forging Quenching and tempering are overly gamified

[Jacsmac]

2 minutes ago, Jacsmac said:

Since tempering is all about balancing out durability and power bonuses, perhaps it would be more intuitive if the goal was to decrease a visible 'brittleness' quantity while keeping the hardness at an acceptable level. A player could also opt out of tempering to keep the highest DPS/mining speed but with reduced durability, a better trade-off than repeatedly quenching the workpiece and gambling the entire piece of metal.

I know this is basically a repeat of the original suggestion, but I can't get this off of my mind after playing the prerelease. The base game implementation just bothers me this much.

[Jacsmac]

5 minutes ago, Jacsmac said:

The heat treatment process should not store Power and Durability bonuses on the work item, rather it should have Brittleness and Hardness. Quenching would increase both, and tempering would decrease both (but decrease the brittleness faster than hardness). The hardness adds power and durability to the tool, but the brittleness subtracts from the durability only.

Also, a strict implementation of this idea would still promote requenching. Obviously heating the metal back up to the quenching temperature should either rapidly undo all heat treatment progress or make the metal ridiculously brittle after requenching to properly convey that this is the wrong way to gain more stats.

[MKMoose]

9 hours ago, Jacsmac said:

The heat treatment process should not store Power and Durability bonuses on the work item, rather it should have Brittleness and Hardness.

Technically, this is what the game kind of already does, because the power and durability effects applied by quenching don't do anything by themselves and are only used to then apply damage and other buffs which actually affect the tool's stats. At a basic level, this change could boil down to just renaming a few things, not necessarily significant changes to the underlying functionality.

"Power" and "durability" have one advantage over "hardness" and "brittleness" or "toughness", and it is that they more directly tell the player what they actually do in-game. That said, even for players completely unfamiliar with material properties, I think it shouldn't be difficult to remember the rough meaning and in-game effects of two or three words, and it might actually be more of a cool learning opportunity of sorts.

 

10 hours ago, Jacsmac said:

Perhaps crafting recipes for mechanical parts/gates and doors could also require iron parts with specific hardness/brittleness values, though I imagine this would be too tedious for players.

One thing I would be careful to avoid is excessive imbalance between the complexity of different areas of gameplay. If crafting with metal is given a bunch of constraints regarding hardness or toughness, then it would seem natural that crafting with wood, bone, stone, sand, leather or other materials should also be given some constraints to prevent the player from using materials which wouldn't realistically be suitable for a given purpose. Certain mechanical parts technically already require harder wood types, but the current implementation doesn't make that requirement very clear.

But that said, I think it would at the very least make a lot of sense to apply the bonuses of heat treatment to anything that can benefit from them. If an item or something crafted from it has durability, then it should likely be possible to increase that durability by increasing toughness. While currently very few items can benefit from this, I think it could be possible to treat plates to craft them into better armor. Item stackability concerns would have to be addressed for this to work well, though.

 

10 hours ago, Jacsmac said:

Since tempering is all about balancing out durability and power bonuses, perhaps it would be more intuitive if the goal was to decrease a visible 'brittleness' quantity while keeping the hardness at an acceptable level.

10 hours ago, Jacsmac said:

'Brittle, -10% durability' on top of 'Quenched, +10% power +20% durability'

Aye, I like both of those. Would help a lot to make the effects clearer and nudge the player towards the optimal treatment order.

[NastyFlytrap]

8 hours ago, MKMoose said:

Technically, this is what the game kind of already does, because the power and durability effects applied by quenching don't do anything by themselves and are only used to then apply damage and other buffs which actually affect the tool's stats. At a basic level, this change could boil down to just renaming a few things, not necessarily significant changes to the underlying functionality.

"Power" and "durability" have one advantage over "hardness" and "brittleness" or "toughness", and it is that they more directly tell the player what they actually do in-game. That said, even for players completely unfamiliar with material properties, I think it shouldn't be difficult to remember the rough meaning and in-game effects of two or three words, and it might actually be more of a cool learning opportunity of sorts.

