Metalurgy, From a passionate metalurgist.

[Woot]

Greetings all, I am nomad, I have played this game since world four, and I have a few concerns about the metal and ore in haven and hearth.
I make no claims about game balance, or whether the changes I propose will re balance or break the system. Merely that it will more truly reflect how things were done in the old days, and how they are better done today.



Step One, The ORE!
Ore is quite easily identified when it is in hand, Iron ore has a rusty look to it, Copper has decent purity, and could typically be more accurately described as a rough nugget, and tin ore has a lot of rock inclusion much like iron, but it is silvery, as it does not rust at all.
The processes you use to refine iron, is completely different from copper, tin or bronze. and should be treated as such, as is, if I have a bunch of different ores, I can smelt them in the same smelter, at the same temperatures, In reality, if I reach the melting temperature of the iron, I will have ignited the copper, and will be breathing toxic metal fumes and die, Rapidly. With green flames shooting out of my exhaust chimney.
So I propose a different sprite for the different ores, and a feul rating for the different ores. And the waste products from smelting do not make a desirable stone for any uses. It's all just junk slag, and has very few uses except as abbrasives. Quality stone nodes should increase, and the stones made in smelting should be removed

-Tin 450 degrees Fahrenheit 1 charcoal for a load of tin, At the end, you get a certain ammount of tin, and a certain ammount of slag. over cooking should result in the tin turning into slag. Thus a wasted load This is later combined in a crucible, We'll get to that later.
-Copper 1984 degrees Fahrenheit, 4 charcoal to run a load of copper, Read tin, and then Crucible for more details. Excess feul should delete a bar every tick.
-iron 2800+ 6 charcoal At the smelting phase, Instead of this finery forge buisness, you should get your slag and bloom at this stage, Failed bloom is cast iron, successful is wrought iron. A game changer, but it's more accurate, Also, when coupled with the steel changes, you'll see what I mean.

On Steel.
Carbon count in iron determines the qualities it will have, In wrought iron, the carbon is added incidentally through the bloomery fires, during the heating at the smelter, The raw iron is then worked into a piece of Wrought Iron, However in steel, the carbon is added MANUALLY by inducing a liquid state, and allowing the carbon to dissolve into it, this process is called crucible steel, and it is ridiculously difficult to achieve. the temperatures involved exceed three thousand degrees, and that is no easy task whatsoever to achieve without modern blowers. Especially since you must hold these temperatures for long periods of time to allow the carbon to become fully and intimately alloyed to the iron, I would use a leaf blower, but that's not an option in the hearth lands

My proposed change to steel follows as such, You must first create a cupolla, This is much like a tree planters pot, and its quality is very important.
This is made exactly like a treeplanters pot, softcapped by dexterity, and then to the kiln. and will work much the same way as the pot.
four pieces of iron Ore must then be placed within. Much like soil
One piece of charcoal must then be added,

The cupolla is then added to a steel crucible, which is then loaded with plenty of feul, the charcoal in the cuppola is the feul that matters most in this process, and is not to be confused with the feul in the crucible. And it's set to burn.


But simply lighting a lot of charcoal on fire is not enough to melt iron out of an ore, You must achieve this heat with a massive amount of air flow, My own forge uses a hair dryer, and larger ones use whole engines to do it, Realistically, a hearthling working some bellows would be historically accurate, Speaking from personal experience, All metal work is a test of your endurance, or in game mechanics, stamina. Much like swimming, the process I am going to describe is expected to need a lot of constitution.

Craft bellows from parchment and two sticks, two boards, and equip it, In the hearth lands every hour is three hours, So out of game, you can expect you will need to work fast and hard to achieve this near impossible task Steel can be made, if the proper temperatures are met in roughly five hours of work, if you are good on those bellows, if the bellows are stoped for more than ten real life minutes, you start to affect the quality of your product, and set yourself back some time as you try to rebuild the heat, the quality of your bellows should effect how much stamina is used to pump the air, This means that you can have really good bellows, and average con and do it with some help, decent bellows and godlike con, and do it with some help, or have awesome levels of both, and do it solo, with plenty of water. And the harder you blow, the faster the feul is consumed.
Finally, after all that effort, You are either rewarded with Steel Bloom, which is then pounded into a steel bar (Again effecting the quality) or, if you failed in the feuling, or the blowing efforts, a useless, twisted chunk of sooty metal.

Current steel takes an ingame week, or 56 hours in real life, An insane amount of time, My proposed changes make steel faster, if you are properly equipped, but more realistic, and much much much more expensive, as the cuppola is often consumed in the process the feul needs are higher, (Though at least now, there is a reason the crucible can take in so much feul.) and over all, It can be a very big group project, or an overwhelming nightmare for one man to attempt. Stockpiling feul will be crucial.


On Anvils and smithing!!!
Just beating something into shape is unrealistic, escpecially considering the things you are throwing together are supposed to be hard, Right? You don't want the armor you made to be so soft any hearthling with a hammer can smash it into a different shape right? Enter the forge workshop, Heat the bars at this area with a bed of charcoal place the item into the forge for a minute or two until it is cherry red, and THEN shape it, Follow that up by clicking the item into hand with tongs in your left hand, right click it onto a barrel of good q water, and quench it, Boom, done. And yet another way to drag your q up or down based on your resources, Now it's not just clay and ore quality affecting finished pieces.

tl;dr: I don't blame you in the least, It's a huge chunk of words, and I'm terrible at condensing my ideas, I'll be continuing work on this thread through edits and what not to make it better.

