolerance - This skill represents your ability to ward off the adverse effects of alcohol. The consumption of brewed beverages will raise this skill.
Related Skills:
  • Carpentry - Carpentry is handy for making the kegs and barrels required for many recipes.
  • Gardening - Barley is a common crop grown for use in beer. To learn Brewing, you will also need Level 35 Gardening.
  • Foraging - Many ingredients used in Brewing are found through Foraging.

Recipe Lists

Brewing Complete Recipe List

Click "Expand" on the box below to view a complete list of Recipes for the Brewing skill.

Lvl Name First-Time XP XP Ingredients Results Description Source
1 Basic Lager (One Glass) 40 10 icon_5717.png Barley x1
icon_5718.png Hops x1
icon_5729.png Basic Lager Yeast x1
Fruit: Red Apple, Grapes, Orange, or Strawberry x1
icon_5744.png Basic Lager x1 A simple, watery, slightly insipid beer. Leveling
1 Potato Vodka (Drinkable Cask) 40 10 icon_5722.png Aged Potato Vodka x1
Fruit: Red Apple, Grapes, or Orange x1
Mushroom Flakes: Parasol, Mycena, Boletus, or Field x1
Boar Tusk, Cat Eyeball, Snail Sinews, Rat Tail, or Basic Fish Scales x1
Oregano, Mandrake Root, Peppercorns or Grass x1
icon_5722.png Potato Vodka x1 A very rough alcoholic beverage. Some say you grow to like the taste, but others say that's just your tastebuds dying from the pain. Hang Out: Gretchen Salas
1 Potato Vodka (Un-Aged) 40 10 icon_5326.png Barrel x1
icon_5022.png Potato x8
icon_5729.png Basic Lager Yeast x1
icon_5722.png Un-Aged Potato Vodka x1 Prepares a cask of vodka for aging. The cask must then be stored in a cave until it is mature. Hang Out: Gretchen Salas
1 Reuse Beer Keg 40 10 Beer Keg x1 icon_5324.png Firkin x1 (!) Dump out a beer keg and clean the container so it can be used again. There's a small chance that the container will be too damaged to be reused. Training: Brianna Willer
1 Reuse Liquor Barrel 40 10 Hard Liquor Barrel x1 icon_5326.png Barrel x1 (!) Dump out a cask of hard liquor and clean the container so it can be used again. There's a small chance the barrel will be too damaged to be reused. Training: Brianna Willer
3 Basic Lager Keg 48 12 icon_5324.png Firkin x1
icon_5717.png Barley x5
icon_5718.png Hops x1
icon_5729.png Basic Lager Yeast x1
Fruit: Red Apple, Grapes, Orange, or Strawberry x1
icon_5745.png Basic Lager Keg x1 A simple, watery, slightly insipid beer. Leveling
10 Applejack (Drinkable Cask) 160 40 icon_5722.png Aged Applejack x1
Fruit: Red Apple, Grapes, or Orange x1
Beet, Squash, Broccoli, or Carrot x1
Boar Tusk, Cat Eyeball, Snail Sinews, Rat Tail, or Basic Fish Scales x1
Oregano, Mandrake Root, Peppercorns or Grass x1
icon_5722.png Applejack x1 Apple brandy, with a distinctive apple taste and a strong kick. A longtime favorite of rural humans. Hang Out: Therese
10 Applejack (Un-Aged) 160 40 icon_5326.png Barrel x1
icon_5137.png Red Apple x8
icon_5730.png Pale Ale Yeast x1
icon_5722.png Un-Aged Applejack x1 Prepares a cask of applejack brandy for aging. The cask must then be stored in a cave until it is mature. Hang Out: Therese
10 Pale Ale (One Glass) 160 40 icon_5717.png Barley x1
icon_5718.png Hops x1
icon_5730.png Pale Ale Yeast x1
Fruit: Red Apple, Grapes, Orange, or Strawberry x1
Mushroom Flakes: Parasol, Mycena, Boletus, or Field x1
icon_5744.png Pale Ale x1 A surprisingly complex beer, but... complexity doesn't always taste good. Training: Brianna Willer
12 Tap Alcohol Keg 192 48 icon_5852.png Keg Tap x1
