Materials

Every object is made of something, and what it is made of matters. A bronze sword hits differently from a steel one, mithril mail is lighter than steel, gold is worth more than tin, and some materials stand acid, rust, and fire better than others. This page explains how.

An object is made of one or more parts, each of one material. Most objects are one material throughout, such as a steel dagger. Some have several parts: a long sword has a steel blade and a leather grip, and a gold amulet has its chain and the ruby in its setting. The first part is the main one: the material the object is mostly made of, and the one the objects table names first.

You can always see what something is made of, even a magic item you have not identified. An item’s name shows its gems and precious metals (the precious materials in the table below) when it does not already mention them. A gold amulet set with a ruby is a gold and ruby amulet, and a long sword with a ruby pommel is a ruby-pommelled long sword. Plain parts, like a leather grip, show only when you look at the item, which lists every part (see Magic items).

Gems are materials too, each with a size and a cut (see Gems). A loose gem is made of its gem alone. An item found set with a gem has it as one of its parts, and the gem’s worth is added to the item’s.

Every other material is measured against steel:

• weight: how heavy an item of it is compared with the same item of steel. Metals go by their real densities, the rest by what an item of them weighs.
• to hit and damage: what it does as a weapon’s blade or head. A few materials also add dice: a weapon of adamantium rolls one more die of its own size.
• armour: how much of an armour’s Protection an armour of it keeps.
• shield: how much of a shield’s Defence a shield of it gives.
• worth.
• binding: how well it holds magic. It is added to the number of enchantments an item made of it can bear: silver −2, the soft metals and knapped stone −1, gold, ivory, jade, amber, silk, and adamantium +1, mithril and the dragon stuff +2.

A material with no weapon figures cannot be a weapon’s working part, so there is no leather sword. One with no armour figure cannot be armour, so there is no flint mail.

Materials come in groups: metal, wood, bone (with horn, ivory, chitin, and dragonbone), stone, hide, cloth, glass, and resin (amber). The precious ones are marked.

As arms and armour

What a weapon’s blade or head of each material does, and how much of an armour’s Protection and a shield’s Defence it keeps. A material not listed here can be neither.

Wear

The chance an item of each material withstands acid, rust, and fire (see Item damage, below).

Working it

The work each material adds to the difficulty of crafting with it, its binding, and the objects made of it, in part or whole.

Item damage

An item can be damaged in several ways, and it is always the same state. A damaged item loses its improvements and is a point worse until it is mended, at an anvil or, for wood, with a knife (Whittle), or anywhere by a craftsperson’s Make do and mend. That is the state a failed attempt at an anvil leaves it in. An item damaged again, by anything, is destroyed. Only its name tells what did it: a corroded, a rusted, a scorched, or a damaged long sword.

Some creatures harm your gear in melee:

• The hezrou and the dretch carry acid that eats at what you wear. Each of their blows that lands has a chance (25% for the hezrou, 10% for the dretch) to reach one piece of armour or a shield you wear, picked at random.
• The ember beetle’s acid blood eats at what strikes it. Each of your blows that lands has a 25% chance to reach the weapon or shield you struck with.
• The black pudding’s acid does both, each way at 25%, and the rust monster rusts both ways at 50%.

Any resistance to acid halves the chance of acid. Rust has no damage type to resist.

What is reached then withstands it by its main material’s chance, in the Withstands acid, Withstands rust, and Withstands fire columns of the wear table:

• Withstood, nothing happens. The first time for each kind you are told so: The acid runs off your mithril chain mail shirt.
• Otherwise the item is damaged, or destroyed if it was damaged already.

Gold, silver, mithril, dragonscale, and the gems nearly always withstand everything. Adamantium is never damaged at all (see Protected items). Iron and steel rust and corrode easily but stand heat. Copper and its alloys corrode but hardly rust. The soft metals melt. Wood and cloth burn. Nothing but metal rusts. A failed attempt at an anvil is never withstood, except by adamantium. Fighting bare-handed or with a spell risks nothing.

