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[AceSV]

I was thinking of making some more interesting fantasy metals.  They'd be based off the classical elements, Fire - Pyrochalcum, Air - Aerochalcum, Water - Hydrochalcum and Earth - Geochalcum and form alloys, Fire + Air = Thunder Brontochalcum, Air + Water = Ice Kyrochalcum, Water + Earth = Life Biochalcum, Earth + Fire = Star Astrochalcum.  (usually I would say Earth + Fire = Metal, but they're all metal, I don't know what a metal-themed metal would act like) 

At first I was thinking I'd just differentiate them with material values, geochalcum is super dense, aerochalcum is super lightweight, and so forth.  But then I thought, hey wait, DF has all these crazy mechanics like heat and syndromes, is it possible to make a flaming metal or a poisonous metal?  I might do some arena tests anyways, but I know some of you know this better than I do. 

Quick look at the wiki looks like I could make a metal that is poisonous all the time, but to be useful it would have to be something that's only poisonous when it breaks the skin.  MAT_FIXED_TEMP could make Pyrochalcum hot and Kyrochalcum cold, but as with poison, it would be like that all the time, igniting or freezing whatever is in your bars stockpile. 

[Nathail]

I think you're over-focusing on weapons. Kyrochalcum, having a fixed below-freezing temperature, won't effect many things in any stockpile but will be magma-proof, making it useful for certain engineering applications. I think it would also freeze any water that tries to flow past it, which would be good for freezing traps and the like.

Not much you can do about pyrochalcum incinerating your stockpiles, but if you give it a lower fixed temp you can have it keep water liquid during the winter, again fairly useful.

Poison is... Yeah, that's difficult to work with. The best you can do there is make sure any dwarves who handle it are wearing gloves.

[BoredVirulence]

Its worth noting fixed temperature items don't always work as you'd expect. Drop some nethercap logs in magma and watch them burn. Fixed temperature clothes can catch on fire. I've never actually worked with any that were cold enough to freeze things, I doubt it would work but can't claim to have tested it.

[AceSV]

well, I decided to see what would happen and added these to iron:

   [MAT_FIXED_TEMP:12000]  (magma)
   [IGNITE_POINT:10000]  (freezing point)

and then:

   [MAT_FIXED_TEMP:900]

The Pyrochalcum killed anyone who carried it.  (by bleeding to death, which doesn't sound right)  Pyrochalcum ammo was safe to handle, but did not catch the arena on fire.  The Kryochalcum had no noticeable effect on the wielders, the victims or the environment, and after removing the IGNITE_POINT from pyrochalcum, neither did it.  Contact with wool clothing did not light it on fire.  However, I suspect that some of this may have to do with the arena being exempt for full physics. 

However, I also tested

   [MAT_FIXED_TEMP:10000] 
   [IGNITE_POINT:9000] 

Which produced a lot of smoke, but didn't kill the users.  While that's not what I want, that's a very interesting effect. 

Being constantly on fire might be an interesting effect for astrochalcum.  I'd probably call it novachalcum or something instead.  I'm really curious to see what the game would do with constructed walls or statues and such that are constantly ablaze. 

[scamtank]

(by bleeding to death, which doesn't sound right)

Fat melts from fire and fat layers have some vascular activity defined, so burning to death is more like "bleeding to death from every pore of your body at once".

It's surprising how easily some oversights are fixable in the basic raws.

[i2amroy]

There's quite a bit of stuff you can do with this... if you utilize DFHack to do it. Vanilla supports very little in the way of non-liquid syndromes materials, and is very limiting in how you can apply them (which usually consists of giving them melting points just above the air temperature of outside, but below body temperature of creatures). I know for sure that you used to be able to do some definitely crazy magic-y stuff with some of the DFHack plugins though, and I wouldn't doubt that at least some of those have been maintained, so I'd say take a look into that.

[Klisz]

This is a stupidly minor point, but I think you should spell kryochalcum "cryochalcum", for consistency in how kappa is romanized.

[AceSV]

So I decided to bring along some Novachalcum on a quick little embark, and I love the stuff.  It makes me want to get all scientifical. 

