Sunny_Sometimes

I'd love to see any contrasting historical info, but I'm only familiar with "drop forging" in a heavily-industrialized context. Trip hammers can be surprisingly powerful, but they aren't thousand-tonne-press powerful. The usage of dies as forging tools is a much more universal practice though, and something I'd love to see incorporated into the game's forging system (could do with some broader reworks as well, imo). Something like iron bars I could see benefiting from them. If drop forging were to become a thing, I'd expect it to require steel dyes and come with some form of steam power. Also the usage of a grindstone might make more sense than a chisel for flash removal?

It's a bit of a cop-out, but (for sheep, at least) I like to have a large, enclosed, grassy pasture that most of the flock/herd is kept in, and then a smaller "safe" pen with a male-female pair to repopulate with if the worst happens.

Bigger pen Don't run at them Split one off from the others if you want to kill it (preferably) Spears are longer than horns Hold a shield if you're scared

I think the point being made is that the storage of dry goods in barrels being beneficial is a realistic use-case that the game is currently missing out on. Imo, barrels currently feel like a gameplay device (an auto-crafter for certain recipes) that's been dressed-up to avoid instantly breaking immersion, instead of existing as an internally-consistent item in the word that can be interacted with. Sorta like a barrel-shaped trash can at an amusement park lol. That's not an assertion that realism automatically equates to good gameplay, to be clear, but that there's a tangible difference between simplifying or tweaking reality for gameplay/performance reasons and starting with a mechanic and working backwards from that. I agree there. I wonder if the upcoming status-effects might add a risk of disease if we don't wash our dishes lol. That would definitely annoy some players, but I think I'd find it fun and engaging while not being too intrusive. From what I know, wooden casks are mainly flushed with water/steam to clean them. If it's a type where the head's taken off to access the contents, there'd be room to reach in and scrub the sides too. More extensive cleaning involves disassembling the cask, shaving-down the insides of the staves to bare wood, and then reassembling and re-charring the inside.

I think barrels should absolutely be usable for dry goods! They regularly were historically. And for continued storage too, not just a specific process. It's always seemed silly to me that we brine food items to preserve them and then take them out of the brine to be stored elsewhere after an arbitrary length of time. All the liquid just disappears too. Making them a storage container that could (slowly) be rolled along the ground by the player, stored on their side, etc. could make them much more mechanically interesting as well. They might even float when sealed, depending on their contents (would take a pretty big one to fit a Seraph inside). Crates would still be more space-efficient for dry goods, but with the tradeoff of not being watertight or movable by hand. It would need to be conditionally possible. Combining the two is how brine, lime water, tannin, dyes, etc. are made, after all.

If there's a more in-depth coopering mechanic introduced, I could see metal hoops being required to create the barrel but not to hold together its final form, if a metal-tech restriction is desired. Even with metal-hooped casks, the hoops used to form them are solid and much thicker than the riveted-sheet-metal hoops used in the final construction (can see the difference in this video). So an in-game coopering process might require the same metal hoops currently used in shields, as construction tools, and then the final cask would be held together with hoops made from either nails & strips or (a higher number of) willow rods. Very much agree there lol. Making a game "harder" is a near-uselessly nebulous concept to begin with, imo, for how plainly it's usually discussed. Adding more steps to a process = harder. Making a process boringly repetitive or uninteresting = harder. Requiring precision in player skill = harder. Requiring the consumption of limited resources = harder. Punishing failure = harder. Locking progress behind luck-based choke-points = harder. Locking progress behind grinding = harder. Restricting player choice and problem-solving avenues = harder. None of those are interchangeable in how the player experiences them, and I'd argue that all of them can have positive or negative effects depending on both the context they're used in and which of the others they're combined with. But they are interchangeable in the sense that they can counterbalance each other. Replace a contextually un-fun form of difficulty with a more tolerable one, and you can make gameplay more enjoyable while still adding value and reward to player effort (the main intended product of difficulty). That's the big edge that this game has over a game like MC, imo, but it still has a lot of room for improvement. Say you add a coopering mechanic that involves a multi-step crafting process, and, for the sake of example, is also limited to certain wood types: The difficulty inherently added by that description is primarily Type 1, with a dash of Type 4 and risks of others. Making the process happen in-world and with distinct steps reduces Type 2 difficulty (large-gear crafting is a negative example of this). Ensuring that there's at least one valid wood type in all climate regions minimizes Type 6 while still giving value to the material and encouraging the player's attention to its procurement. Allowing the final hoops to be made from either wood or metal decreases Type 4, Type 6, and Type 8, to degrees that vary by circumstance. Increasing the variety of cask uses and craftable sizes and styles significantly reduces Type 8. Making certain cask sizes/styles required for certain uses increases Type 8 (e.g. can't soak a huge hide in a tiny cask), but being realistically flexible in that restriction would temper it and even decrease Type 2 and Type 7. As this would be a mainstream crafting mechanic, Type 5 difficulty should probably be restrained, with any implementation coming in the form of needing to redo a step or as an optional counterbalance risk to speeding-up the process. Likewise, Type 3 should probably be restrained to a player's competence preventing slip-ups and increasing speed, as opposed to punishing lower skill with a lesser final-product.

