1.22 smithing feels so overtuned to the point i feel like i need to rush my work

[ThirtySix]

specifically the rate at witch things cool down, at first i was pretty happy like yeah i can really streamline my mold pouring's but now that im in the iron age... kill me just kill me, iron blooms/ingots cool off faster than it takes avocados to brown in open air its nuts! and i've got perfect hands and joints id hate to see how awful it is for anyone with arthritis or slower reflexes honestly this change has made knapster seem mandatory for all but the most spry

[Rainbow Fresh]

I thought they only tweaked campfire stack heating into oblivion while leaving cooling awfully unbalanced? Oh well, more mods to fix I guess.

[Zane Mordien]

5 hours ago, ThirtySix said:

iron blooms/ingots cool off faster than it takes avocados to brown in open air

lol

[Vexxvididu]

I think it's intended and realistic that you will often need more than one heat to forge stuff.  This is totally realistic and reasonable but I get why it's a bit of a shock and does take some getting used to.  I'd say don't rush it, just plan to need a reheat.

EDIT:  I wanted to add that I think the former way to do it was kind of absurd in the opposite direction... people with fast hands would forge 3-4 things with just one fuel item...

Edited May 7 by Vexxvididu

[LadyWYT]

17 minutes ago, Vexxvididu said:

I think it's intended and realistic that you will often need more than one heat to forge stuff.  This is totally realistic and reasonable but I get why it's a bit of a shock and does take some getting used to.  I'd say don't rush it, just plan to need a reheat.

EDIT:  I wanted to add that I think the former way to do it was kind of absurd in the opposite direction... people with fast hands would forge 3-4 things with just one fuel item...

So much this. If you ever watch a blacksmith work, it's not unusual for them to reheat a piece a few times before it actually gets finished. Granted, it also depends on what they're working on, but smithing in general is quite tough.

Prior to 1.22, pretty much any forge item could be cranked out with one heat, with time to spare. It's still possibly to finish workpieces with one heating now, of course, but you've got to be pretty fast and heat the item hot enough to do so. I think if the heating system still followed the old rules, the bellows would probably feel a little extraneous to the entire process and be skipped over by a good chunk of players, plus the player wouldn't be able to produce the same volume of pieces either since everything would take much longer to cool. Yes, quenching is an option, but you don't necessarily want to be quenching things once you start working iron, and needing to wait most of a day before you can work with an item gets a little tedious.

[cjc813]

Personally, I'd rather pump the bellows until it's bright yellow hot than stop in the middle of smithing for a reheat.

I wonder how doing that compares to 1.21 and before in terms of fuel cost and time.

I know you'd have to wait a little bit for things to get yellow in the before times, and it felt like the forge would absolutely devour charcoal.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like in terms of time and charcoal investment, it's probably not *too* much different nowadays? At least at small scales.

Difference here is that you used to be able to light 36 forges, each with an iron bloom, and have your 12-sail, 4-helve hammer setup tear thru them in minutes.

I do kinda miss doing that, to be fair. 

[Nick Salt]

I quite like the 1.22 forge work, I always have 2 or 3 pieces being worked on at a time, its great when I am tempering and reheating a few jobs, a jug of blackberry wine, some food, throw a bit more charcoal on, and work all night until well past dawn. I haven't got round to using fireclay to add durability yet, but looking forward to making my next hammer really OP.

[ThirtySix]

9 hours ago, Vexxvididu said:

I think it's intended and realistic that you will often need more than one heat to forge stuff.  This is totally realistic and reasonable but I get why it's a bit of a shock and does take some getting used to.  I'd say don't rush it, just plan to need a reheat.

EDIT:  I wanted to add that I think the former way to do it was kind of absurd in the opposite direction... people with fast hands would forge 3-4 things with just one fuel item...

id say my biggest problem with it other than shock of something new is that unlike ingots you can only heat up 1 bloom making the already long smithing take even longer, hell i remember my 1st and 2nd saves i would rush through iron just so i could get an iron anvill so i could start making meteoritic iron to avoid blooms

[cjameshuff]

6 minutes ago, ThirtySix said:

just so i could get an iron anvill so i could start making meteoritic iron to avoid blooms

This I think is another issue. If you can work bloomery iron on a bronze anvil, you should be able to do so with meteoric iron. In the real world, meteoric iron was an early way to get small amounts of iron that was rendered largely obsolete by the invention of iron smelting. In VS, it's...a way to get small amounts of iron that's mostly rendered obsolete by the very developments required to make use of it. Yeah, it's slightly better than bloomery iron, but not by enough to bother with, especially with the player about to start making steel.

I always try to relieve as many meteoric iron blocks as possible so I can use them as decoration, since they're more useful for that than for metal...

[Maelstrom]

Meteoric iron (MI) was in game before steel, iirc.   When steel was introduced MI became a half tier between iron and steel.  MI has not been changed at all since I started playing on 1.14.10.  Processing MI is ridiculously out of character for VS, "smelt" it in a bloomery and out pops ingots. 

I wonder if Tyron has any plans to update that or if it has fallen through the cracks.

[BurgerDaddy]

I’ve done a fair amount of iron work in real life, I learned on 1890s era equipment, which is a bit more advanced than what the game is representing. Finishing anything in a single heat is not typical in my experience, but that’s only so relevant to what’s fun in a video game. About the only thing I normally did in one heat was making a single nail, and it’s only the last part, using the nail header, that you really have to be quick about.

New to the game, have not made it past bronze yet, gotta say this is the coolest representation of forging metal I’ve ever played. Of course it’s not totally accurate but I feel like it “captures the vibe”, which is as much reality as I want in my game anyway.

I do think the wooden tongs should last about 30 seconds instead of being good enough that I haven’t even considered sparing the metal to replace them yet. Would be hilarious if their durability drained super fast and then they turned into a torch and dropped whatever you were holding when it ran out.

I guess I’ll find out if I think working iron is frustrating once I get there.

[CrashToDesktop]

I've not had any problems with smithing or needing several reheats for the more basic tools. Granted, I started playing in 1.22-rc2, so I don't know what it was like before then, but there's a pretty generous grace period before items start to cool down, which is what you should really be taking advantage of rather than excessive use of a bellows which eats through charcoal. For example I can hammer out a shovel head in what feels like a dozen hits, and and axe head in not much more. Spears and falxes are more complex and take a reheat, but last way longer for the effort. I do my best not to forge iron blooms by hand, though. But, with a water wheel-powered helve hammer, I can bang out iron blooms at 700 C, the minimum forging temperature, and finish before it even starts to cool, at such a rate I need 3 forges to keep up.

Just make sure you haven't left your forge in the rain.