RNG Recipe Finding in 2020.

[Techy]

It has become evident over the past year that more and more recipes are going long without being discovered. We have yet to find recipes for:

• Armored WinterBot - Feet (341 days since)
• Axolotl Scarf* (92 days since)
• Growmoji Lol Mask (86 days since)

*though technically obtained once, it is yet to be obtained by another (legitimate) player, and its recipe remains to be refined and made replicable.

The problem with recipe-finding nowadays is that it seems that every recipe is simply a chance factor depending on typical sources (i.e. BBM, Startopia, a loot box of the sort) and a few depending on specific and niche sources - sometimes with added conditions - (i.e. break a block, fish with a Magical Fishing Rod). These types of recipes are becoming unengaging and unenjoyable to try and find for those who enjoy doing such. Quite often, the item is found by a random player and kept secret until they start popping up everywhere and the source is revealed. This encourages players to just sit back and wait for all the recipes to be naturally found, which is okay to an extent as it can be exciting to any player to randomly and surprisingly come across a new item, but for 80% of the update's contents, it becomes a waiting game.

Secrets of Growtopia (SoGs) were implemented into the game to reduce dependency on the developers for having to step in and assist with hints. They are a consumable (which are easily mass-producible to an extent) that reveal a 'secret of growtopia', e.g. a hint, for a certain item, e.g. Villain Portrait - Shockinator can't be created by splicing seeds. Since their introduction, numerous types of hints have been added to them due to the many new sources of items being added to Growtopia. However, with the large expansion of items since then (around 10,000~ items now) and the many new sources not receiving hints for, it has become more and more futile and tedious to use SoGs to find recipes when I have spent hours boringly using tens of thousands of SoGs to just try and find one hint. Most of the recipes that players have gotten stuck on are recipes that have no hints for in SoGs and rely on obscure and niche conditions, thus requiring a developer to step in and assist with hints. To even use SoGs to try and get a hint for a new item relies on luck, with 10,000-20,000 different messages in SoGs, it could take up to 10,000-25,000 SoGs to be used to find that hint - and perhaps you don't even find a hint for it, or there isn't even a hint for it. They need to be updated because using them becomes more and more useless. Flamingo Wings weren't found publicly until much later despite their recipe being in SoGs, showing that hardly anybody uses them anymore.

Items with specific traits that lack logical connection to their sources are not enjoyable to look for, e.g. (Halloween) Druid set from Card PvP (all year round). Recipes that lack balancing in their resource consumption are deterring and feel as if the developers are out of touch with the game's economy, e.g. 2000 Sequoia for one Woven Wood Bolt or CoTD bait having items obtained through incredibly low chance.

We have no direction and no hints for the currently undiscovered items. Nothing has been said about the Growmoji Lol Mask, where its counterparts have no consistency from where they are obtained from despite all being chance factors. Axolotl Scarf seems to be a low RNG chance on an expensive bait (that many do not even use in somewhat large amounts) tied to a condition that, a) we do not know of specifically; and b) never triggered or considered by any player who does end up fishing with CoTD. Armored WinterBot - Feet had 2 weeks to be found where its source is most likely (rumoured to be) a chance factor on some obscure and niche activity.

These are all chance factors and all have no hints for.

Searching for recipes that rely on low chance RNG is not fun, especially when it is from obscure and niche sources that nobody does. Having to sit and wait for a developer to acknowledge the lack of discovery and give out a hint is also not fun, especially when most of the staff members who did do such are now gone and fewer and fewer people care to alert the developers about undiscovered items.

More and more players just sit in NEWS to be fed the recipes to them as less and less players bother to look for them.

[Jedaki]

I mean when they give hints, they're very careful about not giving much away so they decide to go for something like "I thought this item was the first to be found." (Hint for the Winterbot - Feet). Sometimes they seem flat-out wrong; as an example, the Winterbot - Fists is found on the gem store for 700k. That was very easy to find. I doubt that there is anything easier to find that hasn't been discovered yet.

Another example is JackBowe saying that he wanted to make the recipe extinguish 50 thousand fires but then said "but Oldsock said he would never be able to do that."... the recipe was extinguish 200 thousand.

