History Main / JustAddWater

* Averted in ''TheWitcher'': In order to create an alchemical mixture, you usually need at least more than just one herb/mineral/monster drop in order to get the substances you need to make the concoction, with more elaborate formulae requiring rare "special ingredients" alongside them. Furthermore, you'll actually need a liquid or powder base to mix the ingredients with.

* Averted in ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls:'' a basic potion can be made with just two ingredients and a mortar, but complex potions can be made with four ingredients, mortar, retort, alembic and calcinator.
** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIDaggerfall Daggerfall]]'' evades the question altogether by only allowing people who belong to a Temple to bring ingredients to a potion-maker.
** But in ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'', once you get that 100 Alchemy (not that hard), all you technically need is ''one'' ingredient and a mortar. JustAddWater indeed.

* One of the town upgrades in ''BreathOfFire 2'' is a restaurant of sorts, where you can combine up to 4 items together, often with extremely implausible results, such as making gold bars from spices and soup, octopi from worms and roast beef and frisbees from curealls.

* Aversion: ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' has Four Ingredient "[[http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Schematics Cooking]]".

Not to be confused with InstantAIJustAddWater.

* [[ItemCrafting Grathmelding]] in ''VideoGame/ArTonelico 1'', where you combine a magic crystal and another material to get items (which can then be crafted into other, fancier stuff). Generally justified as the game shows Lyner working the materials through various processes (and implied to include other less exotic materials) and explaining how the component items contribute. Aurica plays this more literally by borrowing two food items from your inventory and sticking them together to create "amazing" new recipes like [[CordonBleughChef barbecue meat soda.]]

* A ''lot'' of equipment can be made with just a base item and several stacks of the needed minerals in ''AceOnline''. However, you '''do''' need to use the Factory (Or the Laboratory for enchanting/gambling weapons) in Arlington or Bygeniou city to assemble those items.

* On ''Franchise/{{Neopets}}'', there is a cooking pot where you can combine up to three items to make things.

* In ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'', you can make food, drinks, equipment and even living creatures by combining two items. This is parodied with a few things, such as the item Dry Noodles being able to be almost any kind of pasta (cooks to make lasagna, spaghetti, ravioli, ect). Supertinkering requires three items but is otherwise the same.

* ''{{Arcanum}}'' has this for all of its inventions, although some items may require a chain of creations: say, iron ore and steel to make pure ore and pure ore and a handle. Notably, it does this in violation of conservation of mass, where not only can you lose weight from it (which makes some sense) but you can also gain weight.

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* In a similar vein, the entirety of ''VideoGame/TheSecretIslandOfDrQuandary'' is based around collecting various items (such as ABC gum) and mixing them all together in a giant magical cauldron so that you don't have to spend the rest of your life forced to solve math puzzles while trapped inside the body of a troll doll.

* In a similar vein, the entirety of ''The Secret Island of Dr. Quandary'' is based around collecting various items (such as ABC gum) and mixing them all together in a giant magical cauldron so that you don't have to spend the rest of your life forced to solve math puzzles while trapped inside the body of a troll doll.

* ''{{Webkinz}}'' has several different cooking items. All of them use three-ingredient recipes.
* Averted in ''PuzzlePirates''. Crafting alchemistry items involves mixing primary colours to make secondary colours, then piping the secondary colours to their containers. In multiple iterations, typically.

* Averted with ''WorldOfWarcraft'''s later Engineering recipes, where you have to build the parts first; If you break it down into the smallest pieces, many recipes take upwards of 10 parts.

* Averted in ''EVEOnline''. Even the simplest manufactured items are just that - manufactured. You get the minerals (from mining, the player market, refining etc.), a blueprint and bake them in a production slot. This may take anywhere from a second to a few weeks, in the case of supercapital ships. Also, the capital ships and T2/T3 ships need more components - which have to be built from minerals, reverse engineered from ancient relics (well... ancient AI spaceships you destroyed and tried to analyze a bit) and some parts can only be bought on the NPC market (which works very differently from most [=MMOs=] - while the supply itself is infinite, it comes in a steady pace. And the more there is in a station, the cheaper it is. And every station in the galaxy is covered by some PC merchant who buys them when the price is right...). Not to mention the research you have to do upfront to even be able to produce it (in the case of T2/T3 ships) and in some cases to actually make profit (production time and efficiency research). And did I mention the skills you need to build the advanced ships? And you can't rush it either - they train in real-time, just like all the other skills in the game. All in all, if you start a carrier as an industrialist, you still may never ever get to make a single mothership. And a single mothership sold can easily yield you enough in-game money to play the game for ten years without having to pay the subscription.

