Dwarf Fortress > DF Modding
Wood
AceSV:
So I was trying to think of some interesting woods to compliment my collect of magical metals, cultural weapons and anthro people. I found a lot, but I'm interested in additional ideas.
http://www.wood-database.com/ Too many, I can't even
Valuable Woods:
http://www.mostexpensivelist.com/top-10-most-expensive-wood-in-the-world/
Highlights include ebony, African blackwood, which is like ebony, pink ivory, which is bright pink, purple heart, aka peltogyne which is purple, and bocote, which has a cool yellow and black stripy pattern.
There are apparently various kinds of multi-colored ebony, such as dalmatian ebony, tiger ebony and pale moon ebony.
http://www.exoticwood.biz/woodchart.htm
There are a lot of red colored woods on the chart, plus two blue-grey woods, blue mahoe and buckeye burl.
Boxwood is a valuable white wood, counterpart to ebony. American holly (ilex opaca) is amazingly white, it looks amazing.
Apparently the most valuable wood is calamander/coromandel wood which is now extinct. It has an attractive stripey pattern.
Hard Woods:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janka_hardness_test
A list of woods based on their janka hardness rating.
http://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/top-ten-hardest-woods/
More detail of 10 of them. Highlights of the two include lignum vitae, quebracho, which comes from "quebrar hacho" axe-breaker, snakewood, which looks cool, and African blackwood again from the valuable wood list.
Lignum Vitae vs axe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRSMfEmMUs4
Lignum Vitae bokken (sword) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iFnsvAq028
Note that hard materials are not necessarily good weapons or armor, as they are prone to break instead of bend of dent. There is an entire class of woods known as ironwoods (softwoods<hardwoods<ironwoods) which are between woods like oak and woods like lignum vitae, that might have more ideal weapon-like properties. Not sure I want to try and actually translate ironwood properties into DF material properties. As far as I know and I haven't dug too deep, ironwoods are more common in tropical climates and rare in temperate climates, and of course are difficult to work, thus they were relatively unknown in medieval Eurasia.
Fantasy Woods:
There are a couple of myths of true iron wood trees whose branches are made of iron. I could either make them out of real metallic iron, or give irontree wood the same material properties as iron, which means it couldn't be turned into steel.
I remember an Indian legend about a place where the trees' roots dig deep and leach up valuable metals and gems in their environment, giving them characteristics like golden bark or gemstone fruits. Also easy enough to do, but maybe a bit overpowered.
I feel like there should be more, but most tree myths have nothing to do with their material properties.
CulixCupric:
You would be giving ELVES the ability to GROW IRON WEAPONS AND ARMOR. Druids in DnD and pathfinder can't wear metal armor, just as elves don't have [METAL_PREF], but can use ironwood armor, and if that was ironwood, then elves would be even worse with IRONWOOD ARMOR BOWS AND ARROWS. this may increase your !fun! if you choose to do that. I am not saying this is a bad idea, just pointing out an implication.
EDIT: you gave me an idea... a reaction for elves to turn wood into ironwood... thank you!
BlackFlyme:
Yea, most trees of myth I've seen in media are massive "world-trees" or stuff like that. Too large to be made in Dwarf Fortress.
I find that savage or evil plants are easier to think of though. Organ-like trees, with eyes or hearts for fruit, grotesque stuff like that. Maybe some legends of sapient treant-like trees were caused by the menacing appearance of these evil-aligned trees. Maybe an Assassin-Vine/Gallows Tree/Hangman Tree is just a tree that often overgrows with large vine-like growths, giving them a disturbing appearance; even more so if a creature were to become entangled within the vines and expire as a result. Not that such a thing is possible in-game. Yet. Maybe the somewhat infamously silly Wolf-In-Sheep's-Clothing happens to just be a tree that grows fruits in the shape of animals.
Trees formed of a mass of ice in the most savage tundras and glaciers, or ones of crystal in deep subterranean caves.
Bogus:
if you want elves to use harder wood preferentially tho you have to remove the regular wood from their weapons, and give them extra reactions to make weapons of that material.
AceSV:
--- Quote from: Bogus on September 27, 2015, 05:40:46 am ---if you want elves to use harder wood preferentially tho you have to remove the regular wood from their weapons, and give them extra reactions to make weapons of that material.
--- End quote ---
Actually, I don't care about elves, but I've got a lot of reactions in Furry Fortress to make weapons out of wood, things like staffs, flails, spears, bokken, etc. I use a custom reaction so that they will be considered genuine weapons and not training weapons, but because of this, they are not brought in caravans or appear in adventure mode. I would be much interested to know how to code my reactions to show up in AI controlled weapons, especially if new woods make them more viable.
Some good ideas from BlackFlyme I can think about. Also, the living trees remind me of an old European misconception that cotton came from sheep trees. I forget the exact myth. In any case, a fiber producing tree would also spice up the game. Apparently this sort of happens in real life. Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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