Correct. Technically you're adding heat, incrementally, but the net effect is slower cooling. Would presumably be most noticeable with heavy hits and helve hammer hits. And to be clear: this effect only happens when hammering material that's already hot-enough to work, since it's the internal friction from being squashed that generates the heat.

From what I know (can't immediately find the relevant posts) cooling rate is currently fixed for a grace period and then artificially accelerated afterwards, to make the current repeated-quenching-and-tempering system less tedious. I'm personally a big fan of MKMoose's proposed system--at least the current edit of it--and the lack of extensive repetition in that process (or something similar) would theoretically allow for that convoluted cooling dynamic to be done away with; no "grace period", but cooling happens much more slowly. Semi-related: It would come into play more so with the helve hammer than with the hand hammer, but it could be neat to see deformation heating (not sure if that's the industry term) represented, which is where the kinetic energy imparted while deforming (squishing) metal increases its temperature. You wouldn't be able to bring a piece up to forging temps that way, but it could slow the cooling rate. That would reward quick, accurate smithing and higher-speed helve hammers with a slight extension to the window of workability in a particular heat.

Can confirm I've definitely had pieces go from 750º in a 750º charcoal forge to 680º in about 10 seconds. Though I suspect there may be a rare bug with it swapping the heat values of the pieces being exchanged (hasn't happened frequently enough to test).

Hoops were originally wooden--represented by sticks in the recipe--and that continued to be common long after metal hoops became available. Willow was common for this purpose and has been teased as an upcoming tree type. I think the issue is more the amounts of material and effort needed to construct them. Cattails ought to be part of the recipe, really (they're literally referred to as cooper's reeds in the tool-tip), for a barrel to be water-tight. And the buckets in game are also coopered, so their recipe roughly equating to half a barrel with a handle added would make sense as well. A "strong wood-type" restriction might be reasonable too. Coopering in general has a lot of opportunities for in-world crafting and mini-games, imo. Maybe you'd need to make a hoop first and put in on the ground to add planks for staves. You'd take that raised assembly and put it over a lit fire pit for a length of time before being able to bend the staves with a rope (bucket wouldn't need this). After that, add the rest of the hoops to complete the shape (and get your rope back). Casks with wooden hoops require a lot more of them and this could be reflected in-game (using metal hoops would speed-up the construction process). Adding hoops could require a hammer, but removing hoops should probably be more flexible, for accessibility. The heads could then be crafted with planks, cattails, a saw, and an axe; and the end hoops would need to be temporarily removed to put the heads in place. That's still oversimplifying the process a lot, but it's much more representative and requires some effort without adding new tools or excessive tedium. The opening/closing of a barrel could then necessitate loosening an end hoop with a hammer/crowbar/etc. to remove/add the head. Bungholes could optionally be added, allowing the cask to be easily filled and emptied without touching the hoops but restricting it to liquid contents like wine, etc. only. You might even be able to disassemble a cask entirely into hoops and staves, which could then lead into a greater variety in cask sizes. Since they're already bent, larger staves could be cut-down into smaller staves and reused, and liquid-only casks could be remade back into regular casks by replacing the bung stave/head. Hoops and staves could also be stacked like planks, making storage easier when you have more barrels than you need. Maintenance and durability mechanics would probably be too far in the weeds for (mainstream) fun gameplay. And needing to fill a new cask with water and let it swell-up for a few days would just be a time sink. I do think barrels should be able to be moved around more with their contents inside, provided they're sealed. Their real-life counterparts are known for rolling along the ground, after all. Perhaps (filled) smaller casks could even fit in a player's basket slots.

Where I could see herbal remedies offering a use here is as a digestive aid. Dandelion or ginger consumed in a tea or meal could increase the max HP gain delta in a given day (assuming 50%+ satiety). Would have a low cap, maybe going from +0.1 HP to +0.15 or +0.2 HP, and that cap could be reached by having the tea, hot, 2-3 times in a day Otherwise I very much like your approach.

If enemies breaking doors were to be a thing (which I'm not exactly sold on), I think it should at least be confined to higher-level enemies--probably high-level Drifters, specifically--so temporal storms would be the only time barricading is inherently encouraged. Maybe doors would have different strength tiers, based on what they're made from, with metal doors and the big strong-wood gates having full immunity. That way, forts and keeps could be reasonably protected and smaller buildings and houses could have barred-iron "storm doors" layered with their usual ones, only to be closed when needed.

Would fallow syndrome affecting spelt, etc. also be a part of/fit in with this?

I think it makes more sense to prioritize common trees and trees with unique/specific historical uses, since they'd have the most impact on gameplay and general immersion. The Kigelia (sausage tree) might make sense as a source of alcohol, though. After all, we already have cassava, which also requires an involved process to be edible.

Making them more versatile to hang hats, coats, some tools, etc. as well might be a good idea.