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[G-Flex]

Your most common alloys of gold are with copper (rose gold) and silver (electrum, but this is actually another way to get "white gold" (and white gold is another name for electrum), electrum is important only in that it is actually a naturally-occuring alloy, so the notion of purposefully alloying electrum is a little odd).

"White gold" usually refers to other gold alloys, such as those of palladium (commonly used these days) or nickel (less used now due to reasons including allergic reactions in some people). You mentioned nickel, but yeah, other things are used these days, not that that matters for DF.

Most gold we use in the real world is some kind of alloy of gold, silver, and copper all at once.  A good measure would be 2 gold, 1 silver, 1 copper, which would make 12 carat gold.

[/quote]

Wait, silver too? Source?

Since mixing in copper makes gold more reddish (hence, rose gold), you can actually mix copper in with white metals like zinc or nickel, and produce a somewhat more yellowish gold than the white gold formula above.  Something like 3 gold, 1 nickel, 1 copper.

For what it's worth, zinc wasn't isolated until relatively recently; its existence as an elemental metal in DF is highly anachronistic.

Oh, hey, and Black Bronze, according to Wikipedia is 96% copper and 4% gold, but in DF is 2 copper to 1 gold to 1 silver (no idea how silver got in there)

You mentioned Toady's notes about Corinthian bronze; that's where the silver comes from.





Regarding gold furniture, another problem is: That's a lot of fucking gold. If you have that much gold lying around that you're making furniture out of it, you're doing pretty well for yourself. I could see some kind of ridiculous gold throne being made for a king, but you'd have to be pretty careful with it. I don't know that strict restrictions should be in place except for maybe objects that you know will see heavy use.

[TaintedMustard]

As has been said, items should experience wear. Soft metals like lead and gold should wear from use rather quickly, while steel should not. Gold and lead should resist corrosion, while normal iron should rust. A golden statue or sarcophagus that no one ever touches should last for a long time. Pure golden coins, not so much.

[G-Flex]

Adamantine isn't even terribly rare these days.

But yeah, in the new versions, part of the problem is the completely absurd mineral saturation.


Iron and steel are overvalued in the game more than anything else. I'm not sure how inaccurate the other values are.

[Neonivek]

I don't just get you

I am happy though that you said this instead of just assuming I am saying mumbo jumbo like a lot of people seem to believe (in general, not on this topic).

[Neonivek]

Well not only that Eugenitor but there is a lot more metal to go around in Dwarf Fortress

As well Mining is a lot easier and a LOT safer... and heck while we are at it... a LOT more plentiful then real life.

Though you are right, though it isn't the worst in that respect. Rare gemstones which are legitimately rare in Dwarf Fortress arn't worth too much.

[G-Flex]

I've bought platinum bars from merchants for 413 dwarfbucks, and bought lead for 55 dwarfbucks. And this is at an inflated price since I asked for it. It was all right; I had enough used goblin socks and loincloths to afford all the metal bars they had.

Fair point, but I think your numbers may be wrong there. In general, platinum is worth 20 times the value of lead. The objective value in-game of a lead bar is 10 (5*2), versus 200 (5*40) for a platinum bar. Your given ratio is about 7.5 instead of this ratio of 20, so that's a tad misleading and probably due to whatever weird circumstances existed in-game.

Of course, it should probably be worth more, and be more rare (as it once was).

[Pilsu]

Caravans should really ask 5x the price when trading materials. Same for your stuff. It should still be possible to make money out of crafting with imported materials even with such inflated prices, you'd just have to make good quality items to manage it. For reference, a single bar of platinum would cost 1 grand, as much as an exceptional quality mail shirt made of iron. A little excessive in many people's minds I suppose but a good direction to take the game in. Makes trading materials actually worthwhile if you have no artisans yet.

[NW_Kohaku]

Caravans should really ask 5x the price when trading materials. Same for your stuff. It should still be possible to make money out of crafting with imported materials even with such inflated prices, you'd just have to make good quality items to manage it. For reference, a single bar of platinum would cost 1 grand, as much as an exceptional quality mail shirt made of iron. A little excessive in many people's minds I suppose but a good direction to take the game in. Makes trading materials actually worthwhile if you have no artisans yet.

