Shatter and Moisture Mechanics for Pottery!

[Calo-Mari]

The general idea is based on the fact that, as anyone who’s done pottery knows, pottery is partial to shattering/exploding while it’s being fired in a kiln, and so I think it should be implemented as an aspect for realisms sake, and to give another reason to use the beehive kiln over the pit kilns. 

The meat and potatoes of the idea is that pottery has a chance to shatter when being fired, but the chance is based off a few factors including: moisture, kiln, and grog/aggregate.

The moisture mechanic has a lot of details that if explored they could make the mechanic very over complicated, so I’m going to suggest a simple version. Clay would now get a moisture level that makes it semi-perishable. When clay would get dug up, it would have a moisture level of 80% some and then have that amount decrease while in inventory and non-enclosed storage. Clay can be formed and used until it reaches a moisture level of 15%, where it would become too leathery to mold. When the clay reaches a level of 0% moisture, it then becomes “dry clay” and must be rehydrated in a barrel in order to return into useable clay again. But until it reaches 0%-5%, all you’d have to do is throw clay into water to regain its moisture at a rate of… let’s just say 10% per second. Once pottery is finished being clayformed, it would then be placed on the ground like normal, where the tooltip would say something like: “Wet raw _____, ___ hours until dry (__% moist)”. The player would be free to fire the pottery at any point during its drying, just with increasing risk of the pottery being shattered depending directly on how wet it is. ( For example, 100% moist would be a 100% increased chance of shattering, while 50% moist is a 50% increased chance of shattering)

For pit kilns, I think the chance of shatter should be natively small to not make it extremely annoying, at somewhere around 10-25%. Each individual piece of pottery should be judged differently. (For example, if you were firing 10 shingles, each single should have its own chance of shattering instead of it being a set amount of the shingles as a whole.) To help sell the creation of a beehive kiln more, I think it should be half as likely for pottery to break as compared with the pit kiln. Now is this realistic? I have no idea, but it would be a nice thing to add in even just for gameplay. 
 

Now to give a use to all this broken pottery, there is grog. Grog would be collected through either: the purposeful destruction of pottery, in a quern or by hammer; and the remains of shattered pottery from firing. Grog should be clay-typed and whatnot for consistently with what broke, but that doesn’t really matter much. Grog would then be combined with clay in order to make the clay therefore either highly unlikely to shatter, or even just nullify shattering completely. As a side note, this would just be effecting the chance from the kiln, not from the moisture; can’t just put a sopping wet clay pot into an intensely hot oven and expect it not to break. To reduce inventory clutter I think that it should always fire into the same block/item just so there isn’t 10 more variants for each fired clay item you can make in the game, just with the raw ones (This would be just each version of a raw clay item gets a “clay with grog/aggregate” version you can make in addition) . 
As an alternative to grog, sand could additionally be used as aggregate for combing with clay, just with a decrease in the amount of reduction to the shatter chance.

And why add this? I think it would be great as a way to add more depth and challenge to pottery making, leaving players to come up with creative ways to store clay so it doesn’t dehydrate quickly (could even make it a disadvantage for hot regions/summer months, adding a bit more balance that way), and to fulfill the rest of what I find is missing from the survival aspect of pottery in Vintage Story. This also could give us a bit of return for all the brave clay molds lost to the question of “would pouring water on this cool it down quicker?”

 

As a last note to my suggestion, this would have to 100% be a toggleable thing like with cave-ins and such, as I could see a feature like this being a polarizing thing that many wouldn’t want. Could be part of wilderness survival for sure I’d think. 

[Rainbow Fresh]

7 hours ago, Calo-Mari said:

(could even make it a disadvantage for hot regions/summer months, adding a bit more balance that way),

Now let's consider the game starts you at the warm end-ish of Spring. Assume the role of a fresh new player who has no clue what they are doing, and sprinkle in some RNG on clay spawns (or atleast the ability to find it) and it may aswell be summer before this new player gets to join the pottery age. You said earlier up that 0% moist clay can only be re-hydrated by soaking it in a barrel, something players don't have access to before the copper age - another notable step up that depending on player progression speed and RNG can realistically take into the winter-threatened late stages of Fall. Meaning while you can avert it or just gather more fresh clay, the average fresh player being busy with everything and anything all at once might not have time to actively think about clay, they just harvest a bunch and make their essentials and then slowly figure out what other ceramic items they need all for their clay to be dried out and unsuable until the copper age, taking up precious storage space. At this point I can easily see people not bothering with it at all and just throwing the dry clay away and just get fresh one all the time, considering finding, like, two clay sources is all you reasonably need. Mechanically turning this into rot but more uselss (rot makes compost). And while yes, you suggested this to be togglable knowing many people might not like this, then the question would be as to why to add a mechanic that can already be anticipated to be used rarely and be off on the default difficulty?

