New Wyvern Terrain

[Kama]

Originally Posted by kiez

Hmmmm. Kama, you bring up a similar point, but that is not really "Bad". We simply have more evidence for Goonyton's argument, which especially gives me some thoughts as to smithing Obsidian. Do you have any ideas about spells?

As for smithing and repairing the stuff, maybe the amount of blacksmith points you have should greatly affect your results. If you are very skilled you should have no problem, but if you are only "pretty good", that might not even be enough to forge a weapon or repair it successfully once out of 20 times. Basically, the curve should be late, but it should be very, very steep. You can't smith it for a long time, but once you do, it works wonders. Of course, I think it may be helpful to get the weapons into the game first, so maybe there should be a great store of natural weapons to be found, so that people can actually USE the weapon and see through experience, the value of the weapons. Either that, or maybe the difficulty to forge them could be lowered for a while, although I think this could lead to more frustrations after the difficulty was raised,

Nay, I don't know about spells - I'll leave that to one someone else. But I tend to agree with most of you've said about blacksmithing.

Also, due to an inability to sleep at the moment, I read over some of the earlier posts in this thread again, and have a few other things to add for reference purposes.

Interesting fact - Obsidian does not come solely in black, as some may believe. It comes in a wide variety of colors, my all-time favorites being rainbow obsidian and "red mahogany" (the latter's color I believe has to do with iron oxide content, btw). Knowing this, there are a wider range of possibilities for interesting game art than just 'black earth walls' (no offense).

Another thing is that Obsidian tends to form in both surface flows as well as beneath the surface in volcanic vents, though closer to the surface as the burial pressure must decrease some in order for the water content of the magma to dissipate and crystallization process to be frozen, (creating the 'glass' effect). Some of the best quality obsidian is found in those vents, just below ground level.

And Obsidian has a hardness rating of about.. 5.5, I think, on the Mohs scale. Which makes it more fragile than quartz by about 2 points, and half the hardness of diamond - being a rating of 10. (Lead, on the other hand, has a hardness of 1.5+ if I'm not mistaken)

If you follow that logic - any obsidian item, without enchantment, or perhaps being made balanced, should have at least a durability of 1/2 of a diamond item.

I know someone made a comment about picking up rocks instead of slabs, but it's actually not 'too' uncommon to come across very large obsidian deposits, some weighing up to several hundred pounds or more. I've pulled 50lb rocks out of the ground myself, with a little digging involved. Anyways, that would mean that slabs actually aren't that impractical an idea.

I realize that Wyv. isn't the real world, but being born of it, it shouldn't be too erratically different. But there's some more background information for you guys to get your creativity flowin'.. faster than obsidian flows, one would hope. >.>