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[SirHoneyBadger]

Thanks for getting back to me!

Well, the high-temperature weapon seems like it would be a good starting-point. Is there a way to make just the tip of a sword, for instance, instead of the entire blade, be different than the rest of the blade? I'm thinking for safety reasons...

How about a spear? Can the spearhead be on fire, while the spear's shaft is still of ambient temperature, or maybe make the shaft slightly cold, artificially, to counteract the flames?

I already want to make weapons be comprised of several different components, so if that's possible, then ofcourse weapons who's blades are basically formed out of molten lava wouldn't (atleast for very long) be made of wood, or even bone, and would have to be crafted from temperature-stable materials, such as certain metals or bauxite, for instance.

Even so, heat transference would remain a problem, and so artificially cool (but not so cold that it burns us, Precious) substances will be preferred, and while official Magic, with a capital M, isn't yet coded into the game, I have some ideas for interesting resources and processes that would be difficult to find/require alchemical or ritualistic procedures/be harvested from fantastic creatures, etc.

Also, is there a way to "turn special properties on and off, like a lightswitch" kind of thing?
Or are we dealing with constant effects? And if an effect is continual, can or will it ever wear off or decrease in effect with use? If an iron man (who can't drown) were to plunge a magma-sabre into the side of a glacier, will it cool the sword, or will it eventually just melt, boil, and evaporate the glacier?

As far as syndrome-causing items is concerned, what if the syndrome-causing substance itself is extremely hard? Like some weird alloy of arsenic that's as hard as bronze, but that still causes rapid bone necrosis when it enters the bloodstream? Would that decrease/eliminate the possibility of the substance rubbing off, or would that be unaffected?

Armour, I'm thinking, will be both easier and more difficult to deal with, as far as adding "special effects". For one thing, it shouldn't be so difficult to code in a material that is equivalent to spider silk, or depleted uranium, or high-strength ceramics, but which, literally, might grow on trees.

Turning the wearer of the armour into a bronze colossus, or letting the wearer levitate, or safely swim through magma, or causing anything touching the wearer to suffer the effects of giant cave spider venom, while keeping the wearer herself alive, and protecting her from all spiders, and their poisons and webs, might be considerably more difficult than creating a poisoned-tipped spear.

I think armour made from ice would be fun, though, if we can protect whatever's wearing it from the effects. For that matter, critters such as fire imps and blizzard men might make their own tools, clothes, and weapons, which may be every day items in their societies, but strange and wonderful (or more likely, terrible) to the eyes (and their ambitions, relations, and general bodily health) of our dwarfs.

As a slightly aside note: I like the idea of having Bronze Colossi being created by the Gods as soldiers and war machines, against whatever particularly nasty enemies that Gods might come to have, and as such, I'd particularly like to see them having special properties and abilities, and wielding special weapons.

Yeah, bronze colossi are angels now...unsleeping, uneating, undying, uncompromizing, unemotional and unmoral, incapable of anything but complete and utter loyalty, created quite literally with the technology of The Gods, to be Absolute Weapons, and based on the Disney-Acid-Trip weird historical descriptions of angels, then filtered through my crazy head.

At some point in the future, I'd like to mod in a series of bronze colossi "models", and, in addition to that, the colossi themselves might become a source and resource of amazing materials that absolutely can't be gotten, elsewhere, since the Gods themselves are ultimately the only source of them, having Created them, with a capital 'C', and so hunting down one of these murderous juggernauts and somehow pounding it into submission might actually be worth all that death and tragedy. 

...Not that I'm going to make it easy on you.

This should, I hope, play out fairly well against the powerful, ancient, and rather bizarre Giant civilization entity/entities that I'm working on, as well as some lore ideas I have, to add depth to the presence of undead in the game.

Dragons--and their various bits--are also going to figure heavily into crafting fantastic items. Many, many different kinds of dragons...Fortunately (but not really, for our dwarfs) there are going to be many, many greedy, hungry dragons around, and the more trading your Fortress does, the more they start to really want to jack your shit.

Might as well use them for something! 

Draconic mafioso, magical artifacts, Undead for C'thulhu for President (I'll explain that reference, eventually...), crazy-ass psychotic clockwork angels, and their aeons-old war against a mysterious eldritch civilization of the very very large...

Who knew medieval economics theory could be so much fun?!?

arclance, if you get the time, and wouldn't mind, would you like to test your dwarf-sicle idea out, and let me know what happens when they eat one? Testing that out might actually answer some of the questions I have, such as whether you can create an ice-weapon that will turn your enemy into a block of ice, regardless of the enemy's size--useful for fighting off those pesky 300' long dragons.

[arclance]

Thanks for getting back to me!

Well, the high-temperature weapon seems like it would be a good starting-point. Is there a way to make just the tip of a sword, for instance, instead of the entire blade, be different than the rest of the blade? I'm thinking for safety reasons...

