Hey guys, I tried testing this in arena, but the results were inconclusive. Do nethercap arrows or weapons freeze what they hit? It would be quite interesting if they could harm enemies by freezing them.
Nether-cap arrows and weapons are cold, yes. But they are a quite different
magnitude of cold then you are thinking of here. They have a fixed temperature of 10,000 Urists, which is the freezing point of water. So it just means that the level of cold is very similar to touching an ice cube (warmer then that actually), not that it will cause all of your fingers to develop frostbite and fall off.
Nethercap doesn't freeze water or booze. Based on the arena testing, I don't think it works. Damn. Maybe if I lowered the temperature enough, it would.
Water in nether-cap buckets/barrels does not freeze because DF actually accounts for the fact that heat exchange is not perfect. While nether cap
does make the surrounding area slightly cooler, it doesn't absorb enough heat energy to freeze water. Assuming you lowered the temperature enough it
might freeze things, but water that is stored in barrels/buckets is also slightly abstracted, so it might not.
There is likely some heat exchange modeled there, but I don't even think creatures die from the cold, short of being encased in ice (even though blood has a freezing point).
Cold
can kill creatures, but the majority of creatures have enough layering (or clothing) that they are fine. If you set world gen to have a lower minimum temperature and then embark somewhere cold you will notice that dwarves that are exposed outside will develop damage on their exposed body parts.
It's not that they are so cold, it's that they stay that temperature in all conditions.
Correct. The reason nether-cap things are immune to magma is that no matter what temperature they are immersed in they will always have an interior temperature of 10,000 Urists, preventing them from catching fire.
indeed. What we need to know is to what extent temperature interactions are modeled. Also most organic creatures have the homeotherm tag. That may have an effect as well.
Homeotherm tends to set the "default" body temperature of a creature, much as how the "default" temperature of the human body is about 98 degrees. It therefore has a small effect upon what temperature a creature emits towards its surroundings, but currently has very little total effect. It is also believed that it has a small effect upon when a creature starts to take heat/cold damage.