The handbook should show the yield of each recipe.

[Pestilence]

I've been watching a lot of players on YouTube and I've noticed a tendency for them to shy away from crafting recipes I know are worthwhile because the handbook gives no indication of how many items a recipe will produce.  Recipe yield is certainly stored in the game data and it should be exposed in the handbook.

[Streetwind]

This is one of those things that seems super logical to suggest when you notice it missing, right? Been there, done that.

Unfortunately, it's also one of those things that, when you look at the handbook - actually look at it, how it's structured, how it presents information and such - makes you realize that it's pretty much impossible to implement without investing serious time into redesigning the entire thing.

Example: think of an item that can be produced with two different grid recipes, each of which yields a different amount of the item. The handbook will show both recipes, cycling back and forth between them. How do we show the amount the recipe produces? Well, easy, just show it in the output sl... ... oh. Right. There is no output slot for grid recipes. Or for any recipe, for that matter. Because you never look up a recipe. You always look up an item, and the item page just so happens to include a recipe among various other information about that item.

So, let's just make an output slot? ...Nope, doesn't work. Just look at lime, for example. Lime has a header "Created by", and underneath, the subheaders "Grinding" and "Crafting". The "Grinding" contains a number of different stones, and a number of different shells. All the stones yield 1 lime when ground. All the shells yield 2 lime when ground. So, how do you make an output slot for the "Grinding" subcategory? There are multiple possible output amounts, and you need to associate them with the correct input item, but all the input items are grouped in a long line. Also, you can't use up too much screen real estate, and you can't mess with the display of the grid recipe that's also there, shown underneath.

And now keep in mind: this is merely one example among many. The deeper you dive into it, the more edge cases you notice, each of which would need to be fixed in a different way, usually involving a redesign of the way the handbook displays information, which in turn conflicts with the way other, non-recipe information is displayed, or would take an inordinate amount of space, or a dozen other things. And then, you need to take into account not just what the handbook displays in stock VS, but also what it would theoretically have to display if/when modders make use of the freedoms in modding that the game offers them. Because something that has only one grid recipe now, or maybe none at all, may suddenly have sixteen grid recipes after you finish installing mods.

 

Edited December 8, 2021 by Streetwind

[Hal13]

A few items have the possible outputs mentioned right above the recipes (just a line with "1x, 2x" or similar), but it could have been modded items.

I think that would suffice already as an indicator of how much output to expect. I mean if you have an indicator showing that there is a recipe which yields more than others looking closer at the recipes and the differences usually is sufficient to make out which ones do it, sometimes you save only a single item compared to other recipes (or you don't save anything but a bit of time) but when crafting in bulk that can make a huge difference, especially if that saved item is of significant worth.

[Pestilence]

18 hours ago, Streetwind said:

This is one of those things that seems super logical to suggest when you notice it missing, right? Been there, done that.

An output slot for grid recipes that looks exactly the same as the actual in game output slot and shows the output exactly the same way and cycles the same as it already does would be perfect.  The game already has to load and display the data and assets for each recipe it cycles.  For grinding recipes, the yield could be shown in the tooltip that already comes up when you hover each input item.  The game already has to locate and display each possible input item and its associated recipe to display all the alternates.