Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-27130828-20161220224154/@comment-26172435-20170425190106

I disagree with much of this proposal and wish to explain my view in answer to the proposal above.

The proposed 'making mithril harder to obtain' is only apparent in my opinion, only making the process a bit more complex / devious, while effectively only slightly delaying the nett effect of the proposed increased occurence of mithril. Overall, with this proposal, there will simply be more mithril available, causing even more unbalance regarding the use of mithril gear versus other gear, sadly. And I don't think that is the purpose of this proposal.

Moreover I have a fundamental objection to the proposed increased occurence rate, as it is based on an assumption that doesn't hold: if mithril was worth ten times it's weight in gold before Moria was abandoned, but after that it became priceless, it does not give that much factual information on the occurence of mithril ore in the misties and elsewhere after Moria was abandoned, and that is the situation the mod has to represent. In my view, the factor 'ten' should be interpreted as indicative for the availability of mithril in relation to gold in Moria, as it was at the time the only provider, and they were able to set the price. This would lead me to assume mithril was about ten times as rare as gold in Moria until the ore veins either got depleted or were made inaccessible for further exploitation. This implies to me that the current occurence of mithril in the Misties is rather well defined, albeit that I feel it should only generate in the newly planned Moria sub-biome around Moria.

On top of that, I'd rather see other changes affecting the nett availability of mithril gear, like:


 * Mithril ore could be unsmeltable in the present craftable dwarven furnaces, or have a very low yield in those furnaces, like 1 ingot per 8 ore blocks, and either only be smeltable in or only give higher yields in rare, special furnaces: 'Mithril Smelter'. These are only to be found in rare ancient underground dwarven structures 'Mithril Smeltery' that can only be found in the planned Moria biome and are very hard to find, maybe not even visible at the surface and connected to ancient, collapsed dwarven underground mine systems. They should have a very high coal consumption rate (high T indeed) and have a maximum yield of 50%: 1 coal per 1 mithril ore to give 1 mithril ingot per 2 mithril ore blocks. Use of these Mithril Smelters would not require special alignment. This notion leads to this: 1) creates alignment independence of smelting mithril ore and obtaining mithril ingots, 2) encourages team (fellowship!) work in finding and operating these rare furnaces and 3) reduces the nett availability of mithril ingots even further (besides the reduction of the area with mithril ore occurence from the entire Misties, incl. Foothills, to only the Moria biome).


 * 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.


 * New gear can only be crafted by adding mithril ingots to iron based gear, for example, a new mithril chest plate can be crafted with an iron chestplate in the center surrounded by 8 mithril ingots and a new mithril blade can only be forged on the basis of an iron blade + two mithril ingots. I propose to call this craft 'Mithril clad gear'. The protective value and hit strength / sharpness are comparable to pure mithril gear, but the durability of these items must be halved. This gear is repairable though, but as the durability is halved and the maximum yield is halved, the nett mithril gear availability will be reduced with a factor 4, at least. Also, if ever the mod team considers to implement armour weight, this mithril clad gear will be rather heavy and only pure, unrepairable, mithril gear from treasure will have the light weight from legend. This would be in line with my detailed proposal on Armour Weight dependent movement speed, ofc. ;)


 * In case the mod team considers to add mithril veins to any other mountain range, I recommend to ensure the chance of vein generation is smaller than in Moria (1-2 per 10000 seems reasonable there), and I would rather see bigger veins (4-16 ore blocks per vein, instead of 1-4) and a smaller generation chance to make the find of a vein extra exiting.

As this has become such a concrete and specific train of thoughts, I may as well turn this into a separate suggestion ... which I will do, soonish. ;)