[Woot]

A small history on my qualifications to make my claim to the title of a metalurgist, And not just someone reading wikipedia articles. Read or don't read, not crucial to the subject matter.-I have melted aluminum multiple times, usually sledgehammered broken rims, and supplemented with cans, for casting into various things. Hobby level. ingots mostly.
-I have melted brass from waste valve stem collected from tire shops in my local area, for use in experimentation in different casting techniques, including the lost wax technique, wherin an candle is carved into the desired statue, and then packed in greensand(Bentonite clay, coarse sand, fine sand, and motor oil, used) to replace the wax during the pour with the metal you want to cast the statue in. I've also done more traditional stone moulds for these works, hand chisled to make a custom knife handle, and my work shed has multiple plaster of paris moulds for various items.
-I've practiced a home made centrifuge mould practice casting with lead (Due to it being more forgiving, and lower temps than silver, My next project) wherin I pour the lead into a small ball of greensand, place that onto a small hair dryer motor and spin it, so the lead fills the metal more fully than it otherwise would. due to the spin.
-And I've made multiple knives and swords, using forging techniques. using traditional coal, or home-made hard wood charcoal. My current anvil is a resurfaced and flattened sledgehammer head embedded into a landscape timber. It's not much, But My finances will not allow me to spend 200+ dollars on a hobby. Though I learned from my neighbor on his anvil, I make do with what I have, and am happy to do it.
-I have twice successfully crafted mid grade crucible steel on par with 110 tool grade steel, and unsuccessfully done it thrice more.
-And last but not least, I have worked hands on as a kettle man in a hot dip zinc galvanizing plant, and am looking into work at a metal pressing facility currently. As my plant had an accident.

[krikke93]

Yes, I love this thread alot Nomad. Not only do I like the fact this would make the mining and smithing industry in Haven and Hearth more realistic, it also makes it more fun with alot of challenge.
The only downside I see to this is that it will be alot harder for a Hermit (like me) to be able to actually build a brickwall gate since it requires steel. I would almost be forced into buying steel on the market for probably very high prices. Maybe if this would ever be added into the game, they could make it so a brickwall gate doesn't cost steel? or maybe less steel? I don't know.
Making steel this hard to produce also gives the option to make more use to steel, like adding more jewelry, armor, weapons and such.
I also adore the idea of needing to heat the metal before being able to forge it into an item. I always thought it was ridiculous to just smash your hammer into some hard bars, this makes it more realistic and fun to smith!

Very well thought-out and smart idea. I fully support this.

[Woot]

The only downside I see to this is that it will be alot harder for a Hermit (like me) to be able to actually build a brickwall gate since it requires steel. I would almost be forced into buying steel on the market for probably very high prices. Maybe if this would ever be added into the game, they could make

True, but this also make properly equiped people to throw together junk steel faster.
Some strong high con guys with amazing blowers could throw together a q10 cuppola, burn it off with junk boards from q10 trees into the kiln, and go mostly afk as they go, stopping to drink and add feul on timers.

There was a time when I thought swimming would always be impossible, it's amazing what a well developed hearthling can eventually make into a trivial thing, isn't it?

Edit: Also, Game balance aside, Steel may just be one of those things that is next to impossible to do by yourself, I've done it, but the blower was electric, so a lot of the process was micromanaging the feul level, attaching and re-attaching the blower as needed, worrying and such, because a flame too hot will use up all your feul uselessly, or even break your cupolla, too cold, and you'll pull it out, and it will still be semi-solid, and all the charcoal will be unevenly mixxed, or worse sitting on top of it as black dust. I've done this manually with bellows, not for steel, but my brass was all by hand, But that's a whole other story, I just had to achieve a working temperature, didn't have to maintain it for hours. bleh.
Steel is a very difficult thing to make.

[Lord_of_War]

Nice idea, now if it were to be implemented. ......

[overtyped]

jorbtar already said he'd never use anyone elses ideas. So the more ideas you suggest, the more likely the game will stay stagnant. Why do you think horses aren't implemented? because someone suggested horses. 100% original jorbtar content only.

[Woot]

jorbtar already said he'd never use anyone elses ideas. So the more ideas you suggest, the more likely the game will stay stagnant. Why do you think horses aren't implemented? because someone suggested horses. 100% original jorbtar content only.

Well the constitution and the billows are an idea, the rest is less idea and more how stuff works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeGv_PU4ZkA
Here is a link to some crucible steel getting made 17:05 is the ore and powdered charcoal getting added to the cupolla, Though I highly recommend the video It's a bit long, but very cool. 25:30 shows the cuppola exiting the crucible. and the rest is shaping.
In this method, he smashes the cuppolla as junk, But I was taught to tilt it on it's end and tap it a few time, If it fails to release, smash it off.


Edit: May not be proper for haven and hearth, Devs are more than welcome to use these correction to salem or the new haven.
Never played salem more than a day or two to check it out, but I do enjoy the use of fire to crack walls for mining.

[jlt314]

I'd love to see more realistic ores and treatments.
as a small side idea, add a lead ore and add the ability to burn metals for pigments on purpose: iron for red, copper for black, tin for white, lead for yellow.

[Woot]

I'd love to see more realistic ores and treatments.
as a small side idea, add a lead ore and add the ability to burn metals for pigments on purpose: iron for red, copper for black, tin for white, lead for yellow.

An excellent idea, A lot of .res files change the colors of say.. the merchants robe, perhaps an in-game method of changing the colors of your items would be most desirable.