As long as you can sell basic food items for tens of thousands of dwarfbucks, you aren't going to balance that aspect of trading.

Quintuple overcharge is outlandish, and is the sort of thing you'd only expect of what are essentially monopolies of the market.  For basic trade goods like wood or cloth, which are completely fungible, and where it is entirely reasonable and historically valid for producers to export to other nations to be turned into finished products, possibly to be shipped back at a significant profit, even after merchants take a price markup twice, something like doubling and rarely tripling the price would be as high as it goes.

[Cotes]

Eh, I don't think the value of metals should be the same as in real life as long as it is in balance with the rarity of the metal (in DF). I also don't really like the idea making all valuable metals super-rare. I mean sure, a bit rarer than they are now perhaps, but not so much that you won't dare to use gold or aluminum or platinum for anything because you chronically fear you won't ever be able to find enough for that bling-house megaproject if you do.

While on that subject, shouldn't the net loss of metals when creating and then melting an object be a lot less? I know theres in real life some loss, but surely not over 50% like in DF?

[NW_Kohaku]

Actually, part of the problem is that every bar of metal is 2 liters, and the whole bar will be used, regardless of how small the finished product is, which is why you can recover as little as 10% of a bar of metal for metling something down - a gold earring simply isn't nearly the size of a two-liter bar of metal.

[Cotes]

Then create small items like that in sets, similar to bolts?

[Pilsu]

As long as you can sell basic food items for tens of thousands of dwarfbucks, you aren't going to balance that aspect of trading.

I figure the very concept of "prepared meals" will vanish in time. Alcohol already has invisible quality mods which will likely be used for food too.

Quintuple overcharge is outlandish, and is the sort of thing you'd only expect of what are essentially monopolies of the market.  For basic trade goods like wood or cloth, which are completely fungible, and where it is entirely reasonable and historically valid for producers to export to other nations to be turned into finished products, possibly to be shipped back at a significant profit, even after merchants take a price markup twice, something like doubling and rarely tripling the price would be as high as it goes.

I was just trying to drum up the price of the materials. I suppose we could mess with the value mods of the rocks, ores, gems, blocks, logs and bars themselves. Multiplying the variables by 4 makes them much more reasonable in my opinion. You actually have to make decent stuff out of the materials to make money and luxury suddenly means something.

Granted, I don't remember what the trader profit margins are and how much they sway with skill.


Smelting results should not be tied to size in the first place. Anyhow, getting sidetracked here.

[Mel_Vixen]

Dont forget to take tolls and taxes into account. These things were rather common especially in places like the 14th century Germany with its many Barony's etc. Also For whats worth lead is heavy and your Mule can only carry so and so much of it so transporting lead would be rather Idiotic if you dont make a decent profit from it. Since Lead is less worth then the platinum the price should turn up more then Platinums price to make up for the costs of transportation.

Werent bars in made in kilograms?

[G-Flex]

As long as you can sell basic food items for tens of thousands of dwarfbucks, you aren't going to balance that aspect of trading.

I figure the very concept of "prepared meals" will vanish in time. Alcohol already has invisible quality mods which will likely be used for food too.

Prepared food already does have quality modifiers, just as much as booze does (actually slightly more, since it's applied per-ingredient).

[NW_Kohaku]

I figure the very concept of "prepared meals" will vanish in time. Alcohol already has invisible quality mods which will likely be used for food too.

Prepared food already does have quality modifiers, just as much as booze does (actually slightly more, since it's applied per-ingredient).

I think he's talking about making prepared food have quality modifiers that behave similarly to alcohol quality modifiers, which is to say, that they don't multiply product value, and don't appear, even though they still do invisibly exist.

The problem with prepared food is that, if you make a roast, you get four ingredients, each of which gets its own quality modifier, which then gets added together to be the quality modifier of every single item in the stack (so you effectively get four times the quality right from the start), which then gets ANOTHER quality modifier that applies to the whole thing, meaning you can get (5+5+5+5)*5 = 100 as a quality modifier (and that's not even assuming any masterworks), times the base value of the food, times the number of food items in the stack. The value of prepared food basically rises geometrically. Which is why, if you really purposefully set it up, you can get food stacks worth millions of dbs, essentially capable of buying whole CITIES, much less caravans.