I've been thinking quite a bit about this.
Major Ideas
1. Crafting is boring because of how repetitive it is to find the orb, craft the thing, heat the thing, etc.
2. Materials are pointless due to orbs of alchemy being the controlling factor and primal/grim/forge sparks.
3. Because of 1 and 2, gear should require specific areas and challenges
Materials and Orbs
1. Orbs should drop about 1.5x as often.
This way, players won't feel that they never drop for them, as they'll receive them fairly frequently
2. Raise the amount of materials needed to craft items- if you farm the area needed you should get about 1.3x the amount of mats needed as orbs needed. This way, players will be more likely to need to farm something
3. A large material sink is needed. Perhaps a more in depth cooking minigame that consumes materials on mass for sprite food?
New Feature: Recipe Challenge Rooms
1. Found like cake rooms, devilite arenas during tortodrones, etc.
2. Features some sort of challenge followed by Basil selling specific recipes
3. These recipes would be only found on their challenge room, which would suit them
Minerals (and grim/primal/forge sparks)
1. Sprite food should instead rely on primal = seraphynx, grim = maskeraith, and forge = drakon sparks.
1a. Primal/Grim/Forge sparks would no longer buy materials
2. Remove minerals from normal levels
3. New level- gremlin mining colony, features minerals at the start of the level. Some running through, mostly fighting in arenas.
4. Minerals slow the player down based on size, where size = stages slowed
5. Minerals would be used in large amounts to craft and upgrade shard bombs, whose recipe would be found in the gremlin mine at special scenario room alchemy machines.
6. Buff the shard bombs to do more damage + a status effect on each of them
Fire Crystals
1. Need more areas to farm them in; preferably some kind of core boss after dreams and nightmares that is planned.
A large material sink is needed. Perhaps a more in depth cooking minigame that consumes materials on mass for sprite food?
No, I think that that would render minerals almost useless and people would just stop picking them up.
New Feature: Recipe Challenge Rooms
I like it, it can be just like a regular danger room but instead of boxes at the end you'll find a gremlin recipe vendor (Basil can't just do all the work himself, don't stress the guy) that'll have a full alchemy line of a related gear piece like the whole Biohazard alchemy line behind a poison undead gate for example.
Sprite food should instead rely on primal = seraphynx, grim = maskeraith, and forge = drakon sparks.
Primal/Grim/Forge sparks would no longer buy materials
I hate that idea, it's always handy to get a missing material without the need to farm by tokens, maybe there are no arcade gates with the material you need or maybe you're too tired to farm, the game shouldn't be a chorus you have to do but something fun.
Remove minerals from normal levels
New level- gremlin mining colony, features minerals at the start of the level. Some running through, mostly fighting in arenas.
Interesting idea, might just make a new level like graveyard or treasure vault that only appears in random floors in arcade but don't remove them from the normal levels.
Minerals slow the player down based on size, where size = stages slowed
I like that idea, but larger minerals should yield even more of the stuff to be worth the debuff you take. Small = 2 (MSD: low), Medium = 5 (MSD: medium), Large = 9 (MSD: high), Shiny = 14 (MSD: very high)
Minerals would be used in large amounts to craft and upgrade shard bombs, whose recipe would be found in the gremlin mine at special scenario room alchemy machines.
Alternate suggestion: Use a lot of shards instead of minerals (they're shard bombs not mineral bombs after all).
Buff the shard bombs to do more damage + a status effect on each of them
We already have 2 of them with status effects so that part isn't really necessary they would do great with a bit of buffed damage though.
Need more areas to farm them in; preferably some kind of core boss after dreams and nightmares that is planned.
Agreed.