Mining/Metallurgy/Blackpowder Oh my!

[Collins]

So, I've only played for a few hours, but after trying out the mining system I had several ideas.

So I did a little research and came up with some stuff I think would be pretty neat, though, I'm sure plenty of work to implement. I'm sure it could be done a little at a time. Hopefully.

So, here's what I was able to come up with today. I'll add more if I get another flash of inspiration/insanity.

Mining system suggestions:

Ore:
Iron ore – used for metallurgy/weapons/armor
Coal lump – used to be added to lanterns/fires for fuel
Gold ore – used for hilts/décor/armor customization/jewelry
Silver ore - used for hilts/décor/armor customization/jewelry
Tin ore – used for metallurgy/weapons/armor
Lead ore –used for metallurgy/ammunition
Obsidian – used for arrow heads/jewelry?
Flint (Use firestones instead?) – used for firemaking
Zinc ore – Used for metallurgy/weapons/armor
Nickel ore- Used for metallurgy/weapons/armor/ammunition
Rock Salt – able to be ground for cooking/ or can be used for black powder (saltpeter or ‘potassium nitrate’ which makes up 75% of actual blackpower. Or you could do a separate ore for this. ‘Niter-ore’)
Sulphur ore – ground down into sulfur powder for black powder

+any CLOK world only metal ores with magical properties, etc.

Gems: These are nice finds to be used as tips, to sell for more $$ etc. These ores could also be found in lock boxes, etc.
These are the ones you’re most likely to see in a mine:

– Possible ‘Gem crafting’ skill to turn these into jewelry, or cut gems to sell for higher values.
– Gem-ores are found
– The gem cutters skill determines how well they are able to extract uncut diamonds, sapphires, rubies from the ore with their ‘chisel.’
– These uncut gems would then need to be cut via gem crafter tools. The final worth of the gem would be determined by the PC’s skill level.

Gem cutter tools: (Diamond is the hardest gemstone, thus tools must be made/tipped with diamond shars/blades.)

Chisel – mildly expensive, diamond tipped.
Gem-file- expensive to purchase as it must be made of diamond.

Gem-Ores:

Diamond-ore
Sapphires-ore
Ruby-ore
Malachite ore
Quartz ore- Several varieties, Citrine, Rose, Amethyst, Smoky, Milky, Agate,
Other quartz based gems: Jasper, Aventurine, Tiger’s Eye, Carnelian, Onyx
Turquoise ore – already implemented


Metallurgy: Bars would be smelted together in the furnaces to create new alloys to work with.
(These are some formulas that could work to create new metals. Players could experiment, etc.)

Copper (1)+ Tin (1) = Bronze bar (weapons/armor/jewelry)
Iron (2)+Nickel(1)+Tin(1)+Zinc(1) = Steel bar (weapons/armor/jewelry)
Iron (1)+Nickel(1)+Tin(1)+Zinc(1)+Silver(2) = Blue-Steel bar (weapons/armor/jewelry)
Zinc(1)+Copper(1) = Brass bar (hilts/armor décor/jewelry)
(You could add a lot of formulas for this.)


Blackpowder and shot:
Sulphur+ground salt rock(or Niter)+charcoal = black powder (for revolvers)
Lead-ore can be melted down to bars and then used to create custom shot.

(Charcoal to be obtained from used campfires)

You could add your own CLOK world only metals here if you wanted. I’ve only started playing and am still getting a feel for how the GM’s and players view this particular world and game.

Thanks guys. Neat game you have going here! Hopefully you find my ideas useful.

[Rias]

Very useful! I've been glad to see that people have been interested in crafting/profession skills, and not solely for weapons and armor. Thanks for these ideas, particularly the metallurgy. It'd be really fun to make your own alloys. Shouldn't be too hard to implement.

Also really like the gemcutting idea for raising the price of mined gems and for use in jewelry-crafting. Very nifty.

What to do first? Hmmm ...

[Collins]

I'm glad you like the ideas and definitely look forward to anything you do manage to release.

I also think eventually it would be neat to have player created mines. These would be started by by miners who have a certain level of skill already.

Your Wilderness system would work perfect for this. We would just need some mountainous regions for this to work in. (Which you may already have. I haven't explored a ton yet.)

You could have certain areas of CLOK have a higher chance to have rare minerals. Such as mines in dangerous mountain regions would have a higher chance to give better ore/gems. AND/OR You could have dangerous creatures spawn as you dug deeper, (or too deep.) This way miners would have to have some sort of weapon skill to back up their work as they worked in the dangerous wilds. Edit: Or have a friend come guard them.

Just some more ideas to throw out.

