Teh Pizza Lady

How was I attacking anyone??!??!?!?!??? I was literally just replying to you the same way you replied to him, because I thought I could communicate better with you that way. Bro, chill. I'm just trying to help you out. lmfao

The game is oddly devoid of birds aside from chimkins

It's okay, he'll never get to experience this level of dopamine in this game ever again.

I agree.. and in fact, I've used creative mode to get my stuff back after getting ambushed by a bear that literally JUST spawned on me on my server while I was in the process of killing another bear. I think my blackguard friend and I died a total of 5 times before I said, "Hold on, I'm going to be a Cheaty McCheatyPants for a second", popped into creative (which I use /gm c for the command because typing /gm 2 is going to get me killed one day trying to remember which game mode is creative vs survival) and gathered my stuff before running away to regroup and help tackle the bears. In the end we won, but at the cost of all our saved nutrition. FUN FACT: If your bears are scrawny, feed them a couple times before you kill them and they'll drop lots of bush meat and fat! XD

okay... 1. They were checking to see if anyone else had experienced this issue and what the solution was. 2. You aren't the forum police. If this thread is unhelpful to you, ignore it and move on. I've seen a lot of your comments lately and they come off as overly hostile and that's not the kind of culture we want to have around here. (See no. 7: Keep it kind.) And with that in mind... @OBAMFSpike what WAS the solution?

Calling it now... this is the world where you're going to struggle to find Olivine so you will never have tier 2 refractory bricks. Also all your iron will be Hematite in poor readings and the deposit will actually be 2 chunks away from your best reading. because this totally didn't happen to me in my last playthrough after striking it rich on copper and tin..... I love this game!

I saw that. >_> They're not confusing, they just don't make sense in the context of a video game. Niche uses need to have value over "this is one thing we added for use in a single thing that's not even really that great by the time you get the tech to make it". Not that anything you suggested was like that, but I will always vote in favor of simplicity in this case because the game was designed with mods in mind and because of that, expanding the systems too far limits the creativity mod creators can have when working on adding their own content to the game. We don't have firearms in the game (outside of mods) and they're not exactly period appropriate within the context of the game and its lore, although we do have everything in place to make bullets, gunpowder, and the guns themselves. Granted, adding something like gunmetal, for example, means that there is an additional resource that mod creators can use without having to create their own... so its a give and take process. But I still stand firm in that upgrades need to have impact instead of feeling like a side grade. BTW, can you explain how gunmetal black got its name when gunmetal was typically a gold-colored bronze alloy?

I could concede this as well. Admittedly I did not consider cast iron for things like cookware and stoves and steam engines, so I can see an immediate use for it even though those things aren't implemented into the game. The 4-way cross member that is required for the water wheels is an example of a part that could benefit greatly from casting vs forging. For these things, I'm willing to walk back my stance on "iron is iron, duuhhhh", and I'm confident that Anego could do a good job of making it balanced as well as making the casting process not another grindy slog that I know some people would want it to be... Well it sure seemed like you were. You said: "the creation of the blast furnace could take place of the primary progression jump in terms of tool quality" I was thinking cast iron picks and axes which would never work because the toolheads would break the instant you tried to put them through any real, meaningful work. That's my confusion because you said one thing and then walked it back entirely and basically restated what I said but in different words.

I.... didn't think of that.

Because from a game design standpoint, having your next material tier be a sidegrade or downgrade feels fundamentally wrong. Most players neither understand nor care about the historical nuances of early metallurgy. They expect tech progression to feel like forward momentum, not lateral motion. When a player invests time, fuel, and infrastructure into unlocking iron, the result should feel meaningfully better, not a situational equivalent. Otherwise, the upgrade feels hollow, and the next tier feels like an improvement on a downgrade, which dulls its impact. Introducing multiple types of iron (bloomery vs pig iron) primarily serves a very small subset of players who are deeply interested in real-world metallurgy. While that depth is fascinating, it comes at the cost of added complexity, confusion, and friction for the broader player base. For most players, this would not meaningfully improve gameplay, but it would complicate progression and increase frustration. The current quenching and tempering system already adds meaningful depth and payoff. From the data and player experience available, it appears well-balanced. It may need fine-tuning in the future, but fundamentally it works. Iron could perhaps be slightly weaker than it currently is, but not to the point where players feel forced to improve it which is a costly process, I've been told. Many players will simply forge basic tools and move on without chasing perfect optimization, and that group is likely much larger than we tend to assume. Game balance should primarily serve that majority. The argument of the tech tree being forced to expand is because it already currently offers clear upgrade paths for the player: Stone > Scrap > Copper > Bronze > Iron > Steel This is clean, intuitive, and easy to understand. Adding another iron tier introduces two problems: It increases cognitive load and confusion for casual players. It creates failure states where players produce the "wrong" iron and feel punished for not understanding hidden mechanics. Steelmaking is a good example of the second problem. Pig iron contains too much carbon and impurities to be suitable for cementation and cannot be forged effectively without refinement. Wrought iron, on the other hand, works cleanly for both processes from the get-go. Introducing pig iron adds extra steps, extra failure cases, and extra frustration, without providing proportional gameplay benefit. At some point, added realism stops improving immersion and instead starts harming clarity of the steps, flow of the game play, satisfaction of the player base. That is what kills games faster than bad reviews. Unfortunately I think you're making the mistake of thinking that a blast furnace could produce any iron that would be suitable for forging or steel-making processes. Instead it produces cast iron which is cleaner than pig iron, but still unsuitable for forging or cementation because it already exceeds the carbon content of steel. Both cast iron and pig iron are brittle because of these impurities and suffer the same issues that bronze does being that they are brittle under stress, prone to breaking instead of bending, and failures are usually catastrophic and cannot be easily repaired and so they are unsuitable for tools of any type. Wrought iron is the best form of iron. The game compresses all types of iron into just iron so the player doesn't have to bother with burning off impurities and adjusting the carbon content in molten iron in a furnace with a lance. We're already hand-waving a lot here, so why add more to hand-wave when the tech tree exists the way it does now? The only thing I'll concede here is that maybe iron could be lowered slightly so that players are incentivized to find out more about the quenching and tempering processes, but I don't think those two steps should feel forced, especially since doing so increases the risk of the hard-earned tool or weapon breaking in the owner's hands for no other reason than they got served a plate of RNG and it tasted bad.

