Chunk of Coal should be producible

We should be able to produce chunk of coal by throwing pine and maple wood (or wood scraps) into a fireplace or a brazier.

It gets expensive for a crafter who's doing smelting and blacksmithimg to keep going back to the vendor and paying gold for coal.

Please consider adding this feature. Thank you and love the game.

 

that is not how coal is made. Thats how ashes are made.
The energy in coal comes from energy that was stored in giant plants that lived hundreds of millions of years ago in swamp forests, even before the dinosaurs! When these giant plants and ferns died, they formed layers at the bottom of the swamps. Water and dirt began to pile up on top of the dead plant remains. It needs to be mined.

 

While I agree that a chuck of coal should be gatherable (not producible) I also believe that it SHOULD be expensive for crafters to make things. I'm hoping that more coal will begin to appear in mines and other scenes and NPC's will stop selling it, or only sell it at higher prices.

 

Sure. Mining it sounds even better. Just so long as a blacksmith isn't obligated to spend gold on coal.

 

agreed. I actually work in a coal mine in Real Life lol.

 

I think a coal mine would be a reasonable ask. I'd like to see alternatives to buying fuels en masse; coal, salt, wax, & creosote obtainable by crafters at rates that approximate the amount you could get grinding mobs for cash and buying them. The time investment to acquire would be the same, the only difference would be you'd be using producer skills rather than adventuring skills during that time. By definition these areas would need to be relatively safe, as the target audience is crafters, but there should be some threat; I would say no higher than 3skull equivalent zones (unless you wanted to add higher yield ones in higher zones).

Another thought I had would be what if this was linked to town biomes? And they were part of that 'town' ?
Creosote underneath swamps, Salt from Deserts, Coal from underground, Wax from forest (beehives?)
Even if you had to refine these down after harvesting to get the fuels, making it require an extra step, it'd be a neat alternative. We wouldn't need the vendors then and these could also become a tradeable commodity.

 

There are I believe a few coal nodes in-game but not yet functional. I'm really looking forward to when ALL resources can be gathered. As that has always been part of the plan.

 

You're talking about charcoal... And actually that's more complicated than throwing wood in a brazier

 

Coal can be mined. I've gotten some that way. It's just too few nodes and not enough return to make it worthwhile. There definitely needs to be a coal mine.

 

Where did you guys find any coal? I read that there were a few nodes in Solace Forest but as yet I haven't found a one.

 

It is already expensive for crafters to make things, my reference is masterworking and enchanting. The issue for those two crafting activities is the cost of total loss of the item on failures (to the crafter) vs the price that has to be charged to the purchaser to make up for those losses. With the economy in its current state it's not very cost-effective to masterwork and enchant items that are affordable to the casual player because of the failure rates being what they are.

Masterworking and Enchanting are the only crafting activities that cause a total item loss. Every other failure in any type of crafting results in fuel loss only.

A welcome change for masterworking and enchanting would be to factor both Repair and Salvage skill levels into a recovery rate to return some of the Silver, Gold or Gems in the item to the crafter on failure.

 

I would prefer all failed crafting results in a loss. How does someone fail at making bread but keep all the ingredients? (Which is what happens now)

 

They have been functional in the past. I have mined coal before. Just not in the significant amounts required for crafting. It was just like any other mineral with only 1-3 per node.

 

It absolutely does with enchanting and masterworking! 100% loss on failure is pretty sobering.

 

That same argument goes with blacksmithing. How often is the metal lost and unable to be melted down again just because the tip of the sword broke?

 

I thought it was always the intent that fuel would be a gold sink?

 

Its supposed to be, but they also said that these should be attainable in game as well (much like reagents). Not sure if this has changed or not.

 

An example that fits your argument because the reality is bread is blended ingredients and now a part of a homogenous whole. If you fail making a doghouse, do you lose your nails and your shingles?

Do you craft at all? Or just amuse yourself with dental picks?

Crafting is half this game. THERE ARE NO REALISTICALLY PLAYABLE MOB DROPS OF ARMOR OR WEAPONS IN SOTA.

It's ridiculous that improving crafted armor and weapons beyond a base item can result in a total loss of all components except scraps on failure.

 

:sigh:

Crafting is not half this game, it's 1/3 of the game perhaps.

As for "THERE ARE NO REALISTICALLY PLAYABLE MOB DROPS OF ARMOR OR WEAPONS IN SOTA" that's because if their were then no one would need to craft it. It's not a system based on "realism" for a very good reason, we're not capable of creating that, and if we did create that it would include other things like death, disease, PTSD, and a slew of other "realities" that most people come here to escape.

The reason that crafting needs destroyed items is so there's a reason to craft items in the first place. If your idea of a good crafting system is one where you don't have a chance to fail and lose what you're crafting, well then you must also be supportive of having an economy where supply is unlimited and demand is next to zero.

 

I don't expect a total loss. The reason to craft items is to use them, not to spend hours gathering and then get a die roll to determine whether your successful of not. Take out the use of COTOs to fully repair items and use repair skill instead.

And again, I ask you, do you craft? What's your Adventurer and Crafter levels past the close to 16k messages you've posted? ? How much time do you actually spend playing this game vs. Proselytizing on how the rest of us should be?