A way to help forging, and partially fix the economy.

[Moist Happenings]

Since I've been selling forged weapons, I've noticed one thing in particular. The market is absolutely flooded with weapons. It's to be expected after so many years, really, but the question is how do you fix it?

Smelting is supposedly coming out at some point here, which is just going to put a ton more forged weapons on the market, driving weapon prices to all new lows.

I think they should make it so you can melt down existing weapons and armors in order to recover their base materials. Obviously melting down a suit of 90 pound eonake full plate could become a bit overpowered (not that anyone would melt eonake full plate, but just as an example). There would have to be something lost in the conversion process. 8 pounds of a material would only yield something like a 3 pound slab, or something. The mechanics of the benefits and drawbacks would have to be worked out by the coder to make sure it's balanced.

Anyway, it would allow for a much greater variety of materials to use for forging, while at the same time cleaning up some of the massive clutter we have on the market, thus hopefully putting a dent into fixing the economy.

Opinions?

[Mtenda]

I think they should make it so you can melt down existing weapons and armors in order to recover their base materials.

Isn't that was smelting is?

[aesir]

I personally think there should be some form of tempering or mending of weapons and armor but nothing that will be permanent unless you continuously abuse your equipment and tempt fate.

However on the plus side there should be a offset to this 'disability' with weapons being 'beyond mint' condition when freshly mended tempered. Meaning temporarily a weapon can get a +5 bonus to AS and this will gradually wear down (albeit quickly) to normal and then of course go into the negatives when it starts to get banged up.

Plus, equipment fixes should take a significant amount of time to fix depending upon the equipment and not something that takes 5 minutes. Something like 2 to 3 hours for a 10x enchant weapon. This will add risk and another dimension to the game imo.

[Moist Happenings]

Isn't that was smelting is?

Yeah it is sort of, and I think this could be incorporated into it somehow. Knowing Simu, they'd probably do mining/smelting as barebones as possible, and make it so all you can do is dig up metal and then smelt it into bars. The ability to melt down weapons/armor would at least counteract some of what new, easily available bars would add to the market.

[Stanley Burrell]

Isn't that was smelting is?

I think it's this guy:

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2009-02/44902065.jpg

[Moist Happenings]

I personally think there should be some form of tempering or mending of weapons and armor but nothing that will be permanent unless you continuously abuse your equipment and tempt fate.

However on the plus side there should be a offset to this 'disability' with weapons being 'beyond mint' condition when freshly mended tempered. Meaning temporarily a weapon can get a +5 bonus to AS and this will gradually wear down (albeit quickly) to normal and then of course go into the negatives when it starts to get banged up.

Plus, equipment fixes should take a significant amount of time to fix depending upon the equipment and not something that takes 5 minutes. Something like 2 to 3 hours for a 10x enchant weapon. This will add risk and another dimension to the game imo.

Very good idea. I like that. Have you suggested it on the officials? Would add another dimension to forging/blacksmithing. It very well could be the answer to breakage. Your weapon never really "breaks", but you could wear it down to the point where maybe it's -5 or -10 of what it normally would be over time, and have to get it fixed.

[Mtenda]

Yeah it is, and I think this could be incorporated into it somehow. Knowing Simu, they'd probably do mining/smelting as barebones as possible, and make it so all you can do is dig up metal and then smelt it into bars. The ability to melt down weapons/armor would at least counteract some of what new, easily available bars would add to the market.

I guess I just always assumed that the main feature of smelting mechanics would be to smelt existing gear for the very reasons you mentioned. Otherwise, it's just fucking rediculous.

[Moist Happenings]

I guess I just always assumed that the main feature of smelting mechanics would be to smelt existing gear for the very reasons you mentioned. Otherwise, it's just fucking rediculous.

I'll have to read more about what they have on it on the officials. I really never read it in depth, but smelting to me has always been mining raw materials and refining them into something usable. If that's the case, I would be very surprised if Simu has something like the above planned.

Edit:

I always saw it as them just doing something like them expanding on the kobold mine idea. You find your ore, then you smelt it into bars. Never really saw them going past that general idea.

[Rocktar]

Ok, having some experience in this RT, I have to say, your idea of yield from already purified metal is poor. 8 pounds of metal, even in middle ages tech equipment should yield about 6 pounds of slab. Not sure how melting down a heavy set of plate to make a bunch of weapons is unbalancing, just seems to me to make sense. In addition, it would allow all those seeking to learn forging to recover some material to use on more forging and so, mitigate the cost of the learning. Now, raw ore, well, it can come down to 1 pound of purified metal from as much as 1 ton of ore, though in the middle ages, they tended to go about 10% or better (1 pound of metal per 10 pounds of ore) because less was just too hard to do to be worth it.

I would love nothing better than to take a couple pound weapon that is in one of the useless noodle classes and recycle it into something useful. Might just clear out some of the junk weapons and armor in the lands and so on. Also, might be nice ot take all those left over slab pieces and combine them into something useful.

