Oh well that's awesome, it's nice to see they have a coherant system in place.

Since you mentioned soaps sounds fun. yes it does and is. It's a very dynamic and expensive real world hobby. I have let's see dozens of ingredients and they usually release or discover a new ingredient every year.

A lot of different soap types are about equal in difficulty.
MP (pre made soap that is purchased for melting, adding fragrances and colors, and decorating like the hell out of) is considered easiest.
CP Cold-processed, requires lye or to keep the theme medieval we'll just say potash, CP is easy or difficult depending on what is attempted. For example if we were using pure 100% lye (NaOH) in game for making soap then hard bars would be easy, and liquid soap would be a nightmare. But if we were using potash (KoH), then liquid soaps would be easy, and hard bars would be nightmarish. (from what I've heard, never worked with potash) CP requires a minimum of 2 days to rest before being cut. Immediate use may result in lye burns, skin damage. After cut requires 2 months to cure to a safe level.
HP Hot-proccessed, is really CP with lye that is baked in a wooden tray, in an oven for an hour, and then allowed to rest. After which you can cut it and use it immediately without risking lye-burns.
Microwaved CP, cp recipe with oils and lyewater, mix together in a glass pyrex and stick in the microwave. The simple instructions are: mix, stir, and watch, watch for the soap growing larger, mix/stir it down, and then repeat. Must be done at half power. Takes about an hour. Advanced difficulty. User should know CP instructions very well before attempting. Once soap reaches translucency add colors and fragrance. Cast soap into loaf or otherwise molds.

Whipped soap, cp recipe requires a modern day blender? Don't know if that's going to make it in game or not. Oils have to be whipped first, and then lyewater slowly added to it. Doubles the volume of the soap, and halves the weight. You get twice as many bars. Can be stuffed into frosting bags and used to decorate a soap cake, or a soap cupcake like the real version.
Transparent soap, made like cp recipe with white (clear) oils only. follow CP recipe, but once the soap opaques, add more water and bring to a boil. Use a spoon to test transparency by dipping a chilled spoon into the boiling mixture. If it's not transparent, wait longer, and if it's still not, add either propelyne glycerol, or white table sugar. The purpose is to 'knock' the soap molecules into perfect alignment with each other, so that light can pass through it. Once done, allow to cool off, add fragrances, superfats, and colors, and then cast in a mold. Casting before adding anything would result in a clear bar of soap.

Cream soap, It's like working with silk in Tailoring. Extremely hard to get right process. Requires accurate weight measurements, starts with how you make CP, ends goes into a second heating phase, goes into a second cooling phase, and a very long, slow mixing phase. Most people at this level will not even talk to you or answer questions, because if your doing this, you know the basics, you know how to troubleshoot your own soap, and solve common problems. Creates modern 'body wash'

Common problems in soap making:
Batch Seizure Your stirring and suddenly your soap batter went from liquid to a rock. Some fragrances can cause a batch to seize, if you use a lot of fragrance oil it can also cause a seizure. I would say a higher percentile, any alchohol at all in a soap recipe after soap batter has formed will cause it to seize, that includes throwing in perfume, cologne, faldesu water, and any liquour, absinthe, beer. Really I'm serious it does. Only thing to do is to quickly scrape and push it into the intended soap mold and pray for the best. This might also happen if the student failed to realize thay had passed the point of reaching trace, new students most likely to miss it.

Partial Gel, Causes unsightly centralized circular halo in a bar of soap. Gives it an interesting dark feature in the middle of each bar cut from the same loaf, but can be an annoyance to soap-making perfectionists. Caused by the bar heating up, during rest stage, and then the sides rapidly cooling off.

Full Gel, that baby pink you wanted isn't there and has been replaced by a dark pink, what happened? Well Gel did, any bar that is HP processed will go through full gel, and this results in a slight to significant color darkening. Whites, and pale colors darken, fade, or completely discolor into something else. Blues tend to turn scarlet. Whites often darken to gray, beige, or brown.

