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Quenching in metalworking


Jaroslav Šváha

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I've been thinking about things that would make the game immersive.
One thing that came to mind, which should be easy to remedy but does make very little sense, is the fact that you can handle scorching hot pieces of metal with no trouble. I will be the first to admit that I know nothing about how metallurgy works, except for the fact that you quench to harden steel.

However I think that if nothing else, there should a mechanic that prevents you from making an axe from a stick and 1100°C iron axehead. 
I was thinking about needing a pair of pliers to move a white hot ingot from forge to anvil, though that might be annoying and hard to get at the start.

I do not know the best solution for this, but it is something that has been bothering me.

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8 minutes ago, redram said:

There are already plans for these things.  Tongs are a bit low priority as they're mostly a visual thing.   Quenching and Tempering will be their own mechanics with other effects.

What degree of realism/complexity will this whole metallurgical working have? It's quite the complex topic and there are many different variables connected to it in real life (carbon content, impurities, homogeneity, crystalline structure, hardness, toughness, malleability, etc.) so I think some simplification has to happen. The main property of a steel that effects hardening and tempering is of course carbon content, but I imagine VS won't have it as a property of steel, but different types of steel/iron (iron (being wrought iron), mild steel, (medium) steel, hard steel, cast iron (pig iron)) reflecting it. Crystalline structure makes the most sense to reflect, as it is probably the biggest contributor to the properties of the steel and could be expressed reasonably realistically with just five carbon content states.

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17 hours ago, redram said:

There are already plans for these things.  Tongs are a bit low priority as they're mostly a visual thing.   Quenching and Tempering will be their own mechanics with other effects.

That is good to hear, however it doesn't address the problem that I can combine a stick and an 1100°C axehead. Is this mechanic planned to be tweaked as well? 

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