Assay Mining, gemcutting, fertilizer

[Dondy]

New skill: Assay mining: requires mining

Enables the player to find new iron ore mines, sort of like dowsing, but insteadof a dowsing rod the tool might be the regular pick, or a tool might not be needed. New mine site spots to be invisible to anyone without the assay mining skill. As well as iron mine sites the skill would enable the character to located deposits of other minerals.

Assay miner could locate either deposits of ores or locations where a mine could be opened: copper, tin, lead, silver, zinc which can be mined for ore and in addition to that gems and sulphur.

Copper and tin in the crucible makes bronze. Copper and zinc in the crucible make brass. Tin and lead make pewter. They all take a lot less time than the steel does.

Gemcutting skill enables the player to cut gems out of the raw form of gems, uncut gems. A percentage chance randomly determines if the gem is garnet (common), diamond, emerald or ruby.

Silver maybe used to craft jewelry items, with or without the addition of a cut gemstone. These can be worn like the bear claw necklace and might carry a minor charisma bonus.

Sulpher can be used as a fertilizer to increase the seed yield of fields, in the making of matches and possibly in the making of explosives.

Fields that are fertilized with intestines, cow eggs (or a related by product of cows), sulphur, plant fibre or straw have an increased chance of producing more seeds.

To make saltpeter cow eggs or the related by-product of cows must be collected and stored. Ten units stored for a certen length of time turn into 9 units of fertilizer and one unit of saltpeter.

To make explosives sulpher must be combined with saltpeter and charcoal to make gunpowder and then put in a keg or barrel. There should be a risk of explosion with hp damage whenever explosives are manufactured. Since this is primitive explosives the result is not hugely strong but several gunpowder bombs can begin to damage a pallisade or wall. More importantly a bomb set of in a mine shatters a section of the wall into ore.

[theTrav]

New skill: Assay mining: requires mining

This sort of skill has been discussed several times, people seem to have similar ideas to you about how it should be. The dev's have mentioned that they'd like to do that, and I think it's on their list of things to get done before map reset, which is their current target.

Copper and tin in the crucible makes bronze. Copper and zinc in the crucible make brass. Tin and lead make pewter. They all take a lot less time than the steel does.

I believe different metals have been planned. Personally I'd like to see some changes to the steel manufacture as well (why would you use wrought iron to make steel?

Gemcutting skill enables the player to cut gems out of the raw form of gems, uncut gems. A percentage chance randomly determines if the gem is garnet (common), diamond, emerald or ruby.

I don't know if gem's have been discussed before... I like the idea of gems as extremely rare items, I think I'd prefer to know the type (or at least color) at the raw stage rather than at the cut stage though, it seems more realistic.

Silver maybe used to craft jewelry items, with or without the addition of a cut gemstone. These can be worn like the bear claw necklace and might carry a minor charisma bonus.

Sounds good, a natural follow on from precious metals and gems. Don't forget a ruby encrusted golden chalice for me to quaff my wine from!

Sulpher can be used as a fertilizer to increase the seed yield of fields, in the making of matches and possibly in the making of explosives.

I'm not sure if fertilizer is such a plus, an I'm pretty much against explosives but primarily for aesthetic reasons.

[loftar]

why would you use wrought iron to make steel?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucible_steel

And yes, both geological surveying and different metals are coming before the map reset. It shouldn't be too hard to add anyway. Gemstones may be a different thing, however; there are at least a couple of changes I'd like to do to the crafting system before that happens. It's certainly not at all out of the question, though, because,

Don't forget a ruby encrusted golden chalice for me to quaff my wine from!

yes, I like that. :)