Smithing/metallurgy; shields; campfires

[Zabuzaxsta]

So this is definitely a topic that has been brought up a few times, but I want to aim at presenting some original ideas to the whole process and dispelling some mistaken assumptions about the reality of the effectiveness of some of these ideas.

 

Let's talk about shields before we get to the good stuff.  Numerous people have proposed the idea, and numerous others have responded with comments like "oh zeds would just pull it out of your hands" or "shields were designed for intelligent human combatants and not unintelligent zeds, and are therefore more effective against the former and not the latter."  Sorry guys, but these are terrible arguments, IMO.  As for the first, which would you rather face while being bare-handed, a guy with a short sword AND a shield, or a guy with a short sword?  People who make the first comment, according to their own line of reasoning, should respond to this question by saying "Well obviously the guy with the sword and the shield because I'd just grab the shield and pull on it and throw him off balance then pwn his face."  This is quite ludicrous.  Not only would you lack the requisite leverage to do so, but in so doing would make yourself extremely vulnerable to any number of killing blows.  In addition, the shield-bearer could bash you in the face the moment you approached and trust me, you'd have absolutely no possibility of catching the shield and wrenching it free with your bare hands before you were dead.  If this could at all be done with reliability, the shield would never have arisen as a reliable armament.

 

As for the second argument, I have to say I can barely understand it.  If an intelligent person is incapable of doing the aforementioned skillful actions, then surely a stupid-ass slow zed would be incapable of doing them.  Yes, they may have increased physical strength but again couldn't really do anything about the shield before you murdered them in the face.  Again, it's not like you could just dispatch a shield-bearing army by raising an army of really strong bare-fisted fighters (I doubt unarmed Shaolin monks did well against shielded/sworded opponents in Chinese history).  Yes, jujitsu was invented as a martial art for fighting unarmed against an armed opponent, but it was designed to try and maximize your chances of survival in a non-ideal situation - it's not like zeds are jujitsu masters anyway.  Furthermore, as has been noted, there's the large chance that the zed wouldn't even recognize the shield as a thing that needed to be contended with.  If he didn't, you could bash him with it, and if he did, he'd be distracted by it, and you could slice his face off.

 

Which leads me to my next point - swords don't have to be sharp.  During the days of cavalry, sharp swords were a huge bane to the cavalryman.  Imagine swinging a sharp-ass sword down on top of a guy's head with all your might and then THWOCK! your sword gets wedged in his skull.  As you're trying to pull it out, numerous other dudes stab you to death.  They didn't use sharp swords, they used blunt swords - big pieces of metal that shattered your skull or arm bone or collarbone/shoulder that wouldn't get stuck in your body so the cavalryman could keep riding, keep moving, and keep fucking people up.  If we made swords smithable, we could do blunt swords at lower skill levels and sharp swords available at higher skill levels (the former leveling up blunt and the latter leveling up blade).

 

A legitimate way to incorporate smithing would be to (again, as other people have noted) make only one or two anvils in the game.  I respect that you can use any sort of sufficiently hard surface (like a granite countertop, as one has suggested, or a cinder block, as others have suggested) to temper red-hot metal - that's a possibility, but would be hard and counter-intuitive to implement.  It would also be impossible to make anvils "craftable" unless it was a level 5 tier skill, but that's still pretty implausible.  Instead, I say there should be an anvil or two on the map in the various farms, randomly generated and extremely scattered (so you'd have no idea where it was).  You could then go one of two ways - immovable, or extremely difficult to move.  The former would force trips for forging and resource expenditures to make the smithing area safe (or building an entire safehouse around the anvil), and the latter could be easily implemented by making the anvil ignore weight reduction penalties (or make it so damn heavy it could only be carried by putting it in the highest weight reduction bag...the big hiking bag I think?).  Regardless, it would take ages to put into/take out of your inventory and make you super encumbered and exhausted by carrying it, effectively making you vulnerable to anything other than a 1v1 or 1v2 encounter (and making you unable to flee if you encounter more).  This would then make retrieving the anvil a late-game "quest" as it were.

 

There could be various tools required, such as a smithing hammer, tongs, or bellows; you could be required to make a forge out of masonry components (using a hammer to break down brick walls, using concrete bags to make morter, trowel to assemble); and then either logs or charcoal to fuel the forge (charcoal could just be a potential left over thing from campfires for easy implementation, or a specifically crafted item for difficult implementation).  If you don't like the forge idea, heck, you could use a grill - hell, with enough coal and air, I've gotten zones within the coals over 1000 degrees before, and you only have to hit like 1500 or 2000 to be able to shape steel.  It's doable...but dangerous!

 

And that could be the trade off for this potentially game-breaking addition - the danger.  Fires should be extremely common or possible without adequate preventions (e.g. babysitting your shit, not using excess fuel, skill level when forge was built, etc.), and only really definitely controllable at the max skill level.  There could also be a trough required for quenching meta, which would consume extremely valuable late-game water at a high rate.  

 

Needless to say, one could make all sorts of things craftable with this skillset - tools like axes, spades, trowels, sledgehammers, or items like nails, screws, rivets, barbed wire, metal posts, or even nebulous "part kits" for various items (like "car parts" for when they incorporate vehicles, I used a soda can to help fix my engine once, or "gun parts" to repair firearms, or whatever).

 

I'm gonna stop here because this is ridiculously long already.

 

TL;DR - shields are definitely combative effective, swords don't need to be sharp, anvils are implementable, and the whole system can require various max level skills to balance it out and make it late-game only

[Rathlord]

Been over this several times, but I'll do a brief recap:

 

(First, a side note on swords/shields. You're pretty much right there)

 

There are, essentially, two big reasons why forging is silly for PZ:

 

1) People don't have the skills. You're meant to play as an every day person in Project Zomboid. Forging is barely done anymore at all outside of factories (which give no practical experience to their workers anyways) and hobby forging/smithing is incredibly uncommon. Last time I looked it up only something like 3,000 people in the entire nation were hobby forgers. This means the chances of them being in Muldraugh, Ky are... well, you can figure that out.

 

2) The materials to support doing it are incredibly uncommon. Not like, one or two anvils in Muldraugh, KY. Like, only a handful in the state. TIS doesn't have the man power to represent every possible minute detail of real life- things like smithing. There's a list of items nearly infinitely long that are more common than blacksmithing supplies, and finding that stuff scattered at random around the map is just going to feel silly. Similarly, finding it in one location would be equally silly- spending huge amounts of dev time for items, sprites, specialized systems, and a skill tree for something that can only done in one location? There's a time budget that must be considered.

