This mod is in a very rudimentary stage at this time. It is riddled with bugs, and compatibility with similar mods is NOT guaranteed. If you find a bug not listed here, please let me know.

By AD 1500, fourteen elements were known of: Gold, Carbon, Copper, Lead, Silver, Iron, Tin, Antimony, Sulfur, Mercury, Zinc, Platinum, Arsenic, and Bismuth. Of these elements, VS lacks just four.

This mod adds one of these missing elements, and a few other notable substances.

Added Content

Orpiment and Arsenic

Orpiment (As₂S₃) is an orange crystal that can be found in Andesite, Granite, Limestone, Chalk, Marble, Shale, Claystone, and Phyllite, in decreasing prevalence. At 615°C, a temperature easily achieved by burning firewood, the sulfur gets driven off, leaving pure liquid arsenic. It has a working temp of 308°C. Arsenic is a metalloid, somewhat brittle, and not very useful on its own. You can make plates out of it, at least.

Orpiment isn't the most common ore of Arsenic, nor is it very usable due to its sulfur content. It was the first one I thought of, and the one I implemented.

Arsenic Bronze

By combining 85-95% copper with 5-15% arsenic, you can make a fourth type of bronze, Arsenic Bronze. It has a working temp of 475°C and a melting point of 950°C, and you can do pretty much anything with this bronze that you can do with the other types.

This was the first type of bronze to ever be alloyed; at first it was made on accident at times due to the tendancy for certain ores of copper to contain arsenic, however people quickly got wise to the fact that adding arsenic-bearing minerals to their copper made it more durable. It was later replaced by the harder and less toxic tin bronze, however.

Stannite

Stannite (Cu₂FeSnS₄) is a grey ore colored brassy by tarnish. It's considered as a tin ore, however its copper content made it very handy to make a type of bronze called "bell metal". However, in this mod, it melts at 950°C and turns into tin bronze. For balance reasons, it is rather rare, more so than Cassiterite.

It wasn't historically used to make bronze due to Cassiterite being more prevalent and easier to access. Stannite's iron and sulfur content made it difficult to process, as well.

Billon

Billon is an alloy of 40-60% Copper and 40-60% Silver; Electrum's cheaper cousin. It has a working temp of 445°C and melts at 890°C. It is considered decorative similar to Brass, and you can make lanterns and torch holders out of it.

Billon was primarily used for coinage, either as-is or as debasement of what should've been silver, throughout the Classical and Medieval periods.

Planned Content

Stibnite and Antimony

Stibnite (Sb₂S₃) is the principal ore of Antimony. Antimony melts at 631°C. Being another metalloid, it isn't going to be a very useful metal by itself.

Historically, it was occasionally used for decorative purposes, though later on it became important for some alloys.

Stib Pewter

Pewter is an alloy composed of mostly tin and lead, with small amounts of other things, such as copper, silver, or bismuth. However, lead is toxic, and the toxins leeched into acidic foods, fooling generations into thinking tomatoes were poisonous. It is a nice dark metal, despite everything, and besides being used for dishes, it was also used for certain decorative things. I might fancy a pewter lantern or a pewter torch holder, among other things.

This pewter would still be 80-95% tin, but it's also 5-10% antimony and 1-5% copper. I won't be providing the lead pewter here so as to not step on toes, if you want that go see Zach2039's Pewter mod.

Crushed Orpiment

Orpiment was, apparently, often used as a yellow colorant. Might as well, though I might add a yellow-orange dye instead for this purpose, if this isn't too difficult.

Arsenopyrite, Realgar

Arsenopyrite (FeAsS) is yet another gray sulfide with a metallic luster. It is the principal ore of Arsenic. Historically, this is what people used for Arsenic Bronze instead of Orpiment. This may also serve as an iron ore, though more information is needed. Orpiment will probably be made much rarer after Arsenopyrite is added.

Realgar (AsS) is another ore of Arsenic, this one a deep vermillion. Might be used as a dye as well, on top of its use for getting arsenic.

Native Platinum

Platinum is one of those materials that wound up not fully implemented into VS. Some remnants exist of it in the file system, such as the ore textures. With a ludicrously high melting point of 1768°C, you aren't melting this down, not even in a bloomery (bloomeries wouldn't be used for this anyway, bloomeries are for reducing oxides and sulfides chemically using carbon monoxide as the reducing agent). However, given that the platinum is already in a pure form, you could probably heat nuggets up in a crucible until they're hot enough to work (this may require Smithing Plus to function).

Platinum would probably get used for similar things to Gold and Silver. Lanterns, but also making lanterns brighter. Decorative tools (though Platinum has more of an argument for being used for tools than even Silver does due to being harder). Decorative blocks. Even some jewelry, perhaps.

Not Planned Content

Mercury

Cinnabar (HgS) is an ore of mercury that already exists in VS. It is used as a source of red dye. Mercury would be used for its propensity to alloy at room temperature with other metals, such as gold, to make a crumbly plaster-like substance called amalgam. I would want to use this feature to get gold and other minerals out of sand or quartz. Unfortunately, getting mercury out of cinnabar in a realistic way isn't particularly easy (some sort of distillation process, maybe?), but luckily, someone has already made a mod that does all the work for me. Check out Kingdom of Science: Gold Amalgam Extraction if you want mercury.

Known Issues

Likely incompatibility with other mods

This mod has many patches barfed up by ModMaker, and ModMaker's favorite operation is add, rather than addmerge. It also likes remove, and doesn't know about addeach either. There are a LOT of patches, as well, as this mod was technically my first one, started back in 1.19. I will try to clean these patches up moving forward, though it will likely be in stages due to the sheer amount of patch files. I'm also still learning about how to get gud, so I may even move away from patches and move things into this mod's namespace at some point.

Messed up AsBronze hoe

For some reason, the arsenic bronze hoe is interpreted as being a stone hoe. The hoe head has the same model as a stone hoe head, and the hoe itself goes looking where the stone tool textures are for the arsenic bronze texture (there isn't one there), leading to a missing texture. None of this impacts functionality, however it is kinda crap.

Uncentered AsBronze spear head

The arsenic bronze spear head's model isn't centered in the GUI, appearing far below and to the left of its slot. This may be related to the hoe fiasco (the stone spearheads have different offsets), though again, this doesn't affect functionality.