[li0n]

We were not able to get any good "hints" ever since JamSandwich is gone. Nor do SoGs give enough hints as you stated.

[Spyroboy]

Now, I know Techy listed items that were not found yet. But it justify the fact recipes are either stupid easy (Just do the activity that got updated) or incredibly hard with the only hint being "It cannot be spliced from seeds" I'm going to list some items we've gotten from the past few months with very odd recipes that even I'm surprised we found.

Black Cat Ears: A very odd recipe, breaking black blocks with a black cat leash. Not sure how we were expected to find this. First, not many people wear this leash, and people aren't exactly farming black blocks, if they're broken they're building something.

Bed Head: Consuming Coffee while in bed: Not even sure if the bed type matters. But still the point stands, this very weird recipe is something I could of never seen to be found. No one uses coffee, only in races if they even allow it, which most don't anymore.

While mentioned by Jedaki, the 2 points about Winterbot Feet and JackBowe's Koala.

When a dev mentions they're surprised that Winter-Bot Feet wasn't found first, that's scary. The fact they believe the recipe is easier than opening up the Gem Store, or doing the heavily advertised "Winter Seals" makes people feel like it's not worth finding. What could possibily be easier than opening up the gem store, which is one of the first things anyone does upon a new update.

JackBowe's Koala is similar, it was said it was easy, and the fact that he said he changed the amount since Oldsock said "50k is too much" would make people think it's less. not 4 times the amount.

It's a very weird time, and the only way to fix this i feel is to revamp SOGS. I wouldn't give up a straight up recipe, or even name, but riddles. The riddles should still be kinda clear, but still not something you can look at once and know how to get the item.

Example: Item 1 here is obtained by doing the brainworms malady while underwater...

"They say brain worms get stronger they get exposed to water, even with the ability to swim!!!"

[Techy]

I don't think Jack wanted to change the amount.

SoGs should be changed - removing all the useless hints, maybe limiting to 1 hint per item. However, manually implementing a riddle per item is not ideal. I think that, like the recipes of Bed Head and Black Cat Ears, specific hints should be implemented for these very items due to their obscure (yet somewhat logical) recipes. It just increases the autonomy of the game really.

[Jack Bowe]

Definitely an interesting thread - I'm personally not a fan of RNG for the most part (this is why I wanted my sponsor item to be a long grind, but with something guaranteed at the end of it). A SoG revamp would definitely be sweet. Even a SoG "purge" where they just get rid of a bunch of useless "secrets" would be really nice.

Armored WinterBot - Feet is an event item, meaning there's only x amount of time where theories can even be tested until we have to wait a full year to even try and discover it. To me, this is perfectly okay, if it wasn't one part of a set where the rest was discovered. Not everything has to be easy to discover and obtain, but I feel like a set component is one of the worst items to be undiscovered.

Black Cat Ears: A very odd recipe, breaking black blocks with a black cat leash. Not sure how we were expected to find this. First, not many people wear this leash, and people aren't exactly farming black blocks, if they're broken they're building something.

Bed Head: Consuming Coffee while in bed: Not even sure if the bed type matters. But still the point stands, this very weird recipe is something I could of never seen to be found. No one uses coffee, only in races if they even allow it, which most don't anymore.

These are two recipes I actually think were pretty cool, we should have more of these - they just need more direction, which can be done with a SoG revamp. I think recipes like this would be perfect for your cryptic/riddle SoG idea. Having them not be RNG dependent would be nice, too, but this would definitely lower the value so that should be considered as well.

I personally don't mind items being hard to discover and going a long time without finding them, as long as there's clear direction. If we're not finding them, it should be a result of us not following the direction correctly - but that isn't possible when there is no direction to begin with.

The fact that so many players now rely on hints shows there's no direction given. Items should be released in a way that, even when difficult, no additional hints are needed from staff (though, I do imagine at this point players are accustomed to asking for hints if they don't find an item right away - this habit should also be broken).

To clarify about my item, though, 50K was what I requested - but as with any sponsor, the developers decide the final obtainment method. Several of the "hints" people were following were just cropped parts of conversations I had in several Discords, often times not considering the rest of the conversation. I'm glad the amount was upped as it was, though, as people found methods to put out fires at rates I hadn't anticipated.