 

Finally, as a personal sidebar, I don't think it really adds anything to the game except a disconcerting sense that we're trying to be Minecraft here. People do forge and smith in real life, but for a game that tries to capture the spirit of the "everyman" in the apocalypse, it just doesn't feel right. Further, anything you could do with forging could be easily captured by another part of the game. Salvaging metal and grinding or cutting it into weapons is much more feasible. Woodworking could make less durable versions of weapons and shields (though, to be fair, a wooden shield is actually better than anything you could make from forging- shields aren't forged; most shields are wood underneath with metal sides, and possibly a thin coat over the front).

[Kajin]

Let's talk about shields before we get to the good stuff.  Numerous people have proposed the idea, and numerous others have responded with comments like "oh zeds would just pull it out of your hands" or "shields were designed for intelligent human combatants and not unintelligent zeds, and are therefore more effective against the former and not the latter."  Sorry guys, but these are terrible arguments, IMO.  As for the first, which would you rather face while being bare-handed, a guy with a short sword AND a shield, or a guy with a short sword?  People who make the first comment, according to their own line of reasoning, should respond to this question by saying "Well obviously the guy with the sword and the shield because I'd just grab the shield and pull on it and throw him off balance then pwn his face."  This is quite ludicrous.  Not only would you lack the requisite leverage to do so, but in so doing would make yourself extremely vulnerable to any number of killing blows.  In addition, the shield-bearer could bash you in the face the moment you approached and trust me, you'd have absolutely no possibility of catching the shield and wrenching it free with your bare hands before you were dead.  If this could at all be done with reliability, the shield would never have arisen as a reliable armament.

This. All of this. Whenever the shield vs zed discussion comes up I'm always firmly on the side of the shields.

[Zabuzaxsta]

1) People don't have the skills...Last time I looked it up only something like 3,000 people in the entire nation were hobby forgers. This means the chances of them being in Muldraugh, Ky are... well, you can figure that out.

 

So If we did a perfectly even distribution across the United States, that would mean that there were 60 blacksmiths in each state.  If we eliminated the unlikely states (those with extreme weather conditions, highly developed states in which such a hobby would be antithetical to the everyman, etc.) we could probably rule out Hawaii, Alaska, the densely populated northeast, and probably reasonably assert there would be a low concentration in the midwest.  Most likely, there would be a higher concentration in the southeast, southwest, and perhaps west coast due to its high population.  This would mean the amount of blacksmiths in Kentucky would probably be over 60.  Of the towns likely to have a blacksmith, we could probably rule out the big cities.  So, there being a smith in small town Kentucky actually doesn't seem that unlikely to me.

 

Regardless, there's a certain dimension to the game that isn't realistic.  How many people do you know that are excellent sprinters, sneakers, are extremely light-footed and nimble, who are world-class chefs, carpenters, marksmen, reloaders, and so forth?  Further, what is the chance that there is a person in Muldraugh, KY who can sprint all the way to West Point without taking a break?  What about there being an excellent chef in one of those towns?  A marksman who can take down five people with one shotgun blast?  This game definitely bends the realism of such situations.

 

I think the important thing to focus on is whether or not smithing is learnable through trial and error (as others have mentioned), and it most definitely is.  You can gather a bunch of coals together, light them on fire, and then stick a piece of metal in there until it starts glowing red, then bang on it with a hammer and stick it in some water to cool it off.  From there, everything is just refining.

[uberevan]

 

1) People don't have the skills...Last time I looked it up only something like 3,000 people in the entire nation were hobby forgers. This means the chances of them being in Muldraugh, Ky are... well, you can figure that out.

 

So If we did a perfectly even distribution across the United States, that would mean that there were 60 blacksmiths in each state.  If we eliminated the unlikely states (those with extreme weather conditions, highly developed states in which such a hobby would be antithetical to the everyman, etc.) we could probably rule out Hawaii, Alaska, the densely populated northeast, and probably reasonably assert there would be a low concentration in the midwest.  Most likely, there would be a higher concentration in the southeast, southwest, and perhaps west coast due to its high population.  This would mean the amount of blacksmiths in Kentucky would probably be over 60.  Of the towns likely to have a blacksmith, we could probably rule out the big cities.  So, there being a smith in small town Kentucky actually doesn't seem that unlikely to me.

"There are 425 active cities in the Commonwealth of Kentucky that are recognized by the state.^{[1]"-Wikipedia}

^{Rule out the big cities?  Where there are MORE people?  I don't really get your logic but Okay...}

So assuming that all this random chance you described happens you get 60 blacksmiths in 425 cities? What are the odds of having ONE blacksmith PER CITY, and that's if there are any in the first place!

 

I do not know how to smith, I've asked adults, children, friends, family, and they didn't know how to smith either!  I find it highly unlikely to know how to work the tools even if you find them. 

You've got a shield! Great!  Have you ever ran through hundreds of sandbags with a shield?  Then talk to me about  it's effectiveness.

 

Where do these people get swords?  I thought you said there would only be 1 or 2 anvils, and that's assuming they even got the tools, or correctly crafted one at all

 

Sprinting isn't an uncommon trait, I'm pretty sure that should take you a week to get good at, considering that I've done it before. I don't remember the game saying you're a world class chef, being quiet shouldn't be difficult unless you're a middle schooler, carpentry is not hard to learn, again from personal experience, guns are planned to be nerfed by a lot,  and I'm definitely certain you can't run straight to West Pointe without stoping unless you're using hacks.  Besides, isn't West Pointe like 6 miles away?  That's what Google Maps told me, and I'd hope you could reach 6 miles in one day in a Zpocalypse.

[EnigmaGrey]

3 in every 250,000 people, if we use Wikipedia's estimate of 4000 practicing members of whatever that blacksmithing club is.

[Rathlord]

So If we did a perfectly even distribution across the United States, that would mean that there were 60 blacksmiths in each state.  If we eliminated the unlikely states (those with extreme weather conditions, highly developed states in which such a hobby would be antithetical to the everyman, etc.) we could probably rule out Hawaii, Alaska, the densely populated northeast, and probably reasonably assert there would be a low concentration in the midwest.  Most likely, there would be a higher concentration in the southeast, southwest, and perhaps west coast due to its high population.  This would mean the amount of blacksmiths in Kentucky would probably be over 60.  Of the towns likely to have a blacksmith, we could probably rule out the big cities.  So, there being a smith in small town Kentucky actually doesn't seem that unlikely to me.

