Honestly, all the other plentiful issues with the game aside, I feel compelled not to recommend this for the simple fact that they made the game worse when I wasn't looking!
When I first played, pouring out ore only subtracted metal from your bucket as it was added to the molds. As long as your metal was hitting anywhere within the sand, none would be wasted! So I got rather used to creating weapons that take EXACTLY 1 or 2 ore...but now I try to replay the game, and suddenly, 1 ore isn't enough to make a weapon that the design table tells me requires 1 ore! So I test, and indeed, now metal is constantly subtracted from your bucket for as long as it's pouring, no matter where it lands.
And you might think that's more sensible, that they "fixed" it, right? But let me ask you, is it sensible for a weapon that the design table says takes 1 ore...to be impossible to craft with 1 ore? Because losses are inevitable now! I've tried repeatedly, and not once have I succeeded in crafting this dagger, no matter how careful I am to pour out the smallest amounts of metal to get JUUUST up to 100%, there is always a spec extra that escapes! And since the weapon I designed takes exactly 1 ore, it is thusly impossible to craft with only 1 ore, as some of it always gets wasted. Doesn't feel terribly "realistic" to me, honestly! The design table tells you the weapon takes 1 ore, and it is humanly impossible to craft with 1 ore! That was never a problem before! Now I have to design my weapons to only use 0.8-0.9 ore to deal with the losses, which...feels worse than the previous way this system worked. Thank you devs, for breaking a system that didn't need fixed! It's only a [i]core[/i] feature of the [i]blacksmithing[/i] mechanic in this [i]BLACKSMITHING[/i] game, no biggie! Sarcasm.
So, just for the fact that the game is worse than when I last played it, I do feel obligated to warn others about this change! So, buy it if you really want a somewhat sandboxy game to forge weapons in, but be aware that updates making the game worse is not off the table here. You can see the other common complaints in other reviews...but to summarize here, the game is very grindy and click-heavy, doesn't properly reward weapons that take more work and material incentivizing you to craft nothing but daggers, and the ores are prized in a silly way such that you want to sell exclusively golden daggers, or whatever alloy is most expensive, rather than whatever metal makes the best weapon. And also, the writing is funny and charming at times, and ceaselessly sadistic the rest of the time, insisting on inflicting as much torture-porn and injustice on the player as possible, which is quite the fun-killer.
Very promising game, but the developers have made a LOT of poor decisions, and it seems to have gotten worse over time rather than better.
EDIT: After some testing, I recommend giving yourself a 20% margin of error on average to be safe. So for a dagger that uses 1 ore, design it to take 0.8 ore. For a weapon that takes 2 ore, design it to use 1.6 ore. Just take the amount of ore you want to use and multiply it by 0.8, and design the weapon to use that much. I tried making 0.9 ore daggers, but it's simply too narrow a band for me to be able to get even still, I STILL ran out of ore while being as careful as I could! So 0.8x as much as the amount of ores you're using seems to be the sweet spot, at least for me, and for smaller weapons, larger weapons might be able to be pushed a bit farther.
EDIT 2: After even more testing, I don't think it's even a matter of how precisely you can pour the metal! It seems to pour in discrete amounts, and if the amount of metal that the mold needs isn't divisible by whatever that discrete amount is, then whatever excess is poured out in that last droplet will [i]always be lost,[/i] no matter how precise you try to be. I've been reloading and trying to forge this weapon that the design table says takes 0.9 of an ore, but the last of the 3 molds consistently stops at [i]98%[/i] when I run out of metal. What seems to be happening is, as I said, the last droplet used to get the other 2 molds to 100% has a little bit more than is required, meaning that extra is just wasted, with nothing you can do about it. And it's clearly not a small amount being wasted either, I [i]supposedly[/i] have a 10% margin of error here! Over 10% of the metal being wasted evin with perfect inputs, as far as I can tell! I've tried it several times now, the result seems to be consistent. I even tried filling the molds in a different order, but that actually just gets me [i]worse[/i] results! Man, why did they DO this? The system didn't need fixed, and yet, they broke it! Now I just have to somehow cut down on the material this weapon uses even [i]more[/i] somehow...why does over 10% of the metal I use go straight in the bin, devs? It didn't used to be like this.
EDIT 3: I just keep finding new ways to hate this change. I just checked how much money I'm theoretically losing, from that 10-20% of the ore I have to write off as lost. Comparing a golden half-spear (one of the wizard's preferred weapon types, if you turn that mechanic on) that is designed to use 0.8 ore vs one designed to use 1 ore, the theoretical sell value given by the design table of the two designs is 2997 and 3677 respectively. That is a ~22.7% difference! This seems to confirm that nearly the only thing affecting the cost is how much material goes into the weapon, so I am losing...apparently, slightly over 20% of my potential profits, compared to before! This sucks. Why did they change this???
EDIT 4: What is moraka ore/alloy meant to be used for? It's highest damage multiplier is for smash rate, and not by a little! ~1.82x smash rate with it, the next closest is pierce, which it has a 1.24x multiplier for. So one would think, it's meant to be used for maces, right? For blunt weapons! ...But with the lightest guard, pommel, and mace head that I have, a weapon forged with this alloy sells for around ~12,860 at a base 50% chance to sell. ...Who am I supposed to sell such a weapon to? Literally the only customer type that even CAN have that much money is the wizard, and wizards don't accept any weapon not made of pure gold. Anti-mages are the next closest, with a budget of 2,000-10,000...and they won't accept any weapons made of gold or [i]gold alloys.[/i] Moraka is an alloy that uses gold. The next closest is beast hunters, who have a budget of 2,000-6,000. So if I want to use moraka alloy, which has its largest bonus in blunt damage, to create a mace, a blunt weapon...it immediately makes it so expensive that in order to sell it, I would have to charge less than half of what it's worth. Which means I should never do this, and to use it's large blunt damage multiplier, I need to make it not a mace...but a bladed weapon. ...Why, developers? Why? What weapon am I supposed to make from this, if a mace forged of an alloy that has good blunt damage is literally TOO EXPENSIVE TO BE SOLD for anything less than <50% of the value of the materials???
Should I just turn off picky customers, is it just not a balanced mechanic??? Why have it as an option if it's not balanced! I have to either ignore moraka's high blunt multiplier, ignore it's actual use cases and just make daggers or whatever from it...or turn off picky customers, which I assume uncaps their budgets? Let me test that...yep, just had a peasant buy a weapon for 4,238, and peasants cap out at 2,000 with picky customers on. So...the greatest restriction added by "picky customers" is not what weapon [i]types[/i] you can sell them, but how much you can sell those weapons [i]for,[/i] and the budgets...weren't balanced well. Damn. I liked the idea of having to make different types of weapons for different people and price ranges...but it's just very poorly balanced and implemented. Might have to turn that off, since I am literally *unable to sell moraka maces otherwise.
