They love Dirty Laundry

[ImpalerWrG]

While reading some old threads I came across a snippet of old Loftar design ideas from way back in the early days of Salem, he had been discussing clothing having hit points both hard and soft (just like characters in Haven) and the use of Soap lather to 'heal' the soft hit-points (and the hard points presumably being lost for good so clothing 'wears out'). Now obviously clothing has taken radically different course in Salem and hit points are not relevant. But it occurred to me that this idea of Laundry might be adapted to serve a similar purpose.

Their has been some speculation that clothing and or artifice should be wearing out or consumed over time so a better ongoing market will exist for cotton, cloth and tailoring services. Laundry can do that for us in a very thematic way while using items and equipment that already exist in the game.

How it would work

* As you craft or travel in the wild items of clothing will periodically become dirty, it appears as a translucent overlay across individual pieces of clothing.
* The whole character will show some form of graphic cue they are wearing dirty clothing, could be flies buzzing around you, a cloud of dirt, could be progressive as number of dirty items increases, basically you look like a bum and it's obvious you and everyone around you.
* Any dirty piece of clothing ceases to give the benefits of the artifice in it, thus anyone appearing dirty is very likely more vulnerable too.
* To clean clothing you launder it in two step process much like leather making, but in reverse order, first you wash then you dry.
* To wash you use Cloud-of-Lather to make Soapy water as we would use Brains to make Tanning Fluid, up to 4 articles of clothing go in a Tanning tub with Soapy water, more lather and more water can be added as needed, washing is a fast but very phlegm draining activity.
* The wet clothing is now placed on drying racks and will be clean and usable after a long dry.


Now what is the point of all this busy work you say, simple all clothing has a chance to DETACH ARTIFICE when it is laundered (it comes off in the wash phase), because laundering is necessary to regain the effect of artifice and doing so inevitably detach artifice and reattachment will break slots, then all artifice and all slots are ultimately going to be destroyed at some point and clothing becomes a perishable commodity. Each slot on a piece of clothing has a separately rolled chance to detach (maybe 5%), so higher level clothing will suffer more detachments per laundering then low level low slot count clothing. Also if desired all artifice could be given a new attribute to determine that detach probability, the higher tier artifice being more delicate, but an equal probability will also suffice.

This method of degrading clothing dose several great things, first the degradation is slow, by detaching the artifice generally one or two at a time you don't have the player suddenly or permanently deprived of their artifice bonuses. Second by detaching the artifice in a usable sate and leaving an intact open slot you maximize the amount of crafting done to reattach them so crafters win once. Third by guaranteeing all clothing slots are ultimately broken (and the clothing becomes good for nothing but rags) a never ending demand for cloth is produced so crafters win a second time. Forth if the drying time is long enough for wet clothing players will find it preferable to own more then one set of clothing which is yet more demand so crafters win a third time (devs have said wardrobes are coming so multiple clothing sets will be easier to manage). Fifth, players will be constantly getting to make new choices about changing the artifice combinations in their clothing simply by the fact that you're free to put any artifice into the newly vacated slot, this encourages experimentation with newer, better or different artifice (if you want you could even launder already clean clothing to try to make the artifice detach). Sixth by drying clothing on drying racks the incidence of clothing theft will surely increase as high end clothing will easily be the most valuable thing that can be found on a drying rack which by their nature are less secure then chests, which is great source of tears and quite historically accurate too.


Finally a bit about combat and clothing, when a character is KO'ed several of their clothing articles will immediately become dirty (particularly the pants). By not breaking any of the artifice and instead doing only requiring a simple laundering the value of looted clothing is 99% retained, a far better system for the looter then Loftar's original idea of essentially destroying the clothing in the combat process. Also it would be handy to have some table of artifice effects currently active on a player on the equipment screen, developing a set of icons for each of the 18 current effects would also be nice and help keep the table from being too cluttered.

[DarkNacht]

I think the fact that high end set are currently fairly difficult to just make the mats for and to get a good chance of slotting all those very rare artifacts you will likely have to craft multiple of each piece of clothing, and many of the high end artifacts are fairly difficult to slot which will mean that there is a good chance that even with clothing with good difficulty there is a decent chance that something will break, that crafters will have plenty to do for quite some time.