 

Most smithing is actually done in small shops with 2 to 3 people in them afaik. These tend to be on the outskirts of cities frequently due to ease of getting the materials (as they're extremely rare and expensive to ship). Source for this is some personal connections to bladesmiths. Also, no reason to rule out states based on weather- it's mostly done indoors these days with industrial fans and the like. Hawaii is probably a safe bet to rule out due to exponentially increased shipping costs.

 

 

Regardless, there's a certain dimension to the game that isn't realistic.  How many people do you know that are excellent sprinters, sneakers, are extremely light-footed and nimble, who are world-class chefs, carpenters, marksmen, reloaders, and so forth?  Further, what is the chance that there is a person in Muldraugh, KY who can sprint all the way to West Point without taking a break?  What about there being an excellent chef in one of those towns?  A marksman who can take down five people with one shotgun blast?  This game definitely bends the realism of such situations.

 

Nothing in the game ever suggests that you are (or can be) anything besides competent at sprinting, sneaking, lightfootedness, nimbleness, cooking, carpentry, marksmen, or reloaders. The difference is that smithing has an information barrier to even start doing it. Try without that and you're going to fail 100% of the time and possibly hurt yourself. And pointing out game mechanics that need tweaking in an early alpha phase of the game doesn't prove your point at all- those are just things that haven't been tweaked, and are in fact always changing. (For the record, though, I'm good friends with one of the world's best sharpshooters- not that it proves my point or yours in any way).

 

 

I think the important thing to focus on is whether or not smithing is learnable through trial and error (as others have mentioned), and it most definitely is.  You can gather a bunch of coals together, light them on fire, and then stick a piece of metal in there until it starts glowing red, then bang on it with a hammer and stick it in some water to cool it off.  From there, everything is just refining.

 

It really isn't that simple. I've been over time and again how incredibly difficult it is to get a fire up that hot, not to mention finding proper gear to deal with the heat- that alone would stop the vast majority of people from ever even attempting this. Further, sticking random chunks of metal into fire (especially if it's barely hot enough to make it malleable) is going to make the metals much, much weaker to the point where it may not even hold together as a solid piece afterwords. And quenching metals wrong causes them to crack or even shatter.

 

Forging is something that took the human race thousands of years to learn- just to start to learn. The idea that someone with no experience could pick it up at a whim is the height of conceit.

3 in every 250,000 people, if we use Wikipedia's estimate of 4000 practicing members of whatever that blacksmithing club is.

 

And for the record, Muldraugh population hangs at right about 1,000. You do the odds.

[Realmkeeper]

I think the important thing to focus on is whether or not smithing is learnable through trial and error (as others have mentioned), and it most definitely is.  You can gather a bunch of coals together, light them on fire, and then stick a piece of metal in there until it starts glowing red, then bang on it with a hammer and stick it in some water to cool it off.  From there, everything is just refining.

 

A legitimate opinion, however, I think the important thing to focus on is whether or not the amount of time and complexity in developing and implementing a smithing system within PZ would make it anywhere near worthwhile the resultant gameplay and gameplay functionality.

 

From a developer's point of view, and given the current depth and scope of specific skill required functionality already in the game, I'd have to conclude that developing a 'realistic enough to fit the PZ world' smithing system would not be worth the time and effort sunk into it by the Devs.

Look at farming or carpentry - no prerequisite skills are needed to jump right in and attempt the '101' difficulty. Smithing however, needs at least a bit of knowledge and/or insight before you can make anything out of a lump of ore (or the '101' equivalent), so your average Joe couldn't jump right in and teach himself solely through trial and error, or basic skill books (The equipment required is a major hurdle to begin with, then the cost/rarity of the raw materials is also a bit of a setback)

[philthy mcnasty]

I think you would be better off asking for swords to be in comic book shops instead, or in an antique store, or a gun store even.

 

Then again, it could be a skill book in the libary. "medieval blacksmithing"

 

and lets face it, if ash could make gun powder in army of darkness with just a college chemestry text book, then a REALLY board/panicking suvivor may decide to try to do post apolcylptic blacksmithing based on books they have read.

 

BUT

This is assuming they are smart/skilled enough to do this, and lets face it, if this is just an average joe, then even the building of fortifications is going to be out of the question.

[Zabuzaxsta]

"There are 425 active cities in the Commonwealth of Kentucky that are recognized by the state.^{[1]"-Wikipedia}

^{Rule out the big cities?  Where there are MORE people?  I don't really get your logic but Okay...}

So assuming that all this random chance you described happens you get 60 blacksmiths in 425 cities? What are the odds of having ONE blacksmith PER CITY, and that's if there are any in the first place!

 

I do not know how to smith, I've asked adults, children, friends, family, and they didn't know how to smith either!  I find it highly unlikely to know how to work the tools even if you find them. 

You've got a shield! Great!  Have you ever ran through hundreds of sandbags with a shield?  Then talk to me about  it's effectiveness.

 

Where do these people get swords?  I thought you said there would only be 1 or 2 anvils, and that's assuming they even got the tools, or correctly crafted one at all

 

Sprinting isn't an uncommon trait, I'm pretty sure that should take you a week to get good at, considering that I've done it before. I don't remember the game saying you're a world class chef, being quiet shouldn't be difficult unless you're a middle schooler, carpentry is not hard to learn, again from personal experience, guns are planned to be nerfed by a lot,  and I'm definitely certain you can't run straight to West Pointe without stoping unless you're using hacks.  Besides, isn't West Pointe like 6 miles away?  That's what Google Maps told me, and I'd hope you could reach 6 miles in one day in a Zpocalypse.

 

 

So I'll address these one by one.  425/60 = (approximately) 15%.  That's really not that ludicrous of a number.  The same as say, perhaps, a major logging company being located in any given city?  Actually, I just checked - there's about 10,000 logging companies in the US.  So yeah, that's three times larger, but still a pretty small margin for implementing in a random city (and yet, there's one in Muldraugh).

 

And yeah, we should definitely rule out the big cities.  Why on earth would you think that there would be blacksmiths in dense urban centers like New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Houston, etc?  There are laws against having those sorts of things on your property in cities without proper zoning and qualifications.  In rural areas, the requirements are much less severe/aren't really enforced.  Like some dude would have an anvil and forge on his apartment balcony in the middle of NYC, lol.