Beer Keg or Hard Liquor Barrel x1
Tap Alcohol Keg Attach a tap to a barrel of beer or hard liquor and deploy it. The barrel will IMMEDIATELY APPEAR near you, and any players can drink from it. The barrel will persist until all alcohol is consumed (or very slowly evaporates). The barrel cannot be reused. If the barrel is inscribed prior to being tapped, the inscription will be shown to all who drink from it. Leveling
Training: Brianna Willer
13 Pale Ale Keg 208 52 icon_5324.png Firkin x1
icon_5717.png Barley x7
icon_5718.png Hops x1
icon_5730.png Pale Ale Yeast x1
Fruit: Red Apple, Grapes, Orange, or Strawberry x1
Mushroom Flakes: Parasol, Mycena, Boletus, or Field x1
icon_5745.png Pale Ale Keg x1 A surprisingly complex beer, but... complexity doesn't always taste good. Training: Brianna Willer
20 Beet Vodka (Drinkable Cask) 320 80 icon_5722.png Aged Beet Vodka x1
Fruit: Guava, Banana, or Lemon x1
Mushroom Flakes: Parasol, Mycena, Boletus, or Field x1
Boar Tusk, Cat Eyeball, Snail Sinews, Rat Tail, or Basic Fish Scales x1
Oregano, Mandrake Root, Peppercorns or Grass x1
icon_5722.png Beet Vodka x1 A sweet, relatively palatable variety of vodka. Although it's a traditional dwarven drink, it long ago fell out of favor, and these days dwarves only use it for cooking. Training: Brianna Willer
20 Beet Vodka (Un-Aged) 320 80 icon_5326.png Barrel x1
icon_5101.png Beet x8
icon_5731.png Marzen Yeast x1
icon_5722.png Un-Aged Beet Vodka x1 Prepares a cask of vodka for aging. The cask must then be stored in a cave until it is mature. Training: Brianna Willer
20 Marzen (One Glass) 320 80 icon_5717.png Barley x2
icon_5718.png Hops x1
icon_5731.png Marzen Yeast x1
Fruit: Red Apple, Grapes, Orange, or Strawberry x1
Mushroom Flakes: Parasol, Mycena, Boletus, or Field x1
Oregano or Mandrake Root x1
icon_5744.png Marzen x1 A medium-body beer with a malty flavor. Training: Brianna Willer
23 Marzen Keg 368 92 icon_5324.png Firkin x1
icon_5717.png Barley x9
icon_5718.png Hops x1
icon_5731.png Marzen Yeast x1
Fruit: Red Apple, Grapes, Orange, or Strawberry x1
Mushroom Flakes: Parasol, Mycena, Boletus, or Field x1
Oregano or Mandrake Root x1
icon_5745.png Marzen Keg x1 A medium-body beer with a malty flavor. Training: Brianna Willer
30 Goblin Ale (One Glass) 480 120 icon_5717.png Barley x2
icon_5718.png Hops x1
icon_5732.png Goblin Ale Yeast x1
Fruit: Red Apple, Grapes, or Orange x1
Fruit: Guava, Banana, or Lemon x1
Mushroom Flakes: Parasol, Mycena, Boletus, or Field x1
Oregano, Mandrake Root, or Peppercorns x1
icon_5744.png Goblin Ale x1 A hoppy beer with hints of spice. Training: Brianna Willer
30 Pale Rum (Drinkable Cask) 480 120 icon_5722.png Aged Pale Rum x1
Fruit: Guava, Banana, or Lemon x1
Mushroom Flakes/Powders: Field, Blusher, Milk Cap, Blood x1
Boar Tusk, Cat Eyeball, Snail Sinews, Rat Tail, or Basic Fish Scales x1
Oregano, Mandrake Root, Peppercorns or Grass x1
icon_5722.png Pale Rum x1 Sweet and strong, with the distinctive odor of molasses. In far-off lands, ranalon produce and drink rum in tremendous quantities, but it's less common -- and less delicious -- in Alharth. Training: Hiral
30 Pale Rum (Un-Aged) 480 120 icon_5326.png Barrel x1
icon_5724.png Molasses x8
icon_5732.png Goblin Ale Yeast x1
icon_5722.png Un-Aged Pale Rum x1 Prepares a cask of rum for aging. The cask must then be stored in a cave until it is mature. Training: Hiral
33 Goblin Ale Keg 528 132 icon_5324.png Firkin x1
icon_5717.png Barley x10
icon_5718.png Hops x2
