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 February 8 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.

[ArgentLuna]

The only thing better than finding Iron is finding Iron closer to home that the first one (like in the back paddock closer than two Translocators and a lot of running) As to mining it all out and leaving a big dark room.. well there is light sources and Packed dirt to block off area's that you dont need now (i dont go anywhere without a Stack of it on my bar, its just so useful to have)

The Durability is big tho, i was asked by my friend why i use Iron for all my tools and its because i use them a lot and would ratherr they lasted that bit longer than having to make a new bronze item more often (and i do still use Bronzes for items on occasions) I have the full blackgaurd set of armour and weapons and i approch combat cautiously still because even the best gear is a speed bump for the most nasty things in the depths (or your living room at the height of a storm) but i can take hits that will end my friends with one hit

[LadyWYT]

8 minutes ago, ArgentLuna said:

The Durability is big tho

This is also why I upgrade to steel as soon as possible; not only are the tools faster, but they last a little over twice as long. Makes digging out lots of stone for building less hassle, same goes for stockpiling logs or digging up lots of dirt and clay. I typically build two refractories and run them at the same time, so I get 32 steel ingots per firing. Wintertime is the perfect time for this kind of work as well, since not only is the wind better for powering the helve hammer, but the hot coal piles underneath the refractories provide a convenient spot to warm up when working outside.

[Entaris]

On 2/8/2026 at 2:02 PM, aleq said:

When I finally found iron, I found SO much of it

My suggestion.

Make it more scarce. 

...you ever seen how prevalent iron is IRL? hematite, pyrites, ferrites, etc etc

If anything, it should be MORE abundant, with all the variants we've discovered and exploited throughout history

in situ veins

sulfides that need to be roasted

pyrites with precious inclusions

my personal favorite, bog iron that you'd find with peat

 

However, I believe the balance to this is that each type of deposit would have a different processing requirement, both for liberation and for smelting into a usable bloom and ingot

[ArgentLuna]

1 hour ago, Entaris said:

my personal favorite, bog iron that you'd find with peat

 

a reward for having a peat fire

[Dark Thoughts]

I vastly prefer the rare but large ore veins over the tiny MC like pockets that other games also typically go for with their resource nodes. Feels more rewarding to finally find something that's valuable to you in that moment and may even encourage you to set up some infrastructure or decorations, like a proper mine entrance.

[aleq]

11 hours ago, Entaris said:

..you ever seen how prevalent iron is IRL? hematite, pyrites, ferrites, etc etc

We are talking about a game that is supposed to be fun, not emulate real life 1:1

[Ravensblade]

38 minutes ago, aleq said:

We are talking about a game that is supposed to be fun, not emulate real life 1:1

Yes. But it's not fun constantly digging small holes to mine small veins. The next tier - meteoric iron is exactly that - small veins you can mine. I like the big veins that enable setting up permanent mining operation, creation of complex tunnels and set up of proper mines not holes in the ground. I finally feel like I'm actually mining something. It's unique and fresh. 

The other ones are dig a hole, dig out small vein in few hours, plug up the entrance and forget.

Personally i would like for same rare big veins of copper or zinc (I like using brass for lanterns) that would also allow me to establish a proper copper or zinc mine.

 

 

[Headshotkill]

I actually liked the fact iron spawns as a large vein which leads to a large chamber when mined out. It's so far the only time I really had to make use of beams to support the roof and prevent cave-ins, thus over time it began to look like a proper mine. I wouldn't mind if this was also optionally enabled for other ores as well, having larger ore deposits but which are more rare would encourage building local infrastructure. Also the shape of veins could be improved as well, so far I've experienced all veins as spherical blobs or discs, this mod makes them more varried: https://mods.vintagestory.at/interestingoregen

[Dark Thoughts]

2 hours ago, aleq said:

We are talking about a game that is supposed to be fun, not emulate real life 1:1

If your definition of fun is to go into any random cave in any random location to dig out small random pockets of iron wherever you go, then there's plenty of games for that already. Vintage Story however is a survival game and prouds itself to be a fairly authentic experience. If you don't enjoy that, you can either change the ore generation settings, use mods, or move on. Because I don't see them backpedal on ore generation at all.

21 minutes ago, Headshotkill said:

Also the shape of veins could be improved as well, so far I've experienced all veins as spherical blobs or discs, this mod makes them more varried: https://mods.vintagestory.at/interestingoregen

Interesting.
I was using Rare Dense Ores but this may be a bit better while still doing the same thing it seems. I'm curious though, does this ore gen still follow the terrain above? Because that's what affects the pancake generation. If it spawns in hilly terrain the ore pancake would also generate in a hilly form below ground, if it was on a cliff side, it would generate in a very steep pattern.

[LadyWYT]

3 hours ago, Ravensblade said:

The next tier - meteoric iron is exactly that - small veins you can mine.

This is why I pretty much only use meteoric iron for decoration, and not stuff that will actually break or otherwise need repair. It is durable stuff, and the meteors aren't too hard to find, provided that one knows what to look for. However, the meteors are still pretty rare, and don't offer much ore per meteor either. A large iron vein is more preferable, since while such veins can be tricky to find sometimes, finding one will keep me(and my friend, when playing multiplayer) supplied for quite a while before needing to find more ore, even moreso when all that ore is refined into steel.

[Entaris]

8 hours ago, aleq said:

We are talking about a game that is supposed to be fun, not emulate real life 1:1

...somebody didn't read the mission statement.

[aleq]

18 hours ago, Entaris said:

...somebody didn't read the mission statement.

And what is the mission statement?