 

Running through a bunch of zombies (the equivalent of running through a bunch of sandbags) is not something you do in project zomboid; you must not live very long in your playthroughs if you're running that analogy.  One typically wants to avoid running straight into large groups if one wants to survive.  Again, run your point against soldiers in a battlefied..."Would you try running through a bunch of soldiers with a shield?  Lol you would totes die instantly it's like running through sandbags you should do it without a shield" is a god-awful argument.  There's no reason to think that armorless, weaponless, moronic zeds would somehow be more effective than armored, weapon-bearing, intelligent human soldiers.  The sandbag analogy is a terrible one - of course against a horde of zeds swarming you, nothing would be effective.  That's not a good argument for why any given item would not be useful in the zombie apocolypse.

 

Also, sprinting is not something anyone can get good at.  I've had numerous friends that simply cannot run well.  They are uncoordinated, and lack the physical structure of a runner.  Asserting that anyone can be good at it is simply false.

 

The idea about West Point was that you shouldn't be able to sprint there in a day or two in real life, but you obviously can in Zomboid.  Zomboid does not equal perfect realism.

 

Being able to create an amazingly tasty soup out of brocolli, carrots, butter and water on a campfire seems to be the talent of a world-class chef.  I'd like to see you make some awesome stuff you'd never get tired of with those ingredients.

[Zabuzaxsta]

 

Forging is something that took the human race thousands of years to learn- just to start to learn. The idea that someone with no experience could pick it up at a whim is the height of conceit.

 

I actually quite disagree with this.  It also took the human race thousands of years to learn-just to start to learn-how to grow plants.  This, however, is something everybody thinks they can pick up with ease.  Have you ever tried to grow plants?  It's extremely difficult, depending on the plant and environment you are trying to grow it in.  I could use your argument to establish that farming shouldn't exist in the game.

 

Smithing is actually quite easy to do at a rudimentary level.  The reason it was so hard for earlier humans to do is they didn't have charcoal you could buy at the corner store, lighter fluid and lighters to instantly set it ablaze, knowledge that oxygen was key to producing heat, and so forth.  These are all things the everyman understands.  And yeah, maybe you would make really brittle and crappy stuff at first, but presumably (as with all the other skills) you could improve on techniques with time.  I mean seriously, it's completely impossible to saw planks from a log with a hand saw.  That fundamental presupposition completely invalidates the entire carpentry skill - you need way more advanced equipment (powered for really good stuff, or multiple-person saws for ancient age but still usable planks) than is currently available to make the stuff you can make.  And come on, making a dowel from a plank with a saw?  That's a HUGE jump!  You simply can't do it.

 

All the blacksmith arguers are asking for is a similar leap with regards to metallurgy.  If you think there are a bunch of skilled craftsmen who create all of the perfectly flat wooden planks you buy at home depot, you're wrong.  Machines do that; machines that would be dead in the zombie apocalypse.  It is, however, possible for someone to learn through tons of trial and error and with a basic modern background knowledge of materials and elements.

 

I mean, again, it's not like you get soup by putting broccoli in water and boiling it.  You just get crappy, soft brocolli and nasty-ass water.  You have to make stock first, which takes hours, and then add broccoli and a host of other ingredients in order to make even a boring-ass simple soup.  This game already simplifies multiple crafting processes, so asking it to simplify smithing/metallurgy isn't that big of a stretch.

[EnigmaGrey]

Same reason a few existed in Hamilton/Burlington, Ontario, I suppose: cities  mean a larger market to sell your crap.

For example: http://www.themetalmorphosis.ca/index.php?option=com_jfbalbum&view=fullpage&Itemid=107 -- there are a handful in in those two cities. And several in Ontario: http://www.ontarioblacksmiths.ca/gallery/

(All of the above is pretty-much art, though.)

[Rathlord]

Get back to you after my League of Legends match~

[psykikk]

forgeable shields and swords ?  hell no

riot gear, riot shields and police batons ? yes please.

 

still: whatever you would be wearing : if you run into a horde, you´re done. as it should be in this game,

 

just don´t do it. 

 

as for the comment that most people cannot get good at running: simply wrong. givem enough time and effort and proper help (with a coach), anybody can do almost anything. experst assume you just need close to 10.000 hours of practice to become great in something. just takes a while.

and still some will never be wordl class sprinters, I agree wholeheartedly

[Rathlord]

So I'll address these one by one.  425/60 = (approximately) 15%.

 

Not sure why he brought up that number- that's only for cities. Muldraugh is not a city. It is not counted as a city (6000+ residents). This fact is meaningless and it would be nowhere near 15%. As Enigma said above, as close I can tell about 3 in every 250,000 people are smiths, and that includes "jewelry" smiths who do little more than tap on chains with tiny, tiny little hammers. Banter all you want, the fact of the matter is the numbers will always be overwhelmingly against you. I know one smith (who I had to actively search out to find- and it wasn't easy) and that's a gimmick. There's a reason you don't know any.

 

 

And yeah, we should definitely rule out the big cities.  Why on earth would you think that there would be blacksmiths in dense urban centers like New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Houston, etc?  There are laws against having those sorts of things on your property in cities without proper zoning and qualifications.  In rural areas, the requirements are much less severe/aren't really enforced.  Like some dude would have an anvil and forge on his apartment balcony in the middle of NYC, lol.

 

If you'd take the time to read what I said, I specifically said that they were often around the outskirts of cities, ie not in the city limits. And for the record- there's no law that says you can't have an anvil and a small forge in your garage. Maybe check your facts before making such claims =\

 

 

Also, sprinting is not something anyone can get good at.  I've had numerous friends that simply cannot run well.  They are uncoordinated, and lack the physical structure of a runner.  Asserting that anyone can be good at it is simply false.

 

The idea about West Point was that you shouldn't be able to sprint there in a day or two in real life, but you obviously can in Zomboid.  Zomboid does not equal perfect realism.

 

Being able to create an amazingly tasty soup out of brocolli, carrots, butter and water on a campfire seems to be the talent of a world-class chef.  I'd like to see you make some awesome stuff you'd never get tired of with those ingredients.

 

 

Methinks you're getting a bit desperate. Hyperbole doesn't make for good arguments my friend. There is nothing in PZ that suggests you are a world class sprinter- even at level 5. The speed isn't abnormal, and the only thing leveling the skill does is give you more endurance as far as I know- akin to getting in shape in real life. Anyone can get better at running. Are you really expecting us to believe that moving faster than a walk should be akin to being a competent blacksmith?

 

Just so you know, the distance between Muldraugh and West Point is 5.8 miles. That's within a day's lazy stroll for even the least in shape human being, and with the time set the way it is in PZ (which, I should point out to counteract your inevitable "but I play with it longer argument," is the way the game is designed to be played and the way it's meant to be balanced) makes it actually a bit slower in game than it is in real life. Soz.

