v0.31 Talk:Make your own weapons

Awkward title?

I get that this is what the 40d article was called, but wouldn't 'Forging Guide' or something similar be better? The current one is awkwardly titled and uses improper grammar anyway (Making your own weapons would be proper). IMO redirecting this to a new Forging Guide page would be better, and with the new version out, right now is the most appropriate time to do so. --Retro 01:27, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not even sure of the necessity of this article. v0.31:Weapon would probably be a better place for it. Guides should only be made if there is sufficient information that it would clog up the main page on the subject, like bedroom designs. --Mikaka 01:31, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I vote we just redirect this to v0.31:Weapon for now, and put all the info there. --Eagle0600 01:43, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I do see the use of the article (mostly the old one) as a guide - see the 40d version of it for what I mean. If it were retitled, cleaned up, and adapted to include blacksmithing and armorsmithing I could definitely see its use as a more heavily-detailed 'forging guide.' The 'metalsmith's forge' page seems too much about the workshop than its purpose to put it there though. --Retro 01:48, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Not "weapon". This should have a link from weapon.

The need for this article was mainly for the newbie who wanted to save on those damn expensive (300?) axes, which is not as much of a consideration now. But it also walks them thru how to create weapons, which is a bit of a mystery to the new player. True, every subsection is redundant to some other article, but a new player would have to find and digest about 5 different articles to understand what is on this one page - starting build, ore, smelting, weapon, weaponsmith, maybe non-Dwarf's Guide to rock - yay.

The title is awkward, agreed, but, sim to the Non-Dwarf's Guide to Rock, it's not a "tier one" article, it's a specialty topic, narrowly focused to one purpose, and expanding on several indirectly associated tier-one concepts. The fact that axes are now less expensive (17 for a wood one!) doesn't mean that it's not useful to the new player. Reworking it to a "Forging Guide" is a great idea imo - better name, more widely applicable, and the current specific material can be a subsection. Take the basic concept and have (sub)subsections (or just a table) on chains, anvils, armor - every commonly needed metal item, w/ what is needed re raw materials and skill. Use "forge an axe" as a step-by-step example, and I think it's a winner. --Albedo 20:10, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Cool beans. I'm interested in this, so I'll give it a shot sometime after the weekend, probably Monday. --Retro 20:32, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Really, there still are savings. 17 points is a lot to pay for something made for 3 points. So, a Forging Guide is only for the forging aspect, and ignoring the roles of the carpenter. And that is still considered making your own weapons. Though, maybe this could be named something like "The non-dwarf's guide to weaponmaking" or even combined "The non-dwarf's guide to everything" for every guide in one.--Dree12 22:51, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

'...to everything' would be a monster of a page and incredibly unnavigable. Adding 'embark strategies' to the embark page would be nice, but the pros/cons of stuff and the math of it isn't quite the same - I'm talking about removing the 'embark' aspect of this page entirely and replacing it with a how-to-forge-everything-and-how-much guide and a quick table of material costs. I dunno, Albedo gets what I'm playing at. When I have a draft up it'll make more sense. --Retro 23:01, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, the focus is changed from "bring this on embark" to "here's how you make forge stuff from scratch" (metal only, if all basic sub-types). Then, at the very bottom, can be a minor subsection about what to bring on embark to achieve the above w/ diff metals, sim to the "What to bring" subsection. (Also note that the "weapons grade" metals are now no longer the same sliding scale for weak/good/better/best weapons.)
Dree - there is already a "non-dwarf's guide to everything" - it can be found here.--Albedo 02:12, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Wagonite

Possibly a silly observation, but you can break your wagon down into three wood logs - for the truly economical, this could shave 9 points off the first builds (64 -> 54 for bronze and 84 -> 75 for steel) and less for the second builds. - Ancient History 16:47, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Eh... true enough, but the supplied builds are not COMPLETE builds. They don't consider how much other stuff you might want to bring along, and as written they don't go into detail about how to use the supplies. They're there more as example calculations. Somebody might want to use the wagonite for bed supplies, while somebody else might prefer it for barrels, and a third person might need it to build workshops. If you're going into a heavily forested region, chopping trees is more useful than buying logs, so you might use the wagonite to get the process started and then start whacking trees for further wood. If you're embarking on a glacier, though, you'll really only have your starting logs, so you'll spend on those and the wagonite will just be a drop in that bucket. So me "spending" the wagonite here isn't as useful to a reader as me spending 3 or 9 points on logs. --DeMatt 02:31, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Numbers

I am not at home at the moment, so I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I can already tell you that the math on this page is way off on a few things (not everything).

I know that coke and charcoal cost 10pts each at embark. I don't remember if copper is 6 or 9 for the ore, but I know that a copper bar is 10.

There are a few other things.

I am adding this article to my watch list so that I can find it easily when I get home, and I will try to clean it up a bit. :)

Burlingk 02:53, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm...

No, the math is correct. Bars of charcoal and coke do indeed cost 10P, as do bars of copper. However, the examples aren't taking BARS. They're taking STONES. Stones of bituminous coal and lignite cost 3P, as of 0.31.08, but require smelting to turn into fuel. --DeMatt 03:31, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

But the article was stating that the ORE cost 3 as... Err... Rereading. I have to retract my statement. :P I must confess to being a dumba**... The article still needs a little work, but my own assertions were false. I stand corrected. :-) I somehow registered "3 of each, costing 18 each" as costing 3 each. ^^ -- Burlingk

Bismuth bronze is pretty, but expensive

I've redone the calculations and tidied up the section. Unfortunately, as noted in the article, bismuth bronze supplies cost more than regular bronze. Increasing to eight items' supplies, the regular bronze only costs 69 points with coal, while the bismuth bronze equivalent costs 72. Wood-only is even worse - 84 points for regular bronze, but 96 for bismuth bronze. It's the fact that you have to smelt the bismuth supplies to bars, before alloying them together, that accounts for the cost increase. --DeMatt 03:48, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

might be cheaper if you happen to embark near a volcano. --75.6.250.65 05:15, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Ore Changes in 31.19

Copy paste will only get you so far, the introduction is talking about the abundance of minerals, for 31.19 this is certainly no longer the case. Also the usefullness of this article decreases as starting civs have less types of ore available. --82.171.161.117 09:06, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Copy-pasted? Har. This article was written and updated for 31.01 through 31.18, and has yet to be revamped to account for the changes in ore availability in 31.19. I'll add a note to that effect. --DeMatt 06:56, 28 February 2011 (UTC)