It's a great idea.
There are silver and gold bars in the High tower of Magic.
Perhaps we could smelt ore to make bars, as in the Sanctuary of contraptions.
Make the forge in Maelbrin Park.
Add an demonic forge in the Pit
that makes 'corrupted' weapons/armor. Just a cool flag. Not more power.
What we need is resources/vnumbers:
Wood
Coal
sand
Glass
Copper ore
Tin ore
Iron ore
Mithril ore
Silver ore
Copper bar
Bronze bar
Iron bar
Silver bar
Mithril bar
Admantite bar
Then we gather wood from forest area. Eleyin where the FG are cuting trees could be the source of wood.
Then we burn wood to make coal.
Use coal and sand from beaches to make glass.
Smelt bronze ore into copper bars with some wood.
Smelt bronze ore and tin ore plus wood to make Bronze bars.
Smelt iron to make iron bars with wood.
Smelt iron and cool with coal to make Steel.
Smelt Silver/Mithril to make Silver/mithril bars.
Can't smelt Admandite, so we steal the bars.
Then we use this bars to make weapon.
Please please allow us to make the weapons.
Instead of adding modifications, let's just dig down to go up again. More fun.
To make a new weapon we must get an existing weapon first.
Then we use the forging materials and destroy the weapon creating a weapon clone. A blank with only the damage dices, and dam type 1 damage.
Let's call it a "crude weapon" (blank).
Mya wields a crude bronze sword.
We can use the material type to limit the avg damage of the weapon.
Bronze would allow max 22 avg damage.
And Admantite allow max avg 30. No more than 30. Remember you need to already have a avg 30 weapon.
We can also correlate weapon lvl with material. So that lowlevels don't end up with a L50 weapon that does no damage.
Then we start improving the weapon with more materials.
Bronze for +1 hitroll.
Tin for + 2hitroll.
Iron for +1 damroll.
Steel for +2 damroll.
Silver for +1/+1 hit/damroll
Admantite for +2/+2 hit/damroll
Mithrill will give the weapon wrath/sharp.
Then have the number of upgrade based on proficiency %. With the last maxed one giving it the Legendary flag.
Perhaps allow the weapons made of cruder materials to be upgraded more times.
Perhaps also allow us to change the weapon damage type from:
Pierce Bash Slash Magic
No vuln weapons.
Perhaps also allow us to give the weapon a socket.
Perhaps also allow us to burnprof the weapon.
Perhaps also allow us to make it no-drop.
Everything else would be OP, i think.
Perhaps use velum, starstone into this final more powerful upgrades.
Perhaps also for the staring phase while we haven't it full implemented. Digging and stuff, allow the materials to be sold in a shop. You can make the price ridicule large at a later time when you phase in the material gathering.
Perhaps leave the low tier materials for people to grow in interest in the mechanic.