Some alternate sources of metal

[Drakale]

Ok mines are really hard to build, everyone is aware of that. There is no direct problem with that except that it gives an overwhelming advantage to the few that manage to get one. What I am suggesting is that there should be an alternate method to gather ore. The aim is not to replace mines, the ore found may in general be lower quality and the collection is SLOW. This should help small community get the essential goods like a cauldron or a tankyard without having to give an arm and a leg to someone else.

I- Gathering ore/ metals by using sluice box in water.

This method is very slow but has some chance to yield small quantity of metal. You need to build a sluice box and use it in any low water spot.

II-Gathering ore by surface prospection.

Walk around and dig with a pick. You will find some ore with some luck. Some spots might yield more than others, like mountains.

III-Iron sands

Patch of iron sand that can be processed for a low metal yield.

[Peter]

I understand that bog iron is being considered.

I've often heard about massive quantities of wheat and hay being first burnt and then the ashes soaked in water for days. The sludge at the bottom is the cooked as hot as possible and results in just a little bit of iron that had been absorbed by the wheat plants. It would be very little iron, though.

Then there's blood iron, where thousands of men and animals are killed and the blood drained and cooked, resulting in a pretty reasonable iron return.

[loftar]

Actually, while we are planning to add bog iron, our main plan to combat this "problem" (as it may be) is to add more resource chains outside of metal. One venue that I suggested and Jorb seems to agree with is to add glass weapons/armors (yeah, it's a bit unreal, but it isn't completely outlandish either), which would then, of course, be made from sand as raw material, and we'll be trying similar things with other localized resources. It is a bit uncertain what kind of stuff we'll try to invent, though, because I think it would be nice if the game didn't turn entirely unreal.

I, for one, think it would be a lot more fun if different people, because they live in different places and have access to different resources, simply use different things, rather than everyone using the same metal items. The best thing is the amount of combinatorics it would allow between the chains of various raw materials and their immediate products.

[humanalien]

maybe we can make metals out of soil but if would be a long proces
- soil must be dried first by keeping it in your inv or a container. one real life day required to dry
- dry soil must be burned to remove organic components => inorganic soil
- put inorganic soil in a oresmelter to get ore material => 5% chance. the change depends on industry/nature slide, aech slide represents 1%
- the ore material wil then change if burned further in a ramdom metal, changes of become a metal depends or the metals rarity.
for example let say 50% iron, 5% silver and 1% gold for each ore material.
very long proces but allows you to make metals without mines.

[Rift]

i think loftars general idea is a lot more interesting then making new sources of metal.

[Drakale]

I agree that there should be specialty arising according to locations, but right now metal is a bottleneck for a lot of professions. My suggestion is not to make those source competitive at all with the mines, just a makeshift way of getting by if you are isolated or cannot trade any quality resource for metal.

In my opinion the whole point is that different communities should have some specific goods of much higher quality to trade, but in no way should they get a monopoly on an essential part of the game.

[theTrav]

more resource chains > more metal

[RaptorJedi]

Actually, while we are planning to add bog iron

Any plans to add meteoric iron too? A lot of early sources of iron came from iron meteorites.