Game Mechanics Finding crafting recipes in game?

[Spencer Pencer]

Problem: Discovering new recipes can be fun but I don't want to write them down or use wiki (it takes away from the experience)

Creating compact crafting stations with chests around does not solve the problem since crafting recipes use various materials that sometimes don't go in the same chests (wood+metal = cooking pot). You must know the recipe by heart or loot the wood chest before opening the metal chest

Solution: ability to open multiple chests at once

Solution 2: magical chest (maybe in a form of Cornucopia) that displays inventory of all other chests that are wired to it (with a "sort" button that could help with my messy inventory

Solution 42: Guide could give me an incomplete book "Torn book of crafting" that shows the most basic recipes and crafting stations needed. Maybe it would fill up as you discover recipes on your own, maybe you would find "Lost pages of W" dropped by mobs that would fuel the book to reveal more recipes at random (or these pages could be found in abandoned shacks underground).
This would allow you to discover complicated recipes that are really hard to figure out without using wiki (gold clock for example... how can you figure that out without running around the house holding chains and a gold bar like some maniac).

 

[ppowersteef]

The guide has a 'Crafting' option if you chat with him, if you place a Material there, you can see what you can create with that Material, it also shows what kind of crafting station you need to use if you hover your mouse away. Remember that he only let you show the needed stuff to craft, you need to do the actual craft at the crafting station.

I think this will cover up most of your suggestion.