Forging (old)

It is possible to create weapons and armor through the forging system. There are two parts to the process: smelting (mixing), which requires knowledge of the materials; and crafting (pounding), which requires physical stats and the appropriate weapon or armor skills.

There are a number of terms that have been developed by forgers to describe important ideas in the process. These include: volume, break points, compression

For forging, there is a 'hidden' skill called ANALYZE which reflects how much forging you have done. More skill in Analyze allows you to achieve better results when forging.

WARNING: Much of the information below is a few years old. Some details may have changed.

• Updated Blacksmithing for 3.0

Weapon volumes

Note: This list was provided without a 'volume' to bars conversion.

1 volume: Dart

2 volume: dagger,throwing dagger,stiletto

3 volume: rapier,foil,short sword,baselard

5 volume: katar

6 volume: Scimitar,Sabre

7 volume: broadsword

8 volume: hand axe

9 volume: war hammer,mace,battle axe,bastard sword

10 volume: morning star

12 volume: claymore,two-handed sword,halberd

18 volume: maul

19 volume: pike

20 volume: greatsword

Armor volumes

metal breastplate 6.0 bars

half plate 10.0 bars

field plate armor 10.0 bars

full plate armor 14.0 bars

bascinet helm 3.4 bars

visored helm 3.4 bars

armet helm 3.0 bars

great helm 4.0 bars

scale tasset 3.0 bars

plate tasset 3.0 bars

scale aventail 1.8 bars

plate aventail 2.2 bars

plate greaves 2.0 bars

scale vambraces 1.8 bars

plate vambraces 2.0 bars

gauntlets 1.0 bars

chain shirt 5.0 bars

chain hauberk 8.0 bars

double chain mail DOES NOT WORK

full chain shirt 7.0 bars

augmented hauberk 10.0 bars

chain lorica 5.0 bars

chain helm 2.0 bars

full chain helm 2.0 bars

chain tasset 3.0 bars

chain aventail 2.0 bars

chain greaves 0.6 bars

chain vambraces 2.0 bars

mail gloves 0.9 bars

Break points

Some armor molds in the forge can be used to create multiple different kinds of armor. A given item will be one or the other depending on its weight. For example, the mold for Gauntlets can be used to make Heavy Plate, Light Plate, or Neutral Plate. Neutral items will train which ever skill is higher and always have a weight of 5*(VOLUME). Anything heavier than neutral weight will be heavy plate or chain, anything lighter will be light plate or chain. By this example, since gauntlets have a volume of 10 neutral gauntlets will be 50 stones, light plate 49 or less, and heavy plate 51 or greater. Below is a list of known templates which this applies to.

chain vambraces, mail gloves, chain greaves, chain helm, full chain helm, chain shirt, chain lorica, full chain shirt, chain hauberk

plate greaves, plate gauntlets

How to smelt

1. Place your ingredients in the crucible using

2. PUSH crucible over the fire until the items are melted.

3. GET coal to shovel coal onto the fire to get the fire started

4. Push bellows until you see a brilliant fire.

5. SPLASH water if you are tired, If the fire starts to die out add more coal and bellows

6. wait until the metal melts. PULL the crucible off the fire and STIR the contents

7. Depending on what your recipe is you may have to add more ingredients and put the crucible back over the fire to melt it.

8. POUR crucible into wire/plate/ingot mold. The wire mold is used to create chain armor, the plate mold is used to create plate armor and the ingot mold is used to create weapons.

9. Wait until the mold has cooled. If you look at it and see "You see nothing unusual." then you know it has cooled completely.

10. Take wire/plate/ingot to the forge for forging.

How to craft

1. Put wire/plate/ingot on the forge and wait until your mold has heated to glowing white hot, it takes about 20 mins.

2. Take wire/plate/ingot and PUT <wire/plate/ingot> ON ANVIL to pound.

3. POUND <wire/plate/ingot> INTO <item>. If it cools, place it back on the forge to heat it back up.

4. After you get a finished item you must PUT <item> IN WATER to cool it

5. If item is armor you must fit it to the weight and encumbrance. The less weight and encumbrance you give it, the less defense it will provide you. Use FIT <item> <hinderance/weight>. When you have it to exactly what you would like, FIT <item> FINAL.

6. If it is a weapon you must now sharpen it and fix the edges. Head to the honing room and TURN GRINDSTOE a few times and then PUSH GRINDSTONE WITH <item>. Now you will grind it using GRIND <item> <EDGE/POWER/BALANCE/WEIGHT/POINT>.

7. using a hilt in your right hand and blade in your left PUT HILT ON BLADE.

