ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Dwarven steel is simply Dwarven-made steel. They're amazing metalworkers, so they've got the techniques needed to make steel just plain better. Why is there nothing like this for other metals? Stralite and voratun are, to my knowledge, simply rare and exceedingly useful metals, so why is there no Dwarven crafted versions of these metals? It'd be interesting to find the occassional T5 Dwarven Stralite gear, and there could be some rather interesting and powerful T6 Dwarven voratun artifacts.

You're missing the fact that steel is not quite a metal; it is an alloy (in a loose sense of a word). In our realm, for exapmle, there exists a lot of different variations of steel requiring different levels of technology to succesfully execute; and dwarves may have access to either superiour equipment or family secrets that allow them to produce steel with qualities superior to that of other establishments. (Their throne is still iron, for some reason).
Stralite and voratun, on the other hand, do not seem to be alloys; indeed, Borfast's Cage is stated to be made of an alloy of voratun and stralite, which is almost a surefire sign that they are pure, if rare, metals. Maybe the technology exists to enhance them somehow, like steel is an enhancement of iron, but it seems that dwarves either didn't get a hang of it yet or are just not exporting it yet.

Yeah, and for gameplay side of things: 5 tiers; adding more would blur things

Maybe as a special reward in level 800 or so of Infinite Dungeon?

Though I agree. It'd mess with the balance of the game, and power creep is a big no.

I've always wanted to make more materials which sit on the same tiers as existing ones. As an example, I was thinking of magesteel as an alternative, rarer T3 material. It'd have the stats of a T2 item, but get arcane egos like a T4 item.

Also, I wanted to note that the code supports an arbitrary number of ego slots - we could have a "material prefix" slot fairly easily.

The dwarvophile in me thinks it would be cool to see tier 3 renamed, and "Dwarven" made into an ego along the lines of "Short (staff)". Either give it a small boost to armor/defense/base damage, or more interestingly, a small boost to ego multiplier. That way you could have the whole superior Dwarven craftsmanship thing without muddling tiers. Assuming that's something you wanted.

Interesting idea. I approve wholeheartedly. However...

Iron, Steel, [?], Stralite, Voratun.

Signallum? Titanium? Osmium? Bronze? Narrativium? Unobtanium? Explodium? Adamantium? Mithril? Vibranium? Potatoes?

Red wrote:Signallum? Titanium? Osmium? etc.

I suggest gollum or gollium (which, of course, should be a precious metal.)

grayswandir wrote:I've always wanted to make more materials which sit on the same tiers as existing ones. As an example, I was thinking of magesteel as an alternative, rarer T3 material. It'd have the stats of a T2 item, but get arcane egos like a T4 item.

Also, I wanted to note that the code supports an arbitrary number of ego slots - we could have a "material prefix" slot fairly easily.

Material is already included as an "infix"

Also, this is a great idea. I've been thinking of cool things which might be zone-dependent like the mummy wrappings currently are. Stuff like:
- Crystal daggers (in alt.OF and Scint.Caves), t2 with only one Arcane ego each, plus lifedrain
- Living ice swords and shields (Norgos), t2 with only one Nature ego each, they deal Cold damage and give Cold respen
- Phantasmal ammo and axes (Gloom), t2 with at least one Psionic ego each, they deal lower than average damage (randomly Mind or Darkness)
- Wyrmtooth ammo and daggers (Sandworm and Daikara), t3 with at least one Nature ego each, they deal a random "Dragon" type damage (Fire, Cold, Lightning, Acid) and restore some Equilibrium each time you strike

Obviously it'd be best if each "special" material got a custom graphics set, but maybe just recolored stock gear could be good enough to start.

This is probably the coolest brainstorming conversation to come about since last year's Dreamscape thread.

Lyoncet wrote:This is probably the coolest brainstorming conversation to come about since last year's Dreamscape thread.

All my stuff is just reposting older ideas which came from some other thread, or from IRC.

Steel is an alloy, one of the reason medieval armor is rarely as good as a replica made from modern materials is that we have over time created methods to assure the correct ratio of carbon put in with the iron that is part of the steel making process.

Is voratun an alloy like steel or just some metal like copper or iron?

The process matters to a high degree with steel, but this is not true of all metals. Some metals are simply hard to work with but if you can work with them you won't see huge differences past that point. Some metals are easy to work with and in addition won't matter much how good your refining process is. Steel is not particularly harder to work with than iron, but getting the ratio just right (and perhaps more important doing it consistently) is much harder. Working with copper is fairly easy and creating decent copper to work with is also fairly straightforward. Working with an alloy like bronze is harder since its an alloy but in general the difference between variations is not nearly as dramatic as steel. Working with aluminum or titantium is very difficult challenge but does that have the pickiness alloy wise that steel does, and the differences are generally seen in the manufacturing side of things.

It could be that all/most stralite and voratun are actually dwarf forged. So there are no non-Dwarven versions for their materials and thus it is not needed to define items as 'dwarven' or not.

(...this is not really a serious explanation considering you can find this stuff in the East and I do not think there are dwarves there. I just thought it was worth saying )

I actually thought this, but reached the same conclusion you did before posting.

That being said, it's possible all stralite and voratun is Dwarven or Orcish make. Orcs are some of the most cunning, intelligent, advanced, and militaristic people out there, so I can full well believe they have the ability to smith as well as Dwarves, and that would explain all the stralite and voratun in the East. This makes more sense given the Pale Drake lore, since that town was right on top of massive stocks of both metals, but never mentioned forging a thing or trading to anyone but Dwarves.

As a side note for this, it'd be cool if any T3 metal objects you get in the East are Orcish Steel.

cctobias wrote:Is voratun an alloy like steel or just some metal like copper or iron?

You can extract diamonds (carbon) from voratun, so obviously the former (although you can also get pearls from it, just don't ask me how or why.)