Meteoric Iron Overhaul

I was intrigued when I first learned that, in certain rare instances, long before wrought iron was even fathomed as a technology by ancient humans, they got lucky enough to not only come across a meteorite, but see it fall from the sky; sometimes interpreted as a gift from the gods, sometimes a foul omen.

What really ended up truly fascinating me, however, was that certain civilizations ended up discovering they could forge these nickel/iron rich meteorites with great ease, much unlike virtually all other iron oxide deposits in the world naturally (other than telluric iron... see the end section for more on that). The earliest dated evidence of meteoric iron being worked goes back to roughly 3200BC in Egypt of some cold-forged jewelry.

So you can imagine my excitement when I learned that meteoric iron was indeed implemented in VintageStory, but also my subsequent disappointment when I also learned the forging requirments are virtually the same as your bog standard iron ore :(

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What does this change?

This mod aims to rectify that scarce but fortunate shortcut to the iron age in the game by patching 3 things:

- Naturally spawned meteor blocks are now mineable at level 2(copper)

- Takes a bit longer to mine, but drops 0-6 meteoric iron bits and 0-2 meteoric iron ingots

- While smelting temperatures still require a bloomery, meteoric iron ingots can now be forged on an anvil as low as 800C, and on tier 1(copper) anvils

This allows for the limited ingots mined straight from the meteorite to be crafted into tools as early as the copper age, while still forcing majority of the meteoric iron as small bits that have to go through a bloomery at a later point in technological progression to be used

Drop rates are easily modifiable in the 'Meteoric Iron Overhaul v0.9/assets/mio/patches/survival-blocktypes-stone-meteorite.json' file

Additionally, I thought the worked meteoric iron would look better with the Widmanstätten pattern textured on it + a shiny effect on the ingots when placed down, just like the gold ingots. If you dislike the new texture, you can delete the folder and all its contents at 'Meteoric Iron Overhaul v0.9/assets/game/textures'

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I'm considering doing a v1.0 that would allow for meteorites to drop rough chunks with custom voxel models to cold forge on an anvil, to be even more realistic to its historical uses. Let me know what you think or if I should keep it as is

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Companion Mods + My Other Mods

Meteoric Expansion is a really recommended and fully compatible companion mod, adding real time meteor strike events to your world rather than solely pre-generated crash sites (set the destructive mode config for best mod synergy!)

I plan on adding a Telluric Iron mod soon; native iron can be found extremely rarely around the world especially around volcanic activity present or past, but the only major deposit has been found in Greenland. I thought it'd be fun to add these rare slightly biome specific deposits as another natural shortcut to the iron age, adding even more reward to exploration