Anyways, I do think the smelting thing will be go out and find/mine the natural materials and refine them to forging slabs. I would like to see the recycle aspect.

[Moist Happenings]

Ok, having some experience in this RT, I have to say, your idea of yield from already purified metal is poor. 8 pounds of metal, even in middle ages tech equipment should yield about 6 pounds of slab. Not sure how melting down a heavy set of plate to make a bunch of weapons is unbalancing, just seems to me to make sense. In addition, it would allow all those seeking to learn forging to recover some material to use on more forging and so, mitigate the cost of the learning. Now, raw ore, well, it can come down to 1 pound of purified metal from as much as 1 ton of ore, though in the middle ages, they tended to go about 10% or better (1 pound of metal per 10 pounds of ore) because less was just too hard to do to be worth it.

I would love nothing better than to take a couple pound weapon that is in one of the useless noodle classes and recycle it into something useful. Might just clear out some of the junk weapons and armor in the lands and so on. Also, might be nice ot take all those left over slab pieces and combine them into something useful.

Anyways, I do think the smelting thing will be go out and find/mine the natural materials and refine them to forging slabs. I would like to see the recycle aspect.

Well, to draw an example from forging itself, an 8 pound morning star is a 4 pound head and a 4 pound handle.

Meaning that an 8 pound weapon only has 4 pounds of the material you're looking for from it usually. The handle's usually wood.

3/4 ain't bad.

The other reason I suggested the loss aspect of it being rather strong was because losing 2 pounds on 8 could potentially be overpowered because of the super dense materials, like veil iron, and glaes. A massive glaes club is pretty much only useful for bashing, and they're what, 80 pounds?

You come out of melting down a massive glaes club with 60 pounds of glaes. Well that's what, a 50k weapon? You just came out of it with significantly more worth in glaes.

Edit: Also, melting down huge weapons like that just potentially puts MORE weapons on the market instead of less. My thoughts are equally geared towards fixing the economy, and not just making it as historically accurate as possible (though you are correct about that).

[Tolwynn]

They could make the recycling aspect useful in a number of ways.

It could be made to serve as a silver sink, which would help the economy, as well as a desirable sink that players actually want to chase. It could also clear out a fair chunk of the glut of materiel in the lands.

Put some silver cost into the process, and also a percentage of material loss.

Then, tie what metals can be worked directly to the skill level of the forger/smelter. A novice smelter has to work with easy metals like gold, a more experienced one can work things like mithril or invar. Only a mastered smelter would even be able to attempt something like veil iron or black ora.

Don't restrict any metals from the process, but make some of them almost impossibly difficult to work, due to their natures, or require special exacting processes to refine them. Perhaps alchemical reagents could be tied in somehow.

As the skill of the smelter increases, increase the chance they will retain the natural magical properties of whichever metal is in question. As they near mastery, allow a chance to retain enhanced properties as well (weighting or padding would be iffy at best, but something like flaring should be allowed to be retained).

An alternate would be to tie certain skill, racial or profession requirements into certain materials or properties - perhaps only dwarven forgers can properly work invar, or while anyone can work impure black or white ora, a Liabo/Lornon cleric forger can actually refine it into true or pure form.

Probably never a chance in hell it would happen, but one can dream.

[Belnia]

From what Vanern said at the State of Elanthia in 2008 at Simucon, his plans for mining and smelting included making it a combined artisan skill. As in, it's mining AND smelting together for 500 artisan points.

He also said there would be the ability to melt down existing gear, though perhaps with some limitations on unstable stuff like black ora or coraesine.

He didn't explicitly state it, but I'm guessing you'll ONLY be able to melt armor, armor accessories, shields and weapons since they have their material fields properly set. So all those veil-iron gongs remain pretty useless.

[Stretch]

You know what else would help the economy?

Some sort of way to drain silvers by releasing new items or installing a Dragon Bones tent.

But both of those would take away the focus from MONKS!?!?!?!?!11

[aesir]

You know what else would help the economy?

Some sort of way to drain silvers by releasing new items or installing a Dragon Bones tent.

But both of those would take away the focus from MONKS!?!?!?!?!11

I have to agree here. The absolute best way to suck up silvers is to open a gambling establishment around every town. Thats how governments do it in RL.

In terms of smelting. I liked the blonde girls idea. Make it so that when you 'break' your weapon you have a significant chance of losing your weighting or flaring, even on permanent weapons. On the other hand, make it so that weighting and flaring could easily be added at a cost at certain locations.

Essentially, this will make all weighted flared weapons 'temporary' but it'll add versatility to weapons, if you ever wanted to switch out that crit weighting for disintegration flares well you can now.

[Wrathbringer]

On a related note, I think we should also be able to forge armor.

[aesir]

I would love to forge armor but what would be the mechanics? Will there be a set of Perfect Krodera Full Plate running around? Will the bonuses be similar to perfect weapons? Decrease on the damage factor chart for the armor your crafting if it's made elegantly and beyond plus some bonus to AvD/CvA? These things have to be sorted out.