Insimalafdat Posted February 3 Report Posted February 3 (edited) We already have clay, and kilns, and handbuilding, but that's only HALF of what ceramics and pottery is. I think the next best addition to clay and pottery should be.... Glaze Chemistry! For context, I am a Potter working at a college studio making pots and glazes part time. I am happy to answer any questions you may have regarding glazes, glaze chemistry, and ingredients. There is a LOT I left out of this suggestion, as I only wanted to include the basics of glazes and glaze making. There are so many more ingredients you need when making real life glazes, and this is just the simplest way I could find to translate glaze chemistry and glazing to Vintage Story. Pottery is seriously only half-done without it. Glazes in pottery are made from 4 main ingredients. 1. Silica (Ground up quartz), What it does to a Glaze: When silica melts, it turns into glass. This is what makes glazes liquify and turn into, well.. Glass. It's the most important ingredient for making a glaze, and by far the second quickest ingredient we run out of in the Studio I work. How it can be added/Acquired: Grinding up Quartz or Clear Quartz in a grinding stone. 2. Alumina (Powdered bauxite cooked in salt) What it does to a Glaze: Alumina acts as a Stabilizer in the glaze, allowing the glass to harden and settle, as well as increasing its viscosity so it doesn't simply flow off the piece. Less alumina means more drips, more alumina means less movement in the glaze. This is also what makes Glaze stick to Ceramic. How it can be added/acquired: The actual process of making alumina is... complicated, and requires something called the Bayer Process, but the basics of it are, you boil/cook powdered Bauxite and Salt in water. Salt is in the game already, and powdered bauxite is an easy addition. You can do this in a cooking pot or maybe a Distillery with salt water and bauxite powder, though im leaning to cooking pot. 3. Flux What it does to a Glaze: Flux lowers the melting points of the ingredients in the glaze. This allows all of the ingredients to melt together at the right temperature, though this is way more complex in real life, and as such should only really act as a basic/universal ingredient, like with Silica and Alumina, not something changeable to make different types of glazes. How it can be added/acquired: Flux is a big umbrella term for a lot of powdered oxides, most commonly Calcium or Borax oxide. Calcium oxide is found in Feldspar rock, which can be easily added, or you can use powdered Borax for Borax Oxide. Side tangent: This is the most common ingredient in glazes. We run out of this so much in the studio I work, and real life mines are literally running out of it. We've had to switch to several different types of feldspar just because it's being mined out of existence, and even the substitutes for it are running out. Eventually, it will stop being a thing, and hundreds of recipes will become defunct. 4. And finally Colourants What it does to a Glaze: Colourants, usually metal oxides, are used to color the glaze. Their color depends a LOT on how the firing is done, but there are a few basic oxides, and what colors to expect from them. How it can be added/acquired: I'll include a list below with what color they make in each type of firing we have in the game, and how they can be acquired. I will refer to firings with no hatches open as Reduction, and firings with 1 or more hatches open as Oxidation. Glazing cannot normally be done in a Pit Kiln, though there are some techniques like Obvara, Raku, etc. that I will not be getting into tonight. If anyone is interested in it, I'd love to talk about it, as I love alternative firing methods. The List of Colourants: Red Red colours can come from 2 different metal oxides. Iron oxide in an Oxidation firing, and Copper Oxide from a Reduction firing. The difference between each of these is the texture of the glaze. Copper oxide gives a metallic texture in a Reduction firing, whereas Iron oxide provides a matte texture in an *Oxidation* firing. Green Green colours come from Copper Oxide in an Oxidation environment, Iron oxide in a Reduction environment, and Chromium Oxide in an Oxidation environment, with Chromium being the most vivid, and Copper being the most pale. Yellow Yellow colours come from Nickel Oxide in either Reduction and Oxidation, with the main difference being how yellow it is, ranging from bright yellows to tans and yellow greys. Blue Blue colours come from Cobalt Oxide or alternatively, Zinc Oxide. This also does not change much between firing types. Violet Violet colours come from Manganese Dioxide, which albeit is an unimplemented metal, but alternatively