40d Talk:Metal

Brittle flag

what does brittle mean. (For the game, I know what it means). --Soyweiser 13:20, 6 November 2007 (EST)

Hey Soyweiser, if you look at the Raw file below there are tags for [BRITTLE] on some of the metals. I can only assume that this increases the chances of a weapon or other object breaking when in use; but that's just a guess. --Markavian

Yeah, I saw that in the raw files indeed. Perhaps it makes the items degrade faster. But we have no proof of this yet? nobody tested it? --Soyweiser 06:47, 7 November 2007 (EST)

I'm pretty sure that the brittle flag means that you cannot make craft goods and furniture from it. Note that bismuth and pig iron cannot be made into any craft good or furniture item.

Alloys

Alright, someone merged Alloy into this page, but there's also alloy information at smelting. If not its own page, where are we gonna put that info? --Turgid Bolk 01:18, 7 November 2007 (EST)

Counts

Is the number of resulting bars always the same as the one of used bars/ore pieces? There used to be some bugs, resulting in getting more or less bars, than expected. Has anyone checked this in the last version? Dorten 04:06, 10 January 2008 (EST)

Galena. Tetrahedrite. VengefulDonut 10:27, 10 January 2008 (EST)

Graph

Anyone want to make a graph like http://archive.dwarffortresswiki.net/images/9/9c/Metalchart.png ? If nobody says yes, I might give it a try. --Savok 15:58, 2 February 2008 (EST)

That's pretty awesome... t'would be quite the undertaking to get it fully updated and still understandable though. The fuel flow is a tad bit confusing, but not very much so. --Edward 21:56, 2 February 2008 (EST)

Additionally, width would have to be less than about 781px, which was the width of the old image and nigh horizontal scrollbar width. --Savok 22:02, 2 February 2008 (EST)

Pewter values

Just making sure my math is right...

   Tin (2)     Trifle pewter (4)
   Tin (2) ==> Trifle pewter (4)
Copper (2)     Trifle pewter (4)

6 units of wealth have been converted into 12 units of wealth. A 100% value increase.

   Tin (2)     Fine pewter (5)
   Tin (2) ==> Fine pewter (5)
   Tin (2)     Fine pewter (5)
Copper (2)     Fine pewter (5)

8 units of wealth have been converted into 20 units of wealth. A 150% value increase.

   Tin (2)     Lay pewter (3)
   Tin (2) ==> Lay pewter (3)
  Lead (2)     Lay pewter (3)
Copper (2)     Lay pewter (3)

8 units of wealth have been converted into 12 units of wealth. A 50% value increase.

The reason to do lay pewter over fine pewter or trifle pewter would be

• More bars per smelting over trifle pewter. Potentially important if no magma.
• Less tin consumption. Tin can be used for bronze alloys which are weapon capable.

Correct? --Shagie 14:35, 7 March 2008 (EST)

8 units of wealth into 20 units of wealth is 250%, not 150%. Emmanovi 16:21, 22 November 2008 (EST)

If you go from 100% to 250%, that's called an increase of 150%. Shagie's math and terminology are both correct. --Sowelu 19:49, 26 November 2008 (EST)

Ah, point taken. I guess I shouldn't skim-read in future, heh. Emmanovi 18:01, 28 November 2008 (EST)

Bar count?

Is there a page that lists how many bars are needed to forge different things? There's some info at armor. But there's no info at weapon, crafts, or furniture. Should there be a unified list here? --Strangething 17:46, 16 July 2008 (EDT)

"All metal furniture requires 3 bars to forge except for chains, animal traps, buckets and blocks." (not my quote) --AlexFili 03:59, 17 July 2008 (EDT)

Metalsmith's forge. VengefulDonut 09:58, 18 July 2008 (EDT)

alloys

is something required to make the fancier alloys like nickel-silver or electrum? i melted down some cages at my smelter but i couldn't make nickle silver or bronze – unsigned comment by Eerr

Nickel silver requires 2 Nickel + 1 Copper + 1 Zinc. Electrum is 1 Gold and 1 Silver. For rough ideas in-game, go to the stones menu of the Stocks menu and click into stones to find what they can be used in. Or look up the reactions file in your data. -Fuzzy 18:27, 22 November 2008 (EST)

Profits

I added a 'Profit' column to the metal/reaction list. This shows the value added by performing the reaction: There's "profit per bar" if you want to make the most of limited bars, and "total profit" if you're worried about smelter time or limited fuel. Should make it easier to see which reactions are better at a glance, of course it doesn't take a lot of things into account...like "bismuth is otherwise useless". Pig iron and steel are a little weird because they have other inputs too. Hope you like it, revert if it sucks. --Sowelu 19:47, 26 November 2008 (EST)

Recent changes to the profit column have been for the worse. Generally, the metal bars are used to make something and are not kept in bar form, so the value of the actual bars is much less important than the material multiplier. The profit column should (and at some point did) reflect the change in material multiplier. This can easily be used to compute the value difference of nickel silver doors vs doors of the base materials or similar for any other metal item. VengefulDonut 10:18, 23 January 2009 (EST)

Agreed, and reverted. The pig iron entry looks funny to me, but the rest look right. --Squirrelloid 19:21, 23 January 2009 (EST)

USE THE FRIGGIN CALCULATOR!!!