[Nootau]

o.o I knew i said post ideas if you got it.. I didn't know you had one this good/detailed/cool... Go Collins!

[Rias]

[quote=Collins]AND/OR You could have dangerous creatures spawn as you dug deeper, (or too deep.)[/quote]

Maybe an ancient demon of shadow and flame?

Very awesome ideas, and a really good use of wilderness. One of my dreams is to eventually have player architecture, so you could fell some trees, drag the logs to a site out in the wilderness somewhere, and build yourself a little cabin, or whatever. Maybe I'll have a limited number of rooms a character can "claim" as a home, so you could mine yourself out a little cave, claim it as yours, and then you could stash stuff there without it disappearing. Add a door and a lock or something ...

Anyway, dreams. But good ones to have. Gotta start small, with basic crafting. (Pacing myself here)

[Nootau]

Don't become like accursed lands, hundred of thousands of room able to do anywhere and do almost anything... but with so little player support few people played so.. it was a whole lot of nothing.

[Rias]

Wow. Just thinking of thousands, let alone hundreds of thousands, is a little worrying. I'd rather keep it smaller, with a tighter-knit community. I love our little playerbase we have right now.

Not that I'd be against growth, either. Tell your friends!

[KianTheArcher]

Ooh. I like this idea. if you don't mind, I'll be posting some suggestions of my own to make this mesh with real world mineralogy and gemology (I'ma geology major!) later on.

[Rias]

Oo, a geology major. Please do chime in!

[Collins]

Please do! These ideas were based off my limited knowledge from biology classes and wikipedia. :-)

[Icterus]

Collins delved too deep!

[KianTheArcher]

I'm working on a list of ores, their common uses and extraction methods, and the like currently! I'll post it when I'm done!

[Collins]

A few other ideas to throw out there:

- Reinforcing your mine with logs/boards from logging.
- Better Architecture skill = more stable mining conditions.
- Lanterns to be able to be hung from walls and/or handcarts.
- Be able to purchase/hire workers or permanent upgrades for your mine?
* 2k riln = A worker keeps lanterns full of oil in up to 5 rooms. 10k = 10 rooms maintained, etc. (Permanent light to those rooms. Must start at the rooms closest to the surface.)

- Ability to build, or purchase your own furnace room for your mine to smelt bars and work on Metallurgy. These would require coal from the mine to be used, but would save a trip to town.
- Wagons: Your mount can pull these to and from town and allows you to carry 5-10 handcarts full of ore to town to be sold.
- Ability to build a locking door for your mine. (Similar to the homes idea.)

Edit to add:

Must be a member of the mining/merchant's guild to be able to STAKE CLAIM to start a mine?

See new post on Merchant's Guild.

[KianTheArcher]

I'm still being lazy about the ores, guys, sorry. It turns out a lot of ore extraction requires chemical (alchemical for CLOK?) processes.

[Collins]

Yeah, I noticed that as well with my limited research. I tried to list very basic minerals that don't take a lot of processing/chemicals. I hoped that it would make sense a bit more to actually find deposits of those basic types, and then use heat to play with creating new/stronger metal bases.

Perhaps there could be a few tools to use in the Merchant's guild idea.

Something like this:

- Furnace (already implemented)
- Cauldron ( for ores that need to be boiled, or soaked to process them out of the ore.
- Acid vat (for tougher to process metals, like Nickel, or Titanium(which I pulled off my original list)

The process for rares would go:
Mine the ore - You get some rare titanium-ore.
titanium ore goes into the acid vat = titanium-residue/dust/flakes? (Maybe 1-4 portions)
Flakes go into the furnace = 1 titanium-bar (require 4 portions to make 1 bar)

The semi-rares would go:
Mine the ore: - You get some nickel-ore
ore goes into the cauldron to boil = nickel flakes
Portions go into the furnace = 1 titanium-bar (require 4 portions to make 1 bar)

Of course, in a fantasy world, there's only so much you can do I guess? I'm willing to bet the real life list of processes that Kian is going to provide will shed some light into how it could work out.

[KianTheArcher]

Okay! Prefacing my post with the following: It's a long, somewhat detailed post. I tried to keep it as simple as possible, but left in some 'technical' terms (sulfides, oxides, etc.), as well as naming the minerals as well. A sulfide is just a mineral with sulfur in it. An oxide is a mineral with oxygen in it. Please comment! If you feel like something sounds wrong, or can be simplified, let me know. I know this seems fairly complicated, but the majority of it is 'fluff' for the (potential) merchant's guild, as they would probably have documentation and research on the various minerals. This is JUST the ores that produce metals (basic "economic" ores) with some notes at the end. I will tackle the idea of gems at a later date.