*** No, that part makes sense; you would require a bridge to a-bridge a dictionary. But if the bridge is already integrated into the dictionary, why can't you just put that across the chasm and cross it? And bonus: you'd have something to read while crossing.

*** Ever seen fruit leather? It could well be made in a machine similar in fashion to them, drying and compressing as it goes.

*** Though making potions from one ingredient is only slightly better then simply eating the ingredient.
*** Could be played straight, could be averted, depending on your point of view, with the in-game scrolls and notes that when read contain alchemical recipes: Every single one, without exception has "one flask of water" or some equivalent in the list somewhere.

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* Every single one of the recipes in all of Gust's ''{{Atelier}}'' games. The entire series of games is based on this trope. Some games force you to use special utensils for certain recipes, but only until your Alchemy level is high enough.

* ''KnightsOfTheOldRepublic II'' had a system where you could break down items into "components" and then rebuild them into other items, leading to delightfully bizarre scenarios where you could turn a bunch of swords into a suit of armour. The same was true of chemicals, which could lead to disassembling a ''poison gas grenade'' and using the chemicals to build medical supplies or cybernetic implants.

* Ring assembly in ''LostOdyssey''. Need a Jamming Ring? Just stick together 5 "Junk Parts" and 2 "Whetstones". The components are often bizarre, from rocks and ores to {{Magitek}} devices to monster body parts, even including a certain monster type's ''souls''. As usual, the more advanced rings require their lesser versions as components.

* [[ItemCrafting Grathmelding]] in ''ArTonelico 1'', where you combine a magic crystal and another material to get items (which can then be crafted into other, fancier stuff). Generally justified as the game shows Lyner working the materials through various processes (and implied to include other less exotic materials) and explaining how the component items contribute. Aurica plays this more literally by borrowing two food items from your inventory and sticking them together to create "amazing" new recipes like [[CordonBleughChef barbecue meat soda.]]

* Averted in ''HarvestMoon: Friends of Mineral Town''. Not only can you use up to eight ingredients in cooking (not counting spices), but you also have to choose the right utensils to make the recipe! Luckily, most of them are fairly intuitive, except for the ultra-special recipes.

* Notably averted in ''{{Everquest}} 2'', where crafting operates somewhat like the combat system: various trouble spots and opportunities for bonuses pop up, requiring you to react by using the correct ability. You can end up with a junky or masterwork version of the item depending on the results.
* ''[[MabinogiFantasyLife Mabinogi]]'' averts this in that foods and items are crafted through somewhat complicated processes and require a skill minigame of sorts to finish.

* ''{{Minecraft}}'' lives and breathes this trope. Items are assembled by actually more or less drawing what you what with the requisite materials. A torch is a stick with a lump of coal on top, a bookcase is wooden boards with books in the middle, a pickaxe is two sticks end to end with three blocks of the head's material (wood, stone, iron, or diamond) crosswise at the top.

** Many crafting professions in the original release and early expansions had patterns that made some degree of sense for producing items, such as using grinding stones while making an edged weapon. Streamlining with later expansions has reduced the variety significantly.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' is similar to it's predecessor, in that actual finished products are the result of combining various parts, that all have to be made, and usually require items from other disciplines. A spear could require an iron ingot (Blacksmithing/Armoring) and a block of animal glue (Alchemy) to attach it to a length of wood (Carpentry), for example.

* Usually averted in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI'': Most recipes, while maybe not including every last little spice, come across as fairly realistic in terms of ingredients. What isn't averted is justified, as crafting as [=PCs=] go about it is an essentially magical process.

* In ''KingdomOfLoathing'', you can make food, drinks, equipment and even living creatures by combining two items. This is parodied with a few things, such as the item Dry Noodles being able to be almost any kind of pasta (cooks to make lasagna, spaghetti, ravioli, ect). Supertinkering requires three items but is otherwise the same.

* In ''VideoGame/TheSims3'', you need to buy a few (sometimes random) ingredients to cook dishes. Pancakes are made from an apple.

** In terms of playing straight, pecial mention should be made of cooking, where they decided that two parts was too complicated and removed spices from the game. You can now make a spicy dish with one piece of meat and nothing else.

** While usually played straight with everything but engineering, special mention should be made of cooking, where they decided that two parts was too complicated and removed spices from the game. You can now make a spicy dish with one piece of meat and nothing else.

* You rarely get to see what you're ''actually'' making in ''CityOfHeroes'', some of the recipes are... odd... Some examples:

* ''VideoGame/Nethack'' has several:

* ''{{Nethack}}'' has several:
** Pouring one potion into another has a tendency to create a third potion.
*** Or [[MadeOfExplodium explode]], of course. Because why wouldn't two different doses of healing potion explode when you mix them together?