 

Nothing ever claims the cooking is amazing. You're making wild, unfounded claims right now. It's food. It gives a small happiness buff. Ever worried about food every day for days, weeks, or months on end? You're happy to be eating even shitty stuff. To have something as good as fresh vegetables in a pot of boiling water would be fucking amazing.

 

 

I actually quite disagree with this.  It also took the human race thousands of years to learn-just to start to learn-how to grow plants.  This, however, is something everybody thinks they can pick up with ease.  Have you ever tried to grow plants?  It's extremely difficult, depending on the plant and environment you are trying to grow it in.  I could use your argument to establish that farming shouldn't exist in the game.

 

Yup, my family has a small plot of corn and we've had other veggies and fruits in the past. With todays seeds, it doesn't require much beyond burying them in soil and watering every once in a while to get some kind of crop sometimes. If it were gathering seeds from the wild and trying to cultivate them, you'd be right. But it's not, and you're not.

 

 

And yeah, maybe you would make really brittle and crappy stuff at first, but presumably (as with all the other skills) you could improve on techniques with time.

 

This is the crux of it, though. You can't improve over time if you don't know how. The technical knowledge behind smithing was learned over millennia and is not something you can magically intuit just by throwing random metals you find in a fire. I think maybe you should do a bit of research into what forging is actually like. That's not how it works.

 

 

I mean seriously, it's completely impossible to saw planks from a log with a hand saw.  That fundamental presupposition completely invalidates the entire carpentry skill - you need way more advanced equipment (powered for really good stuff, or multiple-person saws for ancient age but still usable planks) than is currently available to make the stuff you can make.  And come on, making a dowel from a plank with a saw?  That's a HUGE jump!  You simply can't do it.

 

It's not, though. It's a pain in the ass, but it's doable. But that's a very, very minute jump for something crucial to the game compared to the monumentally hilariously unrealistic jump that is forgery.

 

 

All the blacksmith arguers are asking for is a similar leap with regards to metallurgy.  If you think there are a bunch of skilled craftsmen who create all of the perfectly flat wooden planks you buy at home depot, you're wrong.  Machines do that; machines that would be dead in the zombie apocalypse.  It is, however, possible for someone to learn through tons of trial and error and with a basic modern background knowledge of materials and elements.

 

Here's the thing, though. It's relatively easy to make a functional board that you can use to barricade windows/doors or make a rough fence out of. It probably should take a knife or something like that instead, but we're still waiting to get a knife added. So maybe that can change. That's still something that you can look at and solve with basic problem solving skills. Forging is fundamentally different as it requires foreknowledge and knowledge you could only get from thousands of years of tradition and research.

 

 

I mean, again, it's not like you get soup by putting broccoli in water and boiling it.  You just get crappy, soft brocolli and nasty-ass water.  You have to make stock first, which takes hours, and then add broccoli and a host of other ingredients in order to make even a boring-ass simple soup.  This game already simplifies multiple crafting processes, so asking it to simplify smithing/metallurgy isn't that big of a stretch.

 

And once again, simplifying a realistic, fully plausible skill to fit better in the game and work with the time constraints is utterly and completely unequal to adding something that is entirely unrealistic and implausible. Your argument is broken at it's most core level due to this.

[Art Falmingaid]

I generally do not ask for people to believe I am an authoritative source on any topic, but on this I must.

I am a sculptor by education and profession.  Of particular relevance, I am a skilled woodworker and metalworker (this includes welding and foundry work and both require a lot more than average knowledge of metallurgy).  In addition, one of the sculptors I work with daily is a blacksmith.  Not a farrier (horseshoes), she is a blacksmith as in she can and does make all of her own tools.  As a metalworker, I often employ smithing techniques but use an oxy-acetylene torch rather than a forge to heat the metal.

 

Until someone better presents themselves, I think I can speak with at least limited authority on many of these issues.

 

you can use any sort of sufficiently hard surface (like a granite countertop, as one has suggested, or a cinder block, as others have suggested) to temper red-hot metal - that's a possibility

Neither cinder blocks nor granite countertops would work.  Cinderblocks are easily destroyed in one swing of a smith’s hammer.  Remember, please, that martial artists break cinderblocks with their hands for show.  Granite does resist compression very well, but a countertop is more at danger of being split because it’s thin.  A granite boulder could potentially be used as a makeshift anvil, but a very poor one since the surface would be irregular.

 

It would also be impossible to make anvils "craftable" unless it was a level 5 tier skill, but that's still pretty implausible.

Implausible is a huge understatement.  To make anything larger than a jeweler’s anvil (for hammering small shapes of soft metals) would require a huge, high temperature heat source and/or a foundry.  The amount of steel needed would be near impossible for anyone outside of a foundry to acquire.  Steel cannot be melted down and re-poured.  The process, at best, would create cast iron (cast iron is both the end result and the specific alloy of iron that the cast object is made from).  Cast iron has a VERY high carbon content and is EXTREMELY brittle.  It would, obviously, be totally  unusable as an anvil.

 

Instead, I say there should be an anvil or two on the map in the various farms

This is not terribly likely.  Any farm with horses needs a farrier (makes and fixes iron shoes).  Unfortunately, farriers are quite rare.  One farrier probably services dozens of towns like Muldraugh and West Point.

 

If you don't like the forge idea, heck, you could use a grill - hell, with enough coal and air, I've gotten zones within the coals over 1000 degrees before, and you only have to hit like 1500 or 2000 to be able to shape steel.  It's doable...but dangerous!

It’s highly unlikely.  You need not only a high temperature, but a lot of heat over a relatively large area and you must maintain it at a constant temperature for a long time.  Also, generating heat becomes exponentially more difficult the higher the temperature.  Getting from 1000 degrees Fahrenheit to 1200 degrees Fahrenheit is significantly more difficult than going from 100 degrees  to 1000 degrees.

Regardless, there's a certain dimension to the game that isn't realistic.  How many people do you know that are excellent sprinters, sneakers, are extremely light-footed and nimble, who are world-class chefs, carpenters, marksmen, reloaders, and so forth?

Everyone starts the game a terrible sneak and sprinter and their ability grows very slowly.  I find the progression of the agility skills to be very realistic.

 

I would hardly consider any crafting recipe in the game for carpentry or cooking to be “world-class.”  Creating a food recipe from nothing using rare ingredients would be world-class, but most the recipes in the game are quite simple.  If anything, the cooking skillbooks are recipe books and most anyone can follow a recipe.  The cooking skill makes meals more nutritious and gives more information about things like cook time.  Nothing “world-class” about it.

