LadyWYT Posted July 1 Report Posted July 1 Callback to this suggestion: So I got the notion to take a crack at overhauling the quenching and tempering system. The vanilla system is okay, but after playing with it for a while, it doesn't necessarily age too well. With @Teh Pizza Lady's help in putting all the pieces together, now there is an alternative! How it works: The player can choose between three different processes in order to improve the stats on an item: normal quenching, clay quenching, and tempering. The process can only be done once, so the player must choose carefully to get the stats they want. Normal quenching will boost an item's power, tempering will boost an item's durability, and clay quenching will provide a modest boost to both power and durability. The power of quenching stats are determined by the item's temperature at quenching time. Lower temperatures will yield lower bonuses, while higher temperatures will yield better bonuses but can carry more risk of shattering. Overheating an item will yield no benefits but will risk shattering the item; if the item does not shatter the player can try to quench again. The exact temperature brackets and bonuses are as follows: Spoiler 815-925 yields +10% power (normal quench), or +5% power +4% durability (clay quench) 925-975 yields + 25% power (normal quench), or +13% power, +10% durability (clay quench) 975-1050 yields + 50% power (normal quench), or +25% power, +20% durability (clay quench) Tempering remains mostly the same as vanilla, save for boosting the item's durability rather than lowering shatter chance for additional quenches. To temper an item, simply heat it to within the 550-700 C range and let it cool off slowly to get a 40% boost to durability(this is the only stat not temperature-sensitive). In short, forge your item, and then choose the appropriate finishing process for the stats you'd like. Once in a while an item might shatter, but most of the time the player should be getting something quite useful. Known Issues: Tempered work items do not list the durability bonus on their tooltip, but will apply and list the bonus on the completed tool. Tempered work items still list their bonus as "Hardened" rather than "Tempered". Mod link: https://mods.vintagestory.at/improvedquenching 1 1
MKMoose Posted July 1 Report Posted July 1 Well, color me interested. Overall I quite like the direction, and I have a few quick notes and suggestions. On the design: It may be better to be able to override the effects of the previous treatment instead of being permanently locked out of further heat treatments after the first one. As already mentioned by another person on the ModDB, realistically, tempering should always be done after quenching - realism is not the be-all end-all here, of course, so I'd be quite fine with it staying as-is, though it is something you may or may not want to consider. Although, it's worth noting that quenching-only as you've done has the advantage of being a simple, no-strings-attached process, whereas my original suggestion of repeated tempering after quenching runs the risk of being a bit tedious or unintuitive. It would likely be beneficial to remove or adjust all parts of the tooltip which are no longer relevant after a heat treatment, and especially "times quenched" and "times tempered". On balance: Having zero shatter chance on both the low and middle temperature bracket seems rather odd to me - given that both temperature brackets require bellows anyways and can be reached with any fuel, there is very little difference in the setup and cost between these two tiers. A whole +50% power is a huge buff, especially with what seems like just 20% shatter chance (the tooltip showed 40% post factum, I'd have to double-check to be sure what's up with that). If that's the intent, then by all means, but if you care about remaining roughly faithful to vanilla (which I personally think is already somewhat out of whack) then ~30-40% would likely be the maximum that can be reasonably given even on the high bracket in its current balance, unless it's made more difficult or costly. For context, in the vanilla balance, assuming repeated quenching with no tempering and no other shenanigans (there's a way to achieve a slightly better result on low quenching counts with a temper, but the difference will be fairly minimal either way): quenching 8 times for a very high ~51% buff (very close to the high bracket) has a total shatter chance of ~88% (on average ~8 items for one survival), quenching 6 times for a more reasonable ~42% buff still has a total shatter chance of ~69% (on average ~3 items for one survival), quenching 3 times for a decent ~25% buff (almost equal to the middle bracket) has a total shatter chance of ~27% (on average ~1.4 items for one survival). Simiilarly, a 40% buff for tempering is pretty huge - if I recall correctly, the maximum obtainable effective durability buff in vanilla if you multiply by survival chance, assuming no exploits or whatnot, is just ~17% (after quenching > tempering > quenching), so even keeping the modded tempering effect at 20% would still be quite significantly better. Again, of course, if that's the intent then I don't mind, but if you intend to stay somewhat close to the vanilla balance then it may warrant some adjustments. 2
Teh Pizza Lady Posted July 1 Report Posted July 1 1 hour ago, MKMoose said: On the design: It may be better to be able to override the effects of the previous treatment instead of being permanently locked out of further heat treatments after the first one. As already mentioned by another person on the ModDB, realistically, tempering should always be done after quenching - realism is not the be-all end-all here, of course, so I'd be quite fine with it staying as-is, though it is something you may or may not want to consider. Although, it's worth noting that quenching-only as you've done has the advantage of being a simple, no-strings-attached process, whereas my original suggestion of repeated tempering after quenching runs the risk of being a bit tedious or unintuitive. It would likely be beneficial to remove or adjust all parts of the tooltip which are no longer relevant after a heat treatment, and especially "times quenched" and "times tempered". I went back and looked at the thread that started this whole thing and what I saw is that quenching should ONLY be done once, yes, but according to your post, tempering should be done after quenching. Annealing should be be done before quenching, so the process is Annealing to lower the risk of the tool/weapon shattering during the quenching process Quenching to harden it Tempering to lower the risk of the tool/weapon shattering during use. Skip and you might have an OP weapon but if you skip annealing, it could shatter while quenching or if you skip tempering it could shatter after making it into a tool/weapon. And that shattering during use thing... idk... it scratches an itch that I didn't know was there. 2