we do have Pink Quartz which could act as an alternative to this, though that is anachronistic. The firing type does not change this element much. How can all of these elements be implemented??? Iron Oxide can be made through crushing iron bits (or any of it's ore bits) in a pulverizer or a Grinding stone Copper Oxide can be made in the same way, through crushing copper bits (or it's ore bits) in a pulverizer/grindstone. Chromium Oxide can be made through crushing Chromite or Chromium Bits in a pulverizer or a grindstone. Nickel Oxide can be made through crushing Nickel bits in a Pulverizer or a grindstone. Cobalt Oxide would need to be added alongside Cobalt, which is a lot of work no one needs to do, so using Zinc is most efficient/easiest to add. Zinc Oxide can be made through crushing Zinc bits in a pulverizer/grindstone. Manganese Dioxide can be made through crushing Manganese/Rhodochrosite in a pulverizer/grindstone How can all of these cool new ingredients be added together to make glaze?? In cooking pots! Mixing all four ingredients together, Silica, Alumina, Flux, and a Colourant, could be a very easy way to make glazes! Barrels can be used to store and use the glaze. How can these glazes be applied to pottery? Once you fire your pot in the kiln, you can either dip the pot in the glaze. This can be done through putting a pot in a barrel with the glaze of your choice, which of course uses up some amount of the glaze. Maybe 1 liter per small pot, 2-5 liters per large pot? Then, you simply fire the pot again in the right firing environment, be it Oxidation (1-3 hatches open) or Reduction (0 hatches open.) Depending on what metal you use in your glaze, and what firing you do, the color and maybe even the texture will change! Why should this be added? This game is so immersed in real life history, ancient trades and crafts, and not to mention *Pottery!!*, so I believe it should 100% include a basic introduction to glaze chemistry / glaze making. This game has taught its players so much, be it about making tools/casting metals, to making steel, to making pottery. I think it would be amiss not to include Glaze chemistry, not just because almost every item derives from a metal or rock we use in game, but also because Half of pottery includes glazing. We already have glazed pots in game, too! I think given the chance to not only expand pottery (which, albeit is already quite expansive) but also teach the players more about glazing and pottery, the devs should 100% take it. Though honestly this is *mostly* my own hopes and dreams as a potter working in a studio who spends most of her time going stir crazy in the glaze kitchen (you genuinely start to tweak out after spending enough time in there.) If you have any questions, suggestions, or additions to make for this, I'd love to hear them! I tried my best to simplify glaze chemistry, but I may have made errors. Edited February 3 by Insimalafdat 7
Kulze Posted February 6 Report Posted February 6 The mod 'Bricklayers' does include a top-tier system for more variety of pottery. I can heavily recommend it. It's good enough to make me wish it to be future vanilla content for most of it. High variety in decorative elements and high variety in needed materials which reduces abundance of some materials quite a lot.
KeeperDL Posted February 12 Report Posted February 12 I like it! It seems like a lot of the ingredients and processes already exist (crushed bauxite exists) so there wouldn't be a need to add new items/material types, "just" the mechanics. Cooking the four glaze ingredients in a cooking pot makes sense to me, and storing the glaze in liquid containers/barrels like dyes makes sense. We already have the mechanic of dying cloth in barrels of dyes; seems to me applying glaze to a ceramic would use the same or a similar mechanic. I think most if not all of the items would need to be crushed using the pulverizer rather than the grindstone, based on what items currently require the pulverizer (like quartz and bauxite). This could be a viable way to add player recipes for the patterned storage vessels, flower pots, and planters that already exist in the game (currently must be bought from traders or found in ruins) {1.21.6}, meaning no need for new textures for each glaze (at least not right away). The ingredients needed are sufficiently difficult to acquire, relative to something like refractory bricks for the similarly advanced steel making, so it seems to scale pretty well with existing mechanics, especially with needing the pulverizer and perhaps high tier pounder caps. Making glazes in a cooking pot may even make the pot "residue covered" like candle making does, adding another level of planning.