 

There isn’t a carpentry recipe in the game that couldn’t be easily learned from a book.  Again, if you were designing these objects from scratch with no pre-existing written instructions, it’s different.  Further, even the highest skill carpentry items aren’t very well built.  As a very skilled woodworker, I can say confidently that carpentry in Planet Zomboid is realistic.

 

I think the important thing to focus on is whether or not smithing is learnable through trial and error (as others have mentioned), and it most definitely is.  You can gather a bunch of coals together, light them on fire, and then stick a piece of metal in there until it starts glowing red, then bang on it with a hammer and stick it in some water to cool it off.  From there, everything is just refining.

Being that I already have a lot of knowledge about things similar to traditional smithing (welding, foundry, jeweling, etc) I could probably learn from trial and error.  I am being generous to myself, as it would still take many months to produce anything remotely usable.  The common person would have no chance.  While the basic premise of smithing is easy to grasp, the actual execution is not.  Not at all.

 

Also, sprinting is not something anyone can get good at.  I've had numerous friends that simply cannot run well.  They are uncoordinated, and lack the physical structure of a runner.  Asserting that anyone can be good at it is simply false.

We’re not talking Olympic athletes.  Project Zomboid sprinting allows you to be a competent, as in physically fit.

 

Being able to create an amazingly tasty soup out of brocolli, carrots, butter and water on a campfire seems to be the talent of a world-class chef.  I'd like to see you make some awesome stuff you'd never get tired of with those ingredients.

Making a tasty soup or stew out of those ingredients is, in fact, quite easy.  Would it get you a five-star restaurant?  No, it wouldn’t, but it would sate your hunger.  Project Zomboid is not talking world-class executive chef.  If anything, it’s more the skill to recognize the difference between burnt and tender vegetables or rare, medium, and well-done meats.

Have you ever tried to grow plants?  It's extremely difficult, depending on the plant and environment you are trying to grow it in.  I could use your argument to establish that farming shouldn't exist in the game.

Growing plants is very easy.  People grow tomatoes and other vegetables in window sill planters in their apartment.  Sustenance farming is admittedly more difficult, but well within reason.  Large scale agriculture is not the farming system in Project Zomboid.  In the game, farming is growing simple vegetables in just enough quantity to sustain your individual life.

Smithing is actually quite easy to do at a rudimentary level.  The reason it was so hard for earlier humans to do is they didn't have charcoal you could buy at the corner store, lighter fluid and lighters to instantly set it ablaze, knowledge that oxygen was key to producing heat, and so forth.  These are all things the everyman understands.
 

Smithing is not easy to do at all.  For someone who has read about the process in detail, the premise is easy to understand.  The execution is absolutely not.  That metallurgy is something the everyman possesses knowledge of is not accurate.  I work among artists and a blacksmith, and the sculptors are probably the only ones who have even a clue about smithing.  Even then, a minority of the sculptors would know anything past the basic premise.

[Art Falmingaid]

I mean seriously, it's completely impossible to saw planks from a log with a hand saw.  That fundamental presupposition completely invalidates the entire carpentry skill - you need way more advanced equipment (powered for really good stuff, or multiple-person saws for ancient age but still usable planks) than is currently available to make the stuff you can make.  And come on, making a dowel from a plank with a saw?  That's a HUGE jump!  You simply can't do it.

 

If the log were the length of the entire tree, it would be near impossible to saw planks from it with a handsaw.  Fortunately in Project Zomboid, the trees are short and several logs are produced from each tree.  It, thus, is not unreasonable to saw decent planks from the logs.  You would probably need to split the logs through the middle with your axe, admittedly.  The process is simplified in the game, sure, but it’s pretty close.  You can easiliy carve rough dowels from wood with a knife.

[Art Falmingaid]

 As Enigma said above, as close I can tell about 3 in every 250,000 people are smiths, and that includes "jewelry" smiths who do little more than tap on chains with tiny, tiny little hammers.

 

I recently acquired jewelry smithing at my work and can confirm that it involves lots of hitting things with tiny hammers.

[EnigmaGrey]

Is it alright if all I take from this conversation is "PZ needs tiny little hammers?"

[Zabuzaxsta]

 

Not sure why he brought up that number- that's only for cities. Muldraugh is not a city. It is not counted as a city (6000+ residents). This fact is meaningless and it would be nowhere near 15%. As Enigma said above, as close I can tell about 3 in every 250,000 people are smiths, and that includes "jewelry" smiths who do little more than tap on chains with tiny, tiny little hammers. Banter all you want, the fact of the matter is the numbers will always be overwhelmingly against you. I know one smith (who I had to actively search out to find- and it wasn't easy) and that's a gimmick. There's a reason you don't know any.

 

I do know several, actually, and the 3,000 number is actually off (it's closer to 4,000), and is only the number of people officially enrolled in the artist's-blacksmiths association of north america.  None of them are enrolled in the association; I think it's a safe bet that there are far more than 4000 blacksmiths in the country right now.  I think it's interesting you would assert I know none when I actually do.  Furthermore, you completely ignored my point about the logging company.  The chances of there being a major logging company in a tiny little town in Kentucky are similarly slim (with regards to the blacksmith possibility).

 

And yeah, we should definitely rule out the big cities.  Why on earth would you think that there would be blacksmiths in dense urban centers like New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Houston, etc?  There are laws against having those sorts of things on your property in cities without proper zoning and qualifications.  In rural areas, the requirements are much less severe/aren't really enforced.  Like some dude would have an anvil and forge on his apartment balcony in the middle of NYC, lol.

 

If you'd take the time to read what I said, I specifically said that they were often around the outskirts of cities, ie not in the city limits. And for the record- there's no law that says you can't have an anvil and a small forge in your garage. Maybe check your facts before making such claims =\

 

I have checked my facts.  The sort of open fires necessary for a forge are illegal within city limits.  I get what you're saying, that people would obviously move just beyond the city limits to do their stuff, but this really isn't an economically feasible business model.  You'd be far from your customer base.  The people that do this are probably the ones smithing for art and whatnot, and your assertion that this represents all of the smithers in existence needs to be backed up.  You need correct zoning or permits to do so in large cities, and if you're saying people do it outside of the city limits you've just proven my point - that people don't do this in big cities.  There are absolutely laws against having this in your garage, as it could easily cause a fire in such an unventilated area and burn down half of your neighborhood.  I've had the police called on me for making charcoal once, and they politely requested that I stop doing it or they'd arrest me next time.  Here's a reference to some people griping about it within the city limits: http://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/1253-neighborhood-blacksmithing/

 

 

Methinks you're getting a bit desperate. Hyperbole doesn't make for good arguments my friend. There is nothing in PZ that suggests you are a world class sprinter- even at level 5. The speed isn't abnormal, and the only thing leveling the skill does is give you more endurance as far as I know- akin to getting in shape in real life. Anyone can get better at running. Are you really expecting us to believe that moving faster than a walk should be akin to being a competent blacksmith?

