Silent Shadow

The game does not update your map until you pass somewhat near the area, so snowy (and green) patches can persist on the world map for a while. Factors like elevation and biome can influence when snow appears too, so you can have some jagged climate edges.

If you are worried about protein, the game also has soybeans, but getting enough seeds may be a challenge. They also last a lot longer than meat without needing any processing.

Devs are free to implement whatever they want, if anything mods are great for them because niche desires (such as this one) can be implemented without work on their part. Furthermore, the changes proposed here do not seem like they would further the Devs' vision of the game. I do think that allowing more metal choices for the decorative items would be some thing that they could do easily though. Same as anyone can say their suggestion should be in the game. Your point? Basically, metal used for decorative items do not require any properties aside from aesthetic ones, so it makes sense to extend that to other metals for more variety in looks (such as the torch holders) and to allow conservation of more useful metals. Weapons, armor, and tools already use the metals suited for them (as well as gold and silver) so there would be no practical reason to make them out of any other metal. The armors can be displayed so gold and silver (with their unique skins) are okay if you want to put in the effort to get those rare materials. Allowing other metals to be used for display armor or weapons would just add a few slightly different colors (lead and zinc look like iron, bismuth looks like bismuth bronze) so you're not getting much out of it. So say this suggestion goes through. You get some useless tools/weapons and some slightly differently colored armors, meanwhile people just learning the game who don't know the difference between bronze and brass spend of lot of time and resources making functionally useless items for a bad experience. Adding platinum group metals add more competition for actually useful ores, may require the devs to implement a new smelting technique just for them (to reach the high melting points), and all this for a group of metals that don't really add anything to the game. There just isn't much benefit for the Devs to do this work (but if someone really wants it for a mod...) The way the metal industry is set up in this game would preclude that idea. You have to start with copper as the other metals do not commonly spawn above ground in nuggets. From there you can't make iron without bronze, nor steel without a lot of infrastructure. I would bet that very few players, especially new players, are wandering around deep underground and finding random ores. I would also say that they would probably be happy not to be able to spend the gold on a pickaxe when there are far better uses for it. There is already a system like that in place in the form of damage/protection tiers. At 0 you have the wood armors, at 1 you have gold, leather, and copper, at 2 you have gambeson, silver, and the bronzes, at 3 you have the irons, and finally at 4 you have steel. Most metals already vary in damage dealt/resisted, work speed, and item hp. Simplifying it to only being per tier would be a step back in my opinion as it would mean that only sourcing the materials would be a determining factor in what people used. Right now there are reasons to use different metals for various tools and armor. As for stone, many cannot be used for tools, while those that can are equal in stats except for flint which is a bit better, and obsidian which is the best. This matches the real world (mostly, edge weapons like knives and spearheads should require flint or obsidian to make). A pickaxe that cannot break stone? An axe that cannot chop wood? Again, useless tools for the sake of having useless tools. Why let a new player waste time making useless items? Why would an experienced player choose to make them? Their only point in the game would be to waste time. Also it does not make sense for all materials to be used for tools. Lead for example, cannot hold an edge and would be useless as an axe after a single blow and the Devs acknowledge that in their game. Umm... can they not do that already? If you look at any tool/weapon/armor in the in-game handbook it will display the tier it is in. If you are having trouble getting a "tier 1 metal" (copper) to advance, then you can use your silver and gold nuggets too. You can melt 14 copper nuggets with 3 silver and 3 gold nuggets to make 1 black bronze ingot/pick/hammer. Kind of a waste in my opinion but much faster than searching for all the nuggets needed for a subpar pure gold or silver pickaxe. There is no need to pretend that lead is suitable for tools when you can just turn up the prevalence of copper anyway.

We might be. I am saying that there are not automatically "better" metals for example, black bronze does less damage and gives less damage resistance than tin bronze but it has more durability (item hp). Which is best depends on what you want out of the item. Introducing more, less suited metals to be usable as tools, armor, or weapons will give new players a bad experience, cost the devs some time to implement in accordance with their vision for the game for little benefit on their end, all while this could just be a mod that someone could make for those who want it for something pretty to have.

There is also durability, protection tiers (for armor), damage reduction, etc. The bronzes themselves vary in terms of durability, damage resistance, and damage. Do you expect a new player to discern whether an extra 100hp on an item or 0.3 extra damage is better? Should they go for armor with more hp or more damage reduction? If you take protection tiers into account than these stats get even more muddy as the damage will penetrate the armor. Some tools do not care about damage or speed (hammers for instance) so only hp matters. Some of the metals and alloys that are proposed for tools/weapons/armor would have a high hp, but a terrible damage output or resistance, something that a new player would have no idea if it would be good or not until they spend a lot of time to get it. It is a bad experience waiting to happen, which would be fine if the time invested were not so much. Perhaps someone playing for longer would know better, but new players not so much. I do not think such minor benefits warrant being in the base game especially since a mod could easily fulfill what is being asked for here.

