Spiral Knights - Recipe Vendor's Secret Stash

Recipe Vendor's Secret Stash

11 replies [Last post]

Sun, 04/17/2011 - 21:23

CrashFu

Legacy Username

So, we all know how it goes. You dungeon run a dozen times, never find that ONE recipe you're dying to get your hands on at the halfway point; nobody has one to sell, and the in-town recipe vendor? Well, everything good in his stock is sold out before most of us log on. The uncertainty of recipe acquisition IS in a way fun, because it makes it feel that much more satisfying when you finally DO get that one you're looking for, and adds value to the recipes, but sooner or later I'm sure we all find ourselves thinking "What I wouldn't pay to get that one I can never find.."

So.. what if we COULD pay for a little better chance?

The way I see it working is, there'd be an option in every recipe vendor's shop to bribe him to show you items he may have been holding out. This will just be an additional handful of completely random recipes*, no guaruntees on them being anything special, and you don't get your bribe money back if you don't buy anything, making it a small gamble.

Obviously, it would be terrible if you payed to access that extra inventory and it was all sold out, so the extra stash will have to be different for EACH player, completely separate from the public, exhaustible-supply of the vendor's standard inventory.

At the same time, we don't want someone to be able to keep paying again and again until the extra stash finally has what they were looking for. Being able to pay for a slightly better chance to find what you're looking for would be okay, but basically being ensured that you can find any recipe in a short amount of time if you just keep dumping money into it? That would definitely kill the "oh my god I finally found it" satisfaction. SO, the extra stash for the in-town recipe merchant, although unique per player, should only refresh once per day, while the in-dungeon recipe vendors' extra stash will refresh on each visit (since you can keep running through the dungeons again and again to look for more recipes anyways. Having to run those first few levels again is effort, (not to mention costly in energy) so it still feels satisfying if you run through three times, pay to see the extra stash each time, and eventually find what you were looking for.)

* That's not to say that they COULDN'T have a set of super special items for which the recipes can only ever be found, and rarely even then, in the vendor's secret stash and never his regular public stash. That could actually be a pretty exciting money sink. Imagine the prestige of having all of that extra money thrown away actually paying off when you acquire such a fantastically rare recipe!

Sun, 04/17/2011 - 22:49

Metaknight

i was under the impression

i was under the impression the vendors stock, though varied from day to day, is not actually impacted by any player but yourself (as far as what is available to buy)

ie everyone sees the same recipes, and what is available to you is only changing if you buy a recipe (the vendor will not be able to sell additional copies of that recipe to you until it shows up again another day).

this might be slightly off topic, but am I wrong in thinking that? I just thought the number of recipes available in a given day varies (sometimes the amount is smaller than on others), but the number of recipes is unaffected by the activity of other players...

Sun, 04/17/2011 - 23:02

CrashFu

Legacy Username

I don't know for sure, DJ,

I don't know for sure, DJ, but I assumed it's public and shared between players since lately there's been a lack of over-tier-1 recipes available. I could be wrong, though. Maybe you're right, and I've just been getting really bad luck with the town vendor. Or maybe in the last patch they intentionally made only low-tier recipes available there to encourage more dungeon-crawls. I don't have a clue here...

However! ... Even IF a vendor's supply is not affected by the purchases of any other players, that doesn't mean it wouldn't be neat to be able to pay some extra money to get a few more items offered. Don't you agree? :)

Mon, 04/18/2011 - 07:06

Metaknight

yeah i think it would be

yeah i think it would be interesting to be able to pay some extra crowns to see some "hidden recipes", and I think particularly rare recipes would be interesting. but depending on how the current inventory works, but it seems unrealistic for every player to have access to a personalized random recipe list. seems like a lot of extra data would need to be maintained, but then again, im unsure how the current mechanic works behind the scenes so maybe its not such a stretch.

Mon, 04/18/2011 - 10:28

MeSako

Legacy Username

Well.. the thing with the

Well.. the thing with the half-way vendor (Basil) is that he is traveling merchant, so he travels around.. (He just happens to be at the crossroad when you are.)
So he picks up stuff on the way, and sells them to anyone who cross his path, so what you see when you talk to him is all he got. When you leave him, and gets back to him, he have been around and sold stuff, and picked up new stuff..