 

Just so you know, the distance between Muldraugh and West Point is 5.8 miles. That's within a day's lazy stroll for even the least in shape human being, and with the time set the way it is in PZ (which, I should point out to counteract your inevitable "but I play with it longer argument," is the way the game is designed to be played and the way it's meant to be balanced) makes it actually a bit slower in game than it is in real life. Soz.

 

Nothing ever claims the cooking is amazing. You're making wild, unfounded claims right now. It's food. It gives a small happiness buff. Ever worried about food every day for days, weeks, or months on end? You're happy to be eating even shitty stuff. To have something as good as fresh vegetables in a pot of boiling water would be fucking amazing.

 

I'm not desperate, and this isn't hyperbole.  Ad hominem is not very polite, IMO, and I'd request that you address the substance of my claims instead of resorting to insults.  Being able to run 5-6 miles is something that the average American can't even hope to do.  I live in a dense, urban walking area and going 1-2 miles in the heat or cold can make you pretty damn tired (and I'm in decent shape).  Most people aren't in shape like that, and couldn't get in shape like that within a few weeks.  Additionally, you never addressed my point that lots of people lack the coordination to run.  I've been to run clubs numerous times in my life and trust me, there are PLENTY of people who just lack the basic coordination to do anything more than a fast jog (and these people are in shape).  But fine, we'll assume the character is fit enough (against all statistical evidence about people in the US) and has the type of body (coordination, posture, running form)  to make sustained sprinting while carrying tons of crap feasible due to your "it's the way the game is designed to be played and the way it's meant to be balanced" argument.

Again, I'm not making wild, unfounded claims - ad hominem again.  Cooking is completely unrealistic, and I'm not quite sure how you can possibly argue otherwise.  Yes, some nice cooked vegetables would be good in the apocalypse, but vegetables boiled in water would not.  They'd be god awful, and the water would taste unbelievably bad.  You need stock (which is itself a whole 'nother process) and some salt to make it at least halfway decent.  Finally, you don't make soup by boiling vegetables.  You cook the vegetables in some way, then add them to the pot of stock and salt to make soup.  Again, boiled vegetables in water would taste terrible, no matter what your situation was, and it wouldn't make the vegetables somehow magically "better" as it does in the game.  Fresh tomatoes would taste waaay better than if you put those tomatoes into a pot and boiled them for an hour.  Also, pretty much all vegetables need to dressed in some way before being put in the pot, another thing which is left out.  But again, let's go ahead and let all of this slide according to your "it's the way the game is designed to be played and the way it's meant to be balanced" argument.

 

Yup, my family has a small plot of corn and we've had other veggies and fruits in the past. With todays seeds, it doesn't require much beyond burying them in soil and watering every once in a while to get some kind of crop sometimes. If it were gathering seeds from the wild and trying to cultivate them, you'd be right. But it's not, and you're not.

Most varieties of vegetables and whatnot are seedlees, or contain inert seeds (this is to encourage you to come back to the store and buy more).  Learning how to harvest and dry seeds is extremely plant-specific and something that is completely outside of the skillset of most people.  It's something, in fact, most people couldn't figure out without training (to one of your own arguments) - they get moldy, aren't harvested at the right time, etc.  I've tried growing numerous things in numerous places (such as tomatoes, citrus, eggplant, squash, etc.) and without fertilizer or top quality soil it was HARD.  Maybe you're just projecting your skill onto other people when you assert all it takes is putting some water on them.  My tomatoes have had early blight, late blight, septoria, aphids, and so forth and without fertilizer would rarely produce and when they did the yields were super small.  It also doesn't take 5 days to grow cabbage.  Now the developers have incorporated some of this (such as the diseases), but they've streamlined and easy-fied it for fun.  Yet another of my arguments that can go under your "spirit of the game" argument.

 

This is the crux of it, though. You can't improve over time if you don't know how. The technical knowledge behind smithing was learned over millennia and is not something you can magically intuit just by throwing random metals you find in a fire. I think maybe you should do a bit of research into what forging is actually like. That's not how it works.

 

I think you are radically underestimating the trial and error process.  Try different things, see if they work/improve your result, then remember said things.  Also, you didn't respond to my point about how "the technical knowledge behind smithing was learned over millennia and is not something you can magically intuit" is not a good argument.  The same can be said of carpentry, which is definitely in the game.  Additionally, learning how to build multiple-story structures and how to support those structures adequately is something that typically takes an engineering degree, and along the lines of your argument should therefore be unlearnable in the game.  If you gave someone with no carpentry experience a log and a saw and said "cut a board" I really doubt they'd be able to do it until after months of practice, but your character starts off being able to do this.  Also, here's a great Popular Mechanics article on how easy it is to make a nice backyard forge (it'd be easy to make a simpler version out of the more common tools in zomboid): http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/how-to-plans/metalworking/4303543 As you can see, there is nothing difficult about it at all.  There's also nothing about quenching techniques and the tips for techniques for shaping metal are things that are easily intuitable.  Making a flat piece of metal is actually (now, this claim is backed up with evidence from smith friends and numerous articles) just whanging on a red hot piece of metal until it flattens.  You constantly asserting that this isn't the case not only violates the researched truth, but common sense as well.  Here's a forum post about a guy trying to make a forge out of a weber grill and numerous people telling him how to do it: http://www.swordforum.com/forums/showthread.php?80973-weber-grill-as-a-forge They also mention making them out of metal barrels/drums, so the trash cans in Zomboid could be used.

 

And once again, simplifying a realistic, fully plausible skill to fit better in the game and work with the time constraints is utterly and completely unequal to adding something that is entirely unrealistic and implausible. Your argument is broken at it's most core level due to this.

 

And here is why I kept granting all of your simplifications - when you look at them in their totality, every sort of simplification required to get smithing in the game is already something the devs have done with another skill in some way.  So no, smithing does not violate the spirit of the game, as it were.  And yeah, it's really easy to build a basically functional forge and to do rudimentary metal shaping - I've actually done some of it with my friends before, and it takes just a bit of intuition to pick up unlike the PhD-level amount of knowledge and research you assert it requires.  To make really good stuff?  Absolutely.  To make nails or a flat piece of metal?  Absolutely not.  Go give it a shot sometime, you'll find out it's not this big, mystical, highly complicated thing you make it out to be.  In this day and age, people have a whole bunch of generally applicable background knowledge to work off of.  The materials are all present, too, which wasn't true back in the day.