Waiting too long after molding to unmold and cut.
Did that on my first batch, and my 2nd, and my third, and fourth, and fifth, and sixth, and thought it was my cutter. In truth it was me, soap needs to be cut once it solidfies, but not more than 4 days after, otherwise the bars just crumble, I guess if you want piles of soap crumbs everywhere that's good, right. I mean at the stage it's pre-grated and you can hot process it again, or maybe turn it into a nice laundry soap? Get those salt-stains outta your trousers.

Scarlet soap with smelly odor of rotten cheese
This happens when soap overheats when using milks (yogurt, goat milk, cow milk, breastmilk, buttermilk) You just can't save it at this point.

Soap with Dreaded orange spots
This happens when the oils in the soap become too aged and they start rotting in the soap. Nothing inherently wrong with the soap, it just beocmes mottled orange over the years. Some butters such as shea, are famous for going rancid quickly in soap, it's believed they do not fully saponify or resist saponification to preserve them.

Glycerin Rivers, a unique soap problem, only happens in very dry and arid places like around Arizona's Death Valley (I'm thinking the entire city and surrounding area of Muspar'i). Glycerin rivers cause unpredictable pale rivers in the soap. While this is particularly beautiful in dark soaps, fancifully decorated soaps, and light soaps will simply not look as nice, or may look uglified with pale cracks or streaks or maybe even strikethru text always appearing to run through the image.

Pouring before trace, usually more a noob mistake, but even the pro's do it occasionally. When soap is stirred it begins to thicken into a thick batter, this is called false 'trace' the test is that lifting a spoon or mixing stick out of the batter will cause batter to drip back into the bowl. Batter that sinks back in is at false trace. Batter that stays on the surface is at trace. Recognizing trace can be tricky, especially without a workshop. Casting molds before trace will work, you can cast soap at any point, liquid, before trace, after trace, and at nearly a rock stage. The problem is that if a soap is cast before trace the ingredients will separate in the mold, and when the mold is pulled a viscus oil will spill out. Then examining your soap you'll usually see a cavern surrounded by white crystals. The crystals are actually partially saponified lye-heavy soap crystals, making it unsafe. You can discard the soap, or keep your ruined loaf of soap for grating and reprocessing.

Moldy soap, occasionally soap will mold over, maybe you kept it in the bath house for too long, or you added too much table sugar or fruit. But at some point it does well, mold over. Too much sugar in the recipe has repeatedly been pointed to the cause, although with CP/HP soaps simply wrapping them up too tightly and not allowing them air to breath can cause this problem too.

Weeping soap, your soap is weeping clear droplets of sticky stuff. How sad and pitiful! What did you do wrong? Actually, this is congratulates you made a good bar of soap with a high glycerin content. Glycerin weeping is a sign that a soap is well-made. Now if you want to, you can collect your extra droplets of glycerin and keep it for another 'bath' recipe later on. Maybe some nice lotion after you bathe? or perhaps a very special emoliant glycerin enriched soap?

licking soap
The traditional method of Safety testing a bar of soap. If it feels like your tongue just touched a lightning rod, the soap is not yet ready for use. If it tastes salty, or even slightly sour, it's safe to bathe with. WARNING: Real world soap-makers rarely experience Alkalosis as a side-effect from tongue-testing fresh soap batches. However, it is possible if a soapmaker makes over 10 batches a day for weeks, for them to develop this very real and deadly condition which may include fluttering heart rate, rapid breathing, rapid fatigue, tiredness, and dizziness. The only cure is to go to a hospital and have your blood pH checked, or rather, be admitted into a hospital for weeks because you were tongue testing, and half of your organs got damaged, and you need time to heal, and you need to allow the nurses to use interevenous means to safely. How this might work with empaths? I was never one so I'll let them figure it out.

pH test strips can be made by boiling red cabbage juice down and then adding sheets of paper to it, allowing it to soak in, and then it creates a crude litmus paper that tests for alkalinity only. (all natural soap is always alkaline)

Okay, well I do have to stop there, real life has caught up to me once again.

~Sircha/Racha