Metal progression change

[Saganes2]

copper, tin and iron ores no longer have a chance to create an ingot.
they spawn with an metal contend.
for example one piece of malachite ore has 25 units worth of copper inside at quality 10.
higher quality means more units of metal inside.
100 units of metal is one ingot worth.
higher quality ores, with more units of metal per piece means you can create more metal in one go.
for this suggestion mining with an axe isnt possible anymore, you need a pickaxe for that.
with exploration you can also find metal bearing nuggets (only copper / tin ores), when the same type of ore is below the ground.

copper progression:
native copper is the first copper ore that can be used to create tools. (i will call native copper ore NCO from now on)
NCO nuggets can be found at moderate exploration level on the surface level (like foragable plants, but only when native copper veins are underground, so its also a indikator of ore below)
other copper bearing ores can be found at the surface aswell, but malachite and others need some preperation before smelting, only NCO is usable as is, NCO should be fairly common because of that.
NCO can be smelted in an kiln, but you have to put your ore inside a ceramic vessel first.
i moved the traditional smelter into the iron tier as an option of faster copper / bronze production.
one NCO nugget at quality 10 has between 5 and 15 units of copper inside, you need 100 units per ingot.
copper tools are casted into molds, each tool needs one ingot worth of copper units, besides a copper sword, which need 2.
you need a copper pickaxe because mining with an axe isnt possible.
with a copper pickaxe you can go underground and mine real ores.
malachite and other copper ores need to be roasted first (with a pan, lets say a pan can only be made with any hard metal) before use. And those surface nuggets only have small amounts of copper / tin inside.

bronze progression:
cassiterite ore needs to be mixed with copper ore inside the ceramic vessel.
the resulting bronze can be casted into the first hard metal tools and weapons.
and you need 20 units worth of bronze to create your first anvil and some more for a smithing hammer and a forge (forge needs bricks and some bronze ingots, can be made from iron aswell)

iron progression:
maybe bog iron can be dug from swamps like clay from shallow water? just an idea.
to turn iron ore into ingots, you first have to build a bloomery from straw, clay and dirt. it is a one use construction.
it also needs a bellow, which can be used multiple times.
it needs to be filled with charcoal (ONLY charcoal) and iron bearing ore.
for the whole duration someone has to use the bellows for the bloomery to work.
at the end of the process you need to destroy the bloomery to gain a "iron bloom".
for each 100 units of iron smelted in a bloomery you gain one iron bloom.
the iron bloom has to be heated in an forge to work temperature and then smithed into wrought iron ingots on an anvil.
to create tools from wrought iron you have to heat the ingot inside a forge again before you can smith them into the desired shape.
the smelter from todays hnh could be a iron tier smelter for castable metals build from wrought iron ingots and bricks to cast greater amounts of metal in one go, but no iron.


steel progression:
i suggest 3 types of bellows: small, medium and large.
the small type is created from leather and some wood and can be carried around and used for a bloomery (maybe also firepit to increase the heat faster?)
the medium bellow is a structure and cant be moved, but it increases the speed at which a bloomery runs.
the large bellow is needed for a blast furnance and cant be powered by hand. you need a mechanical power source nearby (windmill?!?)
the large bellows needs hardened leather, wrought iron and wood, it can be used to run 3 bloomerys at the same time without someone using a bellow. (they need to be directly attached to the large bellow)
the bloomery is build from wrought iron and bricks.
it needs iron bearing ore and charcoal (alot of charcoal)
one cycle takes a while and you have to provide enough charcoal to keep the blast furnance running the whole time.
it produces pig iron ingots.
pig iron ingots and wrought iron ingots have to be heated in an forge and welded together to create a steel ingot.

[MagicManICT]

Surface ore proved to be problematic, so probably not going to even get consideration on that...

We've had requests so that smelters will always return at least a few nuggets of metal instead of being a complete 0 on an unlucky run with poor ore types. As I understand, it is under consideration, but with no commitments. As for the other parts... interesting, at the least. I'm not sure it makes for more or less engaging gameplay than the current system, though I'd welcome any change that made steel production less of an alarm clock hassle than relying on bots.

pig iron ingots and wrought iron ingots have to be heated in an forge and welded together to create a steel ingot.

The actual procedure to produce steel is actually very similar to what the abstract already in the game is: heat wrought iron with high concentrations of coke/carbon over an extended period of time in a low oxygen environment to encourage alloying with the carbon and crystallization of the metal. Quite a variety of crucibles were tested over the centuries with varying impacts on quality and types of steel produced.