Drops in quality during the construction of items

[Archiplex]

This might not be a bug; and simply a misunderstanding of the system, but for now it's my belief that this is a bug.


Several (Okay, basically every constructed item using a sign) items lose quality in some way or form during their building process. This doesn't seem to apply to crafted items by hand (Such as rock axes, etc) but rather placeable items (Anvils, smelters, kilns.)

There is a consistent loss of quality in items as they are built, and I'm putting effort to figuring out where/why this loss of quality happens.

My very first proof of this was my first anvil that I had smithed, I had 10 smithing at the time, and around 20 strength. I put together my first anvil using 10/10/10 iron. If items do even require stats to construct (I presume they do), and which specific stats are needed for an anvil are correct (Geometric mean of strength and smithing would make the most sense), the anvil should by all means end up as 10/10/10. However, this was very obviously not the case, as when I had enough metal to then make a smithy hammer, the quality ended up horrifically bad (8/10/8)

I didn't question it at the time, I did not have a steady flow of iron nor metals at all; but now that I do, I can more appropriately test these items.

My second anvil ended up being similar and dropping in quality somewhere along construction, it was explained in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=47&t=42299

And finally, we constructed a new anvil yet again with 20+ ql metal that I was unfortunately not able to see; so I cannot create tests with them. However, what I CAN make tests with are the bricks we used for the new smelter we have.

The smelter should be 48-45-10 or so in quality; somewhere in that upper area of quality. We have quality 20,10,19 coal being used as fuel on quality 10/10/10 Chalcopyrite and Malachite ore.

However, something strange happens when we create bars. The iron bars ended up being 20/17/12 when fueled, which when calculations are run through (Assuming the quality for bars are the same as before, (Ore*2 + Smelter + Fuel)/4 per quality value, the formula we get is (10+10+19+x)/4 = 12, which would convert to x/4+39/4 = 12 for a final answer of x = 9 (48/4=12)

This means that somewhere along the process, the final quality value of the smelter somehow lowered under 10, although it's certainly not an important change nor gamebreakign, it shows that there's SOMETHING in the process of building these items (And I believe it applies to many, many other items including anvils and herbalist tables/beehives, etc) that lowers the quality

Now, whether that's an issue of a skill we don't know that we need in order for an item's quality to stick (A question still is: Do the skills of a person building an item through a sign even matter? I recall that it didn't in the past. Did the formulae change?) or a bug that's reducing the quality of items when built (Related to the Q0 bug that's been annoying us for almost a month now?) is unknown, and I'd certainly like some clarity on this matter.

If this is a matter of skills being required when constructing items, I very much plead for a small notifier on the sign, similar to how crafting items shows you the related stats+skills for it.

[jorb]

You know what, I've actually noticed something similar. Skills should not matter at all.

Will investigate.

[jorb]

I think we can basically confirm this bug, and we suspect that it may be due to floating point rounding errors, somehow. I believe I may have had it happen to some of my own q10 clay that for some reason, inconsistently, wound up turning into q9 bricks. It would be awesome if someone had steps to consistently reproduce this problem.

[VDZ]

I think we can basically confirm this bug, and we suspect that it may be due to floating point rounding errors, somehow. I believe I may have had it happen to some of my own q10 clay that for some reason, inconsistently, wound up turning into q9 bricks. It would be awesome if someone had steps to consistently reproduce this problem.

Does this mean that the quality drop is 1/1/1 at most, and it's safe to build an anvil right now (as opposed to the earlier q0 herbalist tables and looms)?

[Archiplex]

I think we can basically confirm this bug, and we suspect that it may be due to floating point rounding errors, somehow. I believe I may have had it happen to some of my own q10 clay that for some reason, inconsistently, wound up turning into q9 bricks. It would be awesome if someone had steps to consistently reproduce this problem.

Does this mean that the quality drop is 1/1/1 at most, and it's safe to build an anvil right now (as opposed to the earlier q0 herbalist tables and looms)?

I do not think the ql drop is limited to 1/1/1. My very first anvil was much lower quality than it should have been by any means- however it's mostly safe to build as it's not the same bug as the q0 stuff

[jorb]

Uh, no, I would not make that inference, but, yes, anvils should work fine apart from this bug which is probably more general anyway.

[Archiplex]

Uh, no, I would not make that inference, but, yes, anvils should work fine apart from this bug which is probably more general anyway.

You're thinking it could be single quality drops from the qualities rounding down perhaps, when it shouldn't be? Or something else?

I can certainly affirm that it does happen when it should - a 10q tea leaf turns to 5 on a q0 table, and then to 2 rather than 3 or 2.5 when it turns black. That seems appropriate though.

I'll be doing some junk tests when I arrive home with basic q10 kilns and bricks- since the minimum quality is 10 it should never dip below into 9.

[jorb]

I'll be doing some junk tests when I arrive home with basic q10 kilns and bricks- since the minimum quality is 10 it should never dip below into 9.

That would be much appreciated.