LadyWYT

I wouldn't mind seeing more skill-based quenching and tempering like what you've suggested. However, in terms of iron vs bronze I don't think it's a good argument for making bronze temporarily the stronger option(not saying that's what you're arguing for here, just referencing my earlier post). To make the bronze tier feel more meaningful, without players feeling like progress is artificially gated, I think it's better to just give the player more things to do with bronze as a material, as well as give them more things to do in that stage of the game. That is, if the player has more options for pottery, farming, livestock, herbalism, etc., they'll need to think about what goals they want to prioritize rather than just focus on jumping straight to iron every time(though they can still do this if they choose). Likewise, if bronze can be used to create things like bells(decorative, useful, or even the contraption kind) or diving gear(brass and copper could see more use here too) or even more advanced cookware, that gives it a special niche that iron perhaps cannot fill.

I disagree. Bronze is cheap, and is still valuable in the late game for making nails, tools to trade, or cheap tools like wood-chopping axes, scythes, shovels, etc. when the player would rather devote the iron and steel to other things. Depends a lot on the player's personal preference as well. This is how it currently plays out in 1.22, in my experience. Iron is clearly better, but requires more investment to refine in quantity. It's not enough to just dig up the ore, smelt it in bloomeries, and then throw it on the helve hammer. The player will need to work the bellows to heat the iron up quite a bit first before it can be worked, lest they want to constantly juggle the item between the forge and anvil. Thus bronze retains more use for an extended period, and isn't so easily skipped over. As for quenching and tempering, those are there to make good tools and weapons better, if the player is willing to invest the time. That's one of the main strengths of iron over bronze in the game, but that doesn't mean that iron should just be worse than bronze unless the player puts in that extra effort. If it just takes a single quench for the iron to be better, players are just going to ignore bronze in favor of iron anyway since the first quench is risk-free. If it takes more than one quench, then players are likely going to get annoyed at how much extra processing it takes just to make iron better than a lower tier material, as well as the risk of breaking the item in the process since more than one quench is risky. Keeping in mind that the current setting is the late Middle Ages as well, and not the Bronze Age. Bronze was still a useful material in the medieval period, but had been replaced by iron when it came to tools, weapons, and armor. I think that is also why iron easily outclasses bronze when it comes to gameplay--bronze is just a stepping stone in the early game, and not a material that's intended to be relied on long-term for tools, weapons, armor, and other things.

Agreed. I played with a mod a while back that added bog iron, among other minerals, and I think the mod handled the concept quite well. Bog iron had the same stats as typical iron ore, but occurred in tiny deposits in ponds and lakes rather than being an ore buried in the earth. It was a great way to obtain a bit of iron for some strong early weapons and tools, but the player would still need to locate an actual iron deposit if they wanted to make armor and invest in machinery and steel. The mod also added pyrite deposits, which were iron deposits near the surface; low quality ore that doesn't produce as much iron as the standard deposits, but still a good option for players to utilize for some iron equipment at a lower risk than delving for deep iron.

I think if it takes a few days of cumulative damage before the effect hits, the effect will be too easily avoided unless the player sabotages themselves, or else be a little confusing/annoying due to the significant delay between cause and effect. The better option, I think, is to have a chance to apply the status effect once a certain temperature threshold is reached, with the chance increasing the longer the player remains at said threshold without taking measures to warm up/cool down. That is, once the player starts to shiver, they're at risk of hypothermia; if they continue to ignore the shivering and frosty overlay, they're going to get hit with a penalty. Heat stroke could work in a similar fashion--once the player has remained in very high temperatures for a while they could get an overlay to show that they're beginning to overheat, and ignoring the warning signs will quickly lead to getting slapped with the heat penalty. In other words, it's not a case of "oh the player was outside for 2 minutes and now they must be punished" but rather "the player decided to stay out in the cold/heat all day long without taking the proper precautions, so now the consequences have caught up to them".

No, not really. That's more likely to confuse players. Since iron is the next tier of material after bronze, players will expect it to be better regarding stats; having it be worse is likely going to make it feel rather unsatisfying to obtain. Keep in mind that it already requires more processing than bronze in order to use, since the player needs to construct bloomeries to smelt it, and then work the blooms into usable ingots, which will require bellows and quite a bit of time(even with a helve hammer).