DragonLordAcar Posted February 14 Report Posted February 14 This is great. U was going to post about adding this and took a search to see if there was anyone else who had but you knew way more about this than I did.
Bruno Willis Posted February 14 Report Posted February 14 On 2/13/2026 at 5:04 AM, KeeperDL said: I like it! It seems like a lot of the ingredients and processes already exist (crushed bauxite exists) so there wouldn't be a need to add new items/material types, "just" the mechanics. These are the sort of mechanics that really add something to V.S. It remains hidden unless you go looking for it, or already have some small amount of knowledge. I think V.S. does a great job already getting players to ask "Wait, can I do..." and answering "YES". I don't see any downside to adding this in depth mechanic except dev time to make it happen. Surely it could be a rainy day side project.
MKMoose Posted February 14 Report Posted February 14 (edited) On 2/3/2026 at 7:58 AM, Insimalafdat said: 2. Alumina (Powdered bauxite cooked in salt) [...] How it can be added/acquired: The actual process of making alumina is... complicated, and requires something called the Bayer Process, but the basics of it are, you boil/cook powdered Bauxite and Salt in water. Salt is in the game already, and powdered bauxite is an easy addition. You can do this in a cooking pot or maybe a Distillery with salt water and bauxite powder, though im leaning to cooking pot. Seems to me like this is a relatively modern thing, potentially unsuitable lore-wise for Vintage Story. At the very least, the Bayer process specifically seems to be a 19th-century invention. As far as I can tell, a bunch of types of clay and feldspar already include an amount of alumina which is sufficient to achieve a decent quality glaze, though feel free to correct me, as I'm not as familiar with ceramics as you. It also appears to me that ash glaze would be a simple and very historically relevant kind of glaze, and would just require wood ash to be introduced in some way. It would likely be a simple and cheap early-game glaze, while the more complex mechanics would potentially be only available when using the beehive kiln or maybe some new intermediate kiln type. On 2/3/2026 at 7:58 AM, Insimalafdat said: 3. Flux [...] How it can be added/acquired: Flux is a big umbrella term for a lot of powdered oxides, most commonly Calcium or Borax oxide. Calcium oxide is found in Feldspar rock, which can be easily added, or you can use powdered Borax for Borax Oxide. Boron oxides seem to fall under the same umbrella as the Bayer process of being relatively modern, as far as I can tell, though maybe borax itself was used earlier. Historically, lead oxides were used quite frequently as well. One or two new felsic rock types like dacite or rhyolite would arguably be a really cool addition to the existing igneous rocks to be used as flux when crushed, though it appears that lime would work perfectly fine as a flux as well, and maybe also potash, though naturally a more pure flux may require additional alumina and silica added on top. On 2/3/2026 at 7:58 AM, Insimalafdat said: Violet Violet colours come from Manganese Dioxide, which albeit is an unimplemented metal, but alternatively we do have Pink Quartz which could act as an alternative to this, though that is anachronistic. The firing type does not change this element much. Rhodochrosite is already implemented in the game, although currently doesn't have any use. Allowing to pulverize it for use in glazes would be very easy. On top of the colorants you've mentioned, it seems that cassiterite (tin oxide) could potentially be used for a white glaze. On 2/3/2026 at 7:58 AM, Insimalafdat said: Cobalt Oxide would need to be added alongside Cobalt, which is a lot of work no one needs to do, so using Zinc is most efficient/easiest to add. Cobalt would be pretty nice and easy to add, though its role as a blue pigment could slightly conflict with lapis lazuli. It could be a child deposit in some copper or nickel deposits, or it could appear as its own ore. Edited February 14 by MKMoose
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