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

Mithril, truesilver, one of the most sought after materials in the game. However, the Mithril of the the mod is actually not really accurate when compared to that of the books. The following references are from The Fellowship of the RIng  Book 2 Chapter 4 "A Journey in the Dark", " Mithril! All folk desired it. It could be beaten like copper, and polished like glass; and the Dwarves could make of it a metal, light and yet harder than tempered steel. Its beauty was like to that of common silver, but the beauty of  mithril did not tarnish or grow dim. The Elves dearly loved it and among many uses they made of it ithildin, starmoon, which you saw upon the doors." Also from this chapter is "Its worth was ten times that of gold, and now it is beyond price; for little is left above ground ..." From these passages we see several things.

What Needs to be Changed

1.)  Mithril was worth ten times its weight in gold while it was still being mined. The only reason that it is priceless now is that nobody is producing new Mithril due to the Balrog and the orcs taking over Moria. When it was being mined, I think it is reasonable to infer that due to Mithril being ten times the price of gold, it is also approximately ten times rarer than gold. Now gold ore is currently found everywhere in the Middle Earth world. The exact amount of gold ore varies between biomes, with some biomes having higher concentrations and other biomes having lower concentrations. So I am going to use the amount of gold ore in vanilla minecraft, which is 14.37 per ten thousand blocks. The current rate of Mithril ore in the Misty Mountains is 2.2 per ten thousand blocks, according to the LOTR wiki. The amount in Meneltarma is 6.1 per ten thousand blocks. For ease of calculations and due to Meneltarma being hard to find and very small, only the Misty Mountains and it's stats will be used  in the following calculations. While the spawn rate appears to be a fairly accurate scale, it is not. The Misty Mountains make up approximately 5% of the Middle earth map that Tolkien drew. They barely make up 1% of the total map in the mod. Now, because Gold can be found everywhere, this means that mithril is 140 times more rare than gold according to Tolkiens Map and 700 times more rare than gold according to the mod map. This is not accurate at all. I'm suggesting that we bump up the spawn rate of Mithril ore to about 10 to 15 blocks per ten thousand in the Misty Mountains and Meneltarma. Now before everybody freaks out about an over supply of mithril, please read on.

2.) Mithril was a pliable and easily worked material. It was basically very bright, beautiful, untarnishable silver. The light hard metal the dwarves made of it is the mithril of the mod.This metal does not really have a name in the book and mithril is used interchangably with it.  Now for ease of use, from now on I'm going to refer to the light, hard metal as Mithril and the easily worked, pliable metal as truesilver, because that is what everybody is used to. Now I'm going to describe a new process to make Mithril that will make it harder to obtain.

Truesilver ore will occur at a rate of 10 to fifteen blocks per ten thousand in the Misty Mountains as stated above. It can only be mined with a dwarven, high elven, or mordor Pickaxe. When mined it can be smelted in a dwarven, high elven, or mordor forge. (I include mordor and high elven to make it easier for other players, especially evil, players to do. I don't want to totally exclude them from obtaining mithril.) The forge would have to be fueled by a new fuel called purified charcoal. This would be made by resmelting charcoal in the furnace. The result would be grayish black and smaller, without any of the impurity flecks that you can see in the current charcoal. This new purified charcoal should have a texture reminescent of the high quality Bincho-tan charcoal that the Japanese produce ( to clarify it would not technically be Bincho-tan Charcoal, which has a lower burning temperature than normal charcoal, just look similar to it and be without the impurity flecks). The purified charcoal would burn twice as fast normal charcoal, requiring the player to use more of it. The idea of this purified charcoal is that it burns hotter, at tempatures that can melt the truesilver ore; but not as long, requiring the player to use more of this time consuming resource (Side note: The smelting rate would not increase either). When smelted, the Truesilve ore  would produce a Truesilver ingot, which would be a very bright, whitish, silvery ingot. This ingot would not really do anything at this time. Later it might make special looking glasses or jewelry. I don't know if the mithril rings of the mod should be made of Mithril or Truesilver. Now the player has two options, to make Mithril or Ithildin.

For the following ideas, I mention an Alignment based Crafting system. I made a suggestion about this. For more information on it follow this link. Alignment based Crafting The alignment levels mentioned can be changed after experimentation. They are only suggestions.

I also give the option of Mordor crafting. I do this so that it it's not almost impossible for evil players to obtain mithril. My reasoning behind giving this to Mordor players is that Sauron was a maiar who was a master smith. He helped forge the rings of power, except for the three elven rings, and spent time with the elves in Eregion. It is plausible that he might  know how to make Mithril from his time there. There is no lore on this so feel free to disagree, this aspect doesn't have to be included, and if enough comments are against it I will remove it.

Mithril: On a Dwarven or Mordor Crafting table the player would surround a Truesilver ingot with 7 pieces of purified charcoal and 1 piece of dwarven or Mordor steel to make a Mithril Smelting Ore. This would be a block that looks like charcoal mixed with metal flecks. In order for a player to craft it, the player would have to have at least a Dwarven alignment of 750 and a Mordor alignment of 1250. Once a player has this block, the player will put it into either a dwarven or an orc forge fueled by purified charcoal to smelt it into a Mithril Ingot. This Mithril ingot would be the light and hard metal produced by the dwarves. These would than be used just like the Mithril ingots now.

Ithildin: Ithildin would be made by combining a Truesilver ingot with either 7 purified charcoal and glowstone; 7 purified charcoal and edhelmir; or 6 purifed charcoal, glowstone dust, and edhelmir. The mixture can be decided by Mevans. This would be done on either a High elven or Mordor Crafting table. The alignment requirement could be 750 for High Elves and 1250 for Mordor. When combined this would yield an Ithildin Smelting Ore. This would look like a block of charcoal with sparkling bits in it. This would then be smelted in either a Elven furnace or an orc furnace using purified charcoal. This would yield an Ithildin ingot that could then be split into nuggets, which would replace the dust used for the new ithilidin chisels. It would have the same properties as the current ithildin.

In Conclusion

I believe that these changes will make Mithril more accurate to the books. The spawn rate will be closer to that described in the books, while the new smelting methods will still make it difficult to make. The way I described of making these different ores can be changed, but these seemed like a pretty decent way to do it. No matter how they are made, I do think that there should be three distinct metals instead of the two we have now.

Thanks for reading, I understand that there is a lot of information and that it can be confusing. Please leave comments, constructive criticism, and suggestions. Thanks! : )  