Smithing & Anvils alternate

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Oh, and along the lines of bellows wearing out, I would further suggest *shields his face* than anvils wear out.  Oh yes, indeed, I think the anvil should wear out.  Not fast mind you, but eventually.  I think it benefits the economy of the game to have as many things wear out as possible, so the player does not become too complacent.  My own opinion.

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A couple other things that were discussed yesterday.  

FORGE WELDING ANVILS

Currently state, the tech tops out at iron, and we have no iron anvil.  This presumably because iron is not to be smelted in a firepit crucible.  A few solutions were discussed.

Mark suggested allowing the player to build up ingots into a block (presumably this happens on the bronze anvil) and then remove voxels to form the anvil.  This would be rather like the micro chiseling in TFC.    Depending on how the building up works though, this may more may not take quite a lot of iron, a lot of which is subsequently removed (currently voxels removed from patterns are not returned to the player in smithing, clay working, or knapping).

I suggested a couple options.  One would be using my earlier in this thread flux suggestion to build up the anvil voxel by voxel.  In this way you only use exactly as many voxels as you need to.  I don't know how many voxels that would be though, int he current anvil form.  Hopefully at least 9.   Now the flux system I suggested was envisioning top-only fluxing, which would not support the overhang of the anvil.  So you'd either have to allow fluxing side faces as well, or you could also have the player build the anvil up in two pieces, split at the middle.  The top would be build upside-down.  Then you don't have overhang issues.  At the end, the player places the base on the anvil, fluxes the top, and applies the finished top piece to it, and the finished anvil is completed (you can make the player wale on it with a hammer awhile if you want). 

Both the preceding suggestions are types of forge welding.

CASTING ANVILS

I had also made a suggestion on discord in the past which Saraty fortunately copied down because I'd forgotten the details of it.  This was to incorporate the existing bloomery into an iron casting process.

So what you'd do is, presumably the output of the bloomery from iron ore is not ingots, but an iron bloom, which the player has to work.   I think maybe they get a lump of bloom, which they have to place onthe anvil.  The bloom is sizeable and has a 'crust' of slag, which the player must hammer away voxel by voxel.  Once uncovered, they must use the chisel to break off the ingots.

Now, after that, they can again place the iron ingots back in the bloomery with more fuel.  This time what comes out is molten iron.  So the player can melt up to 500 units of iron this way, and cast it.  They can place a mold directly below and to the side of the bloomery opening.  When the iron is finished melting, it pours out into the mold.  Iron molds must be made of fire clay, not normal clay.  You can only have one block of molds there though, mostly you could only cast one tool at a time, which is less than optimal.  Tools only require 1-200 units of iron, but you're still losing fire bricks building the bloomery.   It may take less time to melt iron this way than it does to get the bloom, though hopefully still a rather long amount.  But what this does allow you to cast is the iron anvil.  The iron anvil would, similar to previously, be made in two parts - the top and bottom.  Each half requires 500 units of iron, and hast their own mold (all anvil modls btw, in my opinion, should always break after removing the anvil).  They can either be combined in the crafting grid, or welding on a bronze anvil as mentioned before.  So this way you get a little more use from the bloomery. 

CASTING IN GENERAL

Now, moving beyond iron anvils.  Once you're into iron, you're into machinery.  You can can use the bloomery to also make some small machine parts.  And one of these could be the making s of the next level of crucible, which is a mechanical crucible (we can call this a 'jack crucible' or something, to be followed by queen and king crucibles - very old-timey naming convention).  The jack crucible holds up to 1000 unit of metal.  the pot itself is made using combination of fire clay and graphite, or other suitably determined materials.  It is large and heavy and only fits in the hotbar.  It cannot be use by itself.  The player must use the bloomery casting process to make two trunions at 500 units of iron each, and a mechanism.  I'll get into mechanisms in more detail in another post, but suffice to say, I think they could be used in other recipes (to make complex machines like steam engines) or placed alone as a block int he world.  They might be able to axle as transfer gearboxes, or clutch gearboxes via a lever to start and stop them.  So in the context of a mechanical crucible, you place a mechanism next to it, add a lever, and you use this to trigger the mechanism.  The parts could perhaps each stand as a block in the world, so the jack crucible takes a block, and each trunion occupies a block on either side (they won't physically fill it, but they will occupy it for purposes of placing blocks).  Or, the jack crucible is placed one block up, the trunions are each 2 blocks tall, and a mechanism must be placed below the crucible bowl, with a lever on the side of the mechanism for activating.   Or perhaps the mechanism is still to the side, and underneath the crucible is the burner assembly, whatever that may be.   Or, if the desire is to keep it smaller, just combine the things in the crafting grid to get the unified object jack crucible.   As per normal for me, I'd really like to see the crucible itself wear out over time, though certainly a longer time frame than a tool. 

A jack crucible can pour more metal, and so make larger machine parts needed for the machiner to refine steel.   But also, it can pour a line of molds up to 5 blocks long away from it.  So you could pour 5 tools, or 10 ingots at once.  It would presumably be also faster than bloomery casting, and you're not losing fire bricks.  This could also involve sand casting rather than ceramic casting, perhaps.  Or save sand casting for a later tier.

Now just to sort of link to my suggestion thread on skill results and trades, imagine that you have quality of the various parts of this machine.  A better quality crucible pours faster and heats quicker.   A better quality burner uses less fuel.  All 3 main parts - crucible, burner, and mechanism can wear out, but better quality means they last longer.  The trunions last forever though.  That's a brief look at how I'd like to see craft quality play into machinery.

[heptagonrus]

I am not sure if I should make a separate topic or a ticket for this, but I want to propose a less significant enhancements, to polish the existing 1.5.2.5 system a bit without much rework.
Kinda 2.1 smiting, if the current one is 2.0.

Mostly to try to replace "mode" system with something more intuitive. If it is welcomed by players, other mode systems may also be replaced.

3 hammer types: big for 3x3, "sharp" for removing voxels, small for adding 1 pixel.

• Easier and intuitive to "select mode" by selecting the correct tool with mouse wheel.
• Nice to come to the forge room and replace your exploration hotbar with smithing hotbar with tools and materials, feels good.
• The small hammer will use "mode wheel" interface for selecting the voxel copy direction.
  You press and hold F, a mode selection window opens, but the modes are not in a line, but in a cross pattern, and you select them by moving your mouse (the mode is highlighted) in the desired and intuitive direction and releasing F. You are not clicking them. The are highlighted depending where you moved your mouse, and the mode is selected when you release "F".

An optional functionality is to "restore" voxels by hitting them with small hammer in the direction of another voxel. This would remove the voxel and increment the available voxel counter.
This may replace the "cutting" hammer. 
But since currently iirc this will not help to decrease ingot cost of any tool, may be useless feature.

Another optional feature is to make anvil's hitbox more sqare, less rectangular. This will allow to circle aroung the anvil easier.

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Ya, move-specific tools was one aspect of my original suggestion.  I agree it'd make the smithing experience more of a 'sit-down' experience.  That and if a leather apron could play in somehow.  I think the better tool names would be 'mallet', 'cutoff hammer', and 'chase hammer', or something along those lines.  Assuming that chisels come into play at some point for carving, I suppose that only the regular 'mallet' will work with it, the other hammers being specialized.