Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[antymattar]

... seeing as the tech-cap is ~1400s.

That word... That single word.....
Once toady gets married and has kids and Im an old man then toadys kids will continue the game and then the tech cap will be like 2050 AD or something. 

[JohnieRWilkins]

Mercury seems heavily anachronistic, seeing as the tech cap is ~1400s.

Mercury wouldn't really alter the feel of the game from fantasy to mundane though. It could have cool applications in alchemy and increase the coolness/breadth of the stuff you can make as an alchemist. I'm all for the addition of mercury.

[catoblepas]

People who keep bringing up the tech cap seem to be forgetting that it was in use as early as the BCs. The Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang (famous for the terracotta army) drank mercury to prolong his life, and is believed to have died from it. His tomb had a map of china in it with the bodies of water using mercury. So much mercury was used in its construction, that his tomb has yet to be excavated, due to the high levels of mercury that persist to this day. He died in 210 BC. If aluminum is in DF, then I see no reason why mercury should not be. It seems like the sort of crazy thing nobles might mandate (hopefully so they drink it) Also, tombs with underground moats of mercury guarded by mummy soldiers and loaded traps would be awesome.

*edit* Wikipedia gives even more examples than I was aware of: Mercury has been found in Egyptian tombs as early as 1500BC. It was used as medicine by the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Chinese, the Maya, and in Medieval Europe. There is Plenty of precedent here people. I for one would love to have mercury available in the game.

Furthermore, if alchemy makes a comeback into the game, mercury would be an obvious candidate for inclusion, being one of the materials used frequently in alchemy.

[ImBocaire]

Once custom liquids come around, I want to be able to make tombs flowing with rivers of mercury.

[Loud Whispers]

I want rivers of blood and syndrome inducing rain.

[Starver]

Yes, but enough about your dayjob, we're supposed to be talking about DF here.

[Dwarven_Sniper]

If df can go up to 1400AD it could easily include mercury. There is substantial evidence that it was used commonly by Egyptians and Romans as early as 500B.C. So it does fit the time line, essentially. Another thing that I believe is being over looked is that Mercury dissolves into our atmosphere. Large open pools of mercury would lead to mercury vapors and would eventually fully dissolve into our atmosphere.

[Sphalerite]

My own experimental mod has mercury and a reaction for distilling mercury from cinnibar.  This is actually quite possible within the technology level of DF.

I also have reactions and workshops for grinding up certain stones and then extracting trace amounts of gold dust from them using mercury.

I'd like to mod in the ability to make mercury-based ointments to cure infections, but DF doesn't have any way to do that yet.  Maybe for once the next release introduces more advanced interactions.

Oh, and I also have modded in a mercury-cell electrolysis workshop for splitting salt into lye and chlorine.  Which is admittedly so far beyond the technology of DF that it's just silly.