Protected items

Some items no harm reaches at all: not acid, rust, or fire, not a failed attempt at an anvil or with the knife, and not a spell’s ruin of what lies on the floor. They are:

• unique items;
• items of the of Proof affix, whether or not you have identified it;
• anything a quest asks you to bring or deliver, until that quest is done for good. What a quest gives you as its reward is an ordinary item, unless another quest asks for it.

Adamantium is never harmed either: no acid, rust, or fire damages it, a failed attempt at an anvil only fails to improve it, a spell’s ruin leaves it be, and a creature’s adamantium gear is never found damaged. Unlike the items above, you can still take it apart or set a gem in it.

Items of other materials

Most items can be found made of a material other than their usual one: a bronze long sword, a duralumin chain mail shirt, a flint spear, a dragonbone quarterstaff, a silk cloak. What an item may be made of is its construction list, shown below by group or by material. Loot and creatures never make anything outside it, so there are no leather swords or wooden chain mail. Rings and amulets may be made of any material of a group, but never paper or wax. Rocks, food, potions, scrolls, coins, gems, and keys are only ever what they are.

Compared with its usual material, an item of another one:

• weighs more or less. Each part weighs its share of the item’s weight times its material’s weight over the usual one’s. A bronze long sword’s blade is 112% as heavy, and its leather grip stays the same.
• strikes better or worse. To hit and damage change by the difference between the two materials’ weapon figures: a bronze long sword is +0 to hit and −1 damage against steel. This counts for every blow, throw, and shot made with it, and for arrows and bolts by their heads. A material with more dice adds that many dice of the weapon’s own size to a melee weapon, a thrown one, or a bow or crossbow. Arrows and bolts get no dice: a shot rolls its launcher’s.
• protects more or less. Armour keeps its Protection times its material’s armour figure over the usual one’s, rounded to the nearest. An iron chain mail shirt’s Protection 3 is 1 in tin and 4 in chromium. A shield’s Defence changes the same way by the shield figure, which is 100% for every material but adamantium.
• is worth more or less, by its parts’ shares and their materials’ worth, like any item with several parts. A gold long sword is worth about nineteen steel ones.
• is drawn in its material’s colour. A ring set with a gem keeps its gem’s colour.

Rings and amulets change only in worth and colour.

An item’s name gives its material when it is not the usual one, after any gem and before the item: a Sharp emerald-pommelled bronze long sword of the Bear. If the name already names a material, the new one replaces it: an iron helm made of bone is a bone helm, and a pair of iron-shod boots made of bronze is a pair of bronze-shod boots. Like every material, it shows at once, identified or not. The item’s damage and Protection show when you look at the item, but its to-hit does not.

How often each material is found

Most items are made of their usual material: a long sword is steel, a cloak wool. At depth 1, an item that could be made of something else is its usual material 90% of the time. The chance of another material grows by half a point with each depth, to 20% from depth 21 on. A creature’s gear, and what it drops, goes by the creature’s level instead of the depth.

When an item is made of another material, that material is picked from the item’s list by the weights in the table further down. The weights compare only the other materials, not the usual one. Primitive metals are the common ones near the surface (copper and bronze, then iron and tin), and steel becomes the common one only deeper. Some materials are worse in a fight than an item’s usual one but dearer, such as gold, silver, or aluminium on a sword, or ivory on a dagger. Such a material’s weight is 10 at most, which is very rare, whatever its own weight says. Rings and amulets are only about worth, so this never applies to them.

A material’s weight also depends on how well it suits the item. The table gives each material’s fit for weapons (anything that strikes or is shot), armour (shields too), jewellery (rings and amulets), and other items:

• good: its weight as given;
• poor: a tenth of it. Copper and the precious metals make poor weapons and armour, hides make poor weapons and jewellery, and wood makes poor armour;
• odd: a hundredth of it. Tin, pewter, zinc, and cadmium make odd blades. Cloth, wool, and fur make odd weapons and odd rings.

An odd material is never ruled out, but it is very rare: a wool ring or a tin long sword is found well under once in a thousand of those items. How often a few items turn up in each kind of material, at depths 1, 10, and 21:

Some factions favour materials for the gear they carry and drop. Each favoured material takes its share of the picks first, for any item whose list holds it. The usual picking described above covers the rest. An orc’s spear is bone more often than not, the dead of the barrows carry bronze, and kobolds like flint, bone, and copper. A favourite never makes an item of a material it could not otherwise be made of: no tribe carries a bone long sword.