[JohnCarver]

While I certainly enjoy and appreciate the well thought out efforts of your posts. I do agree with Darknacht here. By my estimation we won't see a 'perfect' set of gear emerge anytime in the next few months. Which means players will be making more gear simply to strive for a better set, thus keeping a demand on cotton until the marketplace is flooded with perfect stuff. Only in such an event would be be inclined to cause wear on things that are already so rare and hard to come by.

[nonsonogiucas]

Laundry would be cool even without the damaging effect.
It would be a repair mechanic without the loss effect, so you still can have your favourite gear around all the time while periodically having to wash it... why not?

I wouldn't have it lose all its efficiency when dirty though... have it stop at around 75% efficiency would be enough to make you want to wash it, but not enough to make it feel worthless.

Only soap would need to be easier to craft... Vegetable oil or animal fat can be boiled with ashes in a cauldron to produce soap (obviously the stall price would have to be reduced).

Soap could also be used for characters hygiene.. it could give a relatively small bonus to proficiency (or maybe black bile) regeneration for a day or two.

[DarkNacht]

Only soap would need to be easier to craft... Vegetable oil or animal fat can be boiled with ashes in a cauldron to produce soap (obviously the stall price would have to be reduced).

Soap could also be used for characters hygiene.. it could give a relatively small bonus to proficiency (or maybe black bile) regeneration for a day or two.

Soap is very easy for high level hunters to craft, so new players would just need to buy it from someone that has more than they need.

[Feone]

Only soap would need to be easier to craft... Vegetable oil or animal fat can be boiled with ashes in a cauldron to produce soap (obviously the stall price would have to be reduced).

Soap could also be used for characters hygiene.. it could give a relatively small bonus to proficiency (or maybe black bile) regeneration for a day or two.

Soap is very easy for high level hunters to craft, so new players would just need to buy it from someone that has more than they need.

It may also make for a nice mechanic for towns to allow players to advance (slightly) faster.

[lachlaan]

Since disease was mentioned during talks about future expeditions, I assume diseases could be implemented at some point and soap would be a way to either prevent your chance to randomly get diseased during certain activities, or actively reduce your disease debuff, albeit the latter seems a bit silly.

[Orcling]

By my estimation we won't see a 'perfect' set of gear emerge anytime in the next few months.

You said the same about 400-500 bile people. Claeyt really did win that bet against you. You are terrible at estimating things.

[ImpalerWrG]

If it happens in the next few months or two years down the line it is inevitable that the clothing market will become saturated given the current nature of the clothing system. Good clothing right now will outlive the character that is wearing it because of the loot system so unless someone manages to drown with a good set of clothing it will never get eliminated from the market.

Given that people are still grinding up to better clothing, and server populations are growing rapidly the market is being buoyed up by clothing demand that balances growing supply. So long as the devs can sustain exponential player growth the 'Mudflation' will be held at bay so while it may be that other features are a higher priority I think something along the lines of what I've proposed will be deemed necessary some day.

nonsonogiucas: I'm not for any kind of laundry system that just makes busy work without consuming the clothing,that was the whole point, laundry was just a query thematic way to do it that would be somewhat intuitive to most people. Also I'd find soap and personal hygiene to be a stretch, people just didn't know jack about germ theory or sanitation during the early colonial period, having disease cured by leaches would be more thematically consistent.

[KruskDaMangled]

By my estimation we won't see a 'perfect' set of gear emerge anytime in the next few months.

You said the same about 400-500 bile people. Claeyt really did win that bet against you. You are terrible at estimating things.

Well, I guess that makes it useful that we are going through a process in which mechanics and gameplay are tested in the wild by real players to the breaking point with the goal of refining later iterations of what we have now. The capacity for dedicated players to surprise devs is legendary. Many will recall when some jackanape killed Lord British in Ultima Online with a firewall scroll.

(The player base also Ruined Everything when faced with a simulation of animal population, proving a realistic system to be a terrible idea. Because you gotta farm them wolves for minor XP.)

We have our own little silly/possibly not entirely intended, but clever things too. Like using looms as siege engines to span walls, and enraging blood thirsty turkey into slaughtering unwitting marks.

I would be surprised for instance, but not for very long, if some guy came into town on the back of one of the rumored super darkness bears, for instance.

Someone will also probably do terrible, terrible things above and beyond what was actually intended with magic too. That's basically guaranteed.