Compression

Category Abilities, Skills and Magic (4) Topic Weapon and Armor Smithing (12) By WITCHKING from PLAY.NET On Oct 30, 2002 at 15:58 Subject Mixing new metals and compression: A rehash from my POV (LONG) (2195)

Just search metallurgy compression. I had pondered about seeing how "realistic" DR's compression system is, but after hitting things going into a doctorate thesis and other brainy crud, I quit... heheh. Barely have to time play DR, let alone mess with that goop.

As a side note, I don't claim to know everything about the system even though I haven't had an ingot mess up my brain (well, except when I got real tired and confused m'self, yes did that a few times) for some time. Nor do I claim to be a super-genius the likes of Wile E. Coyote, but the system really isn't that complicated. Volumes, weights, compression, flexibility, etc, its not rocket science or for that matter even metallurgy. Its a games representation, and therefore at best a pseudo-science. I have forged since the inception, and sometime ago I found mixes that did everything I needed. I could adjust, etc., get what I want. I didn't have names for what I did, hell I didn't even worry much about volume, let alone compression. Then along comes the new metals, and eventually (prolly less than a month ago) I decided to figure it out. It wasn't that trixy dixy. I've no doubt that my previous time forging allowed for a quicker grasp, but eh... not that difficult. It didn't take me a month, took me oh... lets just say 2 weeks of sporadic work and play to be able to understand every mix that I typically use, and how to adjust each and every mix to predictable levels. Heck, even with the oddball molten metal mixes, you can regain predictability.

How would I do it as a new comer? Go back over every mix posted, its stats etc, mix em, weigh em, pound em, weigh em, watch em, chart em, get some percentages! Go crazy baby! Keep track of everything you can think of (is it all useful? yes, even if to prove to yourself that isnt useful to you). Got that done? Start asking why its all happening. In all likelyhood, you will begin to notice compression. Have a possible answer? Start with a mix you know, toss something else into it, anything really, and before it cools, see what your previous answer would predict. Was it right? Was it wrong? Was it close? If you're right, well, try some more, because right once doesn't equal right twice. If not, look at your new ingot. How much of what? What order? When was dust mixed? Was dust mixed again later? It all counts. You get molten metal? Realize at that point that this will throw you off. Figure out the whole, then come back to molten metal. Poshly has basically stated above what compression does, and once you know it exists, figuring it out isn't so bad.

For anyone who doesn't know, here's a basic look at compression for the apprentice smith, not going to hand out a formula or such, this is a you gotta do it yerself experiment, a stepping stone. Take an iron bar, mix with oh... a zinc slug, then mix in a dust... abbreviated by myself as Ib, zs/1d/ (each "/" equals a time you mix)... and you get steel. Go weigh that ingot and pound it into say, a broadsword. Weigh the blade. Now mix this: Ib,zs/zs/1d, weigh the ingot, pound into broadsword, and weigh the blade. The second blade weighs more! So you think to yourself, "hmmm, the ingot weighs more... so mebe that's why the blade weighs more." So in a grand lusty fashion, inspired by the need to experiment, you just do this mix: Ib, is/is/1d, and voila, you have another 61 stone ingot! Alrightee then! *pound*, run to MAMAS, slap it down on the counter, and scratch yer head. By gum, that silly dwarf at MAMAS is telling you it doesnt weigh the same as the second blade! Same amount of bars and slugs, even the same mixing order, same weight on the ingot.... but not the same. What in blazes! Frustrated, you whip out this mix: Ib,zs,zs/1d. You've got your steel, and wham! Yer off to Mamas, that ingot weighed 61, now what the bejeebers does the blade weigh! Same as the second blade? NO! Gah! Drat that dwarf! You have just witnessed compression, and the lack thereof. Now go see how much those really weigh, and try this one while you're at at it: ib,zs/zs/zs/1d. See what the ingot and blade from that weigh. Now figure out the whys, whens, and hows.

Anyone who wants to know, can know, I just don't want or need to know everything, its just what I need to know that matters,

Veldehar

As an additional note from Gavinne, there are two forms of 'compression' so the term can be misleading if you do not know which form is being spoken of.

