I was thinking about the advanced crafting in this game, and with all its fun it lacks a decent customization system. So I was thinking about how I hoard so many plants and berries and what I could possibly do with all the extras, and I came up with a simple idea for a dye system. Basically it would add dye tub and the ability to customize cloth based items with color. Its interface would look like fireplace but the two bars would represent color level and water level and at this point the idea split into advanced and basic.
The basic one would be a dye tub with 4 slots and you load the berries and water and leave the cloth in for about 2-4 hours and it dyes it. The advanced idea was so much more complicated, 2 structures would be needed. a washboard to process the cloth into a clean state (changing its name from yellow stained to maybe clean cloth or white cloth) and a dye tub with 9 slots that first is filled with berries/plants then use the stomp attack on the tub 2-3 times and it removes all the items in the tub and fills the color level. For water it would be about 3-5 buckets of water to fill the tub, both dye and water levels would drain according to the amount of cloth you are coloring. It would then be put on the drying rack for 1 hour to set the color. It would maybe color 2-6 cloth something that seems realistic but still produces a decent amount cloth, 7-9 would be way too high and 1 would be way too low for the amount of effort put in.
Crafting would remain the same but the item would have to be cloth based (any cloth based item that shares with other things only the cloth part would be colored.) and you would have to use the same color cloth for the entire item. For example farmers shirt would be x2 same color cloth, you wouldn't be able to mix colored cloth. As far as the crafting of the tubs it would be plugs nails and boards like a barrel (so it would be watertight like a barrel) and the washboard would be half the materials of the dye tub with branches for the washing bit. EX: dye tub - 8 wood plugs, 10 boards, 4 nails and Washboard - 4 wood plugs, 5 boards, 2 nails, 5 branches.
Color-wise I though you could use basic plants and berries so it gives an extra thing new players something to sell in bulk for early game silver. something along the lines of this: devil's wort- red, huckleberry - blue, crow-berry stalk- green, oak-wort- yellow and so on, using harder to find plants for the more desired and strange colors like black pink orange and such.
Its skill would be Dye with requirements of flowers and berries, carpentry, and maybe lace/fancywork. Also you could take this one step further and make dyes into paint in which case you could put the skill right after dyes. For paint I was thinking maybe taking a bucket and removing dye from the tub and in crafting combine dye with a thickening item or maybe just lard. Adding in 2 new crafting recipes, paint and brush and giving you the option of painting your houses, fences, basically anything wooden or paint-able.
As far as what this would add to the game/community it has 3 benefits;
Customization: the ability to have a town color, cool clothes, a nice painted house or fence, a great amount of customization and potential settlement beauty.
Trade: the new commodities or dye and paint/colored cloth to make the markets a little more broad and influence people to trade and use silver.
Early game silver: it gives new players the ability to collect berries/plants in bulk and sell to veteran players for small amounts of silver they can use to get a head start in the game.
I know its a lot to read,think about, or even implement but I see it as more of a late game feature to be implemented much later in Salem's future. I would however like some input on my idea maybe some help with it.