icon_5732.png Goblin Ale Yeast x1
Fruit: Red Apple, Grapes, or Orange x1
Fruit: Guava, Banana, or Lemon x1
Mushroom Flakes: Parasol, Mycena, Boletus, or Field x1
Oregano, Mandrake Root, or Peppercorns x1
icon_5745.png Goblin Ale Keg x1 A hoppy beer with hints of spice. Training: Brianna Willer
40 Orcish Bock (One Glass) 640 160 icon_5717.png Barley x3
icon_5718.png Hops x1
icon_5733.png Orcish Bock Yeast x1
Beet, Squash, Broccoli, or Carrot x1
Fruit: Guava, Banana, or Lemon x1
Mushroom Flakes/Powders: Field, Blusher, Milk Cap, Blood x1
Oregano, Mandrake Root, or Peppercorns x1
icon_5744.png Orcish Bock x1 A clean, dry beer that goes down easy. Training: Brianna Willer
40 Whisky (Drinkable Cask) 640 160 icon_5722.png Aged Whisky x1
Fruit: Guava, Banana, or Lemon x1
Mushroom Flakes/Powders: Field, Blusher, Milk Cap, Blood x1
Wolf Teeth, Panther Tail, Deinonychus Claw, Rabbit's Foot, or Bear Gallbladder x1
Oregano, Mandrake Root, Peppercorns or Grass x1
icon_5722.png Whisky x1 A simple variety of whisky made from barley. It's drinkable and has a tolerable flavor. Training: Malvol
40 Whisky (Un-Aged) 640 160 icon_5326.png Barrel x1
icon_5717.png Barley x14
icon_5733.png Orcish Bock Yeast x1
icon_5722.png Un-Aged Whisky x1 Prepares a cask of whisky for aging. The cask must then be stored in a cave until it is mature. Training: Malvol
43 Orcish Bock Keg 688 172 icon_5324.png Firkin x1
icon_5717.png Barley x12
icon_5718.png Hops x3
icon_5733.png Orcish Bock Yeast x1
Beet, Squash, Broccoli, or Carrot x1
Fruit: Guava, Banana, or Lemon x1
Mushroom Flakes/Powders: Field, Blusher, Milk Cap, Blood x1
Oregano, Mandrake Root, or Peppercorns x1
icon_5745.png Orcish Bock Keg x1 A clean, dry beer that goes down easy. Training: Brianna Willer
50 Brown Ale (One Glass) 800 200 icon_5717.png Barley x3
icon_5718.png Hops x1
icon_5734.png Brown Ale Yeast x1
Green Pepper, Red Pepper, Molasses, or Corn x1
Fruit: Guava, Banana, or Lemon x1
Mushroom Flakes/Powders: Field, Blusher, Milk Cap, Blood x1
Cinnamon, Muntok Peppercorns, or Seaweed x1
icon_5744.png Brown Ale x1 A sweet beer with hints of chocolate. Training: Brianna Willer
50 Tequila (Drinkable Cask) 800 200 icon_5722.png Aged Tequila x1
Fruit: Guava, Banana, or Lemon x1
Mushroom Flakes/Powders: Field, Blusher, Milk Cap, Blood x1
Wolf Teeth, Panther Tail, Deinonychus Claw, Rabbit's Foot, or Bear Gallbladder x1
Cinnamon, Muntok Peppercorns, Seaweed, or Myconian Jelly x1
icon_5722.png Tequila x1 Fermented cactus juice with a complex taste. This variety has been aged to make it more drinkable. (It's "more" drinkable, but still not "very" drinkable -- it's an acquired taste.) The stereotypical drink of rakshasa desert bandits. Training: Dhakmar
50 Tequila (Un-Aged) 800 200 icon_5326.png Barrel x1
icon_5010.png Cactus Juice x8
icon_5466.png Desert Rose x2
icon_5734.png Brown Ale Yeast x1
icon_5722.png Un-Aged Tequila x1
icon_5009.png Empty Bottle x8
Prepares a cask of tequila for aging. The cask must then be stored in a cave until it is mature. Training: Dhakmar
53 Brown Ale Keg 848 212 icon_5324.png Firkin x1
icon_5717.png Barley x15
icon_5718.png Hops x3
icon_5734.png Brown Ale Yeast x1
Green Pepper, Red Pepper, Molasses, or Corn x1
Fruit: Guava, Banana, or Lemon x1
Mushroom Flakes/Powders: Field, Blusher, Milk Cap, Blood x1
Cinnamon, Muntok Peppercorns, or Seaweed x1
icon_5745.png Brown Ale Keg x1 A sweet beer with hints of chocolate. Training: Brianna Willer
