In my next message, there will be an example of the fact that I can be an anal-retentive b*stard when it comes to data collection. For example, I think that it is nice to know that a certain combination of things can produce a certain result... but actually, in this game, it can produce several DIFFERENT results and I want to know at what percentage each of those can occur. For that reason, I ran a test growing 20 lvl 1 Prickly Goldweed Seeds. It isn't necessary to do 20 in a row to do meaningful data collection when there are a LOT of people contributing data, but for this test it is just me and 20 is a good proxy for "a lot".
What I discovered, as a level 64 cultivator (I didn't skill up once, no suprise) was:
85% of the time, only 1 Prickly Goldweed resulted
5% of the time, a Wilted Wild Weed resulted (critical failure)
5% of the time, a Glinting Goldweed and a Glinting Goldweed Seed resulted (critical success)
5% of the time, a Glinting Goldweed and a Prickly Goldweed Seed resulted (critical success option #2?).
That is far more meaningful to me then only knowing the particular ingredients I used could produce Prickly Goldweed Seed, Wilted Wild Weed, Glinting Goldweed, and Glinting Goldweed Seed.
The basic format I chose for cultivation looks like this:
..................................Rarity..Required
............Type.................(gWGBP)..Level
Seed/Spore: Prickly Goldweed........W........1
Soil......: Arid....................g........1
Water Can.: Rusted Tin..............g........1
Nutrient..: Clotted Gore............g........1
Result 1..: 1 Prickly Goldweed
Result 2..:
Result 3..:
Where Rarity (gWGBP) refers to grey, White, Green, Blue, Purple) and I hope everything else is self-explanatory. Some cultivation results can have up to 3 outputs, which is why I have 3 result entries. Sorry for the periods, I will explain why below.
Something similar could be done for Talismans (though with Talismans, I thought I came to the conclusion that there can never be more than one result per combination) and Alchemy (though I think there the max is 2, but I am not high enough level yet to be sure).
The biggest problem I have with doing this here on stratics is when posting you can't write in a fixed-width font (like courier), so I did all of my data accumulation in notepad and just cut and paste it over. Then I noticed that even if you choose to DISPLAY the data in a fixed-width font (like courier), the website software here gleefully removes all the white spaces that made everything line up nicely. Grrrrr. Now I am not sure I even want to post the results of my 20 tests. Having to put periods in as white-space place holders is insane, given that it will have to change for every different recipe
BTW, I think this would be pretty easy to write up into a java-application or even just with HTML (I don't write either, so don't ask me to do it ;-). Have entries for each item in the recipe with drop-downs to select from every known item (updating would be required when new items are found, obviously), and either give the ability to select from possible known results (which in turn would permit you to just track the percentage results that each recipe returns what results), or let people just enter it in and suck the data into a database for further number crunching.
If anyone at stratics wants to write such a web application, or anyone wants to volunteer to do it for stratics, it would make this web site an exceedingly useful resource for crafters, well beyond its' current level for typical players.