So happy for ideas/improvements on this idea, it's something I've been thinking about for a while. New Recipe: Recycle Unusual Cost: 2 - 3 Unusual Item Description: Squash 2 - 3 Unusual Items together into an unrecognisable blob, which you somehow shape into a new Unusual Quality Item. Players are asking for ways to change up the unusuals they have and right now the only option is to sell them on the Marketplace. An idea is to recycle/dismantle existing unusuals into something new, whether that's by merging 2/3 together or combining several to get 1x jar out of them.
Technical issues not withstanding as a lot of items have Unusual quality that would have to be pruned ( Holiday being one such example). I would say that any choice of this would have to be very expensive - if it's too cheap, it brings the value of effect jars down. An effect jar is approx. 3 times the price of an unusual (If my numbers are up to date). As this is arguably more powerful than an effect jar as you get to pick the effect, then I think it should be more expensive. As an example, 6 unusual items = 1 effect jar extraction, then this makes twice the price of an effect jar, with the advantage of having control over the effect you receive. With this control (Aka what effect jar to craft), there are two obvious approach - one recipe per effect jar, or we pick randomly the effect, based on the effects present on in input items. So 6 flaming items, gives a 100% chance of a flaming effect jar, whereas 5 flaming items, and 1 chilly items gives a chance of 83% / 17% respectively. It might even have to be more expensive than 6 unusual, as it's going to be highly desirable. That's my two cents.
I don't think it needs to be too expensive, as you already need to own the Unusual, which is either a very low drop or you've invested into crafting it already. I could be wrong but there's probably not a single player who has 6 of the same unusual, probably very few with more than 2 or 3. I think if it's too expensive then it's not worth exploring, maybe random your unusual into a new one could be worth exploring for a decent cost!
Basically, the creation of an effect jar is three times more expensive than an unusual - if it only takes one unusual and an eternal dust to create an effect jar (with a predictable effect), why would I use the classic approach to craft one? This is why I went with making it super expensive, because otherwise, it undermines the existing method of getting an effect jar. I think if we had this, it shod be very expensive to get exactly what you need as it gives you some level of control over the output effect jar. The existing recipe doesn't do this. A different approach would be to have a a recipe per effect jar ( so no need to match effects, just any will do) or we allow for two/three unusuals to be recrafted for a new unusual
Yeah it's fair that jars cost a lot more than unusuals. A better approach is likely to either let someone "recycle" their unusual into a new one, so no jar involved, or like you said combine 2/3 unusuals into a new one. I'll update the original post to reflect that.