So, as it was noticed by many of you the “fix” for the Black Ice Reinforced structures not only did not made it as resource expensive as the Reinforced stone structures but it made the T2 Insulated Wood structures completelly overpriced and pushed it 8 levels further into the progression as you need to unlock the press before you can make it now.
Now, I don’t really get why mess with the Insulated wood, that is a component shared by the 2 tiers when it was clearly the too easily obtainable Black Ice that was causing the problem.
So, my suggestion is to mimic the way the Bricks work.
First, the T2 Problem:
Insulated Wood was already as hard if not harder to make than Bricks, making it a good substitute to them in a T2 structure, so I think it should be reverted back to the way it was and the Insulated Wood structures should also use some Shaped Wood because it would make sense balance wise since Brick structures have to use both Bricks AND Shaped wood.
Then, the T3 Problem:
The way Bricks work is by combining the T2 Material (Bricks) with a Upgrade Material (Stone Consolidant) you create the T3 Material (Hardened Bricks).
So, we’d need a new Upgrade material, I suggest calling it Black Ice Reinforcement and it should be created out of Black Ice + something else in the alchemy bench.
That Black Ice Reinforcement should them be combined with the Insulated Wood (T2 Material) in the Carpentry Bench to create another new material called Black Ice Reinforced Wood.
And finally then we’d have to combine Steel Reinforcements with Black Ice Reinforced Wood and Shaped Wood to create the Black Ice Reinforced Wood structures.
I believe these suggestions would bring the Wooden structures in line with the resource costs of the Brick structures and keep the Insulated Wood structures a viable option.
Insulaed wood is in no way hard to make. Chop dead trees in desert with pick, get 2k of dry wood, chop trees in north for resin, profit. Bricks on the other hand are stupidly hard to craft.
Brick making is just throwing a lot of rocks in a Improved Furnace with some fuel and forget about it.
Insulated Wood you have to harvest 2 different components, neither of which are the primary products of their nodes (Dead Trees give mostly branches and the Northern Trees give mostly wood, obviously, and also branches a secondary product along the Resin.) or use the Drying Rack which takes a long time and uses the always useful, if you play PVP, Bark and the non existence of an Improved Carpenter means you gotta deal with those tiny bench inventories.
Of course it’s not hard to make and it shouldn’t be, but neither are Bricks really.
What? You just chip this and that drop it into carpentry and forget about it. Oil? Same.
For bricks you need ichor, use aclhemists to make consolidant, smelt stone to regular bricks then to other bricks. Dead trees gives LOTS of dry wood and bark if you use pick. I have 3 black ice bases the size of dregs entrance. I have never used a drying rack to build them.
Not to mention that you need 15 for brick foundation whereas it is just 4 for black ice.
I don’t really have an issue with the wooden structures and find them easy and cheap to build. I don’t find bark hard to find at all and use it and the wood collected to dry wood.
But I do agree that Black ice structures are too easy compared to Reinforced brick. I understand stone is everywhere and black ice is harder to collect but I have only ever seen one person build a reinforced stone structure in the server i’m on.
Everywhere I look there are Black Ice structures.
I myself got fed up with the effort involved making reinforced structures and have decided to travel North to collect black ice.
I don’t really like black ice walls but considering I keep getting raided I need replacement tier 3 materials that can be gathered easily and used as soon as i need them.
Instead of adding extra work to Black Ice structures construction why not just up the amount of black ice required, or even lower the amount of resources required to create reinforced stone structures.
The fact that everyone owns black ice buildings and its rare to see reinforced stone ones makes it clear they are too easy to make even though black ice is found in only one location. I managed to go there and avoided all enemies and players to collect some last week and built a small building easily. Yet still haven’t finished my reinforced stone walls for my main keep.
Wouldve made a whole lot more sense if north building were too from brick, but instead of using ichor to harden them u’d use however “refined” black ice.
They should make Black ice melt in the desert. Maybe even the highlands at a reduced rate. That would curb the black ice building spamming all over the place.
It really doesnt make sense to have a black ice building in the desert anyway.
Interesting suggestions that sound like they may work.
The real problem though is that the time invested in brick is to much.
The solution is to give smelters the same material cost reduction as carpenters.