EDIT: On top of that, now that I think back on it, having to actively wait for all of your clay to be dried juuuuuuuust right as to not have your crucial first cooking pot and crucible explode sounds more like a drag than an immersive feature.

Edited May 11 by Rainbow Fresh
Expanded

[Calo-Mari]

4 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

And while yes, you suggested this to be togglable knowing many people might not like this, then the question would be as to why to add a mechanic that can already be anticipated to be used rarely and be off on the default difficulty?

EDIT: On top of that, now that I think back on it, having to actively wait for all of your clay to be dried juuuuuuuust right as to not have your crucial first cooking pot and crucible explode sounds more like a drag than an immersive feature.

Yeah, can’t really argue about any of this, I had thought of most of the issues you brought up with the idea while drafting it in my head, and they are all valid points. 
 

I really just set up the idea like this because this is just how I would like a system like this to be set up, I like having things to slow me down a bit in early game because I prefer going at a slower pace, but I tend to think of the suggestions here as more of a place to bring up ideas rather than giving exact executions of them. I wouldn’t think that adding my exact idea would be great anyway, even just for the fact it’s a whole ordeal of additions that would take a lot of resources away from things for the majority of players would want added. A pure recreation of this idea would honestly be better suited for a mod, but I would think that the base idea of some form of breakage during firing could exist in the main game.

[Rainbow Fresh]

14 minutes ago, Calo-Mari said:

Yeah, can’t really argue about any of this, I had thought of most of the issues you brought up with the idea while drafting it in my head, and they are all valid points. 
 

I really just set up the idea like this because this is just how I would like a system like this to be set up, I like having things to slow me down a bit in early game because I prefer going at a slower pace, but I tend to think of the suggestions here as more of a place to bring up ideas rather than giving exact executions of them. I wouldn’t think that adding my exact idea would be great anyway, even just for the fact it’s a whole ordeal of additions that would take a lot of resources away from things for the majority of players would want added. A pure recreation of this idea would honestly be better suited for a mod, but I would think that the base idea of some form of breakage during firing could exist in the main game.

Oh for sure, it is a place to bring up ideas and then other people give their opinion on the idea and ideally, at the end of the day, all opinions together can help come up with the best version of the idea. The problem here is just, so far with only your idea and my opinion of it, I don't quite see that perfect idea. I totally agree that in general, clay could be made more interesting and engaging in some way? But what that way could be, I honestly don't know. Because I too like to play the game slow and comfy, but that doesn't mean I have to be forced to do so by mechanics turned into a deliberately slower process just for the sake of slowing you down. Cause you say

18 minutes ago, Calo-Mari said:

but I would think that the base idea of some form of breakage during firing could exist in the main game.

and my immediate reaction is "please god no, they already ruined smithing with this". Back in 1.21.6 I played with the "Sally's Manual Quenching" mod and the "Grindstones" mod. The former is a nice, "immersive" QoL addition that lets you dunk your smithed pieces into a bucket of water to save you several minutes of watching a number go down. The latter let's you repair tools at a crafted grindstone at the cost of sinking max durability. An addition I see somewhat direly necessary as just upping universal durability seems unfair but certain high-use tools (like hammer and chisel) break like they are made out of wood still.

Then 1.22 came around and the patchnotes said they added both quenching and grinding to the base game and I was very hyped and then - Grinding might as well not exist that's how utterly useless it is and quenching isn't just a QoL feature, it is a gamble where you can up tool stats at the cost of it randomly exploding into thin air. Is that more realistic? Maybe. Is that an overall more elaborate and engaging gameplay mechanic? Yes. Do I still want my old, easy, modded functionality back? Also yes. So please, don't make clay randomly explode for not reason aswell.

 

On another note, what I'd like to see personally in addtion of clay mechanics is an in-between of the pit kiln and beehive kiln. The pit kiln is nice and simple but it feels kinda weird having to shove clay, grass, sticks and fuel into a hole all the way into the Steel age. Sure, that's what the beehive kiln is *supposed* to be for but in my eyes that's just a fancy late-game gizmo for people caring about the color of their ceramics. It's incredibly expensive to build, equally as incredibly expensive (compared to the pit kiln) to run and its only advantage is to be able to fire up more clay items simulatenously (which the average player at that stage of the game should have no more need for) and turn it funky colors. I have no idea if there is any "realistic" example of such a thing, but some sort of small-scale Bloomery-esque upgraded/re-usable pit kiln sounds nice. Overall slightly cheaper to run (if run several, several times) or maybe just less tedious to set up, maybe slightly faster? But not beehive kiln multi-block structure of doom levels overkill.