 

One thing I would be careful to avoid is excessive imbalance between the complexity of different areas of gameplay. If crafting with metal is given a bunch of constraints regarding hardness or toughness, then it would seem natural that crafting with wood, bone, stone, sand, leather or other materials should also be given some constraints to prevent the player from using materials which wouldn't realistically be suitable for a given purpose. Certain mechanical parts technically already require harder wood types, but the current implementation doesn't make that requirement very clear.

But that said, I think it would at the very least make a lot of sense to apply the bonuses of heat treatment to anything that can benefit from them. If an item or something crafted from it has durability, then it should likely be possible to increase that durability by increasing toughness. While currently very few items can benefit from this, I think it could be possible to treat plates to craft them into better armor. Item stackability concerns would have to be addressed for this to work well, though.

 

Aye, I like both of those. Would help a lot to make the effects clearer and nudge the player towards the optimal treatment order.

I dont know. Maybe i'm just misinterpreting what he wrote but this sounds like a 'quench temper then requench retemper' ad infinitum system, until your tool is either broken or you have enough to your liking.

[Jacsmac]

23 minutes ago, NastyFlytrap said:

I dont know. Maybe i'm just misinterpreting what he wrote but this sounds like a 'quench temper then requench retemper' ad infinitum system, until your tool is either broken or you have enough to your liking.

To be clear, I was pointing out a flaw in my suggestion when I quoted myself. Requenching should never be used to gain rewards, only redo the heat treatment process in case of mistakes.

Edited April 16 by Jacsmac

[NastyFlytrap]

2 minutes ago, Jacsmac said:

To be clear, I was pointing out a flaw in my suggestion. Requenching should never be used to gain rewards, only redo the heat treatment process in case of mistakes.

Alright, so, how would the system work exactly? The player gets one quench and temper to get bonuses and thats all? Just one flat bonus at the end of it all? Unless they want to redo it but then it erases everything and starts from scratch so it doesnt really make a difference. I dont know how the actual practical gameplay steps would look like.

[Jacsmac]

 

10 minutes ago, NastyFlytrap said:

The player gets one quench and temper to get bonuses and thats all?

Yes, exactly. I think the original suggestion says something similar to this too. 
A good quench raises a metal to the highest hardness/brittleness that you would want or expect for the heat treating process before you start tempering. The purpose of tempering is to make the metal softer, making it more durable (less brittle) with the trade-off being less hardness (more susceptible to deformation). For example, a pickaxe should be quenched to make it hard enough to mine faster, but tempered so it doesn't operate in bomb mode (shatters too easily) instead of pickaxe mode.

Tempering (metallurgy) - Wikipedia

Edited April 16 by Jacsmac

[NastyFlytrap]

2 minutes ago, Jacsmac said:

 

Yes, exactly. I think the original suggestion says something similar to this too. 
A good quench raises a metal to the highest hardness/brittleness that you would want or expect for the heat treating process before you start tempering. The purpose of tempering is to make the metal softer, making it more durable (less brittle) with the trade-off being less hardness (more susceptible to deformation). For example, a pickaxe should be quenched to make it hard enough to mine faster, but tempered so it doesn't operate in bomb mode (shatters too easily) instead of pickaxe mode.

Tempering (metallurgy) - Wikipedia

I-, well, yeah, as far as i understand the original suggestion said something like this but the original suggestion gave it some depth, like different stats depending on how perfectly you get the temperature and the quenching times right, etc, while to me, yours just sounded like a 'you did quench? Here's a flat bonus', kinda mechanic which is too simplistic. I want it to have depth.

 

I really liked the idea of the player having to estimate the temperature from the colour of it, like a real blacksmith, and depending how close you get to the sweet spot your stats get better or worse.

[Jacsmac]

Okay, I see where you're coming from. I wasn't trying to replace the original suggestion, but rather the Power and Durability terminology with Hardness and Brittleness (and agreeing that requenching should only be done to "redo" the heat treatment process). I think the level of skill expression involved in the original post makes for the best addition to the game.

