Add a crafting recipe and teach it in the level¶

By the end of this page you have a recipe that shows up on the Crafting page of the backpack, spends items the player is carrying, and hands back a new item after a hold. You also have the choice of giving that recipe to the player from the first frame, or making them find a note in the level to learn it.

Everything lives in one folder: Content/TheLastTemplate/Blueprints/DataAssets/Inventory/Childs/.

One recipe is one Data Asset¶

Three recipes ship: DA_Recipe_HealthKit, DA_Recipe_Molotov and DA_Recipe_NailBomb. Each one is a single Data Asset made from BP_CraftRecipeDataAsset. There is no recipe actor and no graph.

In Content/TheLastTemplate/Blueprints/DataAssets/Inventory/Childs/, right click, then Miscellaneous, then Data Asset.
Pick BP_CraftRecipeDataAsset as the class.
Name it DA_Recipe_Bandage, or whatever you are making.
Fill the fields below.
Save.

The result and the ingredients are ordinary item Data Assets. If the item you want to produce does not exist yet, make it first: Add a new item to the inventory.

The fields on the recipe Data Asset¶

Field	What it does
`Display Name`	The name written on the recipe tile.
`Result`	The `DA_Item_*` the player gets.
`Result Count`	How many of it. `1` on all three shipped recipes.
`Ingredients`	The list of items spent, and how many of each.
`Craft Duration`	Seconds the player holds the click to make one.
`Requires Workbench`	See the warning below.
`Icon`	The texture drawn on the recipe tile.
`Craft Sound`	Played when the craft finishes. Empty on all three shipped recipes.

What the three shipped recipes contain. The Result of each one is the item of the same name: DA_Recipe_HealthKit makes DA_Item_HealthKit, and so on.

Recipe	Ingredients	`Craft Duration`
`DA_Recipe_HealthKit`	Rag 1, Alcohol 1	`3`
`DA_Recipe_Molotov`	Rag 1, Alcohol 1	`2.5`
`DA_Recipe_NailBomb`	Explosive 1, Binding 1	`3`

The health kit and the molotov are built from the same two materials. Change one of the two recipes if you want the player to have to choose between two different piles of loot.

Warning

Requires Workbench is off on all three recipes and nothing in the template reads it. Crafting happens in the backpack, wherever the player is standing. Turning it on changes nothing on its own. If you want a recipe that only works near a bench, write that test in Get Extra Craft Block Reason, further down this page.

Ingredients¶

Ingredients is an array of S_CraftIngredient. Each row has two fields:

Field	What it does
`Item`	The `DA_Item_*` that gets spent.
`Count`	How many are taken per craft. `1` on every shipped row.

Nothing stops you from using a Consumable as an ingredient, but the shipped recipes only spend items filed under the CraftingMaterial category. Seven items carry that category.

Warning

The line under the recipe tile is built from two text slots, Recipe Ing 1 and Recipe Ing 2, on BP_InventoryCraftPageWidget. Add a third ingredient and it is spent normally but never written on screen. Keep a recipe to two ingredients unless you also edit that widget.

The materials bar at the top of the craft page¶

The row of icons across the top of the Crafting page is a hand written list, not an automatic sweep of every crafting material. It lives on BP_InventoryCraftPageWidget, in Content/TheLastTemplate/Blueprints/Widgets/Inventory/.

Field	What it does	Shipped value
`Material Items`	The items shown in the bar, in order	Alcohol, Rag, Sugar, Explosive, Binding, Blade
`Materials Per Row`	How many fit on one line before it wraps	`6`

Each entry shows the item icon and how many the player is carrying.

If you invent a new crafting material, add it to Material Items yourself. Leaving it out does not break anything, recipes using it still work, but the player has no way to see how many they have. Note that Parts is filed as a CraftingMaterial and is deliberately absent from this bar: it is the workbench currency, not a crafting ingredient. See Put a workbench in your level.

Recipes known from the start, and recipes that must be learned¶

The craft page only lists recipes the player knows. That list is Known Recipes on BP_PlayerInventoryManager, the component on BP_PlayerCharacter.

It ships with two entries: DA_Recipe_HealthKit and DA_Recipe_NailBomb. DA_Recipe_Molotov is missing on purpose, because it is the one you learn from a note in the level.

To give the player a recipe from the first frame, add it to Known Recipes and stop there.
To make them find it, leave the array alone and put the recipe on a note.

Four functions on the component handle the rest: Knows Recipe answers yes or no, Learn Recipe adds one, Forget Recipe takes one away, and Get Craftable Recipes returns the ones the player can afford right now. Learn Recipe fires the On Recipe Learned dispatcher, which is where you hang a notification of your own.

Put a recipe on a note in the level¶

A note is an inspectable object carrying a Learn button. It takes an action class, an inspect Data Asset and an actor placed in the level, in this order.

In Content/TheLastTemplate/Blueprints/Inspect/Actions/Childs/LearnRecipe/Childs/, create a Blueprint Class with BP_InspectAction_LearnRecipe as the parent. Name it BP_InspectAction_LearnRecipe_Bandage.
Open it and set Recipe To Learn to your recipe Data Asset. That is the only field to touch. BP_InspectAction_LearnRecipe_Molotov is exactly this and nothing more.
In Content/TheLastTemplate/Blueprints/DataAssets/Inspect/Childs/, create a Data Asset from BP_InspectableDataAsset. Set Mesh to the paper you want held up, SM_Note_Recipe for the shipped one.
Add a row to Actions: Action Class is the class from step 1, Slot is Primary, Label is the word on the button, and turn Closes Inspect on so the note is put away once the recipe is learned.
Optionally add a second row with BP_InspectAction_Read on Slot Secondary, so the player can also read the page. It takes Text Param as the title and Text Lines as the body, one string per paragraph.
Drag a BP_Interactable_Pickup_InspectableBase into the level, set its Inspect Data to the Data Asset from step 3, and set its Static Mesh to the same note mesh so it reads on the floor.

DA_Inspect_Note_Recipe_Molotov is the shipped example and follows exactly that shape: a Learn button and a Read button on the same sheet of paper.

Hide When Blocked on the action ships on, so a Learn button that cannot run is not drawn at all rather than sitting there dead. The inspectable side of this, the framing, the rotation and the other action classes, is covered in Add an inspectable object. The prompt fields on the actor itself behave like every other interactable, see How interaction works.

Change how long a craft takes¶

Craft Duration on the recipe is the base time in seconds. The player holds the click on the tile, a bar fills, and letting go early cancels with nothing spent.

Craft Speed Multiplier on BP_PlayerInventoryManager scales that at runtime. It ships at 1 and the Crafting Speed skill, DA_Skill_CraftingSpeed, raises it through BP_SkillEffect_CraftSpeed. So a recipe set to 3 is not always three seconds. Tune the recipe first and leave the multiplier to the skill: Add or change a skill.

Add your own reason to block crafting¶

BP_PlayerInventoryManager keeps two functions side by side. Get Craft Block Reason holds the rules that ship, and Get Extra Craft Block Reason is the one left for you. Both return the reason, and the craft page shows it instead of letting the hold start.

Put your test in the Extra one. That is where a workbench requirement, a story flag or a time of day goes, and it keeps your work separate from the shipped rules the next time you open the component.

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