Because everyone knows about the fish. Pickaxe and the mentioned animals is much faster… that is of cause if the player likes a more active playstyle intead of just waiting on 20 fishtraps to fill.
Actually I think it’s kinda balanced cause you may need a few steps for hardened bricks but therefore shaped wood is fairly easy in comparison to insulated wood cause you need more ingredients for that too. I personally dont see a problem in the costs.
I respectfully disagree, I have the starmetal pickaxe and two fish traps, will produce more ichor in a day. I’m on official servers so no gathering boost.
But again the Point the OP was complaining Black Ice was easier than reinforced stone, it is not.
If “everyone knows about the fish” what was OP’s problem?
If you want active this is how I get steel, I farm it from npc’s I don’t bother with steelfire.
So I’m not saying “hey do this passive thing” I’m saying T3 stone and DLC mats are very easy to make, easier than black ice.
But why “just waiting”? Go kill some boss, get some Thralls, gather Stone & Ironstone, chop Wood, and return to get some free Ichor that “gathers itself” meanwhile. Passive production is OK as it frees your hands for other more interesting things.
Without showing all the great equations using actual times with T4 crafter’s and estimated farm times and simul-crafting for hardened brick ingredients, it is about 1/3 the time to make black ice usiong 100 foundations of each.
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I preordered the game, I played EA from day one.
I was one of the first to the north when the biome dropped.
I’ve leveled 16 characters to top level, on different types of servers.
I have been trying to help people all that time.
Always people want to argue about black ice, I even once made a character on someone server to prove to him what I was saying.
I’m tired of arguing, do whatever, believe whatever, you want. I’ll sit back and smile as you do.
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Actually, didn’t Funcom already make hardened brick pieces easier to craft than they were a long time ago? I think they did this about 6-9 months ago. It still isn’t equal for number of actions to create a piece, but it got a lot better.
The fact that they are looking to improve it even more is great. I wasn’t aware, but glad to hear it was mentioned in the dev stream.
IF you can get enough Bark to dry Wood or are lvl 57 to have Improved Carpenter’s Bench to make Bark from Wood AND live not far from the North to get extra Resin from northern trees (not speaking of the Black Ice which is very hard to get on lvl 30 when you get Master Mason feat).
If you are not IN the north, you should NOT use black ice, it’s only good if your base is in a cold area.
Let me explain, there is a helmet The Nemedian
It repairs your equipped weapon for every tick of damage your character takes.
I built a small black ice building right on the Border the very edge of north and south.
I put on The Nemedian and it repairs my weapon, and I’m only on the BORDER. if I logged out in that base my character would die.
The only reason people who build with black ice in the south don’t log in to a dead character is luck.
My good friend @Barnes made a tutorial on how to get The Nemedian
Edit 1: Because I left out a step, I had to hunt to find just the right spot to build so that The Nemedian would work this way, two steps in any direction and nothing would happen. So this is why building with black ice in the south is dangerous. You could log out a hundred times with no problem, then one day you log out two steps into the wrong spot, and you come back and your character died from temperature change.
Edit 2: if you just want to use The Nemedian
to repair your weapons / tools use a fire like @Barnes suggested.
I only did it this way to show the right building material for the area matters.
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At the Black Galleon, near Nunu The Cannibal, and up on the Tower of Bats, you will find large deposits of dead trees. If you hit these with a pick, you get all the bark and dry wood you’ll ever need. Resin is something I scrounge: one trip around Asagarth will pocket more than 400. Truly though, I keep resin more for dye/warpaint and weapon crafting these days, as the insulated wood drop from NPCs is quite good.
On our server, Zero-G has built an enormous black ice palace in the volcano. This would be for defensive purposes, which is a very good reason to build in black ice. The problem is, black ice telegraphs what you’re doing, and any enemy will come prepared. As you know, it’s better to customarily build in different styles of sticky brick so that the enemy won’t know where you’ve built a cook or freeze box in your base.
My thought process is that people commonly believe either is more onerous because of region-based components. Take stickybrick: in reality, you can make brick anywhere on the map, thus all you need do up north is to cache a bunch of twine, and burn some shrimp in the barbie. In fact, a Statue of Refreshment will support one fish trap, which is more than enough blue fish for ichor.
As for black ice, because it omits brick it’s very useful for ad hoc T3 buildings even down south. One will always have black ice at every base now because it’s needed for Hardened Steel. So, if you have to throw up an temporary T3 building, all you’d need to do is leave the rebar and black ice on your follower. With a modest amount of NPC killing and chest loostings, you’d have plenty of insulated wood for a safe-ish garrison or outpost.
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@Barnes I’m going to have to disagree with you on this one.
All T3 building mats have exactly the same hit points, there is no defensive benefit of one T3 material over another.
The only difference in T3 mats are the component necessary to assemble, the temperature buff,
and the style aesthetic.