[KianTheArcher]

IRON
Typically, iron is found in hematite (rusty red rocks) and magnetite (black metallic rocks), and in banded formations. Iron can be smelted with coke to form Pig Iron, which can be used for wrought iron objects, or for creating steel by adding a flux such as Limestone. However, steel is quite labor intensive, requiring much time, skill, and effort.

Essentially, iron ore is mined, smelted, and then forged.
Or, iron ore and limestone are mined, the iron is smelted with coke to form pig iron, and the pig iron is smelted with limestone (flux) to form steel.

*Sky Iron - Iron derived from meteorites that have a high iron content. This iron comes from the Heavens, and as such, is naturally conductive to the energies commonly used in channeling. It would make ideal material for enchantment. (NOTE: Only something to add if players would be able to create magical items)

COPPER
Copper is found in a number of sources, including Native Copper ore, and copper sulfides and oxides. Native Copper is very simple to use. The copper is simple mined and used as it is necessary. However, native copper is much more rare than cuprite, the ruby red coloured copper sulfide ore that often grows alongside native copper, and some iron oxide ores. Cuprite that grows in desirable crystal shapes can be used for gemstones. Extraction copper from cuprite requires roasting the copper to produce Copper Oxide, then introducing coke or limestone to extract the oxygen impurities. Chalcocite is another copper ore, black or dark grey with a metallic luster. It is relatively soft, and a copper sulfide. The extraction of copper from Chalcocite is similar to the extraction of lead from galena.


COAL
Coal comes in various forms, though most of it is essentially the same in terms of a low tech setting. Certain grades more efficiently, and coal comes from prehistoric organic matter, typically swamps, and can be found in areas where ever there was large amounts of water and carbon based matter in the geologic past. Coal has two main uses in industry. The first is simply as a fuel, and the second is to produce Coke, an important part of the steel making process.


NATIVE GOLD
Gold is fairly straight forward. One of the few ores that comes in a 'pure' form. Gold is available in both sizable nuggets in veins beneath the earth, and through small flakes and pebbles found in rivers.

Gold is also often found as a natural alloy with silver, forming electrum.

SILVER
Silver, unlike gold, very rarely occurs natively in the form of pure nuggets, though such is possible. More often, it is found along side gold (as the natural alloy of electrum), and as Acanthite (a sulfur/silver mix that requires alchemical processes to separate, known more commonly as Silver-Glance) which is often found alongside lead ore Galena. It can also be found as a Tetrahedrite, an ore commonly rich in copper that has silver alongside it. Any form of silver that isn't native requires alchemical processes to extract.

TIN
Tin is another non-native metal, and is found almost exclusively, in useable amounts, in a mineral called Cassiterite. Tin is extracted from normal smelting procedures, by crushing and washing it, then roasting away the volatile oxides, and finally by reducing it with coal and adding limestone to produce both Tin and a slag with impurities.

LEAD
Lead Ore is another none-native metal, found as Galena, a lead-sulfide. In order to extract the lead from the ore, one must roast the galena in a furnace, and then take the resulting metal and smelt it in a furnace with coke to remove the impurities, leaving refined lead.

ZINC
Zinc is obtained from a mineral known as Sphalerite, another sulfide similar to Galena. Sphalerite is often found alongside Galena and pyrite (fool's gold), and varies in color. Some samples can be used for jewelry, when the crystals are large enough, transparent enough, and of a desirable colour, such as yellowish to honey brown, red to orange, or green. The extraction of zinc is done by roasting the Sphalerite to produce zinc oxide, and removing the impurities by adding either coke or lime stone to form Zinc and gasses that dissipate, leaving refined zinc. Zinc oxide can be used as well, but is lower in quality, and full of impurities.

NICKEL
Nickel has many uses, most of which are too advanced for the sort of tech level of CLOK. Similarly, the extraction method of nickel from ores tends to be too advanced for usual alchemical means.

SALPETRE
Nitre is the mineral form of potassium nitrate (KNO3), IE saltpetre. It is a colourless to white mineral, often growing in rectangular prism shaped crystals along several axis, giving it the appearance of rectangular boxes that jut out at odd angles. It is usually found in massive encrustations along cavern walls, and as effervescent growths, and requires little mining as it precipitates from the surrounding environment.

SULFUR
Pure sulfur (native sulfur) often only found near hot springs and volcanic regions, in which large, yellowish crystal can be found growing on the surrounding rocks. Sulfur can also be extracted from the slag of various sulfide ores, using alchemical processes*.

*This is left vaguely intentionally, as it doesn't not run 100% parallel to RL processes.