60 Dry Gin (Drinkable Cask) 960 240 icon_5722.png Aged Dry Gin x1
Fruit: Pear, Peach, or Green Apple x1
Mushroom Flakes/Powders: Coral, Groxmax, Porcini, Black Foot Morel x1
Wolf Teeth, Panther Tail, Deinonychus Claw, Rabbit's Foot, or Bear Gallbladder x1
Cinnamon, Muntok Peppercorns, Seaweed, or Myconian Jelly x1
icon_5722.png Dry Gin x1 Pleasant, slightly citrusy, but with a distinctive bitterness too. It's said to be the favorite hard liquor of elves, but since elves mostly drink wine, that's not much praise. Training: Dhakmar
60 Dry Gin (Un-Aged) 960 240 icon_5326.png Barrel x1
icon_5717.png Barley x8
icon_5725.png Juniper Berries x5
icon_5735.png Hegemony Lager Yeast x1
icon_5722.png Un-Aged Dry Gin x1 Prepares a cask of gin for aging. The cask must then be stored in a cave until it is mature. Training: Dhakmar
60 Hegemony Lager (One Glass) 960 240 icon_5717.png Barley x3
icon_5718.png Hops x2
icon_5735.png Hegemony Lager Yeast x1
Green Pepper, Red Pepper, Molasses, or Corn x1
Fruit: Pear, Peach, or Green Apple x1
Mushroom Flakes/Powders: Field, Blusher, Milk Cap, Blood x1
Cinnamon, Muntok Peppercorns, or Seaweed x1
icon_5744.png Hegemony Lager x1 A clean beer with hints of oak and licorice. The preferred drink of humans in the Crone Hegemony. Training: Dhakmar
63 Hegemony Lager Keg 1008 252 icon_5324.png Firkin x1
icon_5717.png Barley x17
icon_5718.png Hops x4
icon_5735.png Hegemony Lager Yeast x1
Green Pepper, Red Pepper, Molasses, or Corn x1
Fruit: Pear, Peach, or Green Apple x1
Mushroom Flakes/Powders: Field, Blusher, Milk Cap, Blood x1
Cinnamon, Muntok Peppercorns, or Seaweed x1
icon_5745.png Hegemony Lager Keg x1 A clean beer with hints of oak and licorice. The preferred drink of humans in the Crone Hegemony. Training: Dhakmar
70 Bourbon (Drinkable Cask) 1120 280 icon_5722.png Aged Bourbon x1
Fruit: Pear, Peach, or Green Apple x1
Mushroom Flakes/Powders: Coral, Groxmax, Porcini, Black Foot Morel x1
Cockatrice Beak, Worm Tooth, Ectoplasm, Powdered Mammal, or Barghest Flesh x1
Mint, Honey, Juniper Berries, or Almonds x1
icon_5722.png Bourbon x1 Made from fermented corn mash, this is very mellow and drinkable. This is the favored drink of Councilwoman Sereel "The Steel" Avenbule. She holds a bourbon competition each year in Vidaria. Training: Dhakmar
70 Bourbon (Un-Aged) 1120 280 icon_5326.png Barrel x1
icon_5726.png Corn x10
icon_5724.png Molasses x1
icon_5737.png Pilsner Yeast x1
icon_5722.png Un-Aged Bourbon x1 Prepares a cask of bourbon for aging. The cask must then be stored in a cave until it is mature. Training: Dhakmar
70 Dwarven Stout (One Glass) 1120 280 icon_5717.png Barley x3
icon_5718.png Hops x2
icon_5736.png Dwarven Stout Yeast x1
Green Pepper, Red Pepper, Molasses, or Corn x1
Fruit: Pear, Peach, or Green Apple x1
Mushroom Flakes/Powders: Coral, Groxmax, Porcini, Black Foot Morel x1
Mint, Honey, or Juniper Berries x1
icon_5744.png Dwarven Stout x1 A strong dark beer that packs a punch. The preferred socialization drink of dwarves. Training: Dhakmar
73 Dwarven Stout Keg 1168 292 icon_5324.png Firkin x1
icon_5717.png Barley x20
icon_5718.png Hops x4
icon_5736.png Dwarven Stout Yeast x1
Green Pepper, Red Pepper, Molasses, or Corn x1
Fruit: Pear, Peach, or Green Apple x1
Mushroom Flakes/Powders: Coral, Groxmax, Porcini, Black Foot Morel x1
Cinnamon, Muntok Peppercorns, or Seaweed x1
icon_5745.png Dwarven Stout Keg x1 A strong dark beer that packs a punch. The preferred socialization drink of dwarves. Training: Dhakmar