Edited April 16 by Jacsmac

[NastyFlytrap]

Just now, Jacsmac said:

Okay, I see where you're coming from. I wasn't trying to replace the original suggestion, but rather the Power and Durability terminology with Hardness and Brittleness. I think the level of skill expression involved in the original post makes for the best addition to the game.

Okay, so, in your opinion, what does Hardness and Brittleness mean in terms of game mechanics?

[Jacsmac]

I think that relating Hardness and Brittleness to the heat treatment process rather than just the base stats will help convey why each process is done; the player will know that they should make their tools less brittle intuitively, encouraging them to temper for more durability even at the expense of less power. If the two stats obscure the real stat bonuses too much, I don't think it would be a horrible idea to just list them in the item description like they are now and treat the brittleness/hardness as the addends ('Brittle, -x% durability' 'Hardness xx, +x% power and durability')

In terms of gameplay mechanics, stat bonus optimization would be largely the same as MkMoose's original suggestion (correct temperatures, quenching times, etc.) Rather than just the power and durability being increased perhaps the hardness and brittleness can change by certain amounts based on how well each part of the process goes (better quenching severity could mean less brittleness to start, better tempering could reduce hardness less). 

It's mostly a way to rephrase power and durability in a more concrete terminology to make the end goal more intuitive.
Feel free to let me know where I should elaborate/you have an idea to modify my suggestion (and just to clarify: I 100% agree with the original thread's in-depth heat treatment system suggested by MKMoose).

[NastyFlytrap]

3 minutes ago, Jacsmac said:

Brittle, -x% durability' 'Hardness xx, +x% power and durability

Okay, so its just an opinion on the wording of his mechanics.

Alright, this i like.

 

That being said, as someone who is mostly familiar with metallurgy, the idea of the player intuitively figuring it out would work out for me, but would it go like that for someone who knows nothing about metallic alloys, metalworking, material science, etc?

[Jacsmac]

1 minute ago, NastyFlytrap said:

That being said, as someone who is mostly familiar with metallurgy, the idea of the player intuitively figuring it out would work out for me, but would it go like that for someone who knows nothing about metallic alloys, metalworking, material science, etc?

Well, the player already has to learn where to find reeds, how to dry clay pots and molds, survey for ores, domesticate animals, tan leather, solve puzzles, fight creatures from hell, propagate berry bushes, prevent cave-ins, and rotate crops. I think that real Vintage Story enjoyers are prepared to be patient and learn new things.

It's not out of the question that a mechanic that requires the player to learn something will get added to the game, so I believe gameplay processes should be better at teaching players why things work certain ways in real life while allowing those with existing knowledge to not feel confused by random inaccuracies. 

 

[NastyFlytrap]

1 minute ago, Jacsmac said:

Well, the player already has to learn where to find reeds, how to dry clay pots and molds, survey for ores, domesticate animals, tan leather, solve puzzles, fight creatures from hell, propagate berry bushes, prevent cave-ins, and rotate crops. I think that real Vintage Story enjoyers are prepared to be patient and learn new things.

It's not out of the question that a mechanic that requires the player to learn something will get added to the game, so I believe gameplay processes should be better at teaching players why things work certain ways in real life while allowing those with existing knowledge to not feel confused by random inaccuracies. 

 

Okay but most of those things have nice explanations in the handbook, which this proposed rework sorely needs, otherwise i feel it would make sense only to us, the ones 'in the know', which, yes, most of us, the main community, have a good, wide general knowledge of everything in this world, but there are still people out there who are more mainstream and not that familiar with niche fields like metallurgy.

 

If there was a nice handbook guide for this, then thats good enough. Something to match what we already have.

[BlackCDown]

Fantastic post OP, I am a big fan of the contrast between the simplicity exposed to the player (just needing to choose when to quench or temper) vs the complexity of the mechanics behind it (the details you described). Stuff like this allows players to choose the degree of depth with which they engage with the quenching system and that flexibility is the hallmark of a sandbox game like this one.

Edited May 17 by BlackCDown

[stm91]

Love the idea!

