That's a great idea. I hope this kind of research and player creativity will spawn a new genre of cooperative builders/explorers. I think that might be my idea of the best kind of game.

I remember playing a text MUD where I could be nothing but a healer who never left town. Adventurers would go out on their looting adventures, then they would drop off the herbal materials in a communal chest at the healer's hut. Healers would stay in the hut and use those materials to heal wounded players (who were sometimes unconscious and dragged in by someone else). It was great. A whole human ecosystem based on shared progress rather than economic transactions.