Black Ice vs Hardened Brick imbalance

There were previous threads this past summer (2018) about the crafting imbalance and after purchasing a couple DLCs for new building styles, I am in complete agreement. You basically have 2 resources to gather: Black Ice vs Rocks. It takes 30 rocks+ some ichor & twine vs 1 black ice. That isn’t even counting the cooking time for rock to brick to hardened brick, as well as the consolidant time.

Black ice is literally the easiest resource to gather. One node gives a ton and if you find the right spot, you can get enough ice for a huge base, in a matter of 10 minutes.

So what can we do to fix it? I’d suggest splitting the difference. Make black ice 5x harder, by either needed 5x more ice per building piece, or do a refining process with it to make a black ice brick/span/block, then for hardened brick, either make the base bricks only use 2 stone, or make the building piece only need 1/5th the amount of hardened brick.

Doing both, increasing black ice by 5x and reducing hardened brick by 5x would bring them much closer in raw material costs. Hardened brick would still require more, but that then balances with the concerns I’ve seen expressed with stone being more readily available than the black ice. Even a 4x 4x change would be hugely welcome, if you need more emphasis on the availability of stone. But PLEASE address this imbalance.

From a financial perspective, I’d think players seeing some amazing DLC structures ingame would inspire them to want to get the DLCs themselves, but certainly nobody on a PVP server is going to think building in DLC makes any sense. I’m honestly really unmotivated to mine over a million stone for the small city I was going to build in DLC structures. So far, my new DLCs are just turning into some new clothes for me. Using DLC weapons seems a little silly, when the religion or legendary weapons are all better.

Thank you for listening and I’m hopeful some changes will come soon.

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I am actually looking at doing a mod for a black ice brick to replace black ice in the recipe. Just learning how to do it outside of playing on officials. And would need feed back on the mat costs of a black ice brick.
Maybe 50 stone+10 black ice+1 tar in smelters gives 5 black ice bricks.
Black ice T3 foundations takes 10 black ice bricks, 4 insulated, and 3 steel reinforcements.

Sorry, not tryna hijack post with my idea. But it does fit what you are talking about, and i agree. black ice is the easiest t3 used material to get. I am also toying with a moss T3 BUILDING IDEA. use vines and make dark green building mats for the jungle. But i would need to tie it to some race in Conan lore. Want it to fit with the game, not just throw it in.

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I also am loath to add grind to the mix, but it seemed best making the hardened brick and black ice try to meet in the middle. However, if we made my above changes, then in addition, on both building types, we then reduce the insulated wood and steel supports quantities needed, maybe that would do the trick.

In my other sandbox (Wurm Online), we have a player controlled crafting market. The general rule of thumb there is 1 silver per 1000 actions required to make that craft. Mine 1000 stone, then chisel those into 1000 bricks = a 2 silver payout. delivery is often a negotiating tool. Anyway, the point being each action is of equal value. Higher level characters can perform actions faster, thus your ability to earn increases with your skill. If someone here ordered up a bunch of pre-made construction parts, they would pay considerably more for the hardened brick components. The only value is in the different look, rather than any increased utility or protection value.

It just feels very wrong as it is.

I just realized another imbalance. I thought both the DLCs building also used the same insulated wood, but it turns out they use shaped wood, which is 5 logs for 1 shape, vs 1 log, 1 oil and 1 resin for an insulated wood. The oil and resin are self gathering for the most part, so insulated wood is by far the least intensive to build, which makes black ice building even easier than the other T3 structures.

I agree.

IMO though, I’d prefer to see the Hardend Brick/DLC buildings (Tier3 buildings) changed to be classed as Tier4, and have more health than Black Ice buildings, while Black Ice stays as Tier3. (10k/50k/150k/200k health per wall etc for Tier 1/2/3/4)
This would mean that yes, black ice is still easy & effective to gather & build, but to get the highest defense, you’d need to spend time getting bricks etc. This would mean the basic T3, and all current DLC would become 1/3 stronger than black ice varients, and you’d probably start seeing people use the DLC type buildings more often.

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I agree, wach DLC should have had a T1 and T2 version of the structures. The weapons and Armor technically do (iron then Star metal).

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Good idea! :+1:

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I sort of agree on T1 and T2, but I think the reality is most people don’t DLC until they have already progressed through the game to 60 and at that point, building lower tiers doesn’t make as much sense. However, what does make sense is the different looks that lower tiers provide, so if you surrounded the base with all T3 (and T4?) structures, then the T1 and T2 could make some really sweet looking accents. Probably have to up the DLC prices though, because that is a lot of extra art work to generate.

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