Chromium, nicrosil, dragonbone, and dragonscale appear only deep. Mithril appears only from depth 20 and adamantium from depth 30 (on creatures, from levels 30 and 40).

• Mithril is half the weight of steel and quicker in the hand (+1 to hit).
• Adamantium is a little heavier than steel and the best metal to fight with. A weapon of it rolls one more die of its own size and bites deeper (+1 damage): a long sword’s 1d9 is 2d9+1. Armour and helmets of it have twice steel’s Protection, and a shield of it twice its Defence. It is never damaged by anything (see Protected items). It holds less magic than mithril, though (binding +1).

Neither is a precious metal, and acid runs off both. An anvil works them as it does steel. Items placed by hand in the world’s made places are always what they were placed as.

A long sword and a chain mail shirt in each metal:

The common weapons, armour, helmets, and shields as usually made and in adamantium:

Pieces

Raw material comes in pieces: what a broken thing falls to (an animated thing that does not fall whole, for example; see Animated objects), and the stock smiths and other crafters work with, and what many creatures’ bodies leave when they die (see What creatures leave). A piece is one material, shown as , in its material’s colour, and named by its group: a steel ingot, 3 hardwood billets, a leather hide, a fur pelt, a bone shard, a length of sinew, a block of jade, a lump of amber, a bolt of wool, a lump of glass.

• A piece weighs what 500 g of steel would weigh in that material: a wood billet 200 g, a gold ingot 1230 g. Hides and bolts of cloth are bigger: a hide is worth 8 pieces (a leather hide weighs 1400 g) and a bolt 4. The Unit column below gives this.
• It is worth what a steel ingot (1 gold) would be worth in that material, rounded, times its unit. A tin ingot is worth nothing, and a gold one 20 gold.
• Pieces of one material stack. They are listed under Materials. A smithy and a general store sell them, and a smithy, a weaponsmith, an armourer, a fletcher, and a general store buy them (see Shops), unless they are worth nothing, like a wood billet. In Cēaptūn the smithy has steel and iron ingots.

How many pieces a thing holds goes by weight: its weight in a material divided by one piece of it, rounded, and at least one. A dagger’s steel is one ingot, a long sword’s blade three, a great sword seven, and a quarterstaff ten wood billets.

A broken thing falls apart into the parts it was made of. A gem set in it falls loose, keeping its size and cut. Each other part becomes pieces of its material: half the part’s weight in pieces, at least one, with parts of the same material counted together. Paper, wax, and the like leave nothing. Any magic is lost. A tin dagger with a ruby pommel breaks into a tin ingot and the ruby. A steel long sword breaks into 2 steel ingots and a leather hide.

Each group is worked by one skill: metal by Metalcraft, with Strength; wood, bone, hide, and sinew by Woodcraft, with Dexterity; jade, amber, and gems by Jewelcraft, with Dexterity. Stone, flint, and obsidian are knapped by hand, so Woodcraft works them, not Jewelcraft. Cloth and glass have no crafting skill yet. Some materials are harder to work than others: the work column of the materials table is added to the difficulty of working them (steel 0, tin −3, adamantium +8). Salvage uses both: it takes an item apart into these pieces.

Herbs and essences

Herbs and elemental essences are listed under Materials too, but they are things of their own, not pieces: nothing is made of moonwort. Each stacks, and none lies about as loot, but hags carry henbane and elementals leave their essence when they die (What creatures leave).

• Herbs (", 20 g each): glowcap and moonwort (5 gold), comfrey (8), feverfew and henbane (15), eyebright, bog myrtle, and vervain (25), and mandrake root (60). An alchemist always has glowcap and moonwort for sale.
• Essences (* in their element’s colour, 50 g, 30 gold each): essence of fire, ice, lightning, air, water, and earth.

An alchemist buys herbs, essences, and pieces (see Shops). Where herbs are found is on Herbs. An alchemist brews with both: herbs for most potions, an essence for the battle flasks and a few potions (frost, earthing, sea legs).

See also: Objects and your pack, Crafting, and Forging at the anvil.