Craft Q&A

[Raona]

Your current project is: weaponsmithing
Your Your current project is: weaponsmithing
Your project location is at: The Market
Current item being worked on: a wood boomerang
Estimated amount of work remaining: 1 day
is at: The Market
Current item being worked on: a wood boomerang
Estimated amount of work remaining: 1 day

started as a two day, log out a good 95% of the time in the project location cheek it twice a day for 3-4 weeks now

Oh, no, that's definitely not right. Do you get an echo about your progress when you log back in?

Boomerangs were a late addition and you may have jumped on making one while it was still changing. With apologies for the hassle, my advice and request is that you
CRAFT ABANDON
and try again. If it doesn't complete within a week on the second-go-round, I'll try to reproduce what's going on.

[Nysan]

I was wondering could there be a helpfile for the different types of ore from least to best?
Right now, 'help ore' gives the help file for help smelt

My opinion, not official FK policy... I would consider that something to find out IC, not needing a helpfile. It falls into the same lines as what kinds of metal are out there. Craftable weapons/armor needed a list because the options were extensive and hard to figure out completely IC. The 7(?) variations of ore quality, not so much.

I am sure you can find an experienced miner/smelter somewhere that would be happy to write out a quality list and/or a metal type list on a piece of parchment.

[Selveem]

I was wondering could there be a helpfile for the different types of ore from least to best?
Right now, 'help ore' gives the help file for help smelt

My opinion, not official FK policy... I would consider that something to find out IC, not needing a helpfile.

I disagree wholeheartedly. Especially because there's no such thing IRL nor in D&D. That's something unique to the MUD (or, rather, the code base). Further, there's already been (are) help files that show differences in favor levels, object quality, etc. There's no reason to be cryptic and cause further confusion.

There's a difference between stating what type of ores there are out there IC and a game mechanics thing that isn't really IC.

[Nysan]

I could go into a rant describing ore/metal quality and how it is defined/tested by industries in the real world, but I'll just stick to the topic.

Favour levels are an OOC mechanic. Not once have I ever seen anyone mention 'cherished' or 'ignored', ect in-game. Faith ranks, yes... not favour levels. It is just an OOC measurement of when you can cast certain spells, supplicate objects, recall, ect, ect... all OOC aspects of the faith system. So, yes an OOC mechanic needs a helpfile.

Object quality is a generic overall mechanic for every item in the game. General rules and systems need helpfiles and newb guides. Without a helpfile to explain object condition, life for new players would be rough.

Ore quality is IC information, so doesn't follow favour's "OOC needs helpfile" group. Also, its not generic necessary information, like object quality.

To be perfectly honest, its related to a trade and trades are taught by extensive quests or other players. Could argue that mining/smelting quests need to be updated to clearly explain quality types or expect teacher characters to explain such things during lessons. Which is why I suggested seeking an experienced miner/smelter.

[Selveem]

Why go through all that trouble to update any/every trade quest in the game when it can be easily remedied by a single help file? It simply makes no sense to me.

And as for the metal quality you're talking about IRL, that's _post-smelting_ process. Not _pre-smelting_ process.

[Nysan]

Why go through all that trouble to update any/every trade quest in the game when it can be easily remedied by a single help file? It simply makes no sense to me.

And as for the metal quality you're talking about, that's _post-smelting_ process. Not _pre-smelting_ process.

Now you are arguing time invested vs reward, not what would be IC/OOC appropriate. A simple helpfile would be quicker, yes, but so would a helpfile on anything need to be found IC.

Oddly curious, what is your stance on the other thing I mentioned. Would you want a helpfile listing all metal types offered in-game?

Since you went there... IRL ore quality is defined by how much workable metal is in a set amount of weight... i.e. 20 tons of metal in 50 tons of dirt/soil. I forget what the official measurement is off-hand. Post-smelting quality falls under a different classification, usually something like purity % and possible flaws, such as air pockets in the bars/ingots.

[Selveem]

Oddly curious, what is your stance on the other thing I mentioned. Would you want a helpfile listing all metal types offered in-game?

I think that should remain IC. Book would be fine. To me, metals available in game is not a mechanic, but purely an IC fact. That has nothing to do with ore quality which still does not exist.

Since you went there... IRL ore quality is defined by how much workable metal is in a set amount of weight... i.e. 20 tons of metal in 50 tons of dirt/soil. I forget what the official measurement is off-hand. Post-smelting quality falls under a different classification, usually something like purity % and possible flaws, such as air pockets in the bars/ingots.

You're still talking about two different things. One does not affect the other. When I'm speaking of quality, I'm speaking of in-game terms. In-game, that would only measure how much you could get out of the 'ore.' That would not define the maximum quality of the metal that could be made.

[Nysan]

Oddly curious, what is your stance on the other thing I mentioned. Would you want a helpfile listing all metal types offered in-game?

I think that should remain IC. Book would be fine. To me, metals available in game is not a mechanic, but purely an IC fact. That has nothing to do with ore quality which still does not exist.

Ahh, there is hope for you yet! So, the real question is... is ore quality an IC fact, like metal types, or an OOC mechanic, like favour levels? I say fact and I assume you say mechanic. I think this is one of those bugger issues that falls under house rules. Basically, whatever the staff says...

[Athon]

Honestly, I don't see the big deal about putting either of the two into helpfiles. If you don't want to put metal types into the helpfiles - fine, a book makes sense for teaching all of that.