A new player is not going to be able to look at those stats and be able to say what is good or not. As for the tool tip, just say "weapon/tool grade" or something similar for the suitable metal ingots.

I see it more as anti-frustration. To prevent players, especially new ones, from wasting their time (think of all the stuff you need to do to make a metal item) just to get a wall hanger sword of no practical value and now they have to start the process over again to progress in the game. If they want to spend some time to be able to look at a shiny sword that is fine too, so long as they know that's all they'll get out of it.

Well I think that it would be either a lot of work for the devs to implement within their vision of the game (which I think is realistic/historical with regard to the crafts), or this is something that could be a mod. So long as it is clear to the player that they will not be making a tool/weapon/armor for practical reasons (perhaps with a tool tip warning them of the non usefulness?) I don't see a reason it should be forbidden.

Like what? Just use clippers on leaves and you will have more than enough, it also saves the durability of your axe too.

They aren't blocked though. You can get away with a stack of dirt and some torches (with one or more separated and sitting in the inventory) if all you want to do is explore. To exploit a cave you can slowly tame the cave with pit traps and half blocks before you can "safely" operate it or you can try to quickly "raid" it for the ore/minerals you want and hope your gear is good enough (fear the sawblade locusts). Players do not have to be super geared to go spelunking for ore either. Wood lamellar armor is easy enough to assemble (no metal required) and gives adequate protection for the first raid for tin ore. After that you can exploit your surface deposits of copper to get enough for a bronze suit of armor so you can "safely" delve deeper for the other ores. If you are having trouble with too many drifters then use fences to control their entry from their spawn. If there is a huge crowd you cannot deal with then just leave and come back after they despawn and then fence the area up to prevent another crowd from forming where they can get to you. There also is not much point exploring caves until you get a pickaxe as you cannot extract anything but flint until you get a pickaxe. You could go tunnel diving in sedimentary and basalt layers in the hope of finding limestone or chalk so you can settle near a source but it is very unlikely that you will find either of those, especially without a propick to look for the ores they host (malachite or lapis lazuli for example). As for challenges, if the underground would no longer be dangerous then what area would be? Hill/mountainous forests at night?

Some classes are better at ranged weapons I think the hunter does more damage while others may do less or just be less accurate.

Unfortunately you cannot re-smelt it to recover the missing bits unlike with other ingots, nor can you throw it back into the bloomery. However, there can be more iron bits than are needed to complete the ingot so don't immediately give up hope. In your case though, you will have to wait for the heave hammer as said above.

Personally I enjoy the underground being so dangerous as it remains one of the last dangerous places to go later in the game. Wolves are not a big threat anymore (usually) so the only place I really feel the need to prepare to enter is deep underground. Everywhere else I don't need good armor or weapons, medical supplies, torches, ladders, fences, etc. and if I don't need all that stuff then I would probably skip building a base and collecting all the tools and materials to survive down there. This challenge gives a nice mid game where I am better than a caveman but I lack high end gear and have to be careful delving while relying on my base more. There are challenges, but you just need to get creative. Maybe a pit trap to lure them into (build above them, then allow them access) and then weaken/kill with a gravel/sand trap before killing them all or ignoring them.