So, most of the time, novachalcum is !!novachalcum!!, which seems to block the dwarves from queuing it up for hauling or forging jobs.  But some of the time, it wasn't.  I'm not sure why this was, but my entire setup was outdoors and it started raining for a while, so I think maybe being in water might be able to make novachalcum usable.  I was able to complete a novachalcum nestbox, but it was always !!novachalcum nestbox!! so the dwarves refused to install it.  (actually, they're not dwarves, they are modded lizard-people who lay eggs, and it would have been hilarious)  I also managed to create a novachalcum axe that someone managed to carry around the camp for awhile until it turned into a !!novachalcum axe!! and killed the guy.  When I tried to order a novachalcum statue, all the bars were on fire again and the order kept getting canceled for not having novachalcum.  I tried to set up a sunken area where I could pump in 1/7 water, but it turns out this biome freezes in winter, and they all died of thirst/hunger before it thawed. 

I was fortunate enough to find native novachalcum ore on the map, and smelted up a batch.  After a couple of shipments, the furnace operator was found dead not far from the smelter.  There was no evidence of fire, so I think he died of smoke inhalation.  Having a lot of novachalcum in one tile produced a lot of very thick smoke.  I tried to put them in bins, but it seems that the smoking novachalcum prevented the hauling job. 

Also of note is that the !!novachalcum!! turned into x!!novachalcum!!x.  I'm not sure if it would have eventually disintegrated itself since I had so many it was hard to keep track of. 

So after camp one died of thirst/starvation and assorted novachalcum accidents, I embarked to a new site and this time, the novachalcum created a huge grass fire.  Interesting.  Both times the !!novachalcum!! destroyed the wagon fairly quickly.  But the first embark never set anything on fire, despite throwing novachalcum stockpiles onto the grass.  The grassfire was also on grass  covered in snow.  The second embark crashed DF before I could do any experiments.  I was not able to make novachalcum ammo on either embark. 

Again, novachalcum is iron with the addition:

   [MAT_FIXED_TEMP:12000]  (magma)
   [IGNITE_POINT:10000]  (freezing point)

I want the pyrochalcum to be simpler, so you don't have to start with something that's billowing death.  Making novachalcum should be a difficult process that only mature forts should try.  Although this probably won't stop caravans from bringing it.  I wonder what that will be like...?

There's quite a bit of stuff you can do with this... if you utilize DFHack to do it. Vanilla supports very little in the way of non-liquid syndromes materials, and is very limiting in how you can apply them (which usually consists of giving them melting points just above the air temperature of outside, but below body temperature of creatures). I know for sure that you used to be able to do some definitely crazy magic-y stuff with some of the DFHack plugins though, and I wouldn't doubt that at least some of those have been maintained, so I'd say take a look into that.

As for DF-hack, vanilla modding is about as difficult as I want to get with it, so I'd rather settle for something boring than learn to use a tool for "cheating". 

Huh, I guess I had heard "cryo" before I had seen it, I always thought it was spelled "kryo".  Ks are kooler though...
This is a stupidly minor point, but I think you should spell kryochalcum "cryochalcum", for consistency in how kappa is romanized.

[Putnam]

i take offense to that cheating bizz

heheh

anyway, ptw because man MATERIALS HELL YEAH

here's a tool to help you make 'em

[i2amroy]

Your choice. Personally I wouldn't consider enabling the making a mod that can do things other than make stuff permanently on fire or use weird "you have to pen a chicken next to the workshop for the iron golem reaction to work" workarounds "cheating", but I guess that's your prerogative.

[AceSV]

You know, it's more that I used to make video games and I'm supposed to be making new ones now but DF keeps distracting me.  So the idea of learning to program things into DF when I should be learning to program things into my own games is not something I can handle. 

@Putnam, you know I'm all about your material helper already.  I love all the links you added.  Very pro-looking. 

[milo christiansen]

Any non-artifact item that is on fire will eventually be destroyed (artifacts can burn forever).

There is away to preserve an item, but that involves putting it in a bin (I think) and may make it impossible to extinguish.

Very hot, but not actually burning, items will be fine.

[nearlyNonexistent]

DFhack is not a tool for cheating, it's a tool for creating scripts and modifying the memory. While it comes with various cheats, that is not its prerogative. Its goal is to provide an easy way to access DF's memory and do more than you could normally do. It lets you extend DF's capabilities, bind hotkeys, etc, and yes, cheat.

[Zarathustra30]

While DFhack is not a tool for cheating at Dwarf Fortress, it is a tool for cheating at modding Dwarf Fortress. It's cooler if you can do everything with just the raws.

[Putnam]

It would be cooler if it weren't impossible.