How about a spear? Can the spearhead be on fire, while the spear's shaft is still of ambient temperature, or maybe make the shaft slightly cold, artificially, to counteract the flames?

I already want to make weapons be comprised of several different components, so if that's possible, then ofcourse weapons who's blades are basically formed out of molten lava wouldn't (atleast for very long) be made of wood, or even bone, and would have to be crafted from temperature-stable materials, such as certain metals or bauxite, for instance.

Even so, heat transference would remain a problem, and so artificially cool (but not so cold that it burns us, Precious) substances will be preferred, and while official Magic, with a capital M, isn't yet coded into the game, I have some ideas for interesting resources and processes that would be difficult to find/require alchemical or ritualistic procedures/be harvested from fantastic creatures, etc.

No items in game are made of a single solid material (except for a few hardcoded ones like obsidian swords which have wooden handles).
Creatures are made of multiple materials but each organ is made of a single material.
You can have weapons that require multiple pieces to construct (using reactions) but it will be for flavor or balance only.
Decorations are different materials but they are decorative only and do not contribute to weapon properties.
I don't think that item coatings have a defined area right now so I don't think you can have "poison tipped" weapons yet.

Also, is there a way to "turn special properties on and off, like a lightswitch" kind of thing?
Or are we dealing with constant effects? And if an effect is continual, can or will it ever wear off or decrease in effect with use? If an iron man (who can't drown) were to plunge a magma-sabre into the side of a glacier, will it cool the sword, or will it eventually just melt, boil, and evaporate the glacier?

The properties are constant, unless the effect also destroys the item.
A magma saber in a glacier would melt a circle around itself in the glacier (size dependent on it's temperature) and them just sit there.
If you get a hot tub or a cloud of steam would depend on how hot the sword was.
You should check out the bonfire mod for more information about melting things with hot items.
You can have a temporary effect if the items effect causes it to melt or evaporate, or activates when it melts or evaporates (syndrome or temperature effects only).

As far as syndrome-causing items is concerned, what if the syndrome-causing substance itself is extremely hard? Like some weird alloy of arsenic that's as hard as bronze, but that still causes rapid bone necrosis when it enters the bloodstream? Would that decrease/eliminate the possibility of the substance rubbing off, or would that be unaffected?

As I understand it this is almost how the current elemental/poison/exploding weapons work.
They are a solid material that melts at body temperature whose liquid form carries a specifically crafted syndrome.
When the weapon enters the targets body it melts and enters the bloodstream.
It is really only feasible for ammunition and your army needs to wear gloves so they don't melt their poison bolts when they touch them.

Armour, I'm thinking, will be both easier and more difficult to deal with, as far as adding "special effects". For one thing, it shouldn't be so difficult to code in a material that is equivalent to spider silk, or depleted uranium, or high-strength ceramics, but which, literally, might grow on trees.

This is fairly easy to do getting the material properties correct is probably the hardest part.

Turning the wearer of the armour into a bronze colossus, or letting the wearer levitate, or safely swim through magma, or causing anything touching the wearer to suffer the effects of giant cave spider venom, while keeping the wearer herself alive, and protecting her from all spiders, and their poisons and webs, might be considerably more difficult than creating a poisoned-tipped spear.

I think armour made from ice would be fun, though, if we can protect whatever's wearing it from the effects. For that matter, critters such as fire imps and blizzard men might make their own tools, clothes, and weapons, which may be every day items in their societies, but strange and wonderful (or more likely, terrible) to the eyes (and their ambitions, relations, and general bodily health) of our dwarfs.

I think the most promising armor "enchantment" right now is one that makes it lighter.
You could have a reaction that takes steel armor and "enchants" it by changing it's material to a new non-naturally occuring steel that has a lower density than normal steel.
I love the idea of a "carve ice breastplate" reaction but I think in this case we would have to protect the armor from the Dwarf so it does not melt since only ice constructions magically don't melt.

arclance, if you get the time, and wouldn't mind, would you like to test your dwarf-sicle idea out, and let me know what happens when they eat one? Testing that out might actually answer some of the questions I have, such as whether you can create an ice-weapon that will turn your enemy into a block of ice, regardless of the enemy's size--useful for fighting off those pesky 300' long dragons.

Sure I can do that sometime, I don't know when that will be though.
I never tested it because it is a part of my full bloodwine mod that I haven't had time to update to v0.34.x yet.
It could only be made from ice elemental creatures which is pretty much limited to Blizzard Men.
I know the reaction works because the other varieties I made work but I never got around to testing what happens if they eat the frozen one.
Thinking about this did give me an idea though, mix the ice bloodwine and normal bloodwine in a reaction and you get a "Dwarven Slushie".