LadyWYT Posted July 1 Author Report Posted July 1 2 hours ago, MKMoose said: It may be better to be able to override the effects of the previous treatment instead of being permanently locked out of further heat treatments after the first one. I'll definitely need to look into this. The main goal was to keep it simple and just get the system working first, and then worry about all the potential extras later. 2 hours ago, MKMoose said: As already mentioned by another person on the ModDB, realistically, tempering should always be done after quenching - realism is not the be-all end-all here, of course, so I'd be quite fine with it staying as-is, though it is something you may or may not want to consider. Although, it's worth noting that quenching-only as you've done has the advantage of being a simple, no-strings-attached process, whereas my original suggestion of repeated tempering after quenching runs the risk of being a bit tedious or unintuitive. It's an interesting idea, but as you said, it also risks being a bit tedious. "Unintuitive" shouldn't really be a problem there though, as while it might be that at first, it should be something the player can easily learn. 2 hours ago, MKMoose said: It would likely be beneficial to remove or adjust all parts of the tooltip which are no longer relevant after a heat treatment, and especially "times quenched" and "times tempered". The tooltips definitely need adjusting, especially the tempered one. Currently there's no readout for the tempered buff on a workpiece, so while it does apply effects at crafting there's no way to tell what's been tempered and what hasn't. 2 hours ago, MKMoose said: Having zero shatter chance on both the low and middle temperature bracket seems rather odd to me - given that both temperature brackets require bellows anyways and can be reached with any fuel, there is very little difference in the setup and cost between these two tiers. Honestly I'm not fully convinced that shatter chances are working entirely as intended. I know that they do exist, since I snapped a piece or two when testing, but they'll definitely need some adjustment. @Teh Pizza Lady also mentioned that as well on the shatter brackets, and I mean...it's not wrong. It'll probably be fine-tuned later. 2 hours ago, MKMoose said: A whole +50% power is a huge buff, especially with what seems like just 20% shatter chance (the tooltip showed 40% post factum, I'd have to double-check to be sure what's up with that). If that's the intent, then by all means, but if you care about remaining roughly faithful to vanilla (which I personally think is already somewhat out of whack) then ~30-40% would likely be the maximum that can be reasonably given even on the high bracket in its current balance, unless it's made more difficult or costly. For context, in the vanilla balance, assuming repeated quenching with no tempering and no other shenanigans (there's a way to achieve a slightly better result on low quenching counts with a temper, but the difference will be fairly minimal either way): quenching 8 times for a very high ~51% buff (very close to the high bracket) has a total shatter chance of ~88% (on average ~8 items for one survival), quenching 6 times for a more reasonable ~42% buff still has a total shatter chance of ~69% (on average ~3 items for one survival), quenching 3 times for a decent ~25% buff (almost equal to the middle bracket) has a total shatter chance of ~27% (on average ~1.4 items for one survival). Simiilarly, a 40% buff for tempering is pretty huge - if I recall correctly, the maximum obtainable effective durability buff in vanilla if you multiply by survival chance, assuming no exploits or whatnot, is just ~17% (after quenching > tempering > quenching), so even keeping the modded tempering effect at 20% would still be quite significantly better. Again, of course, if that's the intent then I don't mind, but if you intend to stay somewhat close to the vanilla balance then it may warrant some adjustments. 50% and 40% for power and durability is pretty big, to be fair, but those are also the buffs for exclusively finishing for power or durability. That helps give the clay quench its place for a mix of the two. Otherwise, clay quenching either becomes too underwhelming since the buffs won't be enough to make a difference in gameplay, or it renders the other finishing methods pointless since the clay quench has clearly better benefits. I also recall that one of the player complaints about the vanilla process is that the first quench doesn't feel particularly powerful, and needing to play the RNG games to quench multiple times for really good stats wasn't very fun. Thus the idea here was to give the player a more streamlined process that produces a decently powerful item as well, so there's more reason to interact with the system even in spite of shatter chances. What I may end up doing is adjusting the temperature brackets along with the shatter chances, making the window for the maximum benefit a bit harder to hit. I think that might be more satisfying than simply increasing the shatter chances, since shatter risk was a common complaint about the vanilla system as well. Losing the occasional workpiece is tolerable, but snapping several in quick succession gets rather tedious. On the tempering buff, it is a bit generous, but tempering does require the player to be a bit more patient since the item has to cool off slowly--there's no dunking it and then crafting and using. And like I said above, finishing exclusively for durability needed to be able to compete with the clay quench. I also figure it might help push some players to put in the effort for steel, when they may have skipped it before, as well as potentially satisfy some of the players who aren't happy with the standard tool durability(to be fair, those players are probably already adjusting tool durability in settings). Definitely a lot to consider here though, and some future polishing to do. 1 hour ago, Teh Pizza Lady said: Annealing to lower the risk of the tool/weapon shattering during the quenching process Quenching to harden it Tempering to lower the risk of the tool/weapon shattering during use. Skip and you might have an OP weapon but if you skip annealing, it could shatter while quenching or if you skip tempering it could shatter after making it into a tool/weapon. And that shattering during use thing... idk... it scratches an itch that I didn't know was there. I like the idea but I'm not sure how workable it would be in practice. Or how fun it would be to play with. Might be worth taking a look at later though. 1
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