You should be able to. Unless you shortened the story location distance, the closest location to the world spawn will still be about 5k blocks away, and extremely difficult to find without the map to it. The locations that are easily found without a map are around 20k blocks from spawn, which is likely further than your friend has ranged. Additionally, if your friend had already done the story content, he most likely would have mentioned it directly. To start the main story, you'll want to talk to your friendly local treasure hunter and ask him about interesting places.

Or could make the blueprints with charcoal and parchment. Then there's more stuff to store in scroll racks, as well as stuff to copy and trade with other players.

Diseases are actually something I wouldn't want to see be very prevalent in a status effect system. I think a handful of basic nonlethal ones would be fine, kind of like how Elder Scrolls games handle the concept, but lethal diseases aren't the best idea since getting an herbalism setup will probably take a little while, and it's not going to be fun for most players to die a slow death from something they had no chance to cure. I don't know that I would add in penalties for lack of certain nutrition either. Fruit is easy to get, so unless the player is deliberately sabotaging themselves they really shouldn't be running low on fruit nutrition for extended periods of time. Aside from scurvy being easy to avoid, the other issue is that if lack of fruit nutrition causes problems, lacking the other nutrients should cause problems too. Dairy is the biggest problem there, since in reality it has some rather important nutrients but is difficult to acquire in the game since it requires acquiring appropriate livestock or otherwise trading for it. Heatstroke/heat exhaustion and frostbite/hypothermia I'd expect to see as potential ill effects, perhaps the common cold as well since it's nonlethal with simple treatment options. Broken bones would be an obvious consequence of intense combat or hard falls, and would be a great deterrent to players taking swan dives off cliffs and relying on bandages to heal after. Food poisoning could result from eating spoiled food. Bleeds/bruises could be less serious injuries that still require medical attention to avoid the injury becoming infected.

Status effect system and herbalism. It's not really possible to have one without the other, and the status effect system alone will change the entire game quite significantly, I believe. I expect it will make combat more challenging, hunting more interesting, exploring a little riskier, and the weather a little more dangerous, just to name a few areas that will be potentially be impacted by such a system. Combat and hunting would be more interesting if the player can stun, slow, or otherwise cripple targets, while also being more dangerous when said targets can do the same to the player. Exploring would likely need a bit more planning, since a simple poultice/bandage won't necessarily be enough to fix injuries sustained. Weather would likely be a little more dangerous, given that wearing winter clothing in hot weather might inflict penalties just like being cold for too long might inflict penalties as well. Herbalism, of course, would be an obvious solution to curing or reducing certain negative status effects, as well as be a way to acquire some temporary benefits. It would help flesh out farming a little more by adding more plants to farm, as well as potentially open up the possibility for more pottery options or even glassmaking.

Not exactly. It depends heavily on the where, who, and when. Boiling water was certainly an option, and certainly one that would have been utilized, but if the local water sources weren't very tasty or otherwise known to make people sick, the denizens of those regions would likely opt for alcohol or other beverages if they had the choice. Likewise, cultural practice and beliefs can also influence the decisions as well, even if the local water is rather safe and tasty. A fairly solid overview of the times and beverages: https://newhistories.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/volumes/2018-19/volume-8/the-medieval-beverage-of-choice-alcohol-or-water

It's RNG. I've seen several wolves in 1.22. Several bears too.

Depends on the crate. The average crate holds 20 stacks of items, while the aged crates only hold 16 stacks. Ebony and purpleheart crates can hold 25 stacks, though acquiring such wood to make said crates can be difficult.

Oh there is. However, it's a case where I tend to look at the problem as a self-inflicted one, and those tend to be difficult to fix on the developer end of things, I think. Sometimes adjustments in the code will help, but they can also just as easily end up causing more problems. In this particular scenario, my concern is that putting a cap on the temper/quench benefits either won't stop players from trying to grind the fun out of the process, or otherwise remove the fun from the process itself by removing the high risk/high reward potential. A fair point, but if the players aren't having fun grinding like that, that seems a pretty good way to get the faction's players to leave for other factions where they have more fun. Quality weapons do make fighting easier, but body count can't be ruled out either. A large faction with average weapons will likely triumph over a smaller faction with high quality weapons, just due to sheer numbers alone. There's also the player skill factor, in that the quality weapons are going to be most effective in the hands of the highest skilled players, since those players are better at fighting and less likely to die. Which could also be a real problem when it comes to faction stability, since everyone is going to want the best weapon but only the best players are going to actually get one. From the blacksmith's standpoint, it also seems a prime opportunity to create a faction devoted exclusively to crafting high quality weapons, and then sell to the factions who'd rather fight than craft. Factions who help keep the smiths supplied could potentially receive discounts, and factions who decide to try to take the smiths' work by force could find themselves cut off from the trade entirely and/or having to fight multiple other factions who don't appreciate their convenient trade getting disrupted.

