forging items for 0 gems

[tinkthank]

Previous threads have indicated that item forging costs a minimum of at least 1 gem, no matter what bonuses are in play.
Well I dont have the best forgers around, but in an SP game, a Jade Sorceress of mine forged Rainbow Armor for 0 gems. I was pretty surprised, checked a few times.
The deal: Forge of the Ancients is up, she has Hammer of the Forge Lord equipped, and she is in a province with a 20 Construction bonus (Ancient Forge I think the site is called). Neither Air gems nor Nature gems are subtraced when she is given the order to forge.
I have not tested this systematically, so feel free to throw rocks at me.
Apologizes if this is old news, but I did search and turned up info to the contrary.

[Wyatt Hebert]

Well, let's do some analysis.

I may be wrong, but I do believe the formula is

Cost*(1-FB1)*(1-FB2)... etc... (round down)

So, you have 5*.5*.5*.8 (tho if that site is Construction bonus, it doesn't affect forging. There is a site for Forging bonus, tho, so I'll assume that's where you were.

That comes out to exactly 1.

So it should have cost 1 gem each. Now, if you had an inherent FB, that would drop it lower. However, my understanding of the process does not hold with your example.

I'll check more on my own, tho

Wyatt

[DeathDaemon]

Construction 20 bonus helped forging for me. 20->16 gems

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Wyatt Hebert:
I may be wrong, but I do believe the formula is

Cost*(1-FB1)*(1-FB2)... etc... (round down)

That's wrong: The formula is actually Cost * Sum(FB).

So a hammer of the forge lords (FB 50), Ancient Forge(FB 20), and FOTA (half base cost), means that a 5 gem item will be reduced to a cost of 0, because costs are always rounded down.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by DeathDaemon:
Construction 20 bonus helped forging for me. 20->16 gems

I think the was a long fake thread about it already.

Construction bonus does not affect the gem price of forging AFAIK.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
I think the was a long fake thread about it already.

Construction bonus does not affect the gem price of forging AFAIK.

No, you're thinking about Argitoth's thread where he claimed that Forge Bonus affects the cost of summoning Construction creatures.

Construction Bonus from sites in the province *DOES* affect the cost of forging items. It ALSO affects the cost of construction-school rituals.

Forge bonus, however, does NOT affect the cost of construction rituals.

[Gateway103]

Interesting, this seems to contradict the tests made by aldiss2 early this month.

The results from that particular analysis were:

Originally posted by aldiss2:
1) If FoA is Active, BaseCost=BaseCost/2
2) Cost = [Base Cost] - Caster Bonus (Intrinsic Bonus + Item Bonus) * Base Cost - Site Bonus * Base Cost
3)MinimumCost=20% BaseCost
4) The actual cost you pay is the greater of the calculated Cost or the MinimumCost.

The thread can be found here, http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...=001708#000000

Not sure what game Version he was using, but I don't recall any mentioning of forge cost alteration between the Versions.

Anyone able to reproduce tinkthank's result independently?

-Gateway103

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Gateway103:
Interesting, this seems to contradict the tests made by aldiss2 early this month.

Untrue: The findings do not actually contradict Aldiss's results.

Here's a breakdown.

Take a base cost 5 item. Cast Forge of the Ancients: This reduces the base cost of the item to 2(2.5?).

Now, apply reductions. Take a Hammer of the Forge Lord, which is -50% cost, and a construction site: -20% cost, for a total of 30% of the cost.

This is still greater than Aldiss2's result of a minimum of 20% base cost: However, the base cost of 2.5, multiplied by 0.3(30%), is 0.75 gems. Costs are rounded down, so rounding down 0.75 -> 0.

[tinkthank]

I'm sorry, I have still not found the time to work this out systematically, but I double checked again. It really is functioning this way for me. I suppose that an Ulm Smith would have an even easier time to get 0-gem forgings done; I was doing this with a Jade Sorc.
I would be grateful if anyone out there who knows more about math and the inner workings of this game could either verify or falsify my findings. I can only tell what I see.
(PS: I am *not* claiming that forge bonuses help with construction rituals as in that other thread.)

[Wyatt Hebert]

Ah, ok, I understand what my issue was.

I use FOTA a lot, and I noticed how it interacted with Master Smiths.

In that particular case, the formula does reduce to Cost*.5*.75.

Nice to know about the Construction sites. I thought I had checked that. Very nice to know, though...

Wyatt