Practice Recipes

Practice recipes allow practicing skills and proficiencies by working on crafts that are “just for practice”, and do not yield a finished result (although they may have some byproducts). They may be designed to focus on specific niche skills or proficiencies, which might be prohibitive to learn from the more productive (and time-consuming) crafting recipes requiring many proficiencies.

The practice recipe JSON format is a form of the “recipe” type, with a few differences noted below. See Recipes section of JSON_INFO for more on recipe fields.

JSON fields

Practice recipes have type “practice”, and they cannot define a “result”, since they are not intended to make a specific item. In most other ways, they are just like “recipe” definitions, are loaded into the main recipe_dictionary used for crafting, and appear in the crafting UI.

They:

• must define id, name, description and practice_data
• must not define a result or difficulty
• may define byproducts / byproduct_group

The practice_data field is required for practice recipes, and must be defined. It is an object with its own fields, as follows:

• min_difficulty - Lowest skill level when practice recipe can be attempted.
• max_difficulty - Highest skill level difficulty you will get credit for when practicing.
• skill_limit - Hard cap on highest skill level that can be obtained. Optional, default max skill level (10). This should not be set higher than max_difficulty + 1.

The difficulty of the recipe will match your current practical skill level if it is between min_difficulty and max_difficulty.

The “category” and “subcategory” fields tell where the recipe should appear in the crafting menu. Use category “CC_PRACTICE” for practice recipes, and set a subcategory like “CSC_TAILORING” to make it appear in the corresponding skill sub-tab.

As with other recipes, the skill_used and proficiencies will affect what is learned during practice crafting, the components, tools, and using fields for ingredients and requirements work the same way.

Example

For example, here is a recipe for practicing intermediate level computer skill:

[
  {
    "id": "prac_computer_int",
    "type": "practice",
    "activity_level": "NO_EXERCISE",
    "category": "CC_PRACTICE",
    "subcategory": "CSC_PRACTICE_COMPUTERS",
    "name": "computer (intermediate)",
    "description": "Practice using the command line, writing and running scripts making use of common algorithms and data structures.",
    "skill_used": "computer",
    "time": "1 h",
    "practice_data": { "min_difficulty": 2, "max_difficulty": 4, "skill_limit": 5 },
    "autolearn": [ [ "computer", 4 ] ],
    "book_learn": [ [ "manual_computers", 2 ], [ "computer_science", 3 ] ],
    "tools": [ [ [ "laptop", 50 ] ] ]
  }
]

The recipe time should be set to the standard 1 h unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise. Practice recipes will be easier to balance against one another for skill and proficiency development if they all adhere to the same standard recipe length.