 

Sorry about the quotes, I couldn't figure it out before I wanted to post this reply.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Rathlord
Added quotes in for you- Cheers!

[XxZeraphinexX]

just my 2 cent, since i´m grwon up on a farm and know a lot of the people in villages and farms.

Every 2nd or 3rd at least here in east germany has an anvil in his workshop or backyard, simple for the reason of keeping your tools in shape. Like getting dent´s out of your spade or scythe. Bending nails strait to reuse, sure they have to be handelt carefull but they are usable. And with some learning by doing i´m quit sure and know it myself you could craft simple tools without heat.

I did it myself, just because i wanted to know if possible.

Got a piece of metal, took a metal saw, driller and file and got a hammerhead.

in another try i got a sharp axe head and th elast time a good sharp blade out of a metalbar.

So some things are possible, but like really forging excellent tools like you can buy today i would say no.

and even without an anvil, a good solid log of oak would give you a good alterative for primitive stuff

 

Edit: just sayin that not everyone has to be a blacksmith to do minor work on tools.Just think about a farmer or streetworker knows a bit about getting metal in shape for simple porpuses

[CrazyEyes]

But what you did wasn't forging, you used (power?) tools to work on a piece of scrap metal.  That's perfectly plausible; the act of creating entirely new weapons or tools from ore is not - at least for a layman.

 

As an aside, wow, how long did it take you guys to type out those arguments?  Since at this point you seem to just be disagreeing with each other in an extremely verbose way (though I admit to skimming heavily towards the end), maybe you could give it a rest for those of us who are interested in the subject but don't want to plow though several walls of text.

 

I'd like to see basic metalworking added to the game, but I'm on board with the idea that actual honest-to-goodness forging is a little outside the scope of the game.  

 

Besides, as Rathlord pointed out, anything you could make after months of expensive trial and error at a forge - if you could make it at all - would be far easier to create out of lumber and/or scrap metal. Zeraphine confirmed that he was able to make simple tools using an anvil, metalworking tools, and some scrap metal.  Considering how hard it would be to get smithing supplies (they don't sell ore at Spiffo's ), the incredibly steep learning curve to using them, and the comparitive ease of constructing the exact same tools in a different way, why would there be a reason to add forging to the game?  I just don't see it.

 

Edit: Just read this:

And yeah, it's really easy to build a basically functional forge and to do rudimentary metal shaping - I've actually done some of it with my friends before, and it takes just a bit of intuition to pick up unlike the PhD-level amount of knowledge and research you assert it requires. To make really good stuff? Absolutely. To make nails or a flat piece of metal? Absolutely not. Go give it a shot sometime, you'll find out it's not this big, mystical, highly complicated thing you make it out to be. In this day and age, people have a whole bunch of generally applicable background knowledge to work off of. The materials are all present, too, which wasn't true back in the day.

That's actually pretty interesting. Do you have pictures of the forge or its construction? How exactly did you build it and what temperatures could it reach? The hottest thing I've looked into making for my backyard is a pizza oven and it would have had to be made out of special brick that wouldn't crack in the heat (or concrete, which would be easy to get but harder to shape). I'd be interested to know if something like a homemade backyard forge is possible.

[Handlebar]

 

Most varieties of vegetables and whatnot are seedlees, or contain inert seeds (this is to encourage you to come back to the store and buy more). Learning how to harvest and dry seeds is extremely plant-specific and something that is completely outside of the skillset of most people. It's something, in fact, most people couldn't figure out without training (to one of your own arguments) - they get moldy, aren't harvested at the right time, etc. I've tried growing numerous things in numerous places (such as tomatoes, citrus, eggplant, squash, etc.) and without fertilizer or top quality soil it was HARD. Maybe you're just projecting your skill onto other people when you assert all it takes is putting some water on them. My tomatoes have had early blight, late blight, septoria, aphids, and so forth and without fertilizer would rarely produce and when they did the yields were super small. It also doesn't take 5 days to grow cabbage. Now the developers have incorporated some of this (such as the diseases), but they've streamlined and easy-fied it for fun. Yet another of my arguments that can go under your "spirit of the game" argument.

 

This somewhat irritates me. I live in a residential area, about 17km2 that has a population of around 17,000 residents. Have you been to Lowes, or a Home Depot? Do you see the seed racks? They have instructions on the back regarding zoning, water, light requirements. It is very basic to understand.

 

Now. Getting seeds from last years harvest. Its very basic. It requires no special tools, only the plant. Whether its cutting slices of Potatos that have eyes on them. Or getting the seeds out of a tomato. It is not complicated. Get even a basic book on backyard gardening and read it and anyone can do it with confidence. A person could get the seeds from the year prior, chances are even out of 100 seeds they will get some to germinate. This is not complicated. It really isn't. Ask stated above, how many people have a tomato plant in a pot in the backyard, or a row of beans. Now I do not grow enough to keep me all year, simply because I don't have to, we have grocery stores and the like. Could I grow on the large scale and can if need be? Yes! Just take your small skills and repeat on a larger scale.

 

Farming is not comparible to Smithing, it cannot and should not be compared.

 

Want to tie a rock to stick, sure I can do that.

 

Oh yeah, a 2 minute video on saving your 'mater seeds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaPre6-bJpc

[CrazyEyes]

Have you ever opened a box of microwaveable or ready-bake food or whatever and thrown away the box, then realized you needed the instructions on the box to know how to cook it and had to dig the box out of the garbage?

Well, when our PZ characters open seed pouches, they immediately kneel down, light the seed packet on fire and release it to the wind while whispering a prayer to the Harvest Gods. Every single time.

[Rathlord]

At work so I can't fully respond, but you should never use the words "ad hominem" ever again. First, you obviously have no idea what it means. Saying that your arguments are hyperbole and that they are wild and unfounded even if I'm wrong is NOT an attack on your character- those are very obviously criticisms of your argument and thus entirely relevant. And second, the phrase is vastly overused by people (like yourself) who don't understand the connotation and I'd rather more people wouldn't look it up and then use it in senseless was to derail arguments.

Edit: If you'd or anyone else would care to continue this line of conversation, please PM me rather than continue in thread as it's not relevant to the topic. I hate to pull the moderator card in a debate because it detracts from the discussion, but please don't take this as a suggestion.