Yep, but to clarify for others, you don't just add carbon into the mix all willy nilly. You want the innate carbon to be as low as possible and then add it in a controlled manner for consistency. You can also fold other metals into it the iron for different effects.

Also, corundum is used in the manufacture of some steels. Especially the more durable/stronger ones.

Reality doesn't make sense either.

Why quick silver have you no damn use besided sharpening my Katana? Why?

It can be used to coat steel. It is a mineral of oxidized metals, it cannot be melted in and mixed with iron for added strength, cannot be made into an ingot to fold with iron, and if you were try and separate the metals then you no longer have corundum.

Because it's mostly used as an alloy for Elven weapons and armor.


Who says you do end up with Corundum when you're done mixing it with steel and iron in the game?

I wouldn't mind having this thread turn into a philosophy debate. What is reality to you?

That annoying time that prevents me from playing more Skyrim, of course!

You are just used to soft glass. Both my kids make their living blowing glass and the borosilicate glass they use is much tougher than regular glass. Now we come to the pinacle of eartly glass, quartz glass and it is very strong and tough.

Anyway the game uses "glass" and "ebony" as descriptions of what can only be advanced ceramics. Which will be wicked tough and strong.

Better now?

For glass, yes. I suspected it could be extremely strong and don't really have a problem with it... maybe that it doesn't break ever, but they removed durability for everything, so meh.

Now for the idea that it is made from malachite is another issue entirely.


Wait, what? That question doesn't make the most sense in the world.

Malachite means "Green Rock" - which it probably looks like before being refined. I dunno why they just didn't use "Raw Glass" again, though. Perhaps the guy in charge of smithing spent too much time reading over geology textbooks or playing Dwarf Fortress, but forgetting what everything actually meant.

Those boots have metal parts. I'm more worried that you can make ancient boots in the first place. I would expect that also requires a time machine.

Well, beyond malachite already being a known mineral, raw glass makes more sense in my opinion. Especially in morrowind where there were volcanoes and conceivable deposits of purer-than-most glass was found and can be melted and formed.

Though, I'd like to meet the Bethesda employee who plays DF. It takes a special kind of person to win by losing, and they're generally fun.


They're just like acid washed jeans! Ancient is just a term to make them sell better to teenagers.

Malachite is a green crystalline mineral.

Glass is... well, by definition not crystalline.

Logic?

You can craft other worldly armor using a severed heart.
You can create glass armor that does not shatter when used.
We have Elves, Werewolfs, Vampires
You can wield a 2-hander that is so large it looks like it belongs to an anime character.
Ebony isn't even metal.
Alchemy incrediates that don't make sense.
Enchanting.
Dragons?
How about snow falling thru house roofs.

...and many more.

They are just using familar names, it's a game, logic went out the window.

Since it is commonly found in copper rich rock, malachite is smelted to extract copper. Finer quality malachite is not smelted but instead used in the crafting of jewelry.

So the molecular bonds are not strong enough to survive the temperatures of being melted which goes against turning it into an ingot in the first place. As a gemstone, it's not metallic and can't be hammered into shape.

As for hardness. Harder doesn't mean better. Sometimes by making something hard, you also make it brittle and can shatter if struck too hard. If metal is struck too hard, it can bend. If it bends too easily, it is too soft for the application. If it shatters when struck (which steel can) then it was made too hard and/or brittle.

I'm guessing that they just wanted to use a real mineral name of a green glass-like substance.

Just wanted to further on the decomposition due to smelting. While malachite ore will be smelted to extract any copper within, the malachite itself breaks down. The first thing to go is the hydroxide ions since they are weakly bonded to the copper carbonate molecule. Then you are left with copper carbonate, which will burn to produce carbon dioxide and copper oxide also called tenorite which is a gray-black mineral.

Again, that's a bad excuse. Bad poster, no, no, no. *hits you with a rolled up newspaper*

Saying "it's a game" can be used to excuse literally everything; which if you don't have any expectations what-so-ever then sure, I guess it works.

But I'll say it for the fourth time. My point isn't about how logical the game is, but how consistent it is with its logic. Picking and choosing things that you can apply critical thinking to in a haphazard way does not lend itself to a shining aspect of the game. If you're going to borrow elements from the real world then use them all in logical manner, in my opinion. If you're going to use things that have no place in reality then by all means use them in whatever way you like.

Dragons aren't necessarily cold blooded. Souls don't necessarily go to God. Magical bolts don't necessarily need to do anything we expect.

Fire burns, ice freezes things, iron is found as an ore and smelted into ingots, organic ingredients can be mixed together into solutions, etc.

The game ties into reality in more ways than one, but some effects lie in between the two representations I listed. The most used example here is corundum. It lies in reality, can be mined as in reality, looks like it does in reality, and then with no explanation of voodoo hullabaloo does something completely unrelated to reality.

Ok but why do you care? Why must anything be consistent? There is nothing that applies to everything, nor should there need to be. Nirn and its universe is just another multiverse linked to our world in some ways, and that is all.

Bad poster because I answered your post with my opinion? Okay.

Game Designers have to borrow elements from the real world to make it believable to the consumers, they may not follow logic fully, else creativity in games wouldn't be able to go far. If everything was consistant to real life, it would be boring, if everyting was consistant to a false world it would make us think "that doesn't seem possible".

And another thing for logic is not even physics nor gravity in this game is the same as ours, it's very different. You can probably find the thread with the calculations proving this when players were trying to calculate the scale of Skyrim because of the Throat of the World.

Worst thread EVER.

This question sense does not make.

I'm on earth and I care! Hm, you should also pay attention in school then as well. It pays off in the long run.


I care because I like to use my brain in games. When they offer tantalizing close to reality scenarios I like to start thinking, applying knowledge, and being clever to win goals. When consistency is.... inconsistent then I can't really do that. I have to second guess every action and not assume that anything logically follows. Some stuff does, some stuff doesn't, and some stuff is the exact opposite of what you normally think. I call the inability to use logic in almost logical situations annoying


You don't have to be illogical to be creative, but you do have to be consistent to be logical. In an environment where you interact with the world, letting players assume one thing while not others is inconsistent and I would call bad game design. When interacting with anything you use an amount of logic. When borrowing elements from reality, you are also borrowing the logic that is associate with them. Complying with it one one are and defying it in another doesn't lend itself to a game that encourages critical thinking.


Worst post EVER.

So you are OK with ebony because it's a wood in RL, so why the concern about corundum? In Nirn, corundum is a metal, not mineral. Surely you can't be fine with ebony and glass as metals, but not corundum. That's racist metalist

I'm slightly okay with Ebony being a metal only because it differs from the standard definition of Ebony in huge way, namely composition, and I can't approach it logically in any way shape or form. If Iron was a gas in the game, then I wouldn't make any assumptions about it either simply because it starts off fundamentally different from the get-go. I suppose I'm making the point that it's fine to make materials different from the real world, but name them the same, if they were completely and utterly different from the beginning.

In any case, my ebony ingots ain't gonna be mixin' in school with no corundum ingots, I tell ya what.

i think that the fact that crafting hundreds of iron daggers suddenly makes it possible it to make daedric armor is a much bigger problem with smithing