But ore/metal quality? That's an arbitrary value and as such is a mechanic. The game assigns various values to the ore and ingots for our better understanding as the player, not the character. There is no science or definition of these qualities because they are arbitrary values at best - what I mean is that we would have no exact process of defining it perfectly. Some examples:

Ingot qualities ranging from worthless to outstanding

is equivalent to

Damage ranging from 'slightly scratched' to 'mortally wounded, and will die soon, if not aided'

is equivalent to

Repair qualities from 'terrible' to 'perfect.'

These are all arbitrary values we assigned to mechanics in the game to help understand as a player. There are many of these situations in the game and they are all mechanics. As such, we should be perfectly fine putting ore/ingot qualities into a helpfile, if necessary.

[Nysan]

Not a fuss, just my opinion followed by a related discussion. If the staff puts it in, I won't lose any sleep over it. *shrug*

[Lirith]

I wouldn't want to see metal types put into a helpfile for two reasons. Firstly, your character wouldn't automatically know that information unless they were an experienced miner, and secondly, I like not knowing every metal that it's possible to mine. It's nice to get a little surprise every now and then.

For ore quality, I'm a little more indifferent, but I also don't see why there would be a problem withfinding out IC.

[Brar]

Well, I don't want to go into a debate but for me the only question we have to ask when making a helpfile or any other ooc helping mean is:

"What brings more roleplay into the game ?"

Another thing about that quality stuff, I would only ask you to not forget we are speaking about hand made weapon and mining, not industry.

Brar

[Zuldere]

been a week give or take doing a boomerang
I have yet been able to complete one most I get is

You made some mistakes on a wood boomerang in the past few days, and will need some more raw materials to clean up your mess and continue the project.
I pay the coins and kept going. I been logging about twice a day almost since sunday my woodworking is woodworking

woodworking (Int,Dex) novice

And this is what I see with craft


Your current project is: weaponsmithing
Your project location is at: Ardeep Forest
Current item being worked on: a wood boomerang
Estimated amount of work remaining: 1 day

[Maybel]

Yeah, and are some rooms coded to make no progress? Cause when I was working on making a shield in Brian's room... after a few days (Real Life) I did not make any progress with nothing wrong with my progress, just when i log in i get "you have not made any progress with <item>"

[Athon]

Have the construct times and costs for armoursmithing gone up? It's gone from 2 plat and 2 weeks to 5 plat and 3 weeks for a piece of banded mail armour for the body.

If so, I sure hope the trade improvement has gone up because I'm noticing it takes longer now to improve at a trade than it did previously.

[Raona]

CONSTRUCT is currently checking against armourworking skill for whether you can make masterwork armour, even if you are making leather/hide armour that should employ the leatherworking skill.

[Nysan]

CONSTRUCT is currently checking against armourworking skill for whether you can make masterwork armour, even if you are making leather/hide armour that should employ the leatherworking skill.

Looks like that minor bug with wood weapons/shields we dealt with before.

[Athon]

I would like to make a suggestion regarding smelting two ingots together. The reason for this change is to make it less of a gamble and instead encourage smelters to do it.

When you smelt two ingots together, you end up with only one ingot, whether you succeed or fail. My suggestion is that if you succeed in smelting the two ingots together, you still only get one of the higher quality ingot. But when you fail, you still keep two ingots of the original quality. Example:

Smelting two low-grade ingots of steel will yield either one average-grade ingot of steel or two low-grade ingots of steel.

This will change this from a gamble to a process of obtaining ingots of a desirable quality. It's still far too difficult, in my opinion, to get outstanding-grade ingots of steel - with iron being one of the most common metals to mine. I know getting mithril is supposed to be difficult, but I feel the current system will make it impossible to really utilize mithril to any effect.

[Brar]

[Sarcastic mode = on]Why not just remove all ore quality and everyone mine outstanding and we're done with it? after all, it is only a matter of time and nothing else....
Or even better, we make it so that every x seconds an outstanding ingot spawn in your inventory...

That would be marvelous, and not too hard I suppose...

Or perhaps it's still too hard so we can just give everyone the Object creation commands and it's even easier this way.
After all, everything should be given to everyone for nothing, so why not just let everyone do their own items.[Sacarstic mode = off]

Really, you realize that what you say is that ultimately, anything you mine becomes outstanding, which means no loss of ore, no risk, only a matter of time, not even luck, just time. That removes all the fun and rewards from it for me.

I would rather see the resmelting process goes this way.

2 x ingot = :
- 1 x+2quality ingot (critical success)
- 1 x+1quality ingot (success)
or - 1 xquality ingot (failure)
or - 1 x-1quality ingot (major failure)
or - Loss of components (critical failure)

At GM, rate should be something like 5%, 40%, 35%, 15%, 5%, I very bad a robability but I think it's translate to something like that on a d20: "20" critical success, "12+" success, "5+" failure, "2+" major failure, "1" critical failure (and here you hear everyone screaming... Fumble!)

Sounds more rewarding and more logic for me...

Brar

[Nysan]

The only problem I have with resmelting is the % of failures. It appears to give same or lesser quality metal far too often. However, I have hopes that when smelting gets a trade focus feat, this issue will be addressed (And hopefully I can talk a bored imm into resetting a few feat points). Until I see the impact of trade focus on mining and smelting, it is really hard to gauge any possible problems.