I think this has drifted far past the original topic and into tone and intent speculation, which isn’t productive, as well as personal attacks, which are against forum rules. My position has been consistent: in a compressed game tech tree, iron should represent a clear advancement over bronze, regardless of historical transitional nuance. That is fundamentally a game design argument, not a historical one, though it also happens to be supported by history once the advantages of iron were discovered through continued use and refinement of metallurgical processes. The game makes no such distinctions and just classifies iron as simply iron. It has no other forms until steel. Introducing that complexity reduces the value of iron as an immediate upgrade and forces it into an awkward position where the tech tree is forced to expand from its already compressed form. We clearly conceptualize this differently, and that’s fine. What's not fine is perpetual attacks against my character and insinuations that I have no good faith in my responses towards you. At this point, I don’t think further back-and-forth is going to add anything useful. So I’m going to bow out here. I’ve made my points and done so respectfully, while pushing back against what I see as inaccuracies in both historical and in-game context. No hostility intended.

I'm not being hostile. I'm being precise. You said "cast iron came thousands of years after wrought iron." I corrected that by pointing out that this is regionally true, not universally true, which is historically accurate. That is not an argument — that is a factual clarification. Yes, wrought iron predates cast iron globally. That was never disputed. The claim I corrected was the timescale, not the sequence. As for VS iron: we are in agreement. It is bloom iron. That is exactly why distinguishing between cast and wrought iron in this context is irrelevant. The game simply models iron, not metallurgical subcategories, which was my entire point. Regarding bronze vs iron: of course there are many alloys and grades. That does not invalidate broad mechanical comparisons. General material trends exist for a reason. Bronze is typically harder and more brittle, while wrought iron is softer and tougher. That is basic materials science, not bias. Finally, the game design argument is not "steel-manning your position." It is the exact opposite: it explains why historical nuance cannot directly map onto a compressed tech tree without harming progression clarity. At no point did I misrepresent your position. I disagreed with it, explained why, and backed that up with metallurgy and game design logic. If disagreement is being interpreted as hostility, that is not something I can fix. But make no mistake, I'm not attacking you, just your arguments.

Ez, just smith it part way and then then use creative mode to exchange it for the rest.

Oh I didn't mean strictly the skill tree approach, but Xskills did give you the ability to forge better equipment similarly to how quenching and tempering works now. I think the only way I could see this working in the game as it is now is memorizing how to move the metal bits on an anvil to pound out a tool in the quickest way possible and then having the knowledge of the best way to boost the stats on it with quenching and tempering which will just come with experience by itself. I think the system is fine by itself... ... but...... I think it would be cool if you could earn enough exp from quenching and tempering to maybe get a reduction in break chance. maybe.

I tend not to read comments that start with the idea that the game should stick to realism because I loses sight of the fact that the game is a game, and as such should be fun, not tedious as real life often is. However, I did keep reading this time and something that struck me was your comment that smiths could get happy customers instead of people going "I could have done that but didn't want to spend the time" and it reminded me of the XSkills mod where smithing gave you experience points in smithing which enabled you to do more and better things. That would be a welcome addition to the game.

I for one am looking forward to flowing bodies of water. They have the tech in place with rapids to demonstrate that they can implement flowing water. It's just a matter of telling said water to flow from point A to point B along a route as determined by the layout of the river/creek/stream.

