Ore - What is it used for?

[Rob W]

Hello all,

I've been playing for a couple of hours now and I've found various ores, iron, tin, copper (made bronze), lead - including varying qualities of these resources. Do these actually have ANY impact or have any build purpose? It doesn't appear to make a difference when building things and the documentation is fairly minimal for the game. Anyone have a clue?

[Frosty]

At the moment the different kinds of metal don't make a difference on the items you craft as far as i noticed. The different wood types have different coloration's in what you craft at the moment. I think later on in development, different metals will have their own stats.

[Sticks]

You can change out the resource used when you go to build something to see how it impacts it. For example if you use bronze rigging for a sail you'll get slightly more power at a slightly higher weight than if you used iron. But if you used tin instead you'll get significantly less power compared to iron despite being about the same reduction in weight as iron is to bronze.

So the tradeoff for using tin just isn't worth it for sails, but for things like decorations where weight is all that matters you might want to use tin instead of a heavier material that gives no other benefit.

[Stelar Seven]

In WA ton was great for ship frame.

[Rob W]

Originally posted by Sticks:

You can change out the resource used when you go to build something to see how it impacts it. For example if you use bronze rigging for a sail you'll get slightly more power at a slightly higher weight than if you used iron. But if you used tin instead you'll get significantly less power compared to iron despite being about the same reduction in weight as iron is to bronze.

So the tradeoff for using tin just isn't worth it for sails, but for things like decorations where weight is all that matters you might want to use tin instead of a heavier material that gives no other benefit.

This is the one that helped me out thanks. I felt like I was switching things around and not seeing a difference. Maybe a bug, maybe not, but when setting up those more mechanical engines - I saw the direct changes resources took on the quality of the engine itself. Big thanks

[Marla]

All woods, all metals, all of everything that you can slot into a crafting recipe makes a difference. If there's an option to use this metal or that one, it's because it matters which you pick, straight-up.

Back in Worlds Adrift there used to be stats you could use to intuit which will do what, but for an easy example, try building a ship with birch deckplates instead of pine; birch is significantly lighter, if a little less resilient, but it gives you more room to build crafting stuff on your ship.

They really do all matter! I wish they hadn't removed stat visibility on this for LS, though it does make things seem more accessible at the get-go.

[nuruddiniman96]

Originally posted by Sticks:

You can change out the resource used when you go to build something to see how it impacts it. For example if you use bronze rigging for a sail you'll get slightly more power at a slightly higher weight than if you used iron. But if you used tin instead you'll get significantly less power compared to iron despite being about the same reduction in weight as iron is to bronze.

So the tradeoff for using tin just isn't worth it for sails, but for things like decorations where weight is all that matters you might want to use tin instead of a heavier material that gives no other benefit.

Hmm...How well is the tooltip info. For tin as armor or should I wait for steel armor
And on this subject. I have found a green and purple pine tree wood
purple is call "Flawless" and green is call "Pure"

[Zekk12185]

Higher grades are generally better (I think).

However, the game really doesn't do a good job of explaining the stat benefits of different metals/grades. Sometimes you can infer it from the flavor text of a material, but not always.

It's also very difficult to select proper materials. For example, when you go to build something, the first "material" selected is always DISPLAYED as iron as a default. But if you don't HAVE iron, it'll actually have any other metal selected in the background - meaning you can go to build a Makeshift Storage and it'll SAY you have 58 iron and then consume your Tarnished Saborian Alloy (!!!) anyway.

Additionally, you DO NOT GET YOUR ACTUAL MATERIALS BACK. If you build a sail out of Steel and Birch, you will not dismantle it into Steel and Birch. You will dismantle it into Iron and Pine.

This is super important because of how light Aluminum is. You need to be INCREDIBLY OCD and perfectionist about your shipbuilding in order to not waste heinous amounts of Good Materials™.

Luckily these should be easy bugfixes, but the design on stats/selections in general needs some help.