One form of compression, which really isn't compression at all, is when you have a 200 stone ingot and pound it into a scimitar, yet the scimitar only weighs 22 stones. Folks began calling this 'compression' due to a lack of understanding and hopefully this will help clear some things up. The general formula for determining an items weight is (Total Mix Weight/Total Mix Volume)*Volume Required For Item, or (W/V)*R. Basically, if you have a 5 pound block of steel which has a volume of 3 cubic feet and make something out of it that only needs to use 1 cubic feet, your item will weigh (5/3)*1 pounds, the excess metal is thrown away since it is not used. To further this example, lets say we have a mix like '3 tin slugs, melt and mix them together, add 2 dusts, melt and mix, add 2 more dusts, melt and mix, add an iron bar, melt and mix, then add a final dust, melt and stir.' or, in short, 3 tin slugs MIX 2 dusts MIX 2 dusts MIX 1 iron bar MIX 1 dust MIX. The final dust is to make it steel so that will not be counted as it does not add weight or volume (when carbonizing steel the volume and weight of the dust used to carbonize is not added) so we will not include that, this leaves us with 4 dusts, 3 tin slugs, and an iron bar. iron bar is 51 stones, tin slugs are 7 stones each, dusts are 2 stones each, thus our total weight is 80 stones. For volume, iron bar is 10 slugs, tin slugs are 1 slug each, dusts are 2 slugs each, so our total volume is 20 slugs. 80 stones divided by 20 slugs is 4 so our Average Weight per Unit of Volume is 4. If we were to make that mix into some gauntlets, our gauntlets would weigh 4*10 since gauntlets have a volume of 10, if we were to make that mix into a scimitar the scimitar, which has a volume of 6, our scimitar would weigh 4 stones * 6. The excess material which we do not use is thrown away, hence this is not really compression at all, it is simply using what you need from the ingot, plate, or wire and throwing the rest away. To further explain, if we take an iron bar, which has a weight of 51 and a volume of 10, and make it into a broadsword which requires a volume of 7, our broadsword would weigh (51/10)*7 stones because we would only use 7 out of 10 of the volume, the other 3 is thrown away. At this point I would like to note that Dragon Realms always rounds DOWN, so if your item is 34.9999999 stones, upon completion it will be 34 stones, just like if your item would be 58.12345 stones, upon completion it will weigh 58 stones. Once more to make sure everyone understands, to find the weight of an item you take the Total Weight of the mixture and divide it by the Total Volume of the mixture, this gives us the Average Weight. If you have an iron bar which is 51 stones and 10 slugs, 51/10 = 5.1. So that means each 1 unit of volume in that bar weighs 5.1 stones. We then multiply the Average Weight by the volume of the item we want to make, for example a mace which takes a volume of 9 to make. 51 stones/10 slugs (iron bar) = 5.1, 5.1*9(volume of mace) = 45.9 stone mace, dragon realms always rounds down so it would be a 45 stone mace.

Another form of compression is an unintended but useful error in the mechanics of mixing in which the weight of something is added but not the volume. This has never been fixed, and will not be fixed until forging 2.0 is out due to the fact that without it we would have no way of making items heavier. To explain, compression of this type is based on even and odd numbers of volume. If you mix two different types of metal together, and one has an odd volume number while the other has an even volume number, 1 unit of volume will compress and its weight will be added but not its volume. This is a bit confusing so please bear with me as I attempt to explain. If you have 1 iron bar which has a volume of 10 and it with 1 zinc slug which has a volume of 1, the zinc slugs weight will be added but not its volume, thus 1 iron bar (volume 10, weight 51) plus 1 zinc slug (volume 1, weight 5) makes a mass with a volume of 10 and a weight of 56. By further example, if you mix two zinc slugs together, again each having a weight of 5 and a volume of 1, this will give us 10 stones total at 2 slugs volume. If then we add 3 lead slugs (each having volume of 1 and weight of 8) then by normal thinking it SHOULD give us 5+5+8+8+8=34 weight at 1+1+1+1+1=5 volume, but it does not due to compression. 2 (even) zinc slugs plus 3 (odd) lead slugs will only give us a volume of 4 because 1 unit of volume will compress, the weight will still be added so you will still have 34 stones of material, but due to compression (even+odd, or odd+even) 1 unit of volume will compress so we will only have a volume of 4. Again, to explain, 2+1=2, 3+2=4, 5+4=8, and so fourth due to compression. Theoretically you can make items infinitely heavier this way, since 2+1=2, you can continually add another single unit of volume to it and the weight will be added but, once again, not the volume, so 2+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1=2. A common example of this is 23 stone short swords and 39 stone katars. To make a 23 stone short sword or 39 stone katar, you start with an iron bar, which is 51 stones at 10 slugs of volume, and compress single slugs into it one at a time until you reach 78 stones, you can use any non-iron slug metal slug you want for this such a 2 nickel slugs and 3 zinc slugs, or 2 copper slug and 3 zinc slugs, or 2 lead slugs 1 zinc slug and 1 copper slug, or any other combonation as long as they are a metal other than iron they will compress when mixed one at a time because 10+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1=10. each time you mix a single slug into the iron bar its weight will be added but NOT its volume.

~Gavinne

See also

• Mendasity's Forging Cookbook
• Weapon mixes
• Armor mixes