Make iron feel more valuable and satisfying to find

[aleq]

I haven't played for around one year, but let me tell you a short story about iron.

When I finally found iron, I found SO much of it, that it felt like punishment and not a reward. Why? Because so much of a good thing reduces its value. And you have to work too hard for a long time to mine it all and carry it back to the base. I have never found so much of something in a game that is meant to be valuable. When I dug out all the iron, the room was a big hall where monsters started spawning - almost a labyrinth where it was easy to get lost. 

 

And when temporal storms happened and I got invaded, I still got killed after just a few hits - all this, while wearing iron armor. Then I asked myself: "Why bother? Why go through all the suffering again to get steel - only to get a little improvement..."

My suggestion. Make iron gear more impactful (more armor and not just durability - who cares about durability anyway when you are constantly being attacked).

Make it more scarce. 

 

I don't know if things have changed since then, but my last experience with iron was pretty lame. Honestly, one of the main reasons why I stopped.

Edited 21 hours ago by aleq

[ifoz]

I think the real value of iron comes from the ingots - the ore itself is meant to be somewhat plentiful so that lategame it can overtake copper as your 'do everything' metal.
Especially with how much iron you now require lategame - the beehive kiln takes a lot of iron to make doors for, and the 1.22 large windmill needs quite a bit too. The devs have also said they want to add metal mechanical power parts that prevent burning under severe friction, and that will probably be another iron sink.

[Vexxvididu]

RNG can be cruel with iron... I struggled a lot to find it in my current game.  I think it's mostly fine how it is.  With iron, the bigger reward is in how much work it takes to process the ingots or make steel.

[Ravensblade]

I actually like how massive iron veins are. Instead of just digging hole in the ground, mining ore and moving on, I can establish more permanent mining camp with housing, storage, smelters, more proper mining shaft etc.

[MKMoose]

19 hours ago, aleq said:

"Why bother? Why go through all the suffering again to get steel - only to get a little improvement..."

Large gameplay benefits are not the primary purpose of endgame progression, and they generally shoudn't be.

But even still, steel plate for example reduces your damage recieved from highest-tier threats by about 25% relative to iron armor (less against lower-tier monsters), and that's on top of a humongous durablity increase. I'd say that's plenty incentive to make steel.

 

18 hours ago, aleq said:

Make iron gear more impactful (more armor and not just durability - who cares about durability anyway when you are constantly being attacked).

Ferrous tools and weapons have just been buffed with the addition of quenching, which allows to apply a small buff to all iron or steel weapons and tools practically for free or a larger buff with a bit more effort and risk. Armor hasn't been changed in this update so far and I would be interested to see heat treatment extended to it as well. Generally, I think it's one of the many systems which would benefit from an overhaul sooner or later, but it isn't too much of a priority as the current state of it is functional enough. People tend to use gambeson most of the time, and metal armor is usually reserved for high-risk situations like story locations and storms. And also, if you're "constantly being attacked", then consider caring more about durability, because your armor will be worn down quickly.

At the same time, if you expect the game to suddenly get easy when you get iron armor, then you might want to adjust your expectations, because temporal storms are supposed to be by far the greatest threat in the game besides perhaps story locations or caving near the mantle. While better armor and gear will let you get away with more mistakes, you shouldn't expect not to die quickly when facing the most dangerous enemies in the game. If you intend to fight during storms, having a safe space to retreat to and some spare healing items is a must.

[LadyWYT]

11 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

If you intend to fight during storms, having a safe space to retreat to and some spare healing items is a must.

This really can't be stated enough. I died on my doorstep during a storm once, despite having steel equipment, simply because I stayed out fighting when I should have taken a moment to step back inside and heal. Steel armor is very protective and mitigates most incoming damage, but corrupt and nightmare level opponents still hit very hard. I would steel armor is the difference between instant death/serious injury and a respectable bruise.

[PoisonedPawn777]

Bombs and a dozen lanterns...makes mining out an iron vein a breeze. As for armor, there's almost no point making metal armor below the iron level, gambeson is either straight up better, or is close enough to bronze armors to make the extra effort worthless. Keep in mind though iron is a mid-game metal, there are three armor groups that currently outclass iron. Temporal storms spawn late game monsters that will still cut you up if you aren't careful, especially the tier 4 rusties.