by Shizen » Fri Apr 26, 2013 7:42 am
For literally nothing, I'll just say they could add silver mines as an interesting boondoggle, just have silver run in veins that run dry. A silver vein that could be mined for 5-10k could still be interesting. Some logic to how veins run so they could be potentially predicted could create a mini-game of silver prospecting. It will be hard to match the cash accrual rates of grasshopper/bear hunting, but there's nothing wrong with extra paths to the same goal, just creates more variety. A silver ore boulder as a rare mining result, %age based on vein purity of the mine... I can see the amusement.
As for copper, it's unclear what advantage it has in Salem. In the real world it's easier to refine and to work. Bronze is a little harder to make and work than copper, but still quite workable, casts easier, lower melting point, much strong than copper, can be annealed, etc. There are several kinds of bronze, but they are remarkably similar in quantifiable traits. Iron has a high melting point, and is hard to refine, so unless they make smelting harder... ... It is harder to work, is "hard" but brittle, with little shock absorbance. Cast iron and wrought iron are both inferior, and iron is very hard to purify. I suppose they could make bronze just be easier to get at high purities. But their purity system would need to be overhauled for that to be truly useful. Recipes/items with purity requirements or thresholds, etc. Steel, in this time period is not hard to make in imperfect mixtures. Steel has a high variance, typically referred to in grades and basically runs a sliding scale of trading shock absorption with hardness. Hardness is what lets a blade hold an edge. Most period steel weapons were made with a mix of steels, "low" grade steel cores to absorb shock with "high" grade steal surfacing, annealed at the edges and sharpened.