EchoQuest: Recipe Editor & Crafting Polish
Yesterday we shipped the crafting overhaul — station-based discovery crafting with 125 new ingredients. Today is about the tools that make that system manageable: a proper recipe editor, formula validation, and getting crafting stations onto maps without touching JSON files.
Spreadsheet Recipe Editor
With 125 ingredients and dozens of recipes to create, the old one-at-a-time recipe editor wasn’t going to cut it. The new spreadsheet view shows every recipe in a compact table with inline editing. Click a cell to change the product, adjust quantities, swap materials, or toggle active status. Sort by profession, filter by product type, and see your entire recipe catalog at a glance.
This is the kind of admin tool that pays for itself immediately. What used to take 5 clicks per recipe now takes one. When you’re balancing 50 recipes across two professions, that difference matters.
Recipe Templates & Ingredient Slot Rules
Not every ingredient should go in every slot. A sword recipe needs metal in slot 1 and a handle material in slot 2 — you shouldn’t be able to put herbs in the blade slot. Recipe templates now define slot rules: which item categories are valid for each ingredient position, with validation that rejects invalid combinations before they reach the database.
This means content editors can define recipes with clear constraints (“slot 1 accepts ores, slot 2 accepts wood”) and the system enforces it. Players get better error messages when discovery fails, and the recipe data stays clean.
Crafting Formula Validation
The recipe editor now validates crafting formulas before saving. If a recipe references an item slug that doesn’t exist, or if the material quantities don’t add up, or if the product item is missing from the database, you get a clear error instead of a silent failure that only shows up when a player tries to craft. Catch the mistake in the editor, not in production.
Crafting Stations in the Map Editor
Crafting stations can now be placed directly from the admin world map editor. Select a station type (anvil, brewing table, cooking fire), click where you want it on the map, and it’s placed with the correct interaction radius and visual marker. Previously you had to manually add objects to the map’s JSON file — now it’s drag and drop.
We also fixed an issue where crafting stations were visible to players in maps they shouldn’t appear in yet, and ensured equipped items no longer show up in the shop sell tab (you shouldn’t be able to accidentally sell your equipped sword).
Item Graphics Everywhere
The crafting grid and inventory panel now display actual item graphics instead of placeholder icons. When you’re dragging ingredients into a recipe, you see the pixel art for each material. When you browse your inventory, every item has its icon. We also added fallback handling for missing sprites — if an item doesn’t have artwork yet, it gets a clean default icon instead of a broken image.
With the recipe editor, station placement, and formula validation in place, the crafting pipeline is complete from content creation through to gameplay. Editors can design recipes, place stations on maps, and players can discover and craft — all without touching a single config file.
Try the EchoQuest Demo — free in your browser. Full game coming to Steam.