Again, only partially true. If you're going to continue to speak in partial truths, then you end up dismantling your own arguments. The arrival of cast iron depends entirely on where in the world you're looking. In China, wrought iron existed around 1200–1000 BCE, and cast iron appears by roughly 500–400 BCE. That is not a 1000-year gap. In Europe, yes, cast iron arrives much later, but that is a regional delay, not a universal rule. There is no distinction between cast iron and wrought iron in VS. There is simply iron. So drawing a hard line between the two here is injecting false specificity into the discussion. The iron we have in-game is clearly intended to represent early forged iron, which in real-world terms would align far more closely with wrought iron than cast iron anyway. To put it bluntly: this is an argument over opinion masquerading as fact. You believe bronze is superior to iron. I do not see any meaningful advantage bronze holds over iron in practical use. Bronze: is harder to obtain is harder, but more brittle is prone to fracture under stress tends to fail catastrophically when it breaks Iron: is easier to obtain is slightly softer, but vastly tougher tends to bend instead of shatter resists fatigue and survives repeated impacts That tradeoff alone heavily favors iron for tools and weapons, where toughness, impact resistance, and durability matter far more than raw hardness. And most importantly, for the purposes of a video game, making iron a side-grade makes little sense. Games compress centuries of messy technological development into clean tech-tree steps. You are not reenacting history. You are progressing through capability tiers on the way to steel, which is the real technological breakthrough. From a game design standpoint the tech tree... Stone >> Copper > Bronze >> Iron > Steel ...must represent clear, meaningful advancement as denoted by the double arrows vs single arrows. Bronze is a small upgrade to copper. Steel is a small upgrade to Iron. Iron cannot be a small upgrade to bronze for it to be a clear, meaningful advancement. If iron is reduced to a side-grade, progression stagnates, incentives collapse, and the tech tree loses coherence. Iron exists primarily as a necessary stepping stone to steel, and therefore it should be strictly superior to bronze, even if that slightly departs from early transitional history. It's just simply good game design which trumps any sort of preconceived notions of how things actually work in the real world.

No. Read the full context: You said: That means you're missing a significant amount of in-game context and mechanical explanation that only comes from observing the state of the game world and listening to the stories that the characters have to tell. A lot of this is only made explicit through in the story and progression systems. The state of the game will only fully make sense once you’ve ventured out and experienced that content and get a better feel for the setting and overall timeline. Unfortunately that means that while you're working with the numbers, they won't make sense to you until you have context for them.

Also the game is set in the middle ages, not the bronze age. Bronze is necessary to give the players something to use until they find a good source of iron. even a copper spear is better than flint if that's all you have. Because when you are first starting out, that is all you will have. Players should be encouraged to progress to bronze and then iron and then steel. adding extra value to the lower tiers only encourages the players to hang out in those tiers longer than they should. You don't stand a chance in soft copper armor wielding brittle weapons when fighting the iron-boned rot beasts of the rust world. You just don't. I haven't won a fight against a Nightmare Drifter in anything less than steel armor. They just hit way too hard.

I think she said what she said and reading anything extra into it is just projecting what you want to read instead of taking it at face value. NGL, not very nice of you to do that.

Partially false. A bronze weapon and a cast iron weapon have about the same utility in terms of strength and holding an edge. However Bronze will work harden and become brittle over time making it less desirable for a weapon or tool that needs to hold up over a longer period of time. Iron is also a stepping stone to Steel which is superior to both metals. The very ancient world was a bronze economy. Trade was critically important. This is one reason the ancient Greeks became so successful; they lived by the sea, mastered sailing early, and expanded their influence anywhere they could sail a boat and find a harbor. All the great civilizations of the ancient world were bronze based - China, India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Minoan, etc. When people figured out how to make cast iron (which requires higher temperatures to get the ore out of the rock and to work the metal effectively) there was a huge upheaval. New conquering peoples arose and kicked the butts of the bronze-age civilizations. Greek culture was battered so badly it lost literacy - they literally forgot how to read and write... Why? Because bronze work hardens and becomes brittle and breaks. The same bronze weapon used over and over will break. The same iron weapon used over and over will bend and get hammered back into shape. Societies that relied on bronze lost a war of attrition as their weapons literally fell apart. The widespread use of iron meant that research into the metal was cheaper and easier to study. Iron didn't become more popular just because it was more economical, it became better because once people figured out how to work with it, they realized it was just better overall.

the game literally wouldn't let you or it would just break?

I had my excel formulas wrong. It's not a linear reduction but compounding. have some more data! QQQ...TTT... pattern QTQTQT... pattern

Yes. I suspect the best route would be QTQTQTQTQT.... because according to my calculations after 20 iterations of QT, the break chance is 34%. By all means, if you have enough resources to commit to that, then go ahead and make yourself an OP tool/weapon, but I think in the end the cost might outweigh the benefits. Likely a bug or oversight. You are correct that there is currently no check in the tempering process. Am I going to be the one to submit that bug report? No, because I am not at that point in my game. I have only been progressing enough to test the capabilities of my mods which have nothing to do with the new forging processes.

the 0% at 0Q0T is because you have made a brand new tool. Your shatter chance is zero, because there is no chance of a tool breaking until it is quenched or tempered. The shatter chances aren't applies until you begin quenching or tempering. According to the handbook you cannot temper more times than you have quenched so I did not extend the graph beyond that. But my numbers are off because for the first temper I mistakenly started the temperIteration at 1 instead of 0. It appears the iteration does not go up until after the break chance has been applied. Here's a new chart: Hope that clears things up.