A few blacksmithng ideas

[Onyxsoulle]

Okay, so I've been fooling around with Blacksmithing a bit lately and a few ideas occurred to me. The biggest one is that there doesn't seem to be any way to get the ore other than buying it or through failed recipes(which you still need to buy the metal originally to make the recipe, a lump of steel usually being the failed result).

So I've got to ideas in a similar vein, the first is a result of needing some food and I went foraging. While foraging, all I found was old rusted horseshoes. Well horseshoes are made of metal, so in theory one could melt one down. So that made me think up a recipe that would require X amount of horseshoes to make 1 lump of (whichever appropriate metal here). This would actually give a use(if there isn't one already) to a trash item that can be found through Foraging.

The other was about breaking down items you have(assuming this doesn't already exist). If I make a spiked iron ball either by accident or by grinding, and realize I don't actually need that item, a recipe that takes the iron ball(or sword, or mace, or table, whatever) and produces the base metal ingredient(or similarly to the first section, a lump of the metal) makes a bit of sense. Obviously this recipe wouldn't create the base amount of the metal, but a portion.

Example:

I'm making up the ingredients needed, but you'll get the idea.

Recipe: Temi's Tactical Torc

Needed: 1 x iron ingot
4 x iron bars
1 x Temi's hangnail

Produced: 1 x Temi's Tactical Torc

Recipe: Lump of iron (from neck item)

Needed: 1 x iron necklace
or
1 x Temi's Tactical Torc
or
1 x zebra

Produced: 4 x lump of iron

Reasonably I can see each of these being at the high end of the crafting spectrum, since a master would know how to save as much metal as possible. Or even having it at the high end of the category spectrum (the iron recipes for this being some of the last recipes you get as you start graduating to steel).

Thanks for your time, and see you in game.


*disclaimer* No Temi's were harmed during the making of this post.

*disclaimer* The zebra was harmed, but then put down and cooked, it was delicious.

[Temi]

The problem we have had when trying to figure out a way to support non - purchase acquiring of metals is that it is so expensive. To preserve any of the value of metal objects, getting any of the metal would have to be very involved or repetitive or pretty much suck. And we don't really want to do that to you guys, especially when it would take time away from other things.

[Puciek]

The problem we have had when trying to figure out a way to support non - purchase acquiring of metals is that it is so expensive. To preserve any of the value of metal objects, getting any of the metal would have to be very involved or repetitive or pretty much suck. And we don't really want to do that to you guys, especially when it would take time away from other things.

It may be fever talking but...
Mine deeds and mining contracts!

So instead of expecting players to go to a mine for 5 weeks, let's have mine deeds, from which you can create and sell forward mine contracts. And based on amount of mine contracts you own, you receive that amount of various metals every week. And mining deeds would be very few and rare (also very expensive to even introduce into the world), with small amount seeded to the ruling royalty. Both deeds and contracts would also have a weekly tax to pay for them as to prevent abuse.
It would also require that you cannot hold both - mine deeds and mining contracts - you have to choose which ones you want.

As a result of that you gain a viable resource to fight over, and one that could be used by criminals, or evil characters, to put people depending on it into a hostage situation if they can manage to secure enough deeds/contracts. Of course that would be expensive to stockpile resources like that (you still have to pay the tax on them, and once you release the resources to the market - the price will plummet), so this will put pressure on both sides to resolve the situation - one way or another.

[Onyxsoulle]

In my head, at least for the horseshoes, I wasn't picturing a small number for the recipe. I was honestly thinking 20 or more horseshoes would make one lump of iron, then probably keep steel out of the loop, or make steel require double or more horseshoes. Not sure if that would still impact the cost or not though.