Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-26172435-20170426191637

Mithril gear availability and how this affects gameplay
Mithril gear is the most valuable gear in the mod and leads to 'mithril rushes' in any early game where pvp is one of the gameplay objectives ... so, like, nearly always and on almost any server. Despite the fact that mithril ore is relatively rare and mithril ingots can only be obtained in Dwarven Forges when a player has positive alignment with Durin's Folk, on most servers mithril is a commodity for many players and most combat is fought using mithril gear, unless server staff is succesful in enforcing faction gear for pvp. This is an undesirable situation for most server staff and also to many players who feel mithril should simply be much rarer for the game to fit the lore and theme.

Mithril gear and ingot availability
The availability of mithril is determined by the occurence of mithril ore in the Misty Mountains and on Meneltarma, through treasure in loot chests spread across Middle-earth and through drops of Barrow-wights.

The occurence of mithril ore in the Misty Mountains seems in agreement with the sparse information lore provides as mithril ore is about ten times as rare as gold in Moria, which is in line with the notion that 'mithril is worth ten times its weight in gold' and assuming this holds for Moria at the time it was actively mined and processed there and the dwarves of Khazad-Dûm were able to dictate the price. The presence of mithril outside of Moria is debatable.

The presence of mithril ore on Meneltarma is also in agreement with lore, but the accesibility of Meneltarma is highly debatable and the occurence there may be debatable as well. I won't address this specific Meneltarma issue here as Mevans has already indicated he considered the addition of Meneltarma to be one of their biggest mistakes, likely because of how it affected mithril and athelas availability.

Any faction or fellowship of players only needs one player with positive alignment with Durin's Folk to be able to smelt mithril ore and obtain mithril ingots. In practise, anyone is able to obtain mithril gear, provided they put some effort in it. There are no restrictions on crafting mithril gear from mithril ingots.

Mithril gear of any origin has very high durability and can be repaired.

Purpose of this proposal
With the proposal presented below I intend to achieve two objectives:

1) Significantly decrease the availability of mithril gear to the players.

2) Significantly reduce the relative value of mithril gear in comparison to other gear sets as to encourage the use of other gear sets and reduce the relative importance mithril has to many players.

Together with proposals regarding the spawning of Barrow-wights and the introduction of an additional attribute to armour, weight, this should lead to a more balanced use of the various gear sets of the mod.

Mithril ore occurence
To make the find of a vein extra exiting and worthwhile, and encourage cooperative action of players in fellowships, I propose to quadruple the average size of mithril ore veins from 1-6 to 4-24. This would mean the occurence rate would have to be made four times as low: resulting in a one in sixteen chance of a chunk generating with a vein, instead of a one in four chance.

As I assume a new Moria biome is planned, I expect that biome to be the only biome in Middle-earth that will have the mithril ore occurence similar to the present occurence in the Misty Mountains (incl. Foothills).

In case the mod team considers to add mithril veins to any other biome, like the Ered Nimrais or Erebor, I recommend to use a lower occurence rate as in Moria, preferrably like 4 times as low. This will make it hardly worthwhile to mine for mithril in these biomes, but a huge and valuable surprise to anyone mining there if they ever hit a vein.

Regarding Meneltarma ... yeah, well, just do something about it gentlemen, if you are serious about your regret.

Mithril ore smelting in existing mod furnaces
Mithril ore should either no longer be smeltable in the present Dwarven Forge and only in the new, dedicated mithril oven as proposed below, or become smeltable in all the mods four-slot alloy forges, but at a much lower yield. A yield of 1 ingot per 4 mithril ore blocks would seem a low enough yield to ensure both mithril ingots and the newly proposed mithril oven are valued highly.

I actually see no need nor logic of either lore or realism to limit the ability of smelting mithril ore to any alignment.

Mithril ore smelting in a dedicated dwarvish oven
Mithril ore smelting shall be either only possible in, or have highest possible yield in a new dedicated smelting oven: 'Mithril Smelter'.

Mithril Smelters are to be a very rare find in both Dwarven Towers and Ruined Dwarven Towers and are to be found in new rare ancient underground dwarven structures called 'Mithril Smelteries' that can only be found in the planned Moria biome. The Mithril Smeltery structure should be very hard to find, maybe not even visible at the surface and connected to ancient, collapsed dwarven underground mine systems.