Not always. As I recall there have been multiple unstable release threads in the past, though not every version gets its own thread. Sometimes the older threads were just edited.

Welcome to the forums! The new crowbar in 1.22 should make beam removal much easier.

Bells to put on livestock in general, really. Doesn't need to only be cows.

I can't find it written anywhere, however, I haven't had anything shatter on first quench either. Though I think that if quenching is what drives up the shatter chance, it's safe to say that the first quench will always be risk-free, since logically the shatter chance starts at zero. I think if it were otherwise, it'd be mentioned in the patch notes somewhere.

Maybe. But it takes quite an investment of time and resources into getting a weapon like that. And once a weapon like that is created, the owner has to actually manage to retain ownership of it; that is, whoever owns it can't afford to die with it on their person, unless keep inventory is turned on(which it likely isn't for PvP servers). Thus it may be more attractive to settle for just a decent weapon, not just for time/resource cost but also the higher potential for becoming an attractive target and losing said item. I'm just speculating here, of course, but I do think it could make things rather interesting. A very powerful weapon would be absolutely nasty to face in combat, but it would also be a very attractive prize to claim from a target as well. It would also give more value to more passive players on PvP servers, since someone has to be sinking in the time and resources to make tools and weapons like that in the first place. For servers in general, it makes the economy a little more interesting too, I think, since high quality items like that could fetch very good prices.

Apparently the patch notes for unstable releases are being confined to the client download section this time around.

I would be inclined to say limit how much a tool can be tempered, however, getting incredibly high durability on a tool or weapon is still going to require a lot of time, as well as fuel and fire clay. While increasing durability might be easier than increasing the power, it's still a pretty big investment. Given that a somewhat frequent player complaint is tool breakage, being able to have a low-risk way to significantly increase the lifespan of a tool is quite nice.

Does there really need to be a hard limit on tempering? It might be possible to get an OP tool/weapon with some dedicated effort, however, the time and resource investment seems big enough that most players probably won't be doing that other than maybe once or twice.

Try looking up the roof top rather than the roof bottom. The name is a bit goofy, but it's referring to the specific part of the roof block itself, rather than how it looks on a build.

After tinkering around a little more with 1.22, I'm thinking that bronze will be lasting a little longer than previous versions. Or rather, that investing in some basic bronze armor and tools feels like a more attractive option, since iron takes a little more work to get going. Iron can be worked without bellows, however, it doesn't stay hot enough to be workable beyond a handful of swings before needing to be reheated. I don't think it's necessary to go smithing bronze chain or invest in a full set of bronze armor, but players may find themselves opting for some bronze lamellar to make spelunking and combat a little less risky. Flax will probably be saved for windmills rather than gambeson, and buying gambeson from a trader may or may not be an option. What the player chooses to do also depends on their preferred playstyle, but I do think there's going to be a few more options to consider in 1.22 rather than a clearcut meta strategy.

This would more be my expectation. Steel is just fine for the highest conventional material tier. Jonas tech might use more common materials like lead and copper, however, it also utilizes a lot of expensive stuff, like gold, silver, and Jonas parts, in addition to nickel alloys needing special fuel(coke) to refine. Additionally, Jonas devices seem to rely on temporal gears for power rather than conventional fuel, giving them some extra nuance when it comes to when and where they're used.

I'd rather see it have the same stats as the current, but with a prettier color pattern. Thus the player would just be sinking in a bit more work to get a cool cosmetic effect. Or potentially, just make it a cosmetic variation for tools that have been tempered for durability, and not quenched for hardness. Then it's not just cosmetic, but a clever visual indicator for what kind of tool another player is using.