Print

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

[Corinthius]

I'd really like to add Mithril to DF. Kind of like Adamantine, but only useful for armor, and even better than Adamantine in that role. Anyway, I could add it in to be found in the same places Adamantine is found, by adding [DEEP], I believe. But I'd also like to be able to forge it. I'd like the process to be long and difficult, and not at all high yielding.

I was doing research on wikipedia, it said that originally Tolkein referred to the stuff as "silvered steel". Maybe an alloy of aluminum, silver, and steel? What do you think the components should be?

I've never modded before... can what I'm thinking here even be done in the current version? Maybe I'll wait till next time and make a mithril forging custom workshop...

Anyway, thoughts?

Thanks!

[Diablous]

I am fairly sure that mithril is in a mod already. Dig deeper I think.

[Corinthius]

Mithril is in several mods; however, none of them that I saw allowed you to smelt it from other metals.

[3]

Although it's likely straying rather far from the source concept, what you could do is combine the two ideas - have is a relatively weak DEEP metal (say, a little stronger than steel), and create a smelter reaction that produces a stronger alloy made from the original metal/ore and some other components.

[Shade-o]

I made Mithril a Magnesium-Aluminium alloy that is currently used in things like frames in racing cars. It is of course ludicrously light due it its materials, which makes it not very deadly compared to Steel. Consider it would be like making a hammer out of styrofoam. It is passable for armour though, and due to the legendary (and mostly baseless) properties attributed to it, it is also very valuable. I imagine it would be used by upper-class dwarves who want extremely stylish, light, and expensive armour to show off, regardless of how practical it is.

[o_O[WTFace]]

That is entirely possible to do.  You could make a reaction to smelt mithril stone into a bar, and make it cost X units of coal, or just make it cost bars of gold to make mithril bars into a usable alloy  or whatever.  Take a look at the wiki and just make raw entries for the stone, the metal, and any alloys and the reactions they do. 

Lots of mods have mithril to, take a look at dig deeper.

[Toastergargletop]

mithril is not an alloy.

[Asatruer]

mithril is not an alloy.

Seconded, with citations... http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/m/mithril.html
The Encyclopedia of Arda is a much more comprehensive and pure source of info of all things Middle-earth than wikipedia.  Personally I see Adamantine as being DF's trademark-dodging equivalent to Mithril.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Gandalf: Mithril! All folk desired it. It could be beaten like copper, and polished like glass; and the Dwarves could make of it a metal, light and yet harder than tempered steel. Its beauty was like to that of common silver, but the beauty of mithril did not tarnish or grow dim.

Remember mithril as we commonly understand it is the tempered (hardened) version of the metal, all races used mithril for jewelery but only dwarves possessed the knowledge of this tempering process which raised its value from high to ludicrous (The Dwarven name was like dwarven words secret).  In it's untempered state it was as mailable as copper meaning the tempering process creates an extraordinary increase in hardness form 3 to at least 7 or 8 Mohs hardness (depending on how hard you believe the best steel of Middle Earth was).

So the defining properties are as follows

* Half the density of Steel
* Dose not rust
* Hardness of 3 untempered
* Hardness >7 when tempered
* Silver color, takes high polish

The metal that best fits these properties is Aluminum or some Aluminum alloy, the resistance to rust, density, color and hardness all match for untempered aluminum.  The tempered form would have to be Anodized aluminum which is a coating of Corundum (hardness 9!) which is created by immersing aluminum in acid and running a current through it, a sophisticated process but one that mechanically inclined dwarves could conceivably do with a primitive chemical battery.  The process would be particularly effective on something like ring mail due to the high surface to volume ratio.

[Toastergargletop]

Remember mithril as we commonly understand it is the tempered (hardened) version of the metal, all races used mithril for jewelery but only dwarves possessed the knowledge of this tempering process which raised its value from high to ludicrous.  In it's untempered state it was as mailable as copper meaning the tempering process creates an extraordinary increase in hardness form 3 to at least 7 or 8 Mohs hardness (depending on how hard you believe the best steel of Middle Earth was).

Gandalf: Mithril! All folk desired it. It could be beaten like copper, and polished like glass; and the Dwarves could make of it a metal, light and yet harder than tempered steel. Its beauty was like to that of common silver, but the beauty of mithril did not tarnish or grow dim.