Comparing values like that (i mean iron (10) + pig iron (14) + flux (2) + coal (2)) is absolutely inconvenient! Cause this way you get equal values for flux and coal for example, but in fact flux STONE worth 6 and coal BAR worth 10. This way you give absolutely wrong and irrelevant profits!--Dorten 01:44, 6 February 2009 (EST)

Dorten, stone and bar aren't products, they're just materials that need further processing. So the important thing is not how much a stone or bar is worth but it's material value(MV). Flux stone is flux MV (2)* stone modifier (3) = 6 and coal bar is 2*5=10 indeed, but when you decide to make, let's say, a statue from these, it's worth 60 for both coal and flux. The profit column contains the MV increase, not the bar/stone item's value increase. Norill

The "real value profit" you end up getting with things made of steel is going to vary non-linearly based on what you make out of the steel. Perhaps we should just drop off all flux and coal costs from the profit calc and add a note about what is not included. VengefulDonut 10:26, 6 February 2009 (EST)

I don't think we should drop that costs. When you do that, you recive a very simple equation which can be solved by anyone who dont care about coal's and flux's MV. Lets leave that harder math as is. Norill

Why do you care about the MV of coal? VengefulDonut 17:12, 6 February 2009 (EST)

Gold as Weapon/Armor?

I just had a moody dwarf forge a Golden Left Gauntlet. Is this something strange, or has anyone else seen it before? (The page doesn't list Gold as usable for armor or weapons, so that's why I'm asking) -Drake1500, April 17/2009

Check this page out: Moods:Artifacts created. I think this will answer your question. Basically with artifacts the first thing they grab becomes the primary substance. When the message comes up that the dwarf has chosen a workshop, I forbid other metal bars until they have the first steel bar, then let them take whatever else they want! --Kwieland 20:28, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

What would you give as an approximate modifier for using a nonstandard substance like Gold for armor/weapons? 50%? Would you recommend I forbid this gauntlet because of what it's made out of? (And it's early in my fortress, I don't have any Steel/Iron yet as I haven't found any iron ore yet, so that point is moot) -Drake1500 15:49 17 April 2009 (Canada Mountain Time)

I would treat it as roughly equal to steel. Somewhere I read that Artifacts are "much better" than normal items, if that helps.--Kwieland 23:22, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Modifier for artifact-quality is 2X, I think. This would make the total effectiveness 100%, so it would be equivalent to iron, going by this and this. Emmanovi 12:01, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Complex recipes

I think this table would benefit from having some non-standard recipes if the Value change is significant such as Tetrahedrite to Billon(+9) or Galena to Billon(+5). I put it up myself but it was reverted.--Mrdudeguy 06:00, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Three problems (that I see) with that: 1) it would mess with the sortable function if you had 3 "value increases" under one metal, 2) it's highly redundant, that info is on several other pages already, and better, and 3) that's not the focus of this page or table. The table focuses on metals, and gives a basic idea of their purpose, not alloys and the all the variable ways to make them.--Albedo 07:07, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

The term value increase (like profit) is strange in that everyone seems to think it means something different (just look other talk on this page). That was why I originally replaced it with the strange-seeming word "difference". Since the confusion is cropping back up, I'm going to put the term back. VengefulDonut 13:22, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps a new column for ore-to-metal value change is warranted also, since some people prefer to just use the ore for item production. However, metal doesn't stand a chance for higher value yield (except when making blocks), so it doesn't seem that worthwhile. VengefulDonut 13:31, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps "Value" should be changed to "Value multiplier", with a brief explanation (more than there is now.) That number (and term) by itself is indeed misleading.--Albedo 13:37, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Silver bolts?

It says silver can't be used for ammo, but I've been keeping a site in trade goods with a few bundles of silver bolts selling for as much as 6000* a pop (given a large demand for them, yes - 3600 base). Dorf and Dumb 06:33, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Globs of metal?

Confession time. I've been fighting off sieges by using Gibbed's Tweak, to light them on fire. But after I did this this time, I wound up with these ≈ symbols on the map. I look at them, and they're {Iron}, {Bronze}, etc. It also happened when I caught a dragon, who managed to breathe fire on my trade depot, and when he crushed it, Lead appeared in the same way. What is this, and how would I use it?--Aescula 10:30, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

You can't use it - globs of molten metal cannot be reclaimed and will simply disappear on the next season change. Also, just how hot were you making those sieges? Iron won't melt even in magma, so you'd have to have boosted the temperature insanely high to do that... --Quietust 13:43, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Wonderful, that kinda wastes it. For these, I simply add a 0 to the instant temperature, not touching the permanent, of course. This defaults it to 65535, thus lighting anything flammable (including invaders, but not fire imps >_<) on fire. And apparently stuff to melt nicely. --Aescula 21:27, 18 January 2010 (UTC)