I just had my first interaction with the new system yesterday and 3 out of 5 items broke on the very first quench. This was neither fun nor engaging, just plain tedious.

[Vexxvididu]

6 minutes ago, stm91 said:

Love the idea!

I just had my first interaction with the new system yesterday and 3 out of 5 items broke on the very first quench. This was neither fun nor engaging, just plain tedious.

 

That's really bad RNG, but I agree it's annoying.  Maybe the first quench should have 0 chance of shattering or maybe configurable.

[NastyFlytrap]

So, when is this mechanic getting added to the game?

It really is superior to the one in the game tbh....

[Aethelwulffe]

So let us delve into HISTORICAL tempering processes.  Lots of terms were used, certainly.  Lots of regions, many eras.  Vintage Story is a weird pre-steam steampunk thing, so no use there.  Personally you should maybe drop the term Tempering.  If you used it at all, I would apply it to "quenching", as HISTORICALLY it has often been the term applied, and generally the whole process is often referred to as tempering.  This is also the common perception, despite there being too much complexity in the modern era for just two terms.  You can see this in references to the "temper" of the end product, where it is referred to as both the hardness and toughness of the product.  What you are calling "tempering" in the game is actually annealing.  Modern tempering has nothing to do with it, and that term was only used rarely in the past when ONLY associated with high temperature slow cooling.  It was most often applied the other way around.

Say "quench" and "anneal", and state how one is associated with toughening and the other with relaxing the metal.

Of course thankfully the gamification of this is no where near as disrespectfully bad as the deal with the sailboat.  It could have easily been so good, but it is soooo bad...meaning disappointing.  Please just remove the silly attempt at a squaresail that goes anywhere and uses reefing as a throttle control and just put in a magic gearbox motor thing...or do it right.

[Aethelwulffe]

On 4/16/2026 at 8:47 AM, Jacsmac said:

 

Yes, exactly. I think the original suggestion says something similar to this too. 
A good quench raises a metal to the highest hardness/brittleness that you would want or expect for the heat treating process before you start tempering. The purpose of tempering is to make the metal softer, making it more durable (less brittle) with the trade-off being less hardness (more susceptible to deformation). For example, a pickaxe should be quenched to make it hard enough to mine faster, but tempered so it doesn't operate in bomb mode (shatters too easily) instead of pickaxe mode.

Tempering (metallurgy) - Wikipedia

Tempering, in the context of wrought iron and blister steel produced from a bloomery, is not annealing.  Annealing is the process that happens in the game.

 

[NastyFlytrap]

7 hours ago, Aethelwulffe said:

So let us delve into HISTORICAL tempering processes.  Lots of terms were used, certainly.  Lots of regions, many eras.  Vintage Story is a weird pre-steam steampunk thing, so no use there.  Personally you should maybe drop the term Tempering.  If you used it at all, I would apply it to "quenching", as HISTORICALLY it has often been the term applied, and generally the whole process is often referred to as tempering.  This is also the common perception, despite there being too much complexity in the modern era for just two terms.  You can see this in references to the "temper" of the end product, where it is referred to as both the hardness and toughness of the product.  What you are calling "tempering" in the game is actually annealing.  Modern tempering has nothing to do with it, and that term was only used rarely in the past when ONLY associated with high temperature slow cooling.  It was most often applied the other way around.

Say "quench" and "anneal", and state how one is associated with toughening and the other with relaxing the metal.

Of course thankfully the gamification of this is no where near as disrespectfully bad as the deal with the sailboat.  It could have easily been so good, but it is soooo bad...meaning disappointing.  Please just remove the silly attempt at a squaresail that goes anywhere and uses reefing as a throttle control and just put in a magic gearbox motor thing...or do it right.

Speaking of sailing, if you made a breakdown and proposed rework of that system, like this post, but your own, i'd certainly read it. May even agree with the things said there

[LadyWYT]

On 5/17/2026 at 7:12 AM, Vexxvididu said:

Maybe the first quench should have 0 chance of shattering or maybe configurable.