Building with the wrong temperature buff material is a mistake, it will just kill you slower than the wrong temperature buff armor.
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Proof is the actual numbers. Farming times are estimated, but probably within reasonable accuracy. This is no T4 crafters. Used 2 forges, 1 cauldron, 1 armors bench, 1 carpenters bench, 1 dryer. Overlapped whenever i could the crafting and farming times.
Hardened brick
Balck Ice
Basically once you farm the wood and bark for 100 foundations, you have 2 hours to go do something else, thus black ice is way more efficient time wise.
did not include steel, as that is exact same numbers wise. But, again with the free time after starting dryers, one could get the steel going way earlier than on hardened brick, increasing the efficiency even more.
290 minutes versus 230 minutes is one hour, not two
Ichor if done via the fish method is maybe 5 minutes, to cook.
why are you waiting for the mats in the first place?
the entrum steps are the same, just one requires a alchemist, the other a drier.
The entire mythology you propose is you spend all your time farming.
Your estimated times for brick are overblown.
I spend very little time farming, and most of my time adventuring.
I gather as I go, if I see a lot of fiber, I grab it. I spend maybe five minutes loading up one furnace.
I don’t make a hundred of anything, why would I craft in advance? that only leads to waste.
But as I said, you do you, I’m not going to argue, except to say, your math doesn’t apply to my playstyle.
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I am not. But with black ice, there is dead time i can fill with a thrall run, or hell anything else, more so than the hectic farming around for other mats for hardened.
per wiki 10 s per brick. not my numbers.
Based on your previous argument that level 30 was the standard, i went with bare minimum craft stations. If you want to use 10 forges to reduce time, i would use 10 dryers. Its called equal footing.
Please show me how to improve the hardened brick time frame ( i overlapped farming with crafting times as much as possible) and i will concede. But if you use more craft stations for one, you have to use more for the other. You say fish traps, but that is the slow way, as you then have to figure in the time for fish to populate said trap, and then cook them before you have ichor. Killing spiders is by far faster, kill to harvest to ichor.
I also took the long way to insulated. The best method is to hit highland/monds where i get 1 resin to every 5 wood. So 400 wood already gets me @80 resin, plus another 50 bark to start drying pre-bark run. In theory that would mean by the time i got back from the 800 bark i would have about 100 resin and @100 dry wood (by product of bark harvest) to get a step up on insulated.
I don’t think you understand what I mean by defensive. If you build in Black Ice or Khitan in the volcano – a hot area – it makes it intolerably hot. If you then employ hot things like furnaces or hearths, it makes that defensive structure impossible to approach, climb, or negotiate. That’s the strict inherent advantage, and why Black Ice is in the volcano a lot.
The 2 hours is referring to the crafting time of the dry wood when you decide to build in black ice, not the difference. You spend 40 minutes (20 minutes for bark and wood, and maybe 20 minutes to get the black ice) farming needed mats. After that you are free to do other tasks.
Comparably, hardened brick has 80 minutes of farming the needed mats (stone, plant, ichor, wood) before you can break off to something else.
That is very illuminating, thank you for posting it. The problem is, I don’t really work like that: go out and gather things for a process. Typically, you’ll have more than 1,000 brick sitting around at every base as a function of iron processing. Furthermore, every time I sickle berries I get more than 1,000 plant, which goes immediately into twine. Because these are commodities, out of fairness I would omit them from the equation.
Ichor in a rush for me is spider/salamander region, which I would equate to the black ice run.
Then the only qualitative comparisons are between:
- the wood shaping (a wash)
- Bice: the drying time vs Sticky: burning of the consolidant
By necessity, even by my over-generous standards, this makes the stickybrick one substantive step longer because it must be re-fired.
I agree, but whn my clan hits a server, we divide and conquer. And the post tied it to level 30. For me, i do no bulding until 60. Powerlevel PVP officials. And comparatively, at some point i will have 4 chests of Black Ice. As for iron, well it has been greatly reduced, 4 purge black smiths will do that 
To point being, in a pinch for black ice I need 3 craft stations–blacksmith bench, carpenters bench and dryers. I can get 300 steel from Mounds and Asagarth kills. whick means a 2x2 is suitable to hide and build up T3 mats.
For Hardened i need 2 forges (or brick will have even more cooking into hardened), cauldron,armorers bench, fish trap(s) (apparently), carpenters bench, and black smiths bench. That means larger footprint. which means less hiding from Alphas.
also need tools.
Black ice…level 30…Steel Pick.
Hardened brick…level 30…Steel Pick, Steel Hatchet (wood over bark remember), Steel Sickle
Also, that is one reason i say the economy is broken. The fact that at level 60, with the right tools in 3 hours one could have 1000 Black Ice Foundations with ease.
15,000 Black Ice–20 minute frost temple run
4,000 Insulated–20 dryers–4 carpenters benches.
Not enough rarity of resources to make them worth anything when raiding or fighting for.
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