MECHANIC NOTES


Essentially, all of the sulfide minerals are handled through the same processes. The mineral is roasted, which creates an oxide of the metal. Then the oxygen is removed by introducing coke or limestone (both containing carbon), which creates CO2, which would be vented away from the smelting areas. Sulfuric acid can also be created from sulfide minerals, by collecting the Sulfur dioxide that results as a by product, and treating it with alchemical processes.

Any metal that appears in several minerals would not HAVE to have several mineral forms, but it might be helpful for crafting to have 'tiers' that crafters can work through. IE, some minerals (such as hematite) are easier to work with than others (Magnetite). And some minerals might produce larger amounts of the metal, but be harder to work, or harder to find.

The roasting process of metallurgy generally involves roasting the crushed form of the mineral, and thus a new skill/command (crush) should be implemented. The higher your crush skill, the finer you can get the mineral without ruining it, yielding better results during the other steps of smelting and forging.

Limestone should be a mine-able material as well, easy to find in large quantities (possibly with random fossils, just for RP fun!). Limestone, for the 'flux' portion of forging, would be crushed as well.




MISCELLANEOUS NOTES

Flint was mentioned in Collins' post. I will cover flint at a later date, as it is simply a variety of QUARTZ. Similarly, ROCK SALT is simply halite (Sodium Chloride) and will be covered in the later post, as will OBSIDIAN. Basically, anything that's a non-economic ore will be covered in a second post. I'll also cover alloys in a separate post, at a later date.

[Rias]

Awesome information, Kian. I'd like to get your help when I get around to setting up some more complex systems for the processing and use of these minerals, if you'd be willing. If you have any sort of instant messenger or email that we could communicate with, let me know - you can send the info in an email to rias@contrarium.net.

Regarding sky iron: I've already got it specified as a metal and, while not available to players yet, I do have some items made from it that exist. It's considered a "holy" metal under many names (sky iron, celestial iron, celestium, meteoric iron, etc.) and is particularly lethal to nethrim (beings with a "soul" or "core" mainly made up of nether, rather than spirit). Needless to say, the Templar really like this metal.

While on the subject, the only metals with extraordinary properties at this point are:

Steel: Does a bit of extra damage to nethrim.
Iron: Does a fair amount of extra damage to nethrim.
Sky/Celestial/Meteoric Iron (all the same metal, just different names): Does a large amount of extra damage to nethrim.

All based on the folklore ideas that iron harms or repels witches, the undead, etc. and the 'purity' of iron content in these metals.

[Collins]

Awesome information. I'm glad to see my research wasn't too far off when it came to what would be reasonable for implementation into CLOk.

In regard to the flint, I was thinking that instead of flint, firestones could simply be found when mining in CLOK as a simple alternative. But really, either way works for me. If Rias wanted to move to a more 'realistic' approach....well, I guess Ill wait for the post on those other materials.

I look forward to the second post.

[KianTheArcher]

Well, I personally assumed firestones was just another term for 'flint' on CLOK.


And I'd certainly be able to help when you plan on implementing a more complex mining/forging system. The best way to get in contact with me would be my e-mail. I'll send one to you. And in the meantime, I'll (in the next few days) work on another post, probably able the other minerals and stone post.

[Landion]

To follow up a little follow up on this topic.

Recently we've released iron-ore to go along with the copper-ore and several more 'chunks of rough (gemtype)' which can be found in various areas. Though, these take a significant amount of mining skill to be found.

Current Gemtypes include:
Sapphire
Ruby
Emerald
Diamond

These vary in location and rarity and will be tweaked and changed as needed.

I've also been researching the expansive list of lesser gemtypes and will likely be working on those in the near future.

Future plans are to develop some of the new ore-types to be found via mining. So, any input from others and especialy our neighborhood geologist on this would be quite welcome.

[Landion]

I just released a large list of ores and gemtypes which can now be found in various locations.

Shadgard Copper mines:
Copper
Turquoise
Malachite
Azurite

Ores found elsewhere:
Iron
Gold
Lead
Silver
Tin
Zinc

Gemtypes/Minerals found elsewhere:
Coal
Opal
Topaz
Quartz
Tourmaline
Bloodstone
Garnet
Amethyst
Jade
Aquamarine

These are in addition to the others I mentioned earlier. All ore types should also work in the furnaces to create bars which sell for higher amounts.

I've added some of these to appropriate areas and will be placing more varieties around the game as seems appropriate.

Again, these vary in location and rarity and this system be tweaked and changed as needed with future releases.

[Landion]

Hrm, looks like I need to add limestone as another mineral, based on Kian's post.