Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Crafting is a bit off

I'm having a blast with DOS but I definitely think that the crafting system needs polishing. Combinations and the plethora of choices are awesome but they don't seem balanced. First of all, some resource allocations are off. Essences are extremely hard to find and yet important for blank elemental scrolls which in turn are the basis for blank books etc... yet, it's really easy to create Witchcraft scrolls because of the abundance of required resources. At least that's how it seems to me unless I'm overlooking something. Which brings me to the second observation : In-game manual. Is there a crafting manual somewhere? It just seems way too hard to gather all the books necessary to learn. Isn't there anyone in Cyseal who just sells a neat "Complete Guide"? ;-) (that would be great and I would buy it in a jiffy!). Finally, I think crafting is just too complex and becomes a tad bit tedious. Is it really that necessary to have to go through so many steps just to create one specific scroll? Level 9 character and still cannot create a rain scroll book. Hopefully others agree with these observations because it would really help with that aspect of the game.

I agree. The current system is not cool.

I believe the developers thought it was cool to let crafting be something the community would figure out and then share - just like with Minecraft. So I would really recommend that you just download crafting recipe lists of the web.

Personally, I think it should all be feasible without ever going on the web to look up stuff.

So I would have preferred a more streamlined recipe/crafting system where learnt recipes would actually be listed explicitly.

That's the impression I started getting, which I think is great. My guess is Larian will be developing that aspect further. I just hope other interesting DLCs and additional campaigns will emerge alongside so that people who have finished the campaign can enjoy these updates. Do they sometimes pop by the forums?

I agree with everything you said.
Except... well I have tons of essences saved up, later in the game.

But yes, like making a new two-handed sword is the easiest thing in the world. But making a new bow is hard as crap. Which is kind of opposite from the real world.

What I would really like is
1- a journal tab which lists recipes (and not in prose format)
2- the recipe books to update that journal tab by adding recipes
3- all of the common useful recipes to by findable in recipe books

I stopped bothering to read the damn things because I became frustrated with how little they actually helped, so I just looked everything up online.

I really couldn't find that many so far (level 9 and just completed everything in the Cyseal map including the six treasure maps). I only have one of each and possibly two fire(?) Stupid question but I've just realised I never looked for them in stores - are essences sold? Also a kick ass "Crafts and Magic Shoppe" would be nice

edit : Yep! Those three ideas you've mentioned would really help indeed

Yes, essences are sold. That's mostly where I get mine from. Every time I see an essence being sold, I buy it. They are ridiculously useful.

Yeah now I've got plenty! :-)) Thanks for the heads up!