Dwarf fortress is about as restrictive as this game when it comes to metal for similar tools and weapons (more so since black bronze is not allowed). Armor metals are similar, while DF has more weapon types (mainly blunt types) that are the only types that can use silver and platinum. As for the decorative items, both games allow more or less the same metals. I am not really sure what the point would be to allow more metals to be shaped into weapons, tools, and armor, especially rare metals. Some of these would require new smelting techniques just to reach the temperatures needed to melt the ores (tungsten or osmium need well over 5000 degrees Fahrenheit) so the devs would need to code in something beyond a cementation furnace and for what? A metal that takes a lot more processing for no real benefit? I feel like anybody who got this far would know to not make it. You may as well not bother making tools out of lead, gold, or most other metals as they have terrible strength and hardness and would be useless as tools and armor (there is a precedent for lead hammers for smithing, but for a niche application of spreading out soft metals like copper without indenting it, nothing like in the game). Steel could be improved upon with some allowing agents like vanadium, chromium (for more durability if you want to pretend corrosion resistance is helping the implement last longer), molybdenum, cobalt, etc. or with more involved smithing techniques (quenching, tempering, annealing, etc.) Other tool grade metals can have similar improvements made. You could add some new materials to make copper a bit more strong like some arsenic (which could be sourced from the cinnabar currently in the game) or lead to allow smelting of copper ore with lead to make a weaker copper at lower temperatures (no charcoal required, great for improving copper's casting ability, maybe reduce the amount needed to fill a mold by a small amount?). That would go a ways to giving some of the less useful ores like lead and cinnabar some use in the game. Gold and Silver already have some uses in the game for improving lanterns and as alloying agents but more could be done. The devs may introduce a mechanic where electroplating is possible like with the "Baghdad batteries" tested by mythbusters; zinc, silver, and gold (maybe?) could be used to coat certain armors and tools to extend their durability a bit and to give sulfur a use other than a generally bad blasting charge. Maybe make acid in a barrel and seal it with an ingot and the metal item? Good way to get more out of the ingots investing into suits of armor currently. Maybe allow lead to act as a solder or a brazing agent to fix certain metal items? Maybe allow welding of steel edges onto iron tools to give the impact/speed of steel but with iron durability? Good way to give borax more than a one time use in the metal industry. I would like to see more metal decorative items being made from a wider selection of metals. The torch holders are a good example, tools and armors not so much. I think any player would tear their hair out if they invested 20+ zinc ingots into armor only to find out it is worse than wood armor. TL:DR; Adding more metals alloys than the devs have currently doesn't make much sense, but there is some room for improvement with varying amounts of work. I also agree that decorative items should have a wider base of metals to work with than they currently do but tools and armor is fine where it is.

Not much point for tools as most of the metals we have now can outperform the platinum group metals. I think most of these metals now a days are used as chemical catalysts, electronic components, or for nuclear applications. None of them are really used for tools. There may be some use as components for jewelry as they are rare, but I doubt most people would seek them out for that.

Why then bother with expensive arrows when a slap with a sword or spear would also kill them? Bows and arrows are just harder to make than swords and spears and don't offer a great enough advantage to bother with generally. I would say make them do more damage and be much more accurate than spears are, or at the very least make them materially advantageous (more damage per ingot invested than with spears)

I would recommend posting it in the Vintarian Forum. Nobody seems to use that forum anyway.

I once started in a mountainous forest/jungle with dirt affected by gravity. Constantly sliding off hills, pushing through foliage just for the ground to collapse from under me, all while wolves were chasing me. I think I died 3 times in the first 15 minutes trying to escape it. Can't tell you how many times I ran into wolves and pit traps. I even slid off of a mountain into a pond (losing half my health) only to find 3 wolves lounging around the pond. Eventually I navigated my way out but man that was terrible.

A tunnel nexus can see this happen sometimes where adjacent tunnels can spawn multiple drifters which can all then rush into the junction where you are. Depending on the depth, tainted drifters can be pretty common. Or the game just hates you.

Bows are nice for flexing your chicken ranch status. All those peasants walking around in their pleb steel plate just get so jealous seeing my fat stacks of arrows.

Also IRL, wrought iron has some innate corrosion resistance thanks to the somewhat high silicon content produced during the bloomery process (or the "finery" process which is not in the game). Bronze also has some corrosion resistance and brass even more so and these would be (and still are) used at sea with some polish. Steel and pure copper can form a resistant corrosion layer (typically a green layer for copper and rust for steel) but this is terrible for edges (use oil). Cast Iron would be corrosion resistant but this is not in the game nor is it suitable for most tools/weapons/armor due to its brittleness. The other problem is that the game cannot differentiate salt and fresh water. There is only "water". Thank you for getting through my "actually" comment.

Back in the day this was solved by simply applying some oil to the steel so water never came into contact with it. Maybe use beeswax to compete with candle and food preservation? I also shudder to think of 20+ ingot armor corroding durability away.

I would guess to prevent gaming (heh) the system. If you could change your spawn point at will or even at intervals, then it could easily be exploitable, especially if items were not dropped on death. Besides, is it really that bad? All you really have to do is just wait. You will get exposure to drifters and so after you kill enough of them you'll get one. If you are dying a lot, then you may be playing a little too cavalier in this survival game. If you are simply migrating a long distance then just teleport via console commands and then play as normal.

I do wish there were larger windmills or more power sources though.

Just make more querns, same output, but you can do multiple types. Here is a windmill with 4 querns powered from a single "turbine"