Mining and Smelthing, in General

[Kokaiin]

So, I have a full nature character who does mostly farming. It's getting kind of boring, and was thinking of starting an alt with full industry, moving the alt to my claim, and look for mines from there. But, I have no idea how it works, I just know I need rustroot to make rustroot extract.

Could somebody explain, step-by-step from getting the rustroot to smithing something on an anvil? As we've all probably figured out by now, the Wiki has minimal information at best.

[weirdguy]

Here's a summary.

1. http://havenandhearth.wikia.com/wiki/Rustroot
and
http://havenandhearth.wikia.com/wiki/Rustroot_Extract
and
http://havenandhearth.wikia.com/wiki/Prospecting

2. http://havenandhearth.wikia.com/wiki/Mining

3. http://havenandhearth.wikia.com/wiki/Ore_Smelter

4. http://havenandhearth.wikia.com/wiki/Metal_Working
and
http://havenandhearth.wikia.com/wiki/Anvil
and
http://havenandhearth.wikia.com/wiki/Smithy's_hammer

No, I am not mocking you.

(Wait, yes I am.)

[Kokaiin]

Wow, those helped so much. If only they weren't so convoluted, and I could actually get help from somebody who wasn't too stupid to miss:

As we've all probably figured out by now, the Wiki has minimal information at best.

No, I'm not mocking you.

(Wait, yes I am.)

[Zamte]

You'll need to collect rustroot and make rustroot extract. Once you've done this, and you'll need quite a bit, head out exploring. Periodically use the prospecting ability under adventuring. This scans an area 1,000 tiles in all directions (in a circle) for minerals. A box will come up either telling you that no minerals have been found, or will describe the minerals in range, with a percentage indicator.

Once you've successfully found minerals in range, you're going to have to figure out which direction to go. From here it's much like ranging or water dowsing. You'll need to move in various directions and prospect, and see how the percentages react. Once the number begins to get smaller, continue heading in that direction until you get very close. Now you'll need to use a similar process to the first time to figure out exactly where it is. You need to get within 10 tiles (1%). Once you've successfully gotten to within 1% of the mine location, your character will automatically walk over and set a sign. This is where you build your mine.

Once the mine is built, and has a town around it preferably, you're going to want to mine. Full nature characters take a penalty to the chance of the ore becoming metals, full industry characters get a boost to this chance. This occurs when the ore is mined, not when it is smelted. Thus you can use an alt who's done nothing except maxed his industry out to mine. Smelters are fueled by charcoal, and charcoal is made by kilns. The formula for their quality is [(2*materialq)+fuelq+kilnq]/4. Charcoal can usually (more likely and more times the lower quality your stuff is) be used as fuel for another set of charcoal in order to boost the quality up higher, at the cost of more wood. The smelter will require four pieces of charcoal to run, without using the oven bug, and takes 20 minutes to run. The end resulting metal will be a quality of the average of the smelter quality and the charcoal quality.

Once you've got metal, you can use an anvil (usually with a smith's hammer) to make items such as tankards, tools, and weapons and armor. You can also use an alloying crucible, fueled by charcoal, to turn bars into nuggets, nuggets into bars, or two bars of copper and a bar of tin into three bars of bronze. With iron, the iron can be placed in a finery forge and lit with two pieces of charcoal to create bloom and slag. It's a 50/50 chance to create bloom and this is not effected by nature or industry at all. The resulting bloom can be used on an anvil with the smithy's hammer to hammer it out into wrought iron. This part is helped by industry, and hurt by nature. A failure results in cast iron, while a success results in wrought iron. The finery forge can also be filled with coins in multiples of 10 to create nuggets.

Once you've got wrought iron, it can be placed with charcoal inside of steel crucibles in order to make steel. This process takes 56 hours, or a week of in game time (Seven days of 8 IRL hours each). During this time the crucible needs to remain fueled with branches (one fuel unit each) or blocks, boards, or charcoal (2 fuel units each). If it ever runs out, unlike other processes of "cooking", the process must be restarted from the beginning. A full fuel bar lasts for 12 hours. Each branch thus lasts for 40 minutes. The best quality steel will come from having temperature quality at 100%, which means having the fuel bar half full.

If you luck out and get silver or gold, it will be smelted into nuggets rather than bars, and at a much smaller chance. However this metal has no quality, unlike the others. Precious metals can be used for jewelry items (quality = sqrt(smithing*psyche), as well as symbel items.

That ought to cover just about everything, for all metal types, and all of the structures. Let me know if you need to know anything else.

[Kokaiin]

OK, thanks.

When I use the rustroot extract, will it detect mines on claimed land? Or, does it just find one randomly and then I build the mine there?

[Zamte]

It works like the dowsing rod does. It checks predefined "spots" that are likely contained in a hidden layer of the map. It will not detect built mines, but it will detect claimed ones that aren't built. If it's claimed, there's likely not much you can do, aside from build a village to declaim it.

[weirdguy]

I apologize for reading and then selectively ignoring your statement with scorn.

I had a huge writeup rubbing in the fact that every single detail in the writeup was present in the wiki, but his writeup is significantly more polite, so it's probably more useful to you.

Anyway, we can use maths to determine the location of your mine through the magical process of "triangulation".

Each point you take gives you a percentage. Since each percentage point represents a range of ten squares, you can just get a 'close enough' distance by multiplying the percentage by ten.

Provided that a bunch of mines aren't nearer to your points of analyzation (which is kind of lucky and unlucky for you if you can find that many mine spots), you can draw a survey of your immediate area to indicate three different circular ranges from three different spots you prospected from, at which point their borders intersect and give you an exact location of your mine. If the circles don't meet, then you have a multiple mine situation requiring more points to be taken. If they do meet, you either have a mine spot or a ridiculous situation in which two or more different mines happen to be located at the precise distances required to meet this situation, at which point the information given from the fourth point's circle (should you fail to find a mine there) will indicate the closest of the mines and combined with the information already gathered from the previous three circles, point you to that spot.



You may want to plow the tiles you are scanning from to leave markers, or if you're some kind of crazy person, drag a runestone out there with the exact distance recorded on its face.