[Demoncyborg]

I actually love the drying idea. I'm already seeing a somewhat unintended but useful (and slightly realistic) bit of play where you collect clay, let it dry out in your chests/crates, and then hydrate a portion of your clay to then mix with the drier clay to even out the %'s just like with spoilage and other drying timers. Optimizing your pottery-making by using a clay close to being too dry so it's ready to be fired faster. It's adding a legitimate bit of planning and skill to pottery making, I LOVE that!!!

I'm in no way aware of how hard it would be to code, but using some method of gentle heating and warming to quicken the drying, for a Seraph still making pit kilns, a day in the sun or by the campfire, but for a Seraph with a proper beehive kiln, maybe a partial firing with only one stack of logs/peat will do the trick in a few in game hours to make your whole kiln bone dry.

i'm half and half on breakage during the firing process when clay, especially fire clay, can feel really difficult to procure on certain worlds. I like that the byproduct is something to make stronger pots, but if there ever was a % to break, i'd love it to be within the moisture and firing methods. I totally agree that a kiln between pit and beehive is needed. A brick and mud kiln that you have to destroy after use like a bloomery is my personal thought!

with an extra stage like that, pit kilns could have the highest '% to break' even in perfect conditions, urging you to make enough bricks to level yourself up to a more advanced kiln, which has a much lower % of breakage. Then, the beehive (under perfect conditions, no moisture and properly grogged clay) would never break your pots, since the beehive kiln already needs to be maintained by itself. something like that!

 

[LadyWYT]

Relevant poll: 

In any case, I do like the idea of needing to dry pottery before firing, lest it shatter during the firing process. That being said...

 

17 hours ago, Calo-Mari said:

Clay would now get a moisture level that makes it semi-perishable.

I think this goes too far, as it makes the early game a lot more punishing on newer players, as well as makes it a lot harder to store clay in general for later use. It might not be terribly realistic to have clay be some mysterious substance that never dries out unless it's shaped into something, but I think most players would prefer the compromise of realism and convenience.

 

17 hours ago, Calo-Mari said:

For pit kilns, I think the chance of shatter should be natively small to not make it extremely annoying, at somewhere around 10-25%. Each individual piece of pottery should be judged differently. (For example, if you were firing 10 shingles, each single should have its own chance of shattering instead of it being a set amount of the shingles as a whole.) To help sell the creation of a beehive kiln more, I think it should be half as likely for pottery to break as compared with the pit kiln. Now is this realistic? I have no idea, but it would be a nice thing to add in even just for gameplay. 

Realistically, it's possible to lose an entire batch of pottery if something explodes in the kiln...at least, to my knowledge it is. That's probably too extreme for a videogame though. I think it's more than fair to just make the shatter risk relative to the percentage of dryness the pottery item is. At 100% dry, the item won't shatter at all; at 90% dryness it's probably still safe to fire if the player is in a hurry, but it could shatter; at 10% dryness the player really shouldn't be trying to fire the item as it will almost certainly shatter.

 

17 hours ago, Calo-Mari said:

Now to give a use to all this broken pottery, there is grog. Grog would be collected through either: the purposeful destruction of pottery, in a quern or by hammer; and the remains of shattered pottery from firing. Grog should be clay-typed and whatnot for consistently with what broke, but that doesn’t really matter much. Grog would then be combined with clay in order to make the clay therefore either highly unlikely to shatter, or even just nullify shattering completely.

I think this is best simplified as a mechanic that the player can use to recycle pottery shards/unwanted pottery items into usable clay. With the introduction of a mortar/pestle and a wooden bowl, pottery shards could even drop from broken cracked vessels or panning loot and thus serve as a way for the player to acquire some clay for basic items if they're having trouble locating a deposit. I don't think it should be something that the player can make a "super-clay" out of though.

What I would add here--let players reuse pottery shards for mosaic decorations. That would be a better incentive for the player to deliberately shatter pottery or otherwise invest in a beehive kiln.

For those wanting more robust pottery mechanics, this mod might prove interesting. I ran across it the other day and haven't tried it myself, so I can't say how well it works, but it looks quite interesting: https://mods.vintagestory.at/clayworks