I think it used to be a 0% chance, and got changed to make quenching a risky prospect. Basically, I get the impression that the system is there as a way for players to improve their tools/weapons beyond the normal means, but not without some risk involved. What I've found in gameplay is that having something snap on the first quench is pretty bad RNG and not likely to happen, so having multiple snaps in a row is really bad RNG. My general strategy of handling it is to sometimes not take the risk if it's an item I really need at that time. Iron is plentiful, so a little less power/durability or a broken item every now and then isn't a huge deal. I wouldn't say it's entirely unrealistic either, as even with the best skills sometimes imperfections get missed. 

A configuration option is probably better suited to a mod, since the shatter chance is a pretty small, specific thing compared to the other gameplay options. I would opt for just letting an appropriate amount of iron nuggets drop from shattered work, so that the player doesn't actually lose the material and can try again.

On 5/17/2026 at 1:41 PM, NastyFlytrap said:

So, when is this mechanic getting added to the game?

As soon as someone mods it in, or the devs otherwise change their mind. Or more likely, both happen. It's more likely to be modded first, in which case both systems can be put to the test and the devs can take notes on the mod feedback(as well as try it out for themselves) and decide what changes they want to make with vanilla.

[MKMoose]

5 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I think it used to be a 0% chance, and got changed to make quenching a risky prospect.

It has always been 5% on the first quenching, but most people (including myself) initially assumed it was 0% because of the tooltip, which only starting from 1.22.0 stable finally communicates the risk properly.

 

52 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

What I've found in gameplay is that having something snap on the first quench is pretty bad RNG and not likely to happen, so having multiple snaps in a row is really bad RNG.

The thing that I've never liked in RNG-based mechanics is that even a very small chance, multiplied by a large number of players, can produce a significant number of unhappy players. Shattering your first two pieces only has a tiny 0.25% chance, but give this to, say, 10k people, and on average 25 of them will shatter their first two pieces. Some of those 25 people will leave with a sour taste only to be told "well, you were really unlucky". And while it's ultimately not particularly meaningful in the long run, because you're usually gonna have much more iron on hand, I personally don't particularly like mechanics which allow such an obvious risk in the first place (which, by the way, is also why I'm not really a fan of scarcity balancing which is used extensively for things like resin, bees, or fire clay, or even seemingly common cattails - I've watched a new player search for them for almost two hours trying to complete the tutorial, and they just got a really bad world).

 

10 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

As soon as someone mods it in, or the devs otherwise change their mind. Or more likely, both happen. It's more likely to be modded first, in which case both systems can be put to the test and the devs can take notes on the mod feedback(as well as try it out for themselves) and decide what changes they want to make with vanilla.

One thing that has become quite clear based on the community sentiment that I've been seeing is that tempering is kind of a flop. A bit too many people for my taste don't understand what it does and don't know how many times it should be done, some people have complained that it takes too long even in spite of the greatly increased cooling rates, and it's not been uncommon to see people ignore tempering altogether. The benefits that optimal tempering brings over quenching are quite minimal anyways. And people also seem to quite often mix power and durability quenching on the same tool, which is strictly detrimental past the second quenching unless repeatedly tempered in just the same way that excessive durability quenching is an effective durability loss.

Even if not rework the system completely, I really hope that they will actually keep improving it rather than leave it as is. Though frankly, I feel like any significant work on it might not make much sense until the fabled heating rework is finally in place.

[NastyFlytrap]

6 hours ago, MKMoose said:

and it's not been uncommon to see people ignore tempering altogether

This is literally what i did and will continue to do so until this post's rework is implemented because i think the mechanic in its current implementation is not fun.

[cjameshuff]

For my part, having the thing you're working on just vanish leaving you with nothing is really annoying and frustrating. In general, if you work on something, and get everything right, you should get something. I'd even be fine with the improvement not being fully predictable...say you get unlucky and make a falx from a particularly low-carbon piece of steel that just won't ever harden as much as a higher-carbon specimen. Ideally, let you scrap such an item, melting it down with other steel to try again.