The Mithril Smelter should have a very high coal consumption rate, 1 coal per mithril ore, as the smelting of mithril ore requires relatively high temperature, (and hence the inability or very low yield in ordinary forges) high T indeed). The Mithril Smelter yield will be 50%: 1 mithril ingot per 2 mithril ore blocks.  Use of Mithril Smelters shall not require alignment.

These adjustments lead to:

1) Alignment independence of smelting mithril ore and obtaining mithril ingots.

2) Encouraging of team (fellowships!) work in finding and operating these rare furnaces.

3) Further reduction of the nett availability of mithril ingots.

Repairability of 'pure' mithril gear
Pure mithril gear as found in treasure should not be repairable as it requires smithing skills that are simply no longer mastered by the peoples of Middle-earth since Moria was abandoned and the few smiths that fled Moria alive no longer had pure, fresh mithril to work with, nor sufficient apprentices to pass on their trade.

Crafting of mithril clad gear
A new gear set should be implemented: 'Mithril clad gear'. This includes all items in the current Mitril Armour and Mithril Equipment sets.

Main assumption is that the average third age smiths are not able to forge pure mithril gear like their forefathers could. Instead, they forge molten mithril as a cladding onto iron base items. The recipes for crafting this new mithril clad gear will be shapeless and all use a base iron item and require a number of mithril ingots equivalent to the number of iron ingots used for the base iron item. For example, a mithril clad chest plate can be crafted with an iron chestplate in the center surrounded by 8 mithril ingots and a mithril clad sword can only be forged on the basis of an iron blade + two mithril ingots.

The introduction of mithril clad gear using this recipe has four relevant effects:

1) The protective value and hit strength / sharpness of mithril clad gear are the same as those of pure mithril gear. This is as those attributes can be assumed to be determined by the nature (a.o. density and edge sharpness) of the outer clad layer applied to the iron core.

2) Mirthil clad gear has lower durability than pure mithril gear as both the adhesion between mithril clad layer and base material is not fail-free and the base material is simply weaker and more brittle than the outer clad layer. Repairing is done through 'reforging' and (to keep it simple) by adding mithril. I propose it to have similar durability as Gondolinian armour. Alternatively, the durability of Gondolinian armour should be lowered with 20-30 % and the mithril clad armour will have a durability that is slightly higher, 10-20 %, as the resulting new Gondolinian armour durability.

3) Mithril clad gear can be repaired with fresh mithril ingots. This requires the same skill as the crafting itself and is consequently justifiable.

4) Mithril clad armour is slightly heavier than the base iron scale armour, resulting in higher drag in case the mod team may decide to finally seriously consider implementing weight as an additional attribute to armour items. The result will be that mithril clad armour will have serious competition of many other armour sets and it's no longer the most obvious preferred armour set in combat. If armour weight is implemented in the way as proposed here, combining other types of armour with mithril (clad) armour items may be an interesting option to achieve both optimum protection and player/character agility in combat.

Skill required for crafting of mithril gear
As smithing requires skill and skill is only shared among people who can be considered trustworthy enough, I propose to make both crafting and repairing of mithril clad gear alignment dependent. As soon as a player has acquired +1000 alignment with any faction, he can be assumed to be introduced to the secrets of mithril working by the smiths of that faction and he unlocks the ability to craft and repair mithril clad gear.

Additionally, I wish to remind the option to use experience orbs for crafting of high tier gear, or 'advanced crafting' as proposed here. The attributes of mithril clad gear are good enough to justify the additional cost of experience orbs (which may be interpreted as the crafters 'Vigour', a semi-magical but justifiably physical quality a player/character may acquire from his actions in the game).

Partial implementation
Not all of the above presented adjustments need to be implemented in order to achieve the intended gameplay improvements. To identify which of the proposed measures is most appreciated, a poll is added in the second post of this thread,

Related suggestions
[Endorsed] Armour weight and unit movement speed : Adresses a new attribute to armour and requires reduced availability of pure mithril armour.

[Endorsed] Lore Friendly Mithril : Addresses mithril ore availability and mithril ingot production.

[Endorsed] Banner protection on barrows, ruins and pyramids : Aims to reduce ease to loot barrows.

[Endorsed] Adjusted spawning of Barrow-wights : Aims to reduce the ease to grind Barrow-wights.

Closure notes
Any feedback is appreciated. Valuable improvements to the proposals as explained above will be considered, unless they lead to too strong deviations of the original notions. In that case I recommend to post an alternative or additional suggestion regarding this subject. 