PlaneShift

Hmm, as far as I remember slag is made when you make a mistake with metal crafting, it doesn't make sense to me for iron to somehow 'burn up'; so I would call the current behavior correct (and any transformations of metal items to dust and disappearing incorrect).

Sounds logical. Only thing that remains is, that slag doesn't just stay as it is in ps; slag turns into slag again every few seconds.
I'm aware of that this is of about the least priority (Apologies if I choose the priority wrong on creation - I didn't notice the/a setting that time)

Personally I think it ought to eventually boil off or get caked onto the crucible which would need to be repaired or replaced. Having it be indestructable is counter-productive. I see from my handy KDE periodic table Kalzium that the boiling point of iron is 1200 degrees kelvin higher than its melting point so I guess that is not too likely but I would think that instead what would happen is the metallurgist would fish the impurities out and cast them aside giving a reduced yield.

Certainly slag should not turn to slag, it should do nothing in preference to that. I would rather that it acted like dust and disappeared. When you think about it steel items turn to dust so why shouldn't slag?

Realistically, smelting _always_ produces slag as a by-product, which falls to the bottom of the furnace while the "bloom", or heated but not liquid metal (with some slag in it) is transferred out of the furnace to be worked on. Eventually, the furnace will fill up with slag and have to be emptied. In my opinion, it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for slag to turn into anything else because once you heat the ore up and pass air through it, the chemical reaction is done. I wouldn't think you'd be able to heat the slag up and pass air through it again and get something else, but I'm a bit rusty on my chemistry. Maybe as more ore is smelted, you get higher quality phosphate-rich slag to be used as fertilizer? I don't know, that sounds a bit ahead of the time.

Also, slag can contain metals such as iron, so it makes more sense to leave it in the furnace and recycle it anyways.

If you want to get really particular most smelting involves more than just heating in a furnace. A lot of modern processes use chemical reactions to purify the element being worked on. I am not suggesting that you try to model these realistically, just that if you are going to abstract it then to have a useless by-product that is indestructable by the usual means is impractical. Now if you have an artistic type NPC who wants to use it for sculpting or some such thing and will pay more than 0 for it that might be somewhat better.

IRL slag is recycled into process, along with the ore., until the quality of it reduced to the point it is essentially gravel (the steel plants I have been to use it for their drives…. in addition to it being used for road construction, among other things (hey, what do you think the roads are made of on way out of Hydlaa?, asphalt?) I actually discussed this with some mid-level workers at the steel plant. IF this was going to reflect real-life more, several (perhaps 5?) slags could be used to make the metal it came from (steel slag, copper slag, etc) though it might affect the quality some, AND you would make steel from ingots, not ore. I was told Iron ore and coal would just burn off the coal, and you would not have steel, just slaggy ore. Use decent iron and add carbon (coal I suppose in PS) and you would have a crude steel (He actually said "it might be technically steel")

Back to original post, it seems to happen with non-metal slag, like when I am burning off some "food" someone littered around. In that case it should probably go right to dust? (ever burnt toast? Imagine throwing it in the furnace. And if you never been to a Steel mill. It would barely hit the molten metal before it vaporized. In fact, they use copper tubes to inject air into the process, and when they are done with one, they toss it into the slag pile, where it burns away. So hot it is flaming away into nothing. If copper tubing pulled out of the furnace burns to nothing, should not also food?

Hope not too long a comment….

Well, this has happened to me a while back; setting new for a developer to decide on.

When disposing of RP props, I sometimes would get a continual pop-up on my screen about "You have created 1 Slag" or similar, every few seconds, forcing me to return to collect it [with my bare hands] and sell it to Trasok or whoever is nearby that buys such things.

This hardly felt "realistic" in any way.

Slag turns to dust in both furnace and forge, which in turn disappears.

Please mark closed fixed.