About the city vendors, they just show what they have for sale, and gets new stuff the next day from somewhere Spiral Knights can't go..

Thus they have no secret stash to show you, no matter how much money you bribe them with..
You just have to wait for one of the vendors to get hold of that particular item you want..

And I am fine with that.. ..

Mon, 04/18/2011 - 10:36

Sirrocco

Legacy Username

It is the case that the

It is the case that the recipe vendor in town has a different sell list for each player, updated daily. I believe that the limited-purchase items from the other town vendors behave similarly.

Mon, 04/18/2011 - 10:41

Metaknight

i would suspect players are

i would suspect players are randomly tossed into some grouping each day where they see a set of randomized items that everyone in the same group sees. there would probably be enough groups and a lack of information between players that made it seem like the list was different for each player.. but that sounds like too much information for the developers to have to handle. a randomized item list per EVERY player? times X number of different vendors? if they DID do it that way, color me impressed :)

Mon, 04/18/2011 - 11:46

Merethif

I like this idea generally

I think it could work well with Basil rather then Vatel though. It could work a little bit like Energy Gate - extra door behind Basil that leads to backroom where mysterious Stranger sells few additional random recipes. It would cost ~5 energy points to open said door, but once opened all party members could go through.

Mon, 04/18/2011 - 12:31

Pauling

In general, Basil needs a

In general, Basil needs a better or more reliable selection. I've been to terminals where he had 8 recipes, and other terminals where he had 22. Sometimes he has all high-level recipes, and other times, none. It's wildly inconsistent. Not sure what a good minimum inventory would be, but it's almost certainly more than 8 recipes.

Mon, 04/18/2011 - 14:54

cheeserito

Legacy Username

I am really upset, somehow my

I am really upset, somehow my comment from last night never posted. ):

In any case, I really like the idea of the recipe vendor(s) (at least Basil, since as it's been mentioned, he is a traveling merchant) having something of a "secret stash" that we could pay to look at. I would prefer it be a crown fee, but it would make sense to make it an energy fee (especially if they make it something of a back room like what was mentioned earlier). And it would essentially be the same thing they do now with the in-town recipe vendor, so you pay a fee to see extra recipes, but it doesn't change until the next day. So I definitely think you should still have access to them if you paid for it, though. Like, you pay to see the extra recipes once, but if you don't buy one at the time, you can still see them later without having to pay an additional fee. (Of course, it would reset at midnight or whatever, but yeh)

And yeh, there is no such thing as a "public, exhaustible-supply of the vendor's standard inventory" as the recipes you see are unique to you, and they change each day at midnight (pst). I doubt they put people into groupings for the randomized recipes, as it would be much easier (and more logical) to just have an array with members, and have that get run through a randomization function for recipes. >.>

Mon, 04/18/2011 - 15:23

#10

CrashFu

Legacy Username

Oh jeez. I would hope that

Oh jeez. I would hope that the fee would just be in crowns and not energy. Energy doesn't even make sense (we're paying him, not powering a high tech stash-opening gizmo) and I sink enough of my energy just crafting the recipes after I buy them.

If it's true that the recipe vendors' merchandise is random for each player, then... I have got some seriously bad luck going on. For the past three days it has been like Big Beast Basher, Emberbreak, Zapper, etc. Always the exact same selection of tier 1 items and nothing else. :(

Mon, 04/18/2011 - 16:08

#11

Metaknight

@cheeserito

i suppose it must be personalized since they keep track of how many you've depleted of the vendors stock. i knew it wasnt shared with the other users in terms of quantity, but i thought that the particularly recipes that appeared might be shared amongst other players. just seems like a good deal of work to randomly select recipes/items, for every vendor, for every single player, and keep track of the inventory until the next day when its reset.

by maybe thats just because im a lazy developer and i would definitely skirt my way around that sort of task. :)

Search

Recipe Vendor's Secret Stash