tgame/docs/14-materials.md

Materials Taxonomy

Working draft. The vocabulary that everything else hangs off of — expedition drop tables, recipe authorship, refining stations, Stockpile filter chips, component overlay sprite library. Polish later.

Categories

Raw materials

Gathered direct from expeditions, unprocessed. The "what your gatherers come back with."

Type	Examples
Ore	iron, copper, moonsilver, mithril, obsidian
Wood	hardwood, softwood, ironwood, ebony, lacquerwood
Hide / leather	deer, bear, drake, exotic
Botanicals	moonpetal, nightshade, sunroot, healwart, herbalist greens
Bone & teeth	skeleton bone, drake fang, ghoul fang, ancient ivory
Liquids	oil, sap, swamp-water, blood, alcohols
Stone & rough gems	rough sapphire, jade, lapis, ruby, granite
Cloth fibers	flax, raw silk, cotton, wool
Beast parts	feathers, claws, horns, tails, eyes
Magical raw	fae dust, soul shards, ectoplasm, manacrystal
Gnomish steampunk raw	brass scrap, copper wire, gear blanks
Necromancy raw	shadowsilk, grave-dust, soul-essence, bone fragments

Refined materials

Single-step crafted from raw at a refining station. The intermediate stock you build crafts from.

Type	Refined from	At
Ingots (iron, mithril, brass)	Ore	Forge
Timbers (seasoned hardwood, lacquered wood)	Wood	Carpenter's Shop
Cured leather (light, heavy, exotic)	Hide	Tannery
Distillates / tinctures / powders	Botanicals, bone	Alchemy Table
Cut gems (faceted, polished, cabochon)	Rough stone	Jeweler's Bench
Spun thread (silk, woolen, gold)	Fibers	Loom
Glass (clear, stained, leaded)	Stone + flux	Glassworks
Worked bone	Raw bone	Carpenter's Shop / Jeweler

Components

Multi-step sub-assemblies, ready to slot into a final craft. Multiple refined inputs.

• Hilts — tempered hilt, ornate hilt, gem-set hilt
• Pommels — silver pommel, jeweled pommel, runed pommel
• Vials — clear vial, stoppered vial, runed vial
• Stocks / clockwork frames — steampunk crafts
• Settings — jewelry mounts
• Stringings — bowstring, wire, sinew

Consumables / catalysts

Spent in crafting, no output mass. Influence quality and effect.

• Fluxes, mordants, catalysts (additives)
• Inks, quills (scribing)
• Fuel — charcoal, oil, lamp wicks (per-craft consumption, often abstracted)

Trophies & curiosities

Special, often unique or quest-tied. Lives in the Special tab of the vault, not the Stockpile.

• Recipe scrolls — single-use to learn a recipe
• Lore relics — for Scholars to decipher
• Patron tokens / faction sigils — affect reputation
• Bestiary trophies — display in Library, sometimes valuable to specific patrons

Supply chain depth

General pattern: Raw → Refined → Component → Final Item (3-step pipeline). Variations:

• Some items skip a step: Crude Pickaxe = Refined Iron + Hardwood Timber, no separate Components needed
• Some items add a step: Legendary weapons may require sub-sub-assemblies (e.g., enchanted runed pommel = runed pommel + magical infusion + scholar inscription)
• Quality bands compound through the chain: a Masterwork weapon often requires Fine+ components, which require Fine+ refined materials, which require Fine+ raw

Quality at every stage

Every tier supports the same five quality bands (Crude / Common / Fine / Masterwork / Legendary). A Crude Iron Ingot is interchangeable with another Crude Iron Ingot but stacks separately from a Fine Iron Ingot. Quality cascade rules (whether a great Engineer can rescue a Crude component) are still TBD — see 03-crafting.md.

How materials enter the game

• Expedition drops (primary) — raw materials, occasional refined, rare components from special encounters
• Patron rewards — sometimes specific refined or component items as part of payment
• Scholar research — can convert lore relics into refined materials of unusual provenance
• Beast taming — Beastmasters may tame creatures that periodically produce specific raw materials over time
• Market (when bazaar ships) — buy from other players

Open questions

• Do we want a "scrap / salvage" mechanic — break a finished card into components for partial refund?
• How aggressive is the Crude → Common → Fine quality progression? Should Crude be common from low-tier zones and Fine be rare even in high zones, or does the floor rise with zone tier?
• Should some materials have unique properties beyond quality (e.g., moonpetal is fundamentally a magical reagent, regardless of quality), or is everything reducible to type + quality?
• Steampunk and necromancy material pockets — are they geographically gated (only found in specific zones), or do they crosscontaminate (e.g., gnomish brass scrap shows up rarely in mainline forests because gnomish travelers passed through)?
• Cataloging: how many distinct material entries do we author for v1? Probably ~30 raw, ~25 refined, ~20 components for a playable starting set.