TrippyTheO Thanks for the kind words! And yeah, I feel ya. So far I've played two worlds, and the first had no borax within miles, in the second one I've had to dig down 100+ blocks to find some marble for lime. I'm still not fully certain how I want to swing kernite -- there's pretty much exactly the recipe I wanted in Expanded Matter, so I'd recommend that one to convert kernite to borax. I should get the fluorite casket lids in, though, or at the very least for with EM.

Thanks for this mod. I installed it a while back hoping to make my borax-less existence less painful.

Im a hundred hours into this map and I still haven't found Borax. I still haven't found Lime. I still can't crush Quartz. But man, three possibilities is still way better than one! Even if I don't find those rocks, I'm getting close to just skipping them and crushing up quartz at this point!

Appreciate your work and look forward to having more uses like Fluorite and Kernite, thank you.

Yukari_75 Aluminum powder wouldn't work as a flux, though. And I'm not sure lighting off a crucible full of thermite would have the results you're looking for, unless you REALLY hate that particular bit of your ceiling...

I don't have any older version to test with, but you should be able to unpack the zip, edit the modinfo file, and repack it to test if it works.

When I tried using this in 1.19.8 it said it was dependant on VS 1.20.4 and as a result wasn't loaded, on another note, aluminum powder would be a funny flux to add since it's practically unobtainable, but could be used to smelt iron in a crucible

v0.3.1 should work perfectly fine for 1.21, but I'll be updating it to make sure it's clear.

update for 1.21 happening or nah?

Thank you for this mod, because I literally cannot find borax in my world and I need it to advance. I'm over 80 hours in and there isn't even a trace amount of it anywhere I've looked. Also no luck getting kernite from panning either :/

Yukari_75 I have no idea, I only got into VS as of v1.20.4 or so. It's a simple enough mod, and does not use anything particularly new to the game, so there's every chance it will work. But if you test it out, please let us know.

Does this work in 1.19.8?

You're welcome! I'm sorry I don't have any suggestions on more beginner level stuff. Although I'm sure it exists, it's not something I've ever referenced.

Good call, in my opinion, leaving fluorite out of forge welding. As I suspected, sure it'll work... at what cost? HF is nasty, nasty stuff.

So I did some further digging. According to a blacksmithing forum post I found, you can forge weld with fluorite, but the fumes are... not good, to put it mildly. So while I guess I could add it in, it may not be wise to do so! Though perhaps if I can make it emit some sort of poison cloud? Anyhow, I may stick to just coffin lids for that beast. But good looking out, there.

I may end up with kernite just having a recipe to turn it into borax, as well. Kernite itself seems to not be used except for some pretty specific cases, so maybe dissolving it in water (in a barrel) and boiling that solution (in a dirty pot) to create borax powder from it would work. It approximates how it's done in the real world (dissolve -> purify -> recrystallize).

Holy cow, that's a bible of metal casting. I... may not have the wherewithal to read that, I'm afraid. Looks like an amazing book, and seems widely respected, but it's probably above my paygrade, I just code stuff! 😂 But thank you very much.

Interesting question! I can't point to any handbook of blacksmithing and forge welding, but if you're interested in the use of fluxes and such as they relate to casting, I heartily recommend basically any of the textbooks from Professor John Campbell. "Complete Casting Handbook" for example.

CKitt I'm not gonna sit here and claim to be an expert on metallurgy, but fluorite (aka. fluorspar) is used in the metal industry at least, so I figured it might fit in. It's certainly strongly reducing! If, as you say, it's a bit too... unmanageable to use for forge welding, that probably makes sense to me (from the chemistry I know). If you have any good ideas for reading on the subject I'd be interested.

Perhaps a patch if Expanded Matter is installed, to allow for the various ground materials. Quartz, yes, borax of course, kernite (since it's very similar to borax in the first place) yes, but fluorite? I've only ever used it as flux in aluminum and cast iron. Well, refined 85% calcium fluoride, but close enough.

Does it actually function as a forge welding flux? I'd be terrified to use it that way, personally.

Coffin lids!

SPQRattus Yeah, getting a recipe for them without using borax would be nice.

Same exact reason I made it, in the end. No borax anywhere, searching high and low. Resorted to a search overlay, found nowhere in any explored chunk. And then got annoyed that lime, at least, didn't work. Did Dwarf Fortress not die for our sins?

But now I'm further motivated to continue with it. Next up: Coffin lids, I think.

SPQRattus Oh yeah, that makes sense haha. I'm about to check it out to see if it works.

It does in fact work! No more searching for this goddamn borax :D

SPQRattus 🫡

Glad I refreshed the page haha, I was about to comment my solution after some testing.

I've had such a hard time finding Borax, very thankful for this mod

TerraMilk I found it. Turns out the address you were looking at was where the error was, but on the other end: The "survival/" at the front needed to go away.

Anyhow, v0.1.1 is published, and should work!

SPQRattus I don't have much mod knowledge when it comes to vintage story, but I've noticed something but I don't know if it changes anything.

One of the lines from your mods code:
"file": "game:survival/itemtypes/resource/crushed/lime",

Shouldn't the lime there be listed as "lime.json", because that's what it is in the game files. And I'm thinking that the game can't find the item "lime" because there's no file extension.

"file": "game:survival/itemtypes/resource/crushed/lime.json",
This is what I mean  /\

NEVERMIND!
I knew it was too simple, I changed that line to include the .json and still it didn't fix, so it has to be something else

TerraMilk Now that's extremely interesting. I had it working on v1.12.11, but now it no longer does it seems? Something or other must have gone sideways there. I'll have to dig deeper.

SPQRattus I'm playing on version v1.20.11 (didn't bother to update the game to v1.20.12). And I have used powdered lime, yet it didn't work. Let me know if you find anything

TerraMilk And you were using powdered lime? I have not gotten the in game messages updated as yet. But I made an anvil with lime myself in my own survival game.

Edit: I checked and it seems like it's correct. Something must've changed v1.20.12. I'm investigating.

When trying to apply lime it says that I need powdered borax.

#ThereIFixedIt

Aw nuts. Glitch when compressing the file, must've been. Thanks for the spot.

I think you forgot to actually include any files in assets. Afaict the mod is empty