Screenshots These were removed (outdated), and will be replaced with new ones when I get around to it.
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DOWNLOAD LINK:
http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=3763Current Version: 0.05a (12:47PM CST 4/6/11)
changelog:
0.05a - polished version with compatability for multiple graphics sets.
0.04b - packaged form available for download from DFFD. If you are using 0.04, no upgrade is required.
0.04 - minor fix, removed a redundant "smelt raw mithril ore" command that did the same thing as "make low-grade mithril bars" (updated file: inorganic_stone_mineral.txt) - thanks Sutremaine.
0.03 - fixed a massive issue that was causing four low-grade mithril bars to smelt into 30+ mithril bars (lol wtf?). As cool as it was, it had to go.
EDIT: Problem was that I mistakenly copied the value of "1" for reagents when the reagents were bars, which needs to be "150." This version is now working as intended. (updated file: reaction_smelter.txt)
0.02 - Balancing. Due to difficulty with other civilizations and forge reactions, added "low-grade mithril" as a prerequisite bar, which is smelted from raw mithril. "Mithril" in its weapons-grade form is now an alloy of four bars of low-grade mithril. Changed distribution of raw mithril - it can now be found in any igneous stone, but as a small cluster rather than a vein (it can still be found as veins in obsidian).
0.01 - first version released
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Having played Dwarf Fortress for some time now, I found myself growing increasingly more picky about my embark locations. I wanted everything for my megaprojects - easy magma, easy water, no aquifer, and easy sand. I also enjoy the military aspects of DF, and this lead me to install Fortress Defense. However, with my megaprojects now threatened by legions of steel-wielding fire-breathing imps, I found that in order to stand much of a chance, I needed to at least match them in terms of equipment. Thus, my quest for an embark with sand, flux, water, and a volcano began.
Suffice to say, it is very hard to find an embark that satisfied all of these conditions, and the only solution I found was to give up on flux stone and dig all the way down to the circus.
Now, it has always bothered me that there has been so immense a "power gap" between steel and adamantine, and the Lord of the Rings fan in me couldn't help but notice the game's lack of a certain extremely shiny mythical metal. After some playing around, I managed to get some sharable results in the form of mithril - a metal that is comparable to steel in most of its stats, but does not require flux or fuel to make. My first foray into modding, mithril does not bridge this "power gap" in any field but material value, but does allow players on volcanic or otherwise non-flux stone maps a viable alternative to steel. mithril is my effort to diversify the game by drawing attention to embark locations that were previously unfavorable due to a lack of flux. With the ability to import flux severely hampered by the current lack of wagons, this mod has been a successful experiment in my book.
Mithril is found in small clusters within any igneous rock, or as veins within obsidian. It appears as a distinct reddish-purple chunk of rock called "raw mithril," which produces a brilliant blood-red stone (if you don't like the color, just change it
). This stone is a reagent for mithril bars - a weapon and armor grade metal of similar properties to steel, but slightly lighter, more valuable (mat value of 70) and without the prerequisite reactions of flux and fuel. This makes mithril a slightly better choice for blades, while a slightly poorer choice for mauls, hammers, maces, and bolts, but these differences are fairly minor. And by "minor" I really mean closer to the difference between iron and bronze than the difference between adamantine and anything else.
To balance out the fact that Mithril does not require flux or additional fuel, raw mithril contains only a small amount of usable mithril. Raw mithril must be first smelted into impure mithril bars, which are brittle and useless as weapons or armor (and carry a respectable, but not astronomical, value of 20). Four of these bars must be smelted together to obtain enough pure metal for one bar of weapon-grade mithril. Thus, it requires no less than four stones of raw mithril to produce a single weapon-grade mithril bar, meaning that mass-production of mithril is far less practical than that of steel, and mithril is meant to be used for elite weapons and armor due to the extreme difficulty in obtaining large quantities of it. That being said, even on maps that can support a large steel industry, Mithril is still attractive due to its steel-like armor and weapons properties combined with its striking color and material value, which is a distant second only to adamantine.
Still, if you are not taking measures to make your game more difficult, mithril will likely reduce the difficulty of Dwarf Fortress for you, if only by a little.
However, with the addition of this new metal, I found that I was no longer bound by the ever-elusive layers of flux stone when choosing an embark location, and the addition of a brilliant blood red metal makes my hallways of death oh so much more menacing - and this was what I set out to make possible.
Mithril is listed in the embark screen as a "deep metal."
So if you want to add this metal to your game, simply
copy and paste download.
This addition should be compatible with most mods (see included readme if you use a non-default entities_default file) and is fully compatable with dfhack (dfprospector will show a raw_mithril count, dfvdig will dig veins).
If you have questions, comments, bug reports, concerns, or anything else, feel free to post them. Hopefully this will be the first of numerous mini-mods intended to give metals a little bit more variety.
If you want to use this in one of your own mods, be my guest, but please give credit
This mod is compatable with default (ascii) characters and the following graphics sets:
Mike Mayday's
Phoebus'
Ironhand's
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DOWNLOAD LINK (again)
http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=3763--
KNOWN ISSUES:
None at the moment. Bug and balance feedback is welcome!
Author
Topic: Mini-mod: Mithril (v0.05a) (Read 7126 times)