* Half the density of Steel
* Dose not rust
* Hardness of 3 untempered
* Hardness >7 when tempered
* Silver color, takes high polish

The metal that best fits these properties is Aluminum or some Aluminum alloy, the resistance to rust, density, color and hardness all match for untempered aluminum.  The tempered form would have to be Anodized aluminum which is a coating of Corundum (hardness 9!) which is created by immersing aluminum in acid and running a current through it, a sophisticated process but one that mechanically inclined dwarves could conceivably do with a primitive chemical battery.  The process would be particularly effective on something like ring mail due to the high surface to volume ratio.

thanks.  i don't know how you did it, but YOU KILLED MAGIC.

[Mechanoid]

thanks.  i don't know how you did it, but YOU KILLED MAGIC.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

[sunshaker]

thanks.  i don't know how you did it, but YOU KILLED MAGIC.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Any sufficiently advanced MAGIC is indistinguishable from TECHNOLOGY.

[Arrkhal]

The metal that best fits these properties is Aluminum or some Aluminum alloy, the resistance to rust, density, color and hardness all match for untempered aluminum.  The tempered form would have to be Anodized aluminum which is a coating of Corundum (hardness 9!) which is created by immersing aluminum in acid and running a current through it, a sophisticated process but one that mechanically inclined dwarves could conceivably do with a primitive chemical battery.  The process would be particularly effective on something like ring mail due to the high surface to volume ratio.

No, aluminum is a horrible choice.  The regular metal may be about as soft as copper, but it fatigues far quicker.

Corundum, also known as sapphire, is as brittle as glass, and a coating would crack the instant the material is dented or bent.  It's also only equal in actual strength to beaten copper (about 300 MPa tensile).  Human hair has a tensile strength of 380 MPa, making it actually stronger than copper or corundum.  Do you like me new armor?  It protects me worse than me beard!

Titanium, on the other hand, isn't a bad choice for mithril, but not great.  Pure titanium is about as strong and soft as copper.  The absolute best titanium alloys are about as strong as steel when both are at middling hardness, but the hardenability is complete poop.  A typical high carbon steel can be hardened anywhere from 180 Brinell to 1800 Brinell (though anything over about 750 is very brittle).  The strongest titanium alloys harden from 300 Brinell up to 370.  370 is a good hardness for armor, though.  But swords work best around 500, and knives should be around 550-600.

Really, best bet is for mithril to be some magical junk, instead of a real chemical element.

[sunshaker]

No, aluminum is a horrible choice.  The regular metal may be about as soft as copper, but it fatigues far quicker.

Corundum, also known as sapphire, is as brittle as glass, and a coating would crack the instant the material is dented or bent.  It's also only equal in actual strength to beaten copper (about 300 MPa tensile).  Human hair has a tensile strength of 380 MPa, making it actually stronger than copper or corundum.  Do you like me new armor?  It protects me worse than me beard!

Titanium, on the other hand, isn't a bad choice for mithril, but not great.  Pure titanium is about as strong and soft as copper.  The absolute best titanium alloys are about as strong as steel when both are at middling hardness, but the hardenability is complete poop.  A typical high carbon steel can be hardened anywhere from 180 Brinell to 1800 Brinell (though anything over about 750 is very brittle).  The strongest titanium alloys harden from 300 Brinell up to 370.  370 is a good hardness for armor, though.  But swords work best around 500, and knives should be around 550-600.

Really, best bet is for mithril to be some magical junk, instead of a real chemical element.

This. I was going to say earlier that anodizing while it protects the aluminum metal from everyday wear does not make it invulnerable (I have numerous aluminum products that have been anodized that have scratches on them, paintball markers, ALOX SAKs, flashlights, tools, camping gear,etc). Titanium is amazing hard to refine at DF tech levels (though you might be able to get ferotitanium or cuprotitanium via reduction, even then it would be locked in an alloy form and could not be easily refined to a pure form; [Edit] it also ignites in air when heated to 1,200 °C, given that it melts at 1668 °C, requiring furnaces with inert atmospheres or a vacuum).

HFS Mystical Metal Comment

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My plan is to have it be one of several minerals that get the [DEEP] tag so while you can find HFS via the site finder you won't know which metal you will get (as only one [DEEP] mineral will spawn for each HFS location). While all the minerals that are [DEEP] will be very good (much better than steel) they will be different from each other potentially increasing the difficulty of the HFS.

[shadowsofwhite]

May I point you in the direction of amorphous metal?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorphous_metal

If tempered correctly, while alloying the appropriate metals, I believe you can achieve what you seek.