Known Effects

Percentages and numbers increase with higher level alcohol

(List is not yet complete, other effects may be added as discovered)

  • +(%) to Taunt
  • -(X) to Sprint, +(%) to Taunt
  • -(%) to Taunt
  • +(X) Melee accuracy boost, chance to avoid melee attacks
  • Power Cost decreases for Unarmed/Shield/Sword
  • Power Cost decreases for Necro/Ice Magic/Fire Magic
  • Power Cost decreases for Bard/Battle Chemistry/Archery
  • Power Cost decreases for Crossbow/Psychology/Mentalism
  • Power Cost decreases for Pig/Deer/Cow
  • Power Cost decreases for Knife/Staff/Hammer
  • Power Cost decreases for First Aid/Spider/Bat
  • Power Cost decreases for Armor Patching/Druid/Lycanthropy
  • +(X) Damage to Canines
  • +(X) Damage to Fish
  • +(X) Damage to Corporeal Undead
  • +(X) Damage to Goblins
  • +(X) Damage to Elementals
  • +(X) Damage to Rodents
  • +(X) Mitigation from Direct Nature/Electric/Crushing Damage
  • +(X) Mitigation from Direct Sonic/Poison/Piercing Damage
  • +(X) Max Health, +(X) Mitigation from Direct Sonic/Trauma/Crushing Damage
  • +(X) Max Health, +(X) Mitigation from Direct Acid/Fire/Slashing Damage
  • +(X) Mitigation from Direct Divine/Poison/Crushing Damage
  • +(X) Mitigation from Direct Nature/Electric/Crushing Damage
  • +(X) Slash Damage
  • +(X) Pierce Damage
  • +(X) Sonic Damage
  • +(X) Crushing Damage
  • +(X) Psychic Damage
  • +(X) Poison Damage
  • +(X) Burst Damage against Elites
  • +(X) Max Health
  • +(X) Max Armor
  • +(X) to Peaceableness, Cleanliness, and Community
  • +(%) Chance to gather seeds and mushrooms
  • +(%) Chance to chop extra and perfect wood
  • +(%) Chance to catch extra fish, +% Chance for extra fish scale
  • +(%) to Ignore Knockbacks, +(X) Jump
  • +(X) Jump
  • +(X) Power restored by using Dig Deep
  • +(X) Max Health (Humans only)
  • +(X) Body Heat (Elves only)
  • +(X) Underwater Breath
  • +(%) for YOUR attacks to miss, +(%) Chance to avoid bursts, Sprint boost out of combat +(X)
  • +(%) Dance Appreciation Extra Effect Chance Boost, +(X) Dance Appreciation Boost
  • +(X) Dance Appreciation Boost

Brewing Mechanics

Brewing Advice from Brianna Willer

Brewing advice? Let' see. First, start by making beer. You can brew tiny batches of beer to see how each recipe tastes. When you're happy with the recipe, you can brew up a big keg of it.

Every Brewing recipe has some standard ingredients, like barley and hops, but there's also room for personalization. The personalized ingredients determine the precise flavor and effect of your beer. And everybody's different. Even if I followed your exact recipe, I might get a completely different effect. That's why there's no substitute for experimentation.

Hard liquor is more potent than beer, but you can drink a lot more beer than you can hard liquor! Of course, the fastest way to get blitzed is to mix beer and the hard stuff at once.

Sadly, the recipes for beer, wine, and liquor don't have a lot of carryover. You'll need to do separate experiments for beer, wine, and hard liquor recipes.

Each ingredient can have a different effect in different recipes. I mean, you can put strawberries in Basic Lager, Pale Ale, and Marzen, but the strawberry's effect will be different for each recipe.

When you get more advanced, there's an important trick. If two beer recipes take the exact same NUMBER of ingredients IN EACH SLOT, then there's a way to map the ingredients effects to other recipes with the same setup.

This is tricky to explain to a new brewer. Here's an example: Orcish Bock, a very fancy brew, takes four special ingredients: one of four possible vegetables, one of three kinds of fruit, one of four mushrooms, and one of three garnish items. That means it's 4-3-4-3. Brown Ale's ingredients are different, but they work out to the same number: 4-3-4-3. You can predict how your ingredients are going to work between these two recipes, because their ingredient combinations are the same.

Look, don't worry about all this at the beginning. Just remember to write down your research notes, especially when you start brewing fancier beers like Orcish Bock. You'll thank me later!

And that special trick I just mentioned is even more important for hard liquor, because every kind of hard liquor has the exact same number of ingredients for each slot. That means that if you find an ingredient combo that makes Muscle Vodka, you can translate that recipe into other hard liquors -- Muscle Gin or whatever. So always write down notes on what you try!

Course, hard liquor is a huge pain to brew. It needs a ton of ingredients, plus you've gotta let it age, plus you've gotta age the stuff in big barrels in a cave somewhere. Brewing beer is a lot easier! But once you find a few hard liquor recipes you like, you don't have to make it too often... a full barrel of the hard stuff will last you a while! ... Unless you're selling it to a bar, and you promised not to do that!

Don't throw away your barrels when they run dry! Those suckers are expensive! I can show you how to clean 'em up so they can be reused. They'll still break every once in a while, but they usually last a long time.

Brianna Willer

Information from Citan's blog post, April 20, 2017

The basic ideas of brewing are the same as I described last week, but the details have changed many times. In fact, I think this is the most times I've ever iterated on a craft skill before it went live! The first few versions were prototypes, trying to figure out what the system's goals were and how it would achieve them. I blogged about the system last week based on a fairly fun prototype version. But then I needed to future-proof the system, which turned out to require a full rewrite.

I don't usually bother trying to future-proof crafting skills, because rewriting it later doesn't usually cause alpha-testers too much pain. When I rewrite a craft skill, you keep your old level and recipes, but the contents of those recipes change. No big deal. But brewing is different: brewing recipes have randomized results which will require a lot of player experimentation, so I want to protect that time investment. For instance, if I later decide that apples aren't a low-level fruit anymore, and replace them with, I dunno, kiwifruit, what happens to brewing recipes that can take apples? Obviously, kiwi should be a drop-in replacement in those brewing recipes, doing the same things as apples used to do, so that you don't have to re-try every brewing ingredient combination. But that's not an automatic feature -- it had to be coded that way. I brainstormed other ways that the skill might change in the future, and I tried to make sure those changes wouldn’t mess brewers up too badly. I can't guarantee that everything will work out right -- who knows, a bug might screw everything up. But I've given it my best shot.

After that, I realized the skill was way TOO random: every time you learned a new recipe, you had to start your experimentation all over again. That's fine at low level when there's not too many ingredient combinations, but by level 50 there's over a hundred brewing outcomes! If levels 50, 60, 70, 80, etc. each had 100% different random outcomes, it wouldn't make economic sense to experiment at lower levels. Instead, players would just grind as fast as they could to the highest level and experiment with only the high-level recipes. That's a boring design! I needed a system that lets you "carry over" some of your brewing-experiment knowledge from mid-levels to higher levels. I've got a system that does that now -- although it might carry over a bit too much info... I'm still fiddling with things here.

And in between all these revisions, I've been trying out tons of different possible buffs that could come from drinking booze. I had to answer some tricky questions, like: how many drink-effects can you have at once? If you can "stack" too many booze buffs then each individual drink would have to be weak and uninteresting. But if they don't stack at all, there's no chance to mix-and-match drink effects. After some experiments, I've decided that you can have three beers (or glasses of wine) at once, plus one drink of hard liquor, for a total of four stacking alcohol buffs. That's a lot of buffs! I'm trying to make the drink effects somewhat useful by themselves, but also make them more impressive when stacked together. It's a delicate balance. However, the specific buff effects can be changed later as balance demands, so I'm not TOO worried about this part.

I've also made sure there's room for various systemic interactions later on. For instance, I was thinking it might be fun if beer brewed during the full moon is more random, with a chance to have higher or lower stats than normal. But what would it mean for a beer to be "extra effective" or "less effective" than normal? I had to work all that out too.

In other words, there's lots and lots of design questions! Nothing earth-shatteringly hard, but it's been keeping me busy.

Information from Citan's blog post, April 9, 2017

Brewing

Let's talk about brewing! It's probably the most complex crafting skill so far, because it builds on the tech from other skills. (For instance, Cheesemaking gave us cask "technology", which brewing needs; Augmentation gave us recipes that can infuse items with effects, etc.)

Brewing is the first skill that uses random per-player seeding. Basically, you can add certain items to your brew recipe and you'll get a specific result that's random for that character. Other characters who try the same recipe may get different results. I think this adds some fun to the crafting process, as you get to experiment on your own -- and there's no temptation to wiki the "right" brew recipes, since the recipes are unique to you!

But it's not quite as trivial as "put an ingredient in a box and get a random result". It needs to be a little more fair than that: it shouldn't be the case that some players can use dirt-cheap items to get amazing brew, where others have to use extremely expensive items for the same results. I've ended up using fairly constrained recipes to avoid those cases.

Here's an example: a certain testing beer requires two special items (along with the usual beer ingredients like hops and barley). In the first box, players can drop "an apple, grapes, or an orange", and in the other box, they can drop "a guava, lemon, or banana". The results of that combination are random for each player; there are 9 possible results from just those ingredients.

In that example, I broke the possibilities into "low-value fruit" and "high-value fruit" to avoid some of the extremes of randomness. Nobody will get the most-amazing brew with just a couple of dirt-cheap apples, because everybody has to use one low-value and one high-value fruit. Some people will still get better random luck than others -- the availability of individual fruit fluctuates, but generally apples are easier to find than oranges, for instance, and they're both in the "low-value fruit" category -- but there's enough different random recipe sets that it evens out pretty well in the end.

(And of course, not all brewing recipes use fruit! Or have such a limited number of possible ingredients...)

Drinking Brewing covers all kinds of alcoholic beverages. They're broken up into beers, wines, and hard liquors. Different kinds of brew have different effects, and they're quite broad-ranging. So you might find yourself carrying a small keg of combat-boosting beer into battle, or you might set up a tap of dance-boosting beer at a party.

There's down sides to drinking too much alcohol, such as hangovers, slurred speech, or just passing out drunk. A new skill, Alcohol Tolerance, helps offset some of that. If you plan to drink in combat, perhaps as a drunken kung-fu master or a beer-rowdy tank, you'll definitely need some alcohol tolerance. Of course, no amount of alcohol tolerance prevents you from becoming an alcoholic! It just lets you be a "functional alcoholic." Just like the real-life drunken masters of yore. I assume.

There's more complexity to the systems than I'll bother trying to explain here -- it's a complicated skill with lots of nooks and crannies. But I think it's turning out really well, and I'm looking forward to getting it in front of players!

I mentioned above that this skill is the first that uses player-specific randomness -- and it might be the only one. The tech is being written with the idea that it might be reused for a few other craft skills, either old ones or new ones. But first I'll see how you like the system! Then we'll play it by ear with regard to future skills.

Brewing/Stat Bonuses


Brewing Level Up Rewards

Level Reward
1 Learn Recipe: Basic Lager (One Glass)
3 Learn Recipe: Basic Lager Keg
12 Learn Recipe: Tap Alcohol Keg
40 Can age an extra cask of wine or hard liquor (for a total of 3 at a time)

Brewing Experience Table

Click Expand to view the Experience Table for Brewing

Trivia

The Brewing skill